1:59

side and the wind and it went and

2:02

it turned into like a big mangle of

2:05

metal and broken 4 euro

2:07

pinata. Wind pinata.

2:10

I gave it one minute for each euro. That's

2:14

how long it lasted. And

2:16

then I got smart and bought a 10 euro

2:19

umbrella which was quite a bit more

2:22

sturdy and worked really well. And

2:24

feeling all smug, somebody in the hotel's speaker

2:26

said, you know, the hotel will just give you an umbrella. Thanks.

2:33

I feel smart now. Yeah, I feel smart now. Hey,

2:35

let's roll the music for better know framework. Alright.

2:38

So I practiced

2:41

the

2:42

other day. I

2:47

was asking my friend Richard Campbell, what's up with

2:49

HoloLens? I haven't heard anything about Microsoft

2:52

HoloLens in a long time and he's gone, I don't know.

2:55

So of course I went

2:56

and did what most people do. I googled

2:59

it. Binged it. Oddly enough. Google

3:01

Bing. And so it turns out there's a story from

3:06

onmsft, like

3:08

onmicrosoft.com from

3:11

October 11th, Microsoft releases Windows

3:14

holographic 23H2 update. Nice.

3:18

Here's what's new. And

3:20

so I guess they've

3:23

got their military version close

3:27

to deployment now and you can see in this article

3:29

that there are people in the army wearing it. And

3:33

it's been a big project for them. And

3:37

it's a big multi-billion

3:39

dollar contract

3:41

they have with the army. And so

3:45

hopefully that will turn into

3:47

good stuff for us in the future. Yeah,

3:49

I presume this is just Windows 10 but

3:52

the holographic edition. Yeah, Windows 11. I

3:55

think it's still 10 that they're

3:57

using for the HoloLens too. I don't

3:59

know if they've actually. moved up to the new version. Okay. Which

4:02

why you know they because Windows 10 is getting a 23H2

4:04

so this is the equivalent just for the holo-raphic edition.

4:07

Right right right right okay well

4:09

anyway so you can click on the holo lens

4:11

to release notes from October

4:13

10th 2023 and read all about it. There's no real

4:19

product as far as I know yet. You can

4:22

still buy a holo lens too. You can get a holo lens

4:24

too it's for grand and

4:26

it's been years. Yeah it's been years. And

4:28

I don't see new hardware on the immediate horizon

4:30

but you know they all they've they've basically talking

4:33

about we're waiting for the right chip

4:35

set like the right rev to come along. Yeah.

4:37

It gives us enough battery life and enough things that

4:39

it's gonna be worth making the next one. Right. Meanwhile

4:41

meta quest 3. Yeah. Is $500. Yeah.

4:44

Although it's a

4:47

VR headset not an AR. It's VR not an

4:49

AR. Yes. But and everybody

4:51

says it's a lot of fun. Yeah I've

4:53

got a quest 2. I have to decide whether I want

4:55

to upgrade it quest 3. Yeah me too. Cool.

4:58

Anyway that's what I'm thinking about today.

5:00

Who's talking to us today really? Well knowing we're going to talk

5:02

about sustainable development. Yes. I

5:04

dug back into the archives and I found a

5:06

show from 2011 episode 725. So 1200 episodes

5:09

ago in December 2011. I think I was 14

5:17

years old. I don't think that's true.

5:21

We talked to Kathy Malone who

5:23

was a tech ed speaker about

5:26

being a green developer. Great

5:28

conversation you know 45 minutes long

5:31

and she's gotten here there and

5:33

everywhere and admittedly quite

5:35

a while ago and there was comment on the show at

5:37

the time 11 years ago. This is from Timothy

5:40

Clinkie who said in our company

5:43

telling a developer to make their code more environmentally

5:46

friendly means they need to make it more green

5:48

by adding comments.

5:50

They come up green in the telephones. Oh

5:53

come on. It really does

5:56

that. I thought it was funny Tim.

5:58

I thought it was real funny. Tim, I'm going

6:00

to send you a copy of Mise de Cobaille whether Carl thought it

6:02

was funny or

6:05

not, but it made me laugh. And

6:08

if you'd like a copy of Mise de Cobaille, write a comment

6:10

on the website at dotnetrocks.com or on

6:12

the Facebooks. We publish every show there. And if

6:14

you comment there and I read it on the show, we'll send you a

6:16

copy of Mise de Cobaille. Write a green comment,

6:18

please. Very green. As long as you put the

6:20

double slash on it, it'll be green. Everything

6:23

will be fine. Everything will be fine.

6:25

And you can definitely follow us on Twitter if you want

6:27

to, but the cool kids are over at

6:29

Mastodon. I'm at CarlFranklin at

6:31

techhub.social. And I'm Rich Campbell

6:33

at mastodon.social. Send us a toot. We

6:36

will read them. And with that,

6:38

let me introduce the one, the

6:41

only, Leah Ladieno. Close.

6:44

Close? Good. Ladieno.

6:47

Yes. Let's go with that one.

6:50

Yes. There you go. Okay. Leah is a passionate

6:52

technologist that loves to get people together to solve

6:55

problems. With about 10 years of working

6:57

as a software engineer, Leah has been

6:59

working in London as a C-sharp backend

7:01

engineer, delivering value to FundApps'

7:06

clients for the last five years.

