Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Microsoft limits institutional cloud storage space for environmental reasons

scholar.social

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 177 posts

Re: Microsoft limits institutional cloud storage space for environmental reasons

#81

Post by murderfs »

gambiting wrote: post #55
vasco wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They could make the theme for bing and other microsoft websites dark instead of white, literally just a change of color, if they wanted to reduce screen power usage globally - so many "no impact" changes with software that this has to be a fake justification.

How would that help in the slightest though? Majority of monitors worldwide are just normal TN/IPS/VA panels, for them the colour of the pixels makes absolutely no difference in power consumption. While OLED monitors exist, they are pretty much a niche within a niche.

Lots of monitors (probably most at this point?) have multiple backlighting zones in order to cheat at contrast ratio measurements.

Re: Microsoft limits institutional cloud storage space for environmental reasons

#82

Post by pjmlp »

> Microsoft says server farms are destroying the planet,

Ironically, on another business unit, everyone should throw away their perfectly working computer at the expense of the environment, and buy as Windows 11 capable computer.

Priorities.

Re: Microsoft limits institutional cloud storage space for environmental reasons

#84

Post by 123yawaworht456 »

staplers wrote: post #36
crimbles wrote: post #5

Is that the same Microsoft which is throwing money into running environmentally destructive AI workloads as their key business driver?

HN: AI is all clean energy from the clouds. Crypto uses coal and toxic waste for power. /s

reddit: all technology I've been convinced to perceive as morally objectionable is ruining the environment and should be banned by the world government.

Re: Microsoft limits institutional cloud storage space for environmental reasons

#85

Post by srmarm »

For 'dark' storage something in the style of AWS Glacier storage would probably do the trick from an environmental point of view. Drives can be filled and then left unplugged and only spun up when data is requested which apparently isn't very often.

I seem to vaguely recall that some of the glacier data was just put on Blu-ray discs and filed away. Seems like a viable solution and with the cloudesq abstraction it doesn't necessarily matter so long as it's being done properly.

Of course I suspect the environment is being used as convenient excuse to people with environmental policies.

Re: Microsoft limits institutional cloud storage space for environmental reasons

#86

Post by elashri »

pjmlp wrote: post #80
elashri wrote: post #13

Microsoft is following Google decision two years ago to stop their more generous (than MS) storage plan for educational institutions. A lot of the people who had MS offering instead of google were saying that they are safe with their choice. 1TB is much more reasonable than "unlimited" and Microsoft would keep it. Now here we are. Happy to be part of CERN so I don't have to worry about my institution storage situatio…

I guess there are more generous nowadays than they used to be, I surely didn't had such storage access during early 2000's.

You remind me of my professor telling me not to complain about low memory. He then will tell me about how much he was excited when he could have a machine with 1MB memory in 1980s when he was my age.

Re: Microsoft limits institutional cloud storage space for environmental reasons

#88

Post by pjmlp »

elashri wrote: post #86
pjmlp wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess there are more generous nowadays than they used to be, I surely didn't had such storage access during early 2000's.

You remind me of my professor telling me not to complain about low memory. He then will tell me about how much he was excited when he could have a machine with 1MB memory in 1980s when he was my age.

48 KB on my case, in 1986, with a Timex 2068.

Later on I was kind of envious of my friends with an Amiga 500 and its 512 KB, until getting a 386 SX, with 2 MB in 1992.

Yeah, really understand where the professor was coming from.

Re: Microsoft limits institutional cloud storage space for environmental reasons

#90

Post by YetAnotherNick »

lnxg33k1 wrote: post #28

Just a philosophical question, that I think is on topic, I wonder how many cloud services will have to give people unpleasant experiences for those same people to stop going all in on cloud services, especially in the era of we reserve the right to change the terms and conditions without notice at our discretion At this point I’m not even mad with Microsoft

Why single out on just cloud services? Unless you sign a contract for the future you can't be future proof. Everyone knew that Microsoft would do this specially after Google's move, but university liked their juicy 10TB storage which they got for free.

Honestly I don't have any sympathy for university expecting this for free when they could easily pay $5/student/month or some even more discounted price.

Post reply on HN