this is an interesting intersection of web technology, environmental technology, and sustainability--as is most if not all of the entire low tech magazine project, i believe. this could probably...
this is an interesting intersection of web technology, environmental technology, and sustainability--as is most if not all of the entire low tech magazine project, i believe. this could probably also go in ~comp or ~tech, but since it predominantly deals with a model for environmentally sustainable website hosting and ways to optimize and minimize energy use through the use of a website, i've opted to toss it in here for starters and let other people determine if it's a good enough fit for here.
in any case, as of now this is obviously not something that is necessarily "practical" for probably 99% of websites, but it's still a neat idea to put into practice and hopefully it'll pave the groundwork for some future of websites that build off of its philosophy. you don't seem to hear an awful lot about the intersection of sustainable/renewable/environmentally-friendly technology and the internet, and honestly that intersection specifically seems to be a big area that gets neglected in environmental topics.
In regards to the site going offline in bad weather due to no power, could you have two (or more) servers in different parts of the world, so that if one goes offline due to low power, it would...
In regards to the site going offline in bad weather due to no power, could you have two (or more) servers in different parts of the world, so that if one goes offline due to low power, it would just switch to the other server?
most likely not. to have a dns name be able to be served by multiple servers they have to be proxied through a load balancer / switcher. which would be a third server that would again have to be...
most likely not. to have a dns name be able to be served by multiple servers they have to be proxied through a load balancer / switcher. which would be a third server that would again have to be always on. which would have its own set of sustainability issues that wouldn't be necessary if the first server was already on all the time.
i don't have the technical know-how to definitively answer that one, but it's an interesting question to which the answer is i'm sure "yes" in some form. if i had to guess, the main stumbling...
i don't have the technical know-how to definitively answer that one, but it's an interesting question to which the answer is i'm sure "yes" in some form. if i had to guess, the main stumbling blocks in doing something like that presumably would be with respect to keeping the mission and ideas of low tech magazine (which is obviously low-tech, sustainable, and ultimately reliable enough that it keeps the site up when necessary) and then actually going out and implementing it.
this is an interesting intersection of web technology, environmental technology, and sustainability--as is most if not all of the entire low tech magazine project, i believe. this could probably also go in ~comp or ~tech, but since it predominantly deals with a model for environmentally sustainable website hosting and ways to optimize and minimize energy use through the use of a website, i've opted to toss it in here for starters and let other people determine if it's a good enough fit for here.
in any case, as of now this is obviously not something that is necessarily "practical" for probably 99% of websites, but it's still a neat idea to put into practice and hopefully it'll pave the groundwork for some future of websites that build off of its philosophy. you don't seem to hear an awful lot about the intersection of sustainable/renewable/environmentally-friendly technology and the internet, and honestly that intersection specifically seems to be a big area that gets neglected in environmental topics.
ah, nifty. i actually went back a few pages there to see if it'd already been posted, so evidently i missed it ' c '
In regards to the site going offline in bad weather due to no power, could you have two (or more) servers in different parts of the world, so that if one goes offline due to low power, it would just switch to the other server?
most likely not. to have a dns name be able to be served by multiple servers they have to be proxied through a load balancer / switcher. which would be a third server that would again have to be always on. which would have its own set of sustainability issues that wouldn't be necessary if the first server was already on all the time.
Interesting, thanks for explaining. I guess you could just have a mirrored backup site at another domain/location.
i don't have the technical know-how to definitively answer that one, but it's an interesting question to which the answer is i'm sure "yes" in some form. if i had to guess, the main stumbling blocks in doing something like that presumably would be with respect to keeping the mission and ideas of low tech magazine (which is obviously low-tech, sustainable, and ultimately reliable enough that it keeps the site up when necessary) and then actually going out and implementing it.