7:09

FundApps, plural. FundApps'

7:11

clients. For the last five years.

7:14

Yes. Yes. And we're talking about

7:16

sustainable development. But first, welcome

7:18

to .NET Rock. Thank you very much. Thank you for

7:20

having me. It's our pleasure to have you here. And such a cool

7:22

topic. Yes. And I

7:25

really like that we talked about this 12 years

7:28

ago because I got to hope things have progressed.

7:30

So when you say sustainable development,

7:33

what do you mean? Yes.

7:34

I think sustainable development

7:37

changed over the years.

7:38

To me, it means

7:41

I only buy a laptop every other year.

7:43

Nice. Not every

7:44

year. Yes. I mean, when we talk about sustainable,

7:47

there are like three aspects. Like if you Google

7:49

it, economical, social

7:52

and environmental. Obviously,

7:54

because we are here talking about green, we

7:56

are talking a bit more about environmental

7:59

impact. I

8:01

think, you know, like last

8:03

decade or even more, it was

8:06

how do you make developers code

8:08

more sustainably, not create

8:10

tech debt and all of that.

8:13

To me that says

8:15

maintainable rather than which

8:17

is a kind of sustainability.

8:18

Exactly. But it's a different, I would

8:20

say it's a different kind of sustainability.

8:23

It's not environmental. Right. So

8:25

like they're different aspects. Sure, without a doubt.

8:29

And can I say the obvious, like planet

8:32

is fucked. So we are more

8:34

thinking about environmental aspects

8:37

nowadays.

8:37

Don't use AI. Don't use the

8:39

cloud. And listen, the

8:42

planet's fine. It's all of

8:44

us that have got the problem. Like the planet's

8:46

going to make us. We may

8:48

be burned off of that planet. We're

8:51

an annoying rash on the planet. You know, when I do

8:54

the climate change talk for the high schoolers,

8:56

we talk about the in the Eocene, which

8:58

is like 24 million years ago, carbon

9:01

dioxide was at 1100 parts per million. Right.

9:04

As opposed to what is that right now for 18. It's like

9:07

planet was here. Heck, it was just a big old pile

9:09

of algae. That's all. You know,

9:12

Antarctica had probably had

9:14

trees growing on it. So it

9:17

is, it is, we are, the

9:19

troubles we're having are impacting

9:22

humans being able to function here.

9:24

Exactly. All of the fires

9:26

and the floods and sea levels

9:29

rising. And that's just

9:31

direct impact. Like people not being able

9:33

to live on this planet. Right. There

9:35

is also like all the health issues and what's causing

9:38

that. The subtler parts of all

9:40

these things. So you basically have

9:42

three categories, but I'm immediately

9:45

thinking there's got to be hundreds

9:47

of issues and topics that we

9:49

could talk about, right? Yeah. There's

9:52

got to be hundreds.

9:53

And I'm sure there is, but as software

9:55

engineers and software professionals.

10:00

We can talk about code and what we can do

10:03

and I learned yesterday that 20 to 25

10:07

percent of electricity usage can

10:09

be attributed to digital sector Sure

10:12

And I mean that that's why we are

10:14

talking about it even more and that's

10:16

why it is more important. Yeah,

10:19

and even Richard you had a

10:21

talk about future of electricity. Yes of

10:24

energy actually the future of energy

10:26

Yeah, and our move towards

10:28

using less carbon emitting energy sources.

10:31

Yeah, which certainly helps matters But

10:35

it is interesting in the news especially

10:37

around the large language models, which are

10:40

very compute intensive Now

10:42

there's folks talking about well just how much energy is

10:44

that is it really necessary? also

10:47

the cooling parts of it and you're complaining

10:49

the The cloud vendors

10:51

and Microsoft's among them have come

10:54

up with strategies to make very inexpensive

10:56

cooling systems for computers Yeah, but they're

10:58

fairly water intensive And

11:01

so they you know the sort of reality

11:03

of you're taking Fresh water and

11:06

you're essentially misting it into these

11:08

data centers to cool them. What could go

11:10

wrong? Well, I'll tell you what

11:12

cost of it. I built an i9 machine Yeah

11:16

in my house, and it has a giant

11:19

heat sink And when I say

11:21

giant like I can I can

11:23

barely get the case cover on it, right? That's

11:25

how big it is It's probably a half

11:27

a foot square, but it's probably a

11:30

couple of pounds of copper. Yeah, right Yeah,

11:33

but it's really quiet

11:35

and it's really cool Right and it doesn't

11:37

doesn't require water cooling and it's an i9

11:39

like it's a beefy machine Yeah, and

11:42

the graphics also. Yeah the

11:44

modern video cards you look at the family assemblies

11:46

are on those That's not true really there. The real

11:49

question

11:49

is

11:50

if you pinned it like if you had that

11:52

processor working flat out Yeah, how

11:54

warm would it get? I mean, you know the question

11:56

we know that cooler would disperse that heat

11:59

But that just means it's in the room. And

12:01

let's say that it's a client machine,

12:03

right? It's not a server machine serving up lots

12:05

of CPU. But

12:08

I wouldn't want my data

12:11

center to be completely reliant on

12:13

solar energy either because, okay, my

12:16

server's down. Yes. I

12:19

mean, they use a lot of hydroelectric power. One

12:22

sense I would think that in general, the cloud movement

12:25

has meant that a relatively few

12:27

number of people are responsible

12:30

for a tremendous amount of compute availability.

