Hard core computing from the last century

A spot of tech nostalgia for us, with Google's hirsute chief engineer, Urs Hölzle, discussing his first day in Google's "data center" 15 years ago:

[...] a megabit cost $1200/month and we had to buy two, an amount we didn't actually reach until the summer of 1999. (At the time, 1 Mbps was roughly equivalent to a million queries per day.)
- You'll see a second line for bandwidth, that was a special deal for crawl bandwidth. Larry had convinced the sales person that they should give it to us for "cheap" because it's all incoming traffic, which didn't require any extra bandwidth for them because Exodus traffic was primarily outbound.

What's interesting here is that the primary criteria for billing was space - square footage taken up on the colocation site's floor. Network was an additional cost as noted above, but Exodus didn't bill its residents for power - the 3 x 20A required for all the servers was a scrawled note on the invoice. Nowadays, power is one of the most fundamental requirements of a data center and you don't pour the first bit of concrete before you've got your megawattage lined up. Apple goes as far as sticking its own solar power generation around its North Carolina data center. We've come a long way in fifteen years.

You wouldn't be able to get away with a server rack like Google's 1999 design nowadays - just look at the way they cram the hardware into every available space. I've seen one of these racks on display, and you can barely see any daylight through it from front to back. The fire safety inspector would have kittens.

In the comments, Todd Reed calculates that if you tried to run today's YouTube while paying those data rates, you'd be forking over just under $3bn per month...

This just makes the point that the computing world of 15 years ago really was a different generation from today. Google was anticipating that a few megabits per second would be more than enough to keep crawling the entire web and keep up with the addition of content. Let's look at the most content-dense medium of the modern web - Tweets. In 2013 Twitter averaged 5700 Tweets per second. At 160 characters plus maybe 40 characters of timestamp and attribution that's 200 x 5700 = 1,140,000 characters per second or about 9 Mbits per second (Mbps). It would have cost Google nearly $11,000 per month just to keep up with Twitter's tweets. Nowadays you can get 20Mbps on your home Internet connection for $75 per month (business class) which should cope comfortably with two Twitters - until they started allowing you to attach images...

Nuclear math

The reports from eschatological finance site Zero Hedge on the Fukushima nuclear disaster's aftermath make instructive reading. For instance, today's report that tens of trillions of Becquerels have spilled into the Pacific:

... and moments ago reality struck again, when the Nikkei newspaper reported that readings of tritium in seawater taken from the bay near the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant has shown 4700 becquerels per liter.

Tens of trillions of Becquerels! nearly 5000 per liter of seawater! the end is nigh.

Anyone know what a Becquerel is? One Bq is defined as the activity of a quantity of radioactive material in which one nucleus decays per second:

For example, natural potassium (⁴⁰K) in a typical human body produces 4,000 disintegrations per second, 4 kBq of activity.

Heaven forfend! The most radioactive measured water near Fukushima is 70 times as radioactive as normal people!

Who's the original source for this? Why, it's Russian government funded TV station Russia Today.

Russia Today also reports:

The level of radiation at the site [of a highly contaminated leak] was estimated at 100 millisieverts per hour, while the safe level of radiation is 1-13 millisieverts per year, according to ITAR-TASS news agency.

Well, 4 mSv per year is the natural background dose so one can only imagine where ITAR-TASS is getting its data. US radiation workers are allowed 50mSv per year. The contamination level described would likely be fatal if sustained over a day or two, but then it's still 1/100th the level of radioactivity of some trans-uranic waste from US reactors. I wonder why RT wouldn't put this into the proper context?

Now why might the Russian government, drawing substantial economic and political power from its oil and gas exports, want to put a downer on nuclear power? More interestingly, why might Zero Hedge want to support the aims of the Russian government?

Update: (2013-08-21)
Lewis Page at El Reg points out that the 100mSv is beta particles, so you'd have to splash around in or drink the water for it to have any effect. Gamma is 1.5mSv/hr, which means a nuclear worker can work around the water for four 8 hour shifts before approaching their annual radiation limit.

Provoking Kirchner - you can't win

The DT reports that inviting Argentine Premier Cristina Kirchner to Thatcher's funeral is "another provocation":

Héctor Timerman, the Argentine foreign minister, has previously accused the British government of inflammatory gestures over the Falkland Islands, including the "militarisation" of the South Atlantic.
"Why do they invite me to a place I hadn't planned to go?" he told local radio after Baroness Thatcher's family invited the Argentine government to send a representative, saying it would be "amusing".

I wouldn't be surprised if there are bouquets in the shape of West and East Falkland, just to ram home the message.

Smash the dash for gas!

