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Scientists create Facebook for great tits
We know that more people than like to admit it troll Facebook to check out ladies, but scientists have actually created a social network that they use for nothing but looking at tits. Our more astute and wildlife-oriented readers will have guessed that the tits scientists are ogling are wild great tits — a type […]
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21st Century Activism: Why big business doesn’t always have to be the bad guy
Today is a great day for the future of the IT sector. Over the past few years, we’ve campaigned hard against Facebook to get them to commit to clean energy – specifically, we wanted them to change their siting policy-the decisions that they make about how to power their massive football-stadium-sized data centers. When […]
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Facebook and coal are no longer in a relationship
Until recently, Facebook had an "it's complicated" relationship with coal; an April 2011 Greenpeace report found that 53.2 percent of the company's electricity use was coal-generated. Now, the company is pledging to move away from dirty fuel and work towards powering its operations, including energy-suck data centers, using renewable energy. And they're helping to spread […]
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Facebook is building a renewable-powered mini-town in the Arctic
Facebook is building a server farm in northern Sweden, on the edge of the Arctic circle. The average temperatures there are so cold that they won't need to use anything but the outside air to cool 600,000 square feet of servers. But even so, the server farm will use as much power as 16,000 homes. […]
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New Facebook app will let friends compete over energy efficiency
Companies large and small (including influential ones like Google) have been trying to convince consumers that they should actually use all the new smart-grid information to tamp down their energy use. So far, these programs have had little luck. Basically it’s hard to get consumers to pay attention to anything besides updating their Facebook status. So it’s lucky that Facebook now offers an energy-efficiency app.
Facebook is taking a stab at promoting energy efficiency through data, in partnership with Opower and NRDC. Next year a Facebook app will let user compete with friends over their energy use. -
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Meet clean energy's smart guy
MacArthur "genius award"-winner Shwetak Patel talks about a future where your house tracks your energy consumption -- and your every move.
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Would you believe Mark Zuckerberg killed a bison?
Does this look like the face of a man who could kill a bison? Does this look like the DOG of a man who could kill a bison? WELL IT IS. Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg is continuing his yearlong challenge of eating healthier and more sustainably by only eating meat he kills himself, rather than meat from environmentally unfriendly factory farms. And now he's going after the deadliest game. Or wait, no. But pretty big game nonetheless.
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Google, Facebook reap benefits of building hot data centers in cold Scandinavia
Data centers are the gigantic, Borg-like assemblages of computers that run everything we take for granted on the web, from email to social networks. They take a lot of energy, because they do all the things, but more than that they take a lot of cooling; keeping data centers from overheating requires up to half […]
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MyConservationPark is a Facebook game that’s actually good for something
MyConservationPark is a Farmville-style Facebook game that lets you administer a nature preserve, juggling animals, plants, structures, and people to protect the habitat of endangered wildlife. But this isn't just a whole new way to annoy your Facebook friends with environmentalism; it also makes a difference in the real world. Fifteen percent of any in-game […]