12:34

And when green requirements are put

12:36

on them, they have a better chance of implementing it

12:38

than we do if everybody was building their own

12:40

data center.

12:41

Yeah. I mean, it's here, it's numbers, right?

12:43

Like economy of scale. If

12:47

we all use cloud providers, surely

12:50

we can push them to do something better

12:52

and in a better way. Plus, we

12:54

can all reuse these resources instead

12:56

of every one of us having a server

12:59

at home.

12:59

Yeah, running 10% utilization.

13:02

I think it's also – that's true.

13:05

I think it's also making us lazy.

13:06

Yeah. Well, I don't know that we've ever

13:09

prioritized this. Like, if you think about the priorities

13:11

of a software developer, it's like, one,

13:13

make

13:14

it work. Yeah. Two,

13:17

make it work fast. Right.

13:19

Yeah. Make it work so that somebody

13:22

else could possibly fix it. Yeah.

13:25

Like, where is any other consideration at that point?

13:27

Make it available all the time.

13:29

Yeah.

13:30

Yeah. I don't remember these times because

13:32

probably I was not born or I was just

13:35

a kid. But I mean,

13:37

once upon a time, memory and CPU

13:40

and hardware were very expensive.

13:42

And constrained as a consequence.

13:44

Right. And huge.

13:46

Yeah. It was a massive expense. And

13:48

you did need to consider how you

13:50

code. It needed to

13:52

be super efficient. It needed to be for

13:55

computers. That's how we got solid

13:57

principles. Right. Like, we were writing code

13:59

from a computer. machines to be efficient.

14:01

Well, because we had to. We had to,

14:03

exactly. We also limited the feature set accordingly.

14:06

Yes. You went upon a time you could not waste

14:09

cycles on a GUI, much

14:11

less a touchscreen. Yeah. That's

14:14

a lot of extra compute. Yeah,

14:15

we move now into world of

14:18

memory is cheap, CPU is cheap.

14:20

Storage is infinite.

14:21

Storage is infinite. You can scale these

14:23

servers, you can add more nodes, you

14:25

can add more memory and CPU on fly.

14:28

It's very easy. And

14:30

everything was about performance. Like, everything

14:33

was like, I want it done immediately.

14:34

Yeah, and that's a great version

14:36

of performance. Not even the code is fast, but you got the

14:38

code written fast, like the performance of get

14:40

the feature out. Get

14:41

the feature out, but also run

14:43

as fast, but not by writing the code performance.

14:45

No, by buying the figure process. But by like, all scale

14:48

it, and like, it's going to be on a hundred nodes,

14:50

and it's going

14:50

to be super quick. I will fix this with the giant

14:53

compute button. Exactly.

14:56

So, do you see your role as

14:58

shining light on these inefficiencies and

15:00

saying, you know, hey, we have to get better at

15:02

this, or do you have solutions

15:06

to these problems that can be implemented today?

15:08

Yes, no. Well, it's

15:11

a complicated question, but I do

15:13

think we need to change something. It's

15:17

harder for the planet, because

15:19

we see what's happening. We can

15:22

get smarter at it. But

15:25

it's also, if we

15:28

don't do something, as software

15:30

engineers, our boss is going to come

15:32

after us, and it's going to say, you need to write

15:34

it in this way, because either

15:37

government told me that I need to,

15:39

or because we can't sign any more clients,

15:41

because they're all asking for

15:44

all of these checks that we are thinking about, I

15:46

mean, even in Swandos, now

15:48

we are, all of our prospects

15:50

are looking for these vendor checks, and

15:52

like, are you doing this? Are you

15:54

doing that? And the reason why we get

15:56

the signature was not only because

15:58

of that, but is because we

16:01

are thinking about these things and at the moment,

16:03

they are optional. They're not

16:06

there if you would, you

16:09

know, if companies thinking about

16:11

it and thinking about the environment. But

16:13

in my opinion, soon, this is

16:15

going to be a must. It's

16:17

going to be a mandate. Yeah.

16:19

Well, and I wonder if it just won't become table stakes.

16:21

Like Microsoft and all of these tech companies

16:24

have been talking a lot about zero carbon

16:27

and zero impact technology centers. They

16:30

help check those boxes off for you. And

16:32

one could argue that some of

16:34

this is quote unquote green washing.

16:37

Like are they really doing anything about it? But

16:39

it also makes it easy for us. Like, hey, just write

16:41

your code. Don't worry. We'll make sure it has

16:44

no impact on the planet. Right. But they

16:46

also bill us by the minute for the

16:48

compute. Like there is an angle on this. It says if

16:50

I write my code more efficiently,

16:53

it will actually cost me less. Right. You

16:55

know, when you own the computer and you don't

16:57

fully utilize it anyway, you don't care. You

17:00

have all the compute and you have enough compute for what you're doing.

17:02

But if you're charged by the transaction

17:05

and by the compute load, any

17:07

more efficient code, that's money in the bank. So

17:09

GitHub co-pilot, I'll go to say while

17:12

true and get a copilot.

