8 ms·

And this shows us why it is a bad idea to have a large portion of the worlds digital infrastructure in a place which will destroy it sometime in the next centur

by monochr 12y ago

And this shows us why it is a bad idea to have a large portion of the worlds digital infrastructure in a place which will destroy it sometime in the next century. Put it in the middle of the Australian outback, nothing's happened there for a billion years, nearly literally. To the people down voting me: please explain why you think it's a good idea to put our digital infrastructure in a place which might well be destroyed in an afternoon when it can be put quite literally anywhere.

rasur 12y ago
Perhaps the people down-voting you might like to share _why_ they think you said something wrong. FWIW, I would tend to agree - in general terms.
- sohailk 12y ago
  I didn't downvote, but it seems that all these companies would(should) have backups outside of the bay area. I can't imagine major services going down for an extended period of time. I do foresee a significant drop in overall productivity in the area for a longer period though.
  - rasur 12y ago
    > I do foresee a significant drop in overall productivity in the area for a longer period though. True, though there are a lot of people working in that area. Deaths at the wrong time could be catastrophic.
ghshephard 12y ago
Latency and Bandwidth. You want your Data Centers to be close to improve performance. You also want to have massive amounts of bandwidth - Australia is particularly bad for both. Also - there are a ton of data centers out in Nevada, Oregon, DC, etc...
- monochr 12y ago
  Nielsen's law means that we have to build half the pipes we have every year. It doesn't have to be Australia, just some place where natural disasters don't happen. The places you mention don't warrant much more optimism than California: http://www.usa.com/nevada-state-natural-disasters-extremes.htm http://www.usa.com/nevada-state-natural-disasters-extremes.h... http://www.usa.com/washington-state-natural-disasters-extremes.htm http://www.usa.com/washington-state-natural-disasters-extrem... http://www.usa.com/washington-dc-natural-disasters-extremes.htm http://www.usa.com/washington-dc-natural-disasters-extremes....
  - lifeisstillgood 12y ago
    Could you explain Nielsens law ? Build half the pipes to keep growing - is this like Moores law? Nielsen just triggers UI design in my synapses you see
    - monochr 12y ago
      Pretty much[1], but the growth is at 50% a year as opposed to 60% so networks get slower compared to processors from the same generation, combine this with Kryder's Law[2] which states that magnetic storage grows at something like 100% a year and we have the fact that the internet is most likely a fad which will pass once we can store essentially all the information we could possibly need in a convenient physical package. It will be literally cheaper and faster to send homing pigeons with hard drives around their necks than to have to wait for the same amount of data to be downloaded [3] and [4] will become a viable way of implementing ip. Probably the first industry to be hit by this new disruption will be music or books when every song/book in the world could be stored on a phone. For example the spotify library at 320kbps would take up something like 250 Terabytes, which will be the size of a laptop hard drive in 8 years give or take. The upside to this is that movie studios will probably push 16k screens and extremely high frame rates to keep files big enough that you can't just have one drive with a few thousand movies on it. [1] http://www.nngroup.com/articles/law-of-bandwidth/ http://www.nngroup.com/articles/law-of-bandwidth/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Kryder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Kryder [3] http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/carrier-pigeon-faster-than-south-african-isp-20090910-fi9h.html http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/carrier-pig... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_over_Avian_Carriers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_over_Avian_Carriers
TeMPOraL 12y ago
Yes, this point was also raised by Maciej Ceglowski (hn: idlewords) in the talk that keeps circulating in HN comments: http://idlewords.com/bt14.htm#america http://idlewords.com/bt14.htm#america "And speaking of California, let me try another tack. This festive map shows seismic hazard in Northern California, where pretty much all the large Internet companies are based, along with a zillion startups. The ones that aren't here have their headquarters in an even deadlier zone up in Cascadia. Now of course, each company has four zillion datacenters, backed up across the world. But how much will that matter when there's a major quake, and Silicon Valley can't get to work for a month? All of these headquarters are going to be shut down for a long time when the Big One comes. You're going to notice it. So even if you don't agree with my politics, maybe you'll agree with my geology. Let's not build a vast, distributed global network only to put everything in one place!"