Intrepid climber Ewa Jasiewicz is at the top of a chimney in a new gas-fired power station and wants us to know why:

The government and the big energy companies want to build as many as 20 new gas power stations, which would leave the UK dependent on this highly polluting and increasingly expensive fuel for decades to come.
[...]
We already rely on gas for 83% of our central heating and almost 50% of electricity. Increasing this dependence will cause household energy bills to rise even further, pushing those who live the most precarious lives deeper into fuel poverty.

Oh, well that's all right then. So gas is expensive, and if we stop the UK building more gas plants then we'll stop bills from rising because nuclear, solar and wind are so much cheaper, and coal is less polluting, than gas.

We ask ourselves: who is Ewa Jasiewicz and what does she want? Ewa's previous Guardian writings give us a clue:

• Ewa Jasiewicz spends a harrowing week in Gaza documenting life under attack;
• Primark answered critics over its use of child labour by closing factories in India. But its PR worries aren't over yet;
• Don't exclude those of us who want to see revolutionary change from the fight against global warming. We're all in this together;
• There can be no state solutions to climate change: governments won't give up the powers that leads to environmental ruin; and
• To the fury of ordinary Iraqis, the country's oilfields are being privatised. Unions must fight together to prevent it.

She's writing and video-ing all over the shop; back in July, for instance, she was telling Sainsbury's to pay a "living wage". I couldn't quite find the time to watch her speech on the united4justice YouTube channel. I think you get the picture. Find a trendy cause and you find Ms. Jasiewicz. She and her pals in Kampania Palestyna outdid themselves in 2010 by scrawling graffiti on the Warsaw Ghetto Monument saying "Free Gaza and Palestine":

"People here need to wake up and realise that occupations and ghettos did not end with the end of the second world war. These tactics and strategies of domination and control of other people and lands are present in Palestine today and are being perpetrated by the state of Israel. We have a responsibility to free all ghettos and end all occupations".

Way to win over the Polish Jewish vote, Ewa!

Without wishing to be uncharitable, I note that West Burton is forecast to have rain all week, and night-time temperatures (at ground level) hovering just above freezing. Personally I'd fence around the base of the chimney to prevent delivery of any additional clothing, food, or fuel, and leave Ms. Jasiewicz up there as long as she wants to stay.

Physicists against interpretive dance

Well, not really, but very similar. Artists against fracking:

Dear Governor Cuomo,
I have concerns about the impact of fracking upon our water, our air, and our local communities in New York State. I believe that fracking for shale gas is a danger to all New Yorkers. Please don't frack New York.

Well, I've visited Manhattan and Brooklyn, and I'd say that the only risk from fracking is a distinct improvement in the quality of the environment. Or lower power bills.

I see that noted bipolar druggie Carrie Fisher supports the cause, for instance. Well, with that level of engineering and scientific expertise, I'm convinced. Truly, "Artists against fracking" have jumped the shark. What's next? "Lawyers against nut allergies"? "Pensioners against co-sleeping"? Kittens against apartheid?

Big Oil funding propaganda!

Expect howls of protest from Greenpeace and friends about this deplorable use of oil money to fund popular propaganda any time now. No, really, any time now...

A new film starring Matt Damon presents American oil and natural gas producers as money-grubbing villains purportedly poisoning rural American towns. It is therefore of particular note that it is financed in part by the royal family of the oil-rich United Arab Emirates.

"Promised Land" aims to oppose the practice of fracking (injecting water underground to fracture rock layers and release natural gas), as made famous in the pseudodocumentary Gasland. It seems that the UAE Royal Family are not thrilled at the prospect of the USA achieving something close to energy independence, and are doing their bit to ensure a continuing high demand for oil (and thence high oil price) as long as the UAE reserves last.

We can't blame the UAE for doing this - why wouldn't they? - but I will be fascinated to see how the various environmental groups tackle this news. With whom should they side? I suspect most of them will adopt the subterranean ostrich approach in order to avoid their heads exploding.

The Baltic Sea USO - what's going on?

That's Unidentified Seabed Object, just to be clear. So I've been following the earlier Daily Mail articles about this strange rock formation on the bed of the Baltic, thinking "yeah, yeah, Face on Mars territory." Except that now it seems that there's an additional wrinkle:

Professional diver Stefan Hogerborn, part of the Ocean X team which is exploring the anomaly, said some of the team's cameras and the team's satellite phone would refuse to work when directly above the object, and would only work once they had sailed away.
He is quoted as saying: 'Anything electric out there - and the satellite phone as well - stopped working when we were above the object.

Now, let me say that my immediate working hypothesis is that Stefan is enjoying screwing around with credulous journalists. However, just supposing that he's reporting the actual facts, what's going on?