17:15

Can't do that. That's a tight loop.

17:17

Yeah. I mean,

17:18

we do have serverless at the moment, like

17:20

all of these cloud providers, you can spin

17:24

up containers when

17:27

you need them, then you can scale them down and

17:30

shut them down. You can turn on

17:32

these lambdas. I

17:34

mean, even us, when we code,

17:36

we have massive problems of things taking

17:38

too long. True. And you develop

17:41

something for a kind of this very simple

17:43

things take, I don't know, five minutes

17:46

and then it scales up. You get a more complex

17:48

client. It takes two and a half hours for, let's

17:50

say, a batch process. You remove

17:52

it to strength, but it's

17:54

done tens of millions of times.

17:56

Yeah. It saves half an hour. Yeah.

17:58

No kidding.

17:59

There, you are not paying

18:02

for that half an hour of these,

18:04

I don't know, 300 containers being

18:07

gone.

18:07

Right. Or especially if there's

18:09

a big pipeline running, like you probably like fewer instances

18:11

too. Yeah, exactly. That is money you're

18:13

not spending if you do it well. I

18:15

think there is a direct

18:17

link from how much

18:19

you're paying something to how

18:22

much energy that

18:24

you use. Sure. You're basically

18:26

eliminating this infrastructure

18:28

that you don't need

18:29

to run.

18:31

So, there

18:33

are a couple of things. You can

18:36

just run these machines when

18:38

you need them, when you're running something

18:40

instead of constantly having them on.

18:42

So elasticity is cost efficient.

18:45

Exactly. That's one thing. The

18:47

other thing is write more performance code. Right.

18:50

So you don't need to have them on for an hour, maybe you

18:52

need them just for half an

18:53

hour. And that is good

18:56

for the environment, you're assuming less resources and

18:58

happens to save you money. Exactly.

19:01

But if you perform the same amount of

19:04

CPU processing that you would do in

19:06

a half an hour if you do that in five minutes, you're

19:09

jacking up the CPU, are you really saving

19:11

anything?

19:12

Maybe. I think that

19:14

really depends. I guess what I'm saying is the developers

19:16

need to think about not just going

19:18

faster but... It's really

19:20

kind of a compute cycle problem. I

19:23

like your lambda scenario

19:26

because typically when I see a spike load like

19:28

that, I've got a big old queue of calls. Like there's

19:30

a bunch of work that's just come in, we've got a whole bunch of stuff

19:32

to run. And

19:35

it is containers under the hood, we all know that,

19:37

right? We just don't have to deal with it. It lights them up

19:39

and to pump through as quickly as possible is going to light up a lot

19:42

of them. But if you've made them more efficient,

19:44

you'll literally light fewer. So

19:47

in the end, you're going to see how many

19:49

instances... It was the same workload but

19:51

how many parallel instances did it need to execute

19:54

it? And because it was finishing faster, it won't

19:56

have lit as many. The same

19:58

one will be reused more time. There's real

20:00

savings to be had there. I guess that's a

20:03

puzzle for everybody to individually figure

20:05

out. Sure. Like how to make things more efficient. Well,

20:07

and we played these map reduce games before

20:10

where it's like, hey, I can run map reduce on one machine.

20:13

Don't do that. It's dumb. But it'll take

20:15

an hour. I can run it on six

20:17

machines, and it'll take 12 minutes.

20:22

I can run it on 60 machines,

20:24

and it'll take four minutes. So

20:27

you know it's- So what's the environmental impact of running

20:29

it? You're exactly right. Like one would argue

20:31

the six machines was kind of the efficient middle point

20:33

where it took less time, and

20:36

the overhead of the mapping part and

20:38

the recombining part wasn't

20:40

as high as over distributing it, where

20:44

we may be able to cut the time in half, but we upped the

20:46

load by five times to

20:48

make it work. I don't know if you thought about this, Lab, but

20:50

I know Richard has. Do

20:52

you think quantum computing is

20:55

going to change the equation in terms of

20:58

sustainability

20:59

and

21:01

in our data centers? Can

21:04

you think of a quantum data center,

21:06

what that would look like?

21:08

I don't know that much about quantum

21:10

computing,

21:13

but there is an interesting example. My

21:16

brother, he's a physicist, and he

21:18

works with solid state physics

21:21

and kind of combination with chemistry and finding

21:23

new materials. And

21:25

this was an interesting thing. I was talking to him the

21:28

other day, and what he's trying to do

21:30

is use machine learning to find these

21:32

different- to write programs

21:35

that find these different combinations

21:37

of materials.

21:38

That

21:39

would otherwise be done with quantum

21:42

computing, which takes a lot of power,

21:44

which takes a lot of energy.

21:46

Mostly in the cooling.

21:48

Yeah. So

21:50

I can't say anything about quantum

21:52

computers, like how efficient they are, what

21:54

are they doing to their

21:55

environment? Well, they don't really exist yet, do they? I

21:57

think they kind of do, but they're within limitations.

