Community Impact
Your local environment at your home is just as important geographic and global environment. How does our relationship with technology become abstracted so that we lose sight of the fine details?
How do the choices we make come together to have larger ramifications?
Pollution
Different people are sensitive to these senses differently. Light may make it difficult for some people to sleep, while the whiting may make it difficult to concentrate.
https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/the-staggering-ecological-impacts-of-computation-and-the-cloud/
Noise
Computers may have a built in mono or even dual channel speaker for playing basic sounds for events and notifications these are used for the post
Noise pollution can make it hard to focus
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160412021005304
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0003682X06000065
Hard drives, power supplies and fans
- Whirring, clicking, grinding and buzzing chimes screeching
- Dirt and age only make these sounds more prevalent especially on a serve that operates 24/7. It's best to address these as soon as possible
- Some are signs of an underlying issue, but sometimes this is just the operational state
The noise and light pollution created by your server can affect your immediate neighbors if you are in an a apartment style building.
Light
Computers emit light, usually from led indicator lights. These are often part of the case for monitoring power, disk activity, network card activity. Components like Power supplies may have their own indicator light. Depending on the hardware, individual components like the motherboard, ram and fans can have decorative and even programmable fans. These cannot always be disabled. Case lights can be unplugged, if possible, or taped over with patches created to block indicator lights.
Vibration
Use feet or mat for the computer. Vibration dampeners for case fans can also go a long way
Utilities
Heat and cooling
Computers generate heat. Some more than others. Single board computers are designed like cell phones to only require passive cooling without a fan. They make the components operate more slowly as needed in order to throttle heat production in order to cool the device. These computers can use add on cooling.
A server can heat a room, especially when performing high intensity operations like converting a video file. This can cause problems in summer and a boon in winter. It may even be necessary to cool the room during some months. It may be helpful to put the server in A basement. Computers cam operate better at lower temperatures than higher temperatures.
How do these compound? Cooling a server creates more noise and vibration than the server alone. The AC can itself create heat that needs to be directed.
Internet
How much Internet capacity your server uses will affect the other people in your home. If you are consistently using 30% of capacity, the remaining will need to be shared by all of your devices.
ISP are often promising you a theoretical connection that is based on everyone using an "average" amount of traffic. When someone greatly exceeds this, it can cause slowdowns for others on the network. This is especially noticeable during prime streaming, gaming and television times. Your ISP might throttle you if you go over or during peak hours
Power
Calculate the power draw based on the psu wattage
https://www.energybot.com/tools/energy-usage-calculator.html
You will also be paying for power for the router, modem and other networking devices
Data centers can consume up to 100 times more energy [10] than a standard office building.
A router may consume 1KW[8] and a large data center consumes nearly 100 MW.[9]
A research study shows that in the US, 50% of PCs are left on overnight, resulting in an estimated annual energy waste of 28.8 billion kWh, and a cost of $2.8 billion per year.
By intentionally creating a localized server for our services, we can focus on ensuring our other computers
How might your power usage effect your neighbors, such as during a heatwave when ACs are running or the winter with heaters? How is the infrastructure at handling this?
Checking where your regional power comes from
https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/72h/hourly
Electronic Waste
Hardware replacement and e-waste
Refurbishment - are you repurposing ewaste?
Used electronics which are destined for refurbishment, reuse, resale, salvage recycling through material recovery, or disposal are also considered e-waste.
The rapid exponential increase of e-waste is due to frequent new model releases and unnecessary purchases of electrical and electronic equipment (EEE), short innovation cycles and low recycling rates, and a drop in the average life span of computers.[3]
Electronic scrap components, such as CPUs, contain potentially harmful materials such as lead, cadmium, beryllium, or brominated flame retardants.
In electronics, refurbishment is the practice of restoring and testing a pre-owned electronic device so that it can be re-sold.
Refurbished electronics are therefore pre-owned electronic devices (usually smartphones, tablets, or laptops), that have been tested by a reseller to confirm that they are fully working.
Refurbished electronics may also be referred to as renewed, reconditioned, recycled, recertified, or "like new" electronics.
In many countries, the word "refurbished" is not legally protected. However, most refurbished devices have been rigorously tested to ensure they are fully working.
"refurbished" devices are distinct from "used" devices, where a "used" device is one where no repairs or testing have taken place.[2]
The 'Grade' or 'Condition' of a refurbished device describes how much wear and tear there is on the device.
Right to repair is a legal right for owners of devices and equipment to freely modify and repair products such as automobiles, electronics, and farm equipment. Right to repair may also refer to the social movement of citizens putting pressure on their governments to enact laws protecting a right to repair.[1]