I think the most likely explanation involves the Soviet Navy; there's a long history of Cold War submarine activity with seabed-crawling Soviet mini-submarines, and the Swedish Navy depth-charging them. Maybe, just maybe this artefact is the result of some mid-1980s activity that buried Soviet (nuclear?) hardware under rocks and sand, broadcasting a significant RF signal for some as yet unknown purpose. The Russians are unlikely to admit any involvement unless actually confronted with the retrieved device.

Or maybe aliens crashed their spaceship into the sea, and this expedition will retrieve it. I've seen the second X-Files movie, and know that this never turns out well. Time to go short of Sweden?

Talk about bearding the lion...

Alicia Castro, the new Argentine Ambassador to the UK, decides to open her posting by writing an article in the Telegraph declaring that she's fully in favour of jaw-jaw rather than war-war:

My extensive experience, first in the trade union movement, then in parliament and as a diplomat has made me a strong advocate of dialogue and positive negotiations.

and then begins her argument:

The sovereignty dispute between Argentina and the UK is 179 years old. It dates from the time that Great Britain – in much the same way it invaded Buenos Aires in 1806 and 1807 without success – invaded and took the Malvinas Islands by force in 1833.

Oh dear, Alicia. You were doing so well up until then.

Strangely, with all the talk of militarisation and invasion, she only refers tangentially to the war in 1982. Why might that be?

Commentator John DeVries has a solution for Ms. Castro:

Rest assured, as long as Britain remains in the Falklands, the islanders will never attack Argentina or flood it with mutton.
Such is our respect for your country we don't even want payment for this service. We're going to drill for the oil which is in the area, sell it and pay for everything ourselves.

Appoint that man to the post of UK Ambassador to Argentina.

Vote Energetic Ken

I had to check that we hadn't gone back in time a couple of weeks - Ken Livingstone wants your vote because he will set up City Hall as an energy provider:

The former mayor signalled he was prepared to fight companies if they tried to block his vision of running an energy co-operative within the Greater London Authority to cut household energy bills by an average of £130 a year.

Because one of the first things City Hall looks for in its recruitment is expertise in the energy markets. Right? It's obvious there must be hundreds of pounds per consumer just lying around for the taking.

How is he going to achieve this feat?

Livingstone is confident he can offer cheaper energy to Londoners by exploiting a Transport for London contract which allows it to buy energy at "half the price" of a domestic consumer.

Umm. There are what, 6 million people in Greater London? Assume 2 million households, and that Ken supplies 20% of them. Average minimum energy consumption at 0.5kW in the summer (fridge, computer, TV). That's 200MW, or about 30% of the output of Medway gas-fired power station. And Ken thinks he can get that amount of energy at half price? Good luck.

Commentator jonbryce makes a point that has perhaps been overlooked:

So he buys this energy and gets it delivered to a London Underground substation. How does he plan to get it from there to peoples' homes? That costs money to transport it over the local grid network.

It does raise some questions about exactly what that TfL contract says; I find it entirely conceivable that the delivery endpoints are specified for exactly this reason. Surely Ken can't be making promises that he could never actually keep?

Weisbrot is a mendacious weasel

I've been enjoying Mark Weisbrot's piece in the Guardian about how Argentina's renationalisation of YPF is perfectly sensible and valid. It's a treasure trove of mutually contradicting statements. For instance:

When the government defaulted on its debt at the end of 2001 and then devalued its currency a few weeks later, it was all doom-mongering in the media. The devaluation would cause inflation to spin out of control, the country would face balance of payments crises from not being able to borrow, the economy would spiral downward into deeper recession.
...
A favourable balance of trade has been very important to Argentina since its default in 2001. Because the government is mostly shut out of borrowing from international financial markets, it needs to be careful about having enough foreign exchange to avoid a balance of payments crisis.

Oh look! it seems that defaulting on debt does have significant long-term economic consequences after all. Who'd have thought? Apparently not Weisbrot.

He has no doubt about the underlying problem:

There are sound reasons for this move [the renationalisation], and the government will most likely be proved right once again. Repsol, the Spanish oil company that currently owns 57% of Argentina's YPF, hasn't produced enough to keep up with Argentina's rapidly growing economy.

According to Weisbrot, Repsol clearly is refusing to make as much money as it otherwise could. This is interesting, because if true then its shareholders should be trying to fire its management. His solution is to get the government involved in the oil+gas prospecting and producing business. What could possibly go wrong?

Commentator peacefulmilitant picks up Weisbrot on one of his comments:

"Mexico nationalised its oil in 1938, and, like a number of Opec countries, doesn't even allow foreign investment in oil."
Because Mexico's oil production has skyrocketed from 2004 to 2011, right? In fact in light of the standards set by the state owned Mexican oil company (Pemex) the output of YPF looks positively fantastic.