23:59

the

24:00

my latest MacBook my M1. Yeah

24:03

the M1s and the M2s being some of the finest

24:05

machines that are made. So we used to have and

24:07

the battery lasts forever. And and well

24:10

in that chip

24:12

is an incredibly large chip it's

24:15

not actually that complex a chip because

24:18

the ARM architecture is simpler they have room

24:20

to include a GPU, include

24:23

an NPU, include more memory

24:25

all things that make it perform better. So we're

24:28

starting to see a push towards arms

24:31

in the server closets and in the cloud and

24:33

I think you're going to talk about double digit

24:35

decreases in energy consumption

24:37

for the same results. Wow.

24:39

And I think that's a good point like Pentium

24:42

is now talking like working on

24:44

chips that are low consumption.

24:47

They're no longer saying when marketing

24:49

like even Apple with their chips they're no

24:51

longer saying this is super fast in performance.

24:54

Like how fast do we need like you

24:56

know like we're

24:56

it's fast enough.

24:59

We are now in a world where it's like this

25:01

is more sustainable battery will like

25:04

it will use less energy. Right. It's

25:06

not just us like Apple like

25:08

all of these companies are also marketing

25:10

on this. When you're right that like arms pitch

25:13

has always been battery efficiency those M1s

25:15

and M2s all day battery in your laptop

25:17

and it's not a big battery. Yeah. The idea that

25:19

you put it into server because literally it'll be less

25:22

kilowatts is just another

25:24

level of the same thinking so we

25:26

should be able to get there. I mean you're

25:28

cool. Well inevitably because you're

25:30

literally moving the electrons around less.

25:33

The pipelines aren't as complicated as not as many instructions

25:36

said and in the end all that

25:38

heat comes from vibrating electrons. Well there

25:40

you go. So we don't have

25:42

to fix our code we're fine. Just you know .NET

25:46

CLR will automatically compile

25:48

onto ARM and we're gonna get the computer results.

25:51

I think there is also another lens

25:53

to it like we are using all

25:55

of these programs hopefully

25:58

to bring some value right. So what

26:00

problems are they solving? Like when we are talking about

26:03

machine learning, when we are talking about quantum

26:05

computing, when we are talking about any

26:07

software that we develop, or

26:09

even AI and crypto,

26:12

like not crypto, like blockchain,

26:15

and distributed systems, like

26:18

what problems are we solving?

26:21

How much energy they

26:23

use

26:25

might be okay if we are thinking

26:27

about the problems that we are solving, and maybe

26:30

those problems would be using

26:32

even more energy if we were not doing this.

26:35

So I think we need to kind of

26:37

look at the bigger picture, not in the small

26:39

and isolation, this is using X, Y, Z

26:42

amount of energy. It's like,

26:44

what is that replacing?

26:45

And the trick is the comparison,

26:48

because there's not going to be easy comparison. No. And

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27:44

And we're back. It's .NET Rocks. I'm

27:47

Carl Franklin. That's my friend Richard Campbell. Hey. And

27:50

we're talking to Leah Mladenio. Yes,

27:53

I got it right again. I

27:55

got sustainable computing and like,

27:58

you know, there's so many. subtopics

28:01

under here but we're going for

28:30

you

28:35

know watts per transaction.

28:38

We can also be talking

28:40

about that greenwashing that you mentioned earlier

28:42

Richard. Yeah. And I think that's a

28:44

big pain. I think with anything that we do that's

28:46

a big pain like because people stop trusting

28:50

the numbers and their impact. Yeah.

28:53

If all of these companies are scamming

28:56

in a way. Yeah. Let's go over

28:58

that one. Because

29:00

then you stop trusting it. And even

29:02

if okay if we are thinking about where we

29:05

run our software, how we write our software

29:07

and how performant it is, we

29:10

can't reduce it to zero right? No. Like

29:12

we would stop living

29:15

or we would not write anything and

29:17

that's the best thing for planet.

29:19

Right. But I don't know if that's true

29:21

but yeah.

29:21

Okay. But you know like we can't

29:23

do that. So like it's also offsetting.

29:25

Yeah. There is a lot of greenwashing

29:27

there as well. So I

29:30

think our next step is as

29:32

well kind of removing

29:35

the fog around all of that or trying

29:38

to figure out.

29:39

Creating more transparency. More

29:41

transparency. Maybe standards

29:43

like it's electricity right?

29:45

Like we know how

29:47

to calculate electricity. Like. But

29:49

looking at the environmental impact of it if you have

29:51

an electrical source is challenging.

29:53

It depends on what you're using. I

29:55

mean I've had a chance to tour the Quincy Data Center

29:58

in Eastern Washington. but

30:01

you're really test sites for Azure,

30:03

but they're powered by hydroelectric power, which is about

30:05

as green as you're going to get. It's

30:08

not like hydroelectric power doesn't have environmental consequences.

30:11

You do flood a valley and a bunch of plant

30:13

life goes underwater and other things like

30:15

there are consequences. Yeah, whatever happens in that whole,

30:19

let's put a data center underwater. You

30:22

know, funny, I did a lot of... Speaking of green washing

30:24

or whatever. No, no, I talked

30:26

to Mark Resinovich about that. Okay. And

30:29

he was just a while back in the build timeframe and

30:32

we talked about Project Natick, which

30:34

was this test of putting essentially

30:36

racks in a metal cylinder under

30:39

the ocean to do the... Right.

