Category: asides
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A few notes on the quest for £1/kg H2, and relating it to fossil free datacentres
This post from Rivan, a hydrogen startup, makes a few key points that I think are really interesting in the context of the research into fossil-free molecules you might need for aviation, shipping, all year round power generation, and a fossil free internet. I’ve mainly written for my future self as much as anyone else,…
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Things you forget to ask when doing a podcast about AI power spikes and hardware standards
I’m sharing this here to come back to later, as I host a podcast called Environment Variables and I recently did an interview with some folks who are working on getting a standards group off the ground focussed on how datacentre hardware and software work together. There was one claim that during the interview I didn’t…
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Sustainability *via* tech, vs sustainability *of* tech
I’m sharing this post here, because I’ve found this diagram useful in clarifying recent discussions about green IT, or sustainability in the tech sector recently. Here’s the diagram I’ve been using in a few talks and to support discussions. Sustainability via tech / sustainability via IT These are the sustainability benefits you can acheive by…
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Why some people in Virginia get miffed about datacentres
Every year, there is an absolutely stellar deck from Nat Bullard, the former chief content officer of Bloomberg New Energy Finance, about climate, and this year, one of the slides caught my eye enough to share here – slide 169, which I’ve added below. We’ve heard stories about datacentres using around 20% of all the…
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Discovering Docling
A couple of years back, I started using a RSS reader again. I find it really useful for compiling notes for the CAT newsletter I’ve been editing and publishing most weeks, but I also end up with loads of links that are interesting, but do not fit. The first of hopefully a series of small…
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Will new models like DeepSeek reduce the direct environmental footprint of AI?
I’m in a chat at work, and recently this question came up: Are folks expecting a reduction in energy demands if DeepSeek-style models become dominant vs the ones you see from Open AI? I’ve paraphrased it slightly, but it’s an interesting question, so rather than obnoxiously share a long answer into a that chat, I…
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2025 is the year that the RE100 change how they recognise green claims
I’ve been following Flexidao for a while, and they recently published an interesting post about updates from the RE100, and the new way the recognise claims around Green Energy. I figured it’s worth sharing here as I think it has implications on how people talk about green energy in datacentres – a long running, and…
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Parking an idea – WNDR, for Web Native Dynamic Rendering
I realised today when writing a post into the Django Forum that I had a half formed idea in the new post form that I had totally forgot about out. I spent some chatting with Carlton about it, so it seemed worth dropping the ideas here before they’re lost to the ether. Background – Carlton’s…
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What’s the air quality like in rooms at FOSDEM?
This post is placeholder until there’s a clearer plan to try instrumenting a few rooms with affordable CO2 sensors at FOSDEM, well known, free open source conference held in Brussels. Why do this? Broadly speaking, I think it’s a good idea to let people make more informed choices about being in crowded rooms, with unclear…
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The wagtail project template I wish existed
As of December 28th, 2024, this website visible at rtl.chrisadams.me.uk, is a WordPress blog. I ended up using it out of convenience after wasting too much of my life faffing around with building static site generators, and abortive attempts at hand-built CMSs. I’ve tried using Wagtail a few times to build these CMS’s too, but…