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[99.02 --> 100.90] You can't, you know, you can't charge all.
[100.96 --> 102.94] You have to have the ability to charge all that stuff up.
[103.08 --> 107.72] So I feel like I've kind of hit the sweet spot that because it's winter, you know, we're not getting prime sunshine.
[107.72 --> 110.56] And I'm only running the generator about once a day.
[110.78 --> 112.76] And otherwise, we're getting along.
[112.90 --> 114.42] I think I'm kind of in that sweet spot.
[114.50 --> 120.16] And I think that's something you should think about when you're specking out your solar system for your house is what are you covering for?
[120.24 --> 122.30] Are you covering for a couple of days of no power?
[122.46 --> 124.64] Or do you really just need to cover for a couple of hours?
[125.18 --> 128.02] And if it goes longer, maybe you could run a generator for an hour or two.
[128.48 --> 133.50] I think I want to cover just the average daily low-level load of the house.
[133.50 --> 134.94] I want to make the house more sustainable.
[134.94 --> 141.08] So, you know, like just all the lighting, all the computers that are on in here, whatever that works out to be.
[141.76 --> 146.28] My electric bill is normally in a sort of $100 to $120-ish range.
[146.36 --> 147.32] So it's not too crazy.
[148.36 --> 150.78] And for me, it's about sustainability.
[151.16 --> 155.46] And I was watching a David Attenborough program, Our Perfect Planet, the other night.
[155.80 --> 158.90] Beautiful 4K HDR on the LG OLED.
[159.28 --> 161.52] Oh, it was magical to watch that thing.
[161.82 --> 162.90] Streaming from the Plex server.
[163.28 --> 163.60] Correct.
[163.60 --> 165.30] Yeah, through the Nvidia shield.
[166.06 --> 176.44] You can't help but watch these perfect planet things and be left with a sense of guilt about what humanity is doing to the planet and how we're consuming too many resources and stuff like that.
[176.58 --> 189.10] So, you know, I think about how I might be in a position to do something about that as just an individual when in reality we need to, as a species, collectively actually affect change.
[189.10 --> 191.66] But as an individual, there isn't much I can do.
[191.66 --> 197.14] But reducing my use of fossil fuels, even by a little bit, feels like a good place to start.
[197.40 --> 202.64] Yeah, I love the idea of even just offsetting the computers that run all the time.
[202.64 --> 206.26] So, during the day, I've reached the point where all day long I'm running off the solar power.
[206.38 --> 215.74] I'm bringing in more solar power than I am using, which is a great spot to be because that means my home server, all my stuff is being sustained by the sun.
[215.74 --> 220.92] And I'd love to do a similar setup at the studio, a couple of panels on the roof.
[220.98 --> 227.82] If I could just bring in, you know, 400 watts or so, I could probably cover most of my computer gear that's running 24-7.
[227.82 --> 236.70] And, you know, I think about long-term, Alex, say even just 10 years, 15 years down the road, maybe the majority of cars or all cars sold will be electric.
[237.28 --> 244.88] How does the grid in the United States, at least, handle that if we don't have some people offsetting their load with solar?
[245.02 --> 252.94] It seems like long-term, the direction things are going between crypto mining and electric cars, there's going to be more demand on the grid than ever.
[252.94 --> 260.12] So, being able to supplement a little bit might not only just be a nice thing to do for the environment, but also ensure that you have enough power to go around.
[260.78 --> 261.50] Free Bitcoin, baby.
[262.06 --> 262.24] Yep.
[262.34 --> 263.36] Get that crypto going.
[263.94 --> 266.10] And maybe, maybe spend your time learning.
[266.22 --> 268.52] This episode is brought to you by the all-new A Cloud Guru.
[268.72 --> 272.96] They are the leader in learning for the cloud, Linux, and other modern tech skills.
[273.14 --> 273.62] Go check them out.
[273.66 --> 276.24] They have hundreds of courses and thousands of hands-on labs.
[276.34 --> 276.70] Get certified.
[276.86 --> 277.26] Get hired.
[277.68 --> 280.28] Get learning at acloudguru.com.
[280.28 --> 287.24] You could spend that time mining crypto, or you could spend that time learning job skills and getting hired.
[287.62 --> 297.32] But, you know, I think maybe you and I are thinking about off-grid and backup power today because a lot of our listener services are down and offline as we record this right now.
[297.74 --> 298.08] That's right.
[298.18 --> 298.30] Yeah.