30:42

Like take a shipping container, put all the servers in it, have

30:44

it water cooled, boom. It's a pressure

30:46

vessel, so it's cylindrical. Yeah. And

30:48

they tested it in the Orkneys and so forth. But in the end, it came down

30:51

to data

30:53

sovereignty controls, like just

30:55

being able to protect the machines. So...

30:59

Like who owns it? Well, not only who owns

31:01

it, who has access to it. Like one of the

31:03

problems with it being underwater is you don't know if people

31:05

are approaching it. Right. I

31:08

don't even notice, but we're living in a world lately where there's

31:10

a few bad state actors out there. Yeah, you're right

31:12

about that. This is exactly what Resinovich was talking

31:14

about. It's like, you know, we

31:17

like our big buildings

31:19

made of concrete with big fences

31:21

around them and

31:24

strict controls on access and

31:26

you can't do that when it's sitting at the bottom of a bay

31:28

in a city. Yeah. So,

31:31

in the end, it became impractical. The only thing they showed...

31:34

One of the things that came out of it that was really interesting was that the

31:36

hardware lasted longer when

31:39

the environment was completely undisturbed.

31:41

Wow. That the machine failure

31:43

rates were actually lower because

31:46

nobody walked by them there because

31:48

they were in a middle cylinder out of the ocean. That's interesting.

31:51

Did you ever hear about Subsea Cloud? That

31:54

was another company that planned to have

31:56

a commercially available undersea data center

32:00

operating off the US coast before the

32:02

end of 2022. Yeah, I don't think it made it.

32:04

That didn't happen apparently. No,

32:07

and I think you get back to the same old problem. It costs

32:09

more and it's questionable safety. The

32:13

ocean is a dangerous place and

32:16

a secretive place. So I think it's problematic

32:18

overall. There was a bunch of benefits to it without a

32:20

doubt. The logical

32:22

thing was you were going to be able to put them closer to cities where

32:25

the latency would be low in a space that

32:27

would be inexpensive. But

32:29

there are unusual regulations which you get

32:31

in the water that are hard to deal with. Yeah. And most

32:34

importantly, you don't have direct control over everything. Well,

32:36

probably the worst place to put a data center is above

32:38

ground, isn't it? Well, where else are you going to put it? Underground.

32:40

Yeah. Yeah,

32:43

as long as you can control the space around it. Right. And certainly

32:45

you get more heat management that way. I

32:47

think you see a lot of organizations

32:49

talking a lot about where they're getting their power from and

32:52

how they're cooling. I mean, the two big

32:55

energy consumers. And

32:57

for the most part, I want to... This

33:01

seems to be the logical thing for

33:03

us to do is we pick the provider whose

33:06

green approaches are

33:08

appropriate. I suspect

33:10

they're all going to be the same ultimately,

33:13

and they all have a certain amount

33:15

of green washing in them. And

33:19

we need to fight against it. I'm not saying it's acceptable,

33:22

just it's part of our responsibility

33:24

to be going. This part where you're buying all these carbon

33:27

offsets because you didn't actually say what you're going to do, which when

33:29

you have no carbon output on this, stop

33:31

it. Stop emitting carbon on it. But

33:33

that's the thing. As we

33:35

care more about

33:37

this, as we care more about the environment,

33:40

we are choosing those providers. Yeah. And

33:42

at the end, we'll stop choosing

33:45

those that we don't trust or that

33:47

are not doing a good thing, whatever we define

33:50

that that could think is or whatever the values are

33:52

and standards are. I think it'll get

33:54

better. Yeah. I think we just at the moment trying

33:56

a lot of different things and... people

34:00

are putting the numbers or ratings

34:03

that would make them look better.

34:04

I think that's important. It

34:07

is interesting to weigh the price

34:09

of building ultra-efficient code

34:12

that will consume as little energy as possible

34:14

versus the maintainability of that code.

34:17

Yes. My experience with making highly optimized

34:19

code is it's harder to take care of.

34:22

The simplest code is the best code

34:24

for maintainability, even if it is

34:26

going to consume more energy in the process.

34:28

There is always a balance, right? I

34:31

think we sway too much into the direction

34:33

of we want to scale, we want to fast, we don't care

34:35

about how we write the code.

34:37

I mean, honestly, Leah, I don't think people are thinking

34:40

about this for the most part.

34:40

Yeah. I get that. And

34:43

I think the first steps are to start

34:46

talking about it. Right. Get

34:48

the data on like what are you doing,

34:50

where you are. Because most

34:52

of this is we can do loads

34:55

of stuff. And I think we should

34:57

do loads of stuff now at the beginning when we

34:59

don't know what's the right thing. We

35:01

should experiment, we should learn from it. But

35:05

it's mostly to get the data and know what brings

35:07

the most value. Yeah, starting

35:08

to measure, just measure. Yeah.

35:10

I mean, data and metrics,

35:13

it's another thing to add to these

35:15

storages that don't impact

35:17

the environment in a good way. Yeah,

35:20

measuring is also a consumption of confusion. Exactly.

35:23

And storage. At least we can make an informed decision

35:26

on what we are doing. The thing

35:28

that we need to be mindful about is

35:30

that we shouldn't wait

35:33

to get something. We should all start

35:35

thinking about it and do something about it. Because

35:38

I don't think there's going to be a perfect solution. Yeah.