But to answer Mark's central question:

So why the outrage against Argentina's decision to take – through a forced purchase – a controlling interest in what for most of the enterprise's history was the national oil company?

Well, there's that word 'was', Mark. According to Wikipedia: "YPF was privatized in 1993 and bought by the Spanish firm Repsol". So the Argentine government sold YPF to Repsol, which made it (according to most property laws) Repsol's possession, no longer Argentina's. There's a word for taking what's not yours, Mark; do you know what it is? Repsol's shares fell by 9% on the news of the renationalisation, which implies (given a current market cap of 20bn Euro) it lost 2bn Euro of value on the renationalisation.

I do wonder if Argentina has shot itself in the foot somewhat here. In the (currently rather unlikely) event that it were to acquire the Falklands (or, as they are known in America, the "Maldives"), what firms would be willing to do the oil prospecting and production in the Falklands waters if this means an economic partnership with Argentina?

Update: How interesting, I'd missed this tidbit. The Economist has ceased publishing official Argentina inflation figures:

The Economist magazine has ceased publishing price statistics provided by Argentina's national statistical agency INDEC, on the grounds that these official figures are subject to political manipulation and lack credibility.
The exclusion reflects widely-held concern both inside and outside Argentina that INDEC's figures understate dramatically the real rate of inflation. For instance, while INDEC's current figure for inflation is 9.7%, independent observers put the true figure at between 24-30%.

Mark Weisbrot, any comment?

Rosatom wants to build UK nuke plants

After RWE and E.ON backed out of building new UK nuclear plant, the future of UK nuclear power generation was looking pretty bleak.

Not to worry! The Russian state atomic energy agency Rosatom is looking to acquire a stake in Horizon which E.ON and RWE are selling, claiming that they are totally down with building the UK's next generation of reactors:

Sergey Novikov, Rosatom's Director of Communications, told The Daily Telegraph: "The British market is potentially attractive for Rosatom. Rosatom can give all guarantees that the construction of a NPP [nuclear power plant] in the UK will meet absolutely all international safety requirements and International Atomic Energy Agency standards."

Sergey, my old chum, I've no doubt that you believe this to be true. But, really, "safety engineering" and "Russia" are not two phrases that you would normally expect to occur in the same sentence. As an example, I offer you today's XKCD cartoon on the oceanic depths where its author Randall Munroe mentions in passing the Kola Borehole where the Russians drilled over 12km into the Earth's crust, essentially just to see what would happen. Munroe notes "Russians are awesome" which is true enough, but do you really want these engineers building nuclear plant anywhere near where you live? Note that I have the class not to mention a certain Ukraine-based reactor where they turned off all the safety features before running an overload test in 1986.

What could possibly go wrong? (And this is before considering the political aspects: where does a lot of UK gas currently come from?)

Government: shooting itself in the foot

The Government is worried about fuel shortages with the planned tanker driver strikes, so what does it do? It It tells motorists to plan for fuel shortages:

The Government is considering stockpiling fuel, with emergency services having a priority on supplies. No 10 said motorists and companies should also be planning for the pumps to run dry.

Motorists respond as anyone could have foreseen:

Motorists started to panic-buy fuel yesterday as Government officials warned them to prepare for a rolling national strike by militant tanker drivers.

(facepalm)

Oil: clean or dirty?

The EU appears to be concerned that oil from Canada is dirty and polluting and wants to inform oil purchasers about this.

Um. So making a mess in the middle of nowhere (and, believe me, Canada has an awful lot of nowhere) is a Bad Thing, and we should instead buy oil instead from such regimes of truth, openness and human rights as Russia, Iran and Saudi Arabia. If you say so.

Ezra Levant's Ethical Oil: The Case for Canada's Oil Sands is an interesting contrast to the EU's opinions. His perspective is that the environmental pollution from the oil sands is outweighed by the damage to human rights perpetrated by buying oil from, and therefore funding, much of the Middle East. You can argue about the relative weights of these damages, but it would be nice to see the EU at least acknowledging that such a trade-off is being made.

Just a load of hot air

Hurrah! People are taking a stand against high gas prices! I take it they want to start drilling for shale gas all over the country?

Oh, maybe not quite:

Hannah Edler, a 27-year-old protester, said: "We could have a fairer system where our energy is owned by communities who decide how it is priced and produced."

Luckily we already have this arrangement. Gazprom's network of cronies could be one of those communities, for instance. Or, if you want somewhere closer to home, BP owns rights to more local gas fields..

What I think she's asking for is for the Government to parcel out electricity, gas and oil supplies from some set of magic pots (nuclear, windfarm, shale, oil sands, Saudi wells) to local communities, who will then decide what price to sell energy in each category depending on how bad for the environment or human rights each source might be.

What could possibly go wrong?