[298.46 --> 304.60] OVH, one of the largest VPS providers in Europe, have suffered a major fire this week.
[304.60 --> 316.64] And it's taken, literally taken out one of their data centers and had dramatic effects on some of their other regions, data centers, whatever they called for OVH as well.
[317.36 --> 319.42] It's just got me thinking, great.
[319.62 --> 322.16] There's another disaster that I hadn't really thought about.
[322.24 --> 325.50] What if AWS or DigitalOcean or Linode, what if they catch fire?
[325.50 --> 327.68] Oh, that's another one to plan for.
[329.12 --> 335.40] Yeah, the thing that's tricky about OVH is data centers one through four were all kind of like in the same area.
[335.84 --> 341.86] So after midnight on the Wednesday of the week we're recording this, OVH cloud had an alarm go off.
[342.24 --> 344.82] The cause as of this recording right now is still unknown.
[344.82 --> 350.16] However, the founder and CEO speculated it may have been a UPS fire.
[350.34 --> 358.90] And he noted in a video update that he released a couple of days ago that UPS number seven had been serviced earlier that day.
[358.98 --> 361.70] But obviously more investigation is required.
[362.02 --> 366.38] In total, OVH had four data centers in this area and one data center.
[366.78 --> 370.76] SBG two was just totally destroyed by fire.
[370.76 --> 375.40] And then part of SBG one was also damaged.
[375.54 --> 378.22] And then SBG three and four, they're fine.
[378.40 --> 383.44] But as we record, there's still some outages because there's some areas the staff can't get to.
[383.52 --> 384.68] There's network issue.
[384.94 --> 386.64] There's still some power issues.
[386.64 --> 392.56] And there's even the fact that they still have to validate that the cooling system is still fully functional.
[392.90 --> 394.56] It's like bad, Alex.
[394.56 --> 406.88] This is a weird one to me because every data center that I've worked near or in in some occasions, they've all had argon fire suppressant systems.
[406.88 --> 414.92] And just fire was something that you kind of assumed would never get out of control in a data center because it's a controlled environment.
[415.42 --> 419.56] There isn't a huge amount of flammable stuff like on a data center floor.
[419.86 --> 423.44] It's just metal boxes with some cables and stuff like that, essentially.
[423.44 --> 424.04] Yeah.
[424.28 --> 426.98] So it's kind of surprising to me that it was able to get to this level.
[427.10 --> 432.44] I mean, if you look at some of the pictures and we've got a Reuters article linked in the show notes, that building was toast.
[433.20 --> 433.54] Yeah.
[433.58 --> 442.84] The CEO says something about it using older style construction techniques and that the newer buildings that weren't damaged were using the newer style.
[443.04 --> 447.78] I wonder if that style is fire suppression, you know.
[447.96 --> 448.60] Yeah, maybe.
[448.92 --> 450.30] Or materials or something.
[450.30 --> 454.94] But it kind of got us thinking like, you know, we got kind of a sad note in from listener.
[455.04 --> 458.62] Kerry said, my server was in data center one and I have lost it.
[458.68 --> 467.80] I'm afraid I didn't have any complete backups because I didn't really have anywhere to back up to that server already blew my personal self-hosting budget.
[468.46 --> 470.88] I feel like I've lost a loved one.
[471.52 --> 474.44] I guess I'll get a box at home and I'll have to back up to that from now on.
[474.44 --> 476.64] But that's going to get very expensive.
[477.42 --> 478.12] That is tricky.
[478.12 --> 479.08] Well, it is.
[479.40 --> 480.82] It is going to get expensive.
[481.40 --> 486.62] But I would argue that the emotions you're feeling right now are also expensive.
[487.18 --> 491.48] Just in a, you know, not dollars and cents necessarily, but they're expensive in a different way emotionally.
[492.50 --> 496.44] And only you can quantify how much your data is worth.
[496.44 --> 504.78] I mean, I don't know what was on this particular server for you, Kerry, but I certainly know in the past when I've lost data, it hurts.
[505.20 --> 516.68] Genuinely, you spend the next few weeks, months, sometimes longer wishing you'd done things differently, thinking, oh, if only I'd spent a couple of hundred on a Pi and an external hard drive.
[516.68 --> 519.30] And I wouldn't even be in this situation.
[520.56 --> 530.24] I mean, if you think about what most typical VPSs are, they are probably less than a hundred gig disk, probably only a few gigabytes of RAM or something like that.
[530.32 --> 533.84] So we aren't talking about a huge amount of data to back up here.