35:42

Nobody's perfect. No solution will be perfect. It's

35:44

a moving target. It's a moving target. But

35:46

everything is. This is a complex topic

35:49

that we need to solve. And at some

35:51

point, we will have better data. We will

35:53

have more information on what

35:56

is going to make

35:58

it all better or which direction we are. we want to go

36:00

in and there's going to be a couple of options.

36:03

But at the moment, let's

36:05

just try, let's do something.

36:07

I mean, I think the easiest thing I can

36:09

get by a senior

36:11

leadership is this. We have a SaaS

36:13

offering and I can reduce the cost of

36:15

us offering the SaaS offer for the same set of customers.

36:17

So effectively, we're going to make more money off

36:20

of existing customers by making this code more

36:22

efficient. And if you want to then

36:25

do a little green marketing on the back

36:27

of we make our code more efficient to reduce our

36:29

impact on the planet, that

36:31

fine, you know, up to you. Yes,

36:33

there is that thing

36:35

where we

36:37

need to be able to know

36:40

how to present

36:42

this work, which value this brings. There

36:45

is also that thing you want to work for the

36:47

company that wants to do good. And

36:50

if they don't understand what that

36:52

means, you want to explain

36:54

them. But if they don't get it and

36:56

if they don't want to do it, find

36:59

another job. Like we are

37:01

spending... Are

37:02

we going to get to that point where it's like, I can't work

37:04

here because you don't care about these things? I mean,

37:07

that's interesting to me. I don't know

37:09

if it's true.

37:10

Well,

37:12

there is an interesting, not interesting,

37:14

there is a phrase that

37:17

I was reminded by recently by my

37:19

CEO and it was, every

37:22

dollar you choose to spend is

37:24

a vote for the future you want to live in.

37:26

Exactly. I think

37:28

that's fair. And arguably, the pandemic

37:31

has made us more aware of the culture

37:33

we want to be in and a culture

37:36

of an organization that takes environmental

37:38

impact seriously is maybe a culture you want to

37:40

be a part of. So that does affect your

37:42

choice of where you want to work.

37:43

Yes. And I think

37:45

we shape it, right? I think

37:47

we choose and if our

37:51

employees are

37:52

not willing or don't care about

37:55

it, they need to start because people will not want

37:57

to live, they will not want to work there.

37:59

It's a signal about culture.

38:01

It's a signal. And it's a signal we want

38:03

to do something, right? And OK,

38:06

that's one goal is they

38:08

will not be able to get software engineers,

38:11

get software engineers. The other thing is these vendors,

38:13

they'll not be able to get the clients. Or the government

38:15

will say, they will start

38:18

charging you on your environmental

38:21

impact.

38:22

That's the other thing. It is interesting to get to

38:24

a point where it's like, can we get ratings

38:27

on our software for environmental

38:29

impact? I like that idea. It doesn't exist

38:31

at this point, obviously. But we certainly

38:34

talked about other rating systems

38:36

for quality. And

38:38

so could there be one that measures

38:40

this as well? Absolutely. It's

38:44

interesting just how unmeasured

38:46

our industry is. And

38:49

again, I think the cloud's a sort of workaround to this.

38:52

The byproduct of cloud is we've now concentrated

38:56

that responsibility down to a few organizations

38:59

that we can press against, for

39:01

better or worse. I think it's a client

39:03

conversation here, too. Like, I

39:06

saw the EU's talking

39:08

more about the maintainability

39:10

of smartphones. You already said

39:12

this earlier, Leo. This is all like, do you really need

39:14

more compute? It's like, do I need another camera

39:17

in my phone? I think three's enough, right?

39:21

The main reason I've replaced phones these days is because

39:23

the battery's starting to fail, because batteries

39:25

aren't replaceable. And now you see the EU coming

39:28

back to, we

39:30

used to have changeable batteries, right? And

39:34

could you tolerate a millimeter thicker on your

39:36

phone? But every few years now, you're going

39:38

to be able to take the old battery out, have it recycled, get

39:40

a new battery for your phone, and you can use it for longer.

39:42

Well, certainly, Apple doesn't want

39:45

that, do they? Because they can't sell you

39:47

a new phone. Well, I'm not

39:49

just going to lay that at the feet of Apple. All

39:51

manufacturers are in the business of selling

39:54

you new devices. But the cadence

39:56

is decreasing, right? People

39:59

aren't at it. getting every new iPhone. Maybe

40:01

they're getting every other. Certainly

40:04

over in enterprise land we were talking

40:06

about keeping workstations.

40:08

It used to be two years and that was

40:10

four years. Now we're talking five and six

40:12

years because A, they're

40:14

good enough. It's not like

40:17

the employee's productivity

40:19

is impaired. The only reason that if five

40:21

or six years we start wanting to swap out the machines

40:24

is we start having more problems with them.

40:26

I had my last workstation for over 10

40:28

years. Yeah. Over 10. This new

40:31

one is gonna last me a long time too. The

40:34

last set of servers I had when I had a server

40:36

closet because I don't have one anymore and I'm not unhappy

40:38

about that. That's greenwashing right there.

40:40

Right there. But that set of servers,

40:43

twice I changed out all the

40:45

hard drives and all the fans in it. Yeah. Like the

40:47

motherboards were good enough and

40:49

there's nothing wrong with the chassis but eventually

40:52

the bearings on the fans start to go and that will

40:54

kill a machine as it stops pumping air through well.

40:56

Well I have 32 solar panels on my roof

40:59

so I feel pretty smug right now. But

41:02

again we're thinking about in terms of when

41:05

we reduce impact, when we maintain

41:07

equipment for longer and there does seem

41:10

to be a general sense that

41:12

a lot of these devices are sufficiently performant.

41:14

We don't need to replace them to get anything from that

41:17

but they should be more repairable.

41:19

Yes. I've really hope we're going in that direction

41:21

because I mean we are a consumer.

41:24

How do you say like consumed? Yes. Yeah.

41:27

We have been trained

41:29

by a system that profits from us consuming

41:31

constantly. Exactly. They're consuming

41:33

constantly. We want everything like you

41:35

go on Amazon and you order things

41:38

immediately, clothes, gadgets.

41:40

Everything is I just want it now.

41:42

It doesn't need to be good quality because

41:45

I'm going to be dead. I'm going to get bored of

41:47

it in the month. And this is the thing

41:50

like these companies that produce

41:53

these things, they are not incentivized to make

41:55

it last

41:56

longer. But

41:58

that's what you get you end up with like regulations

42:00

say, oh no. Well, they forced iPhone

42:03

to use the USB-C port and

42:05

it's not like they couldn't do it and

42:08

there was much acclaim from everyone and now they've

42:10

also said stop shipping chargers with the phone.

42:12

Yeah. Because we've got enough chargers. I

42:14

have enough cables at home. I got a story

42:17

for you. So my second

42:19

marriage,

42:21

I inherited two step daughters and they're

42:23

wonderful bonus daughters but at

42:25

one point one of them came and said, mom are

42:28

we broke? And

42:30

she goes, no, why? Because

42:34

I haven't seen any Amazon boxes on

42:36

the front porch in like two weeks. Call!

42:43

Order something quickly.

42:48

Yeah, we

42:51

are just used to having everything

42:54

now. Yeah. And

42:57

the world is getting complicated, you know, like

42:59

all of this stuff, all of these frameworks,

43:02

all everything, you know, like run

43:04

this, ship logs there, I

43:06

want to filter on this. We talked about

43:08

observability yesterday. That's

43:10

more data. That's more, you know, like

43:13

I'm not saying any of that is bad. I'm

43:15

just saying what is the value that that's bringing?

43:18

What problems are we solving with that?

43:20

But you hit an interesting point. It's like there's

43:22

an awful lot of consumption going on without assessing

43:25

the value from it. Exactly. Like if you're gonna

43:27

do that level of logging, tell me you're looking at the

43:29

logs.

43:29

Yeah, why are you using them? Is it

43:32

just like, first of all, like do

43:34

you need it? What's the problem you're trying to solve?

43:36

The other thing is like, what's the tool for the

43:38

job? Yeah. And this is a thing like,

43:41

is that the machine learning? Is it these

43:44

AI? Is it the, can you run

43:46

this during the night when energy

43:48

consumption is lower? Can you

43:50

run it in a region where we

43:53

have greener energy?

43:54

Sure. Yeah, that's an interesting idea

43:56

that we shift workloads, time

43:58

and geography for a little bit.

43:59

lower impact. Again, I don't know

44:02

how much consideration that is right there, but it's an interesting question

44:04

to ask. Those are not

44:06

stunningly hard problems. No.

44:09

If you had the numbers in front of

44:10

you. Yeah. I think there are different ways.

44:12

It's just we do need to start talking

44:15

about them. We need to start

44:17

making it easier for people to do them.

44:19

Yeah. Make a path.

44:22

The path of least resistance is also

44:25

a path of optimal outcome. Yeah.

44:28

I buy it. It's an interesting conversation to have and

44:30

to kick upstairs. Yes. To

44:33

take to leadership and say, where does this fit into

44:35

our conversations? How are we thinking about this?

44:38

Again, as someone who's had

44:40

to convince leaders to do things for

44:43

many years, it's like, come with a dollar

44:45

figure. They understand that. Yeah.

44:48

Absolutely. You need to speak with the language

44:50

of the people you're talking to, so you need

44:53

to know your audience.

44:53

Yeah. If I can make

44:55

the CFO happy and the CEO happy

44:58

at the same time, I've got a good day. Well,

45:00

I can really tell you that in

45:03

front of us, we made this

45:05

platform greener by accident

45:08

at early stages. This was just

45:10

because we were trying to – not just because.

45:13

One of our problems was we couldn't scale

45:16

with the client sizes and the hardware

45:19

is just too expensive. By trying to reduce

45:22

the cost, we

45:24

actually made the platform greener. Nice. Scale

45:27

it up, scale it down when you're not using it, distribute

45:29

it in a different way, like those

45:32

different things. That's

45:34

a language that our CFO understands.

45:35

It's cheaper. Right. It was cheaper.

45:38

It should be cheaper. It's

45:40

awesome.

45:42

What's next for you? What's in your inbox?

45:44

What's next for me? Well, with

45:47

FundUps, I'm lucky to work in a company

45:50

that actually cares about this, that

45:52

does want to make a good impact and not just

45:54

profit. We

45:57

just re-architected our platform.

47:45

dot

48:00

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48:02

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48:04

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