- baddox 12y ago
  > But how much will that matter when there's a major quake, and Silicon Valley can't get to work for a month? Well, putting everything in the Australian outback doesn't help that much, because there are good reasons why thousands of tech workers can't work there. This is essentially an argument against having any population centers in earthquake zones.
  - jpgvm 12y ago
    > This is essentially an argument against having any population centers in earthquake zones. Which is an interesting point in and of itself.
    - raldi 12y ago
      Is it? What American city is not in an earthquake zone, or a tornado zone, or a hurricane zone, or a blizzard zone?
      - timw0j 12y ago
        Phoenix. Sure they have drought, but not much other weather or natural catastrophes to speak of.
rtpg 12y ago
For one thing Australia is pretty far from everybody. Also, while a lot of companies are in the SV, I don't think many servers are actually there. Google wouldn't disappear from an earthquake. An earthquake is not an endgame either. Sendai and Kobe are still on the map. Though I don't know how prepared SF is for this.
itazula 12y ago
It's one reason (the other being cost) we moved out of a datacenter located in San Francisco's SoMa district.
arnorhs 12y ago
Which portion of the world's digital infrastructure is in the bay area? Where the companies are located doesn't really have that much to do with where their servers are. Maybe to some extent, but less than you might think. Also, if it helps you sleep better at night, none of the root dns servers are in the bay area: http://public-root.com/root-server-locations.htm http://public-root.com/root-server-locations.htm
tlrobinson 12y ago
Maybe it's not a great idea, but it wasn't someone's "idea" or conscious decision, so there's not much you can do about it. Good luck convincing millions of people in the Bay Area to relocate to the Australian outback.
- ingenieros 12y ago
  Try rebranding it as a year long Burning Man and see how they flock by the thousands.
  - smsm42 12y ago
    I'm pretty sure one of the big enjoyments of such outings as Burning Man is an ability to come back to civilization as soon as it's done.
NamTaf 12y ago
Because you'll be swapping the issue of death-by-earthquake with death-by-enough-heat-to-melt-silicon-PCBs. Why not build it in some frozen area instead? All the same advantages and your cooling costs are ridiculously cheaper.
- walterbell 12y ago
  Put it next to the Svalbard seed vault in Norway, http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/svalbard-seed-bank http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/svalbard-seed-bank ?
  - BugBrother 12y ago
    Ok for the general area (Alaska, north of Scandinavia, etc) for stuff that needs chilling and stable geology/politics. But don't put anything close to the seed bank, which a crazy with a nuke (IS, Putin, Iranian ayatollahs, etc) might want to target... Edit: Maybe not Alaska for geological stability.
natch 12y ago
"Destroyed" is an overly dramatic word, and wrong. Earthquakes don't destroy digital infrastructure. At most they might dislodge a few things temporarily. Historically you might note that fires have sometimes occurred as a result of earthquakes, but then it's unlikely those fires were in data centers. Stuff does sway around a bit, but it's not a huge deal for the digital infrastructure.
- idlewords 12y ago
  Earthquakes destroy water and power grids, and transmission lines, which is a big deal for the digital infrastructure.
coldtea 12y ago
>To the people down voting me: please explain why you think it's a good idea to put our digital infrastructure in a place which might well be destroyed in an afternoon when it can be put quite literally anywhere. For one, insensitivity. There could be some victims even today, and you're talking casually about an event that will wipe out the Valley and S.F. Second, most data centers are in tons of places for redundancy. Google, Microsoft, Amazon, etc etc. Even low cost providers like Linode And Digital Cloud have redundant data centers in 3-4 locations around the wolds. Third, ever done a ping to Australia? When most of your users are in the US, it's not really a good idea to have data travel halfway around the world and back. Even if anything else improves, the speed of light will remain constant. Fourth, you think Valley based datacenters are not built to endure earthquakes? That they are just some dumb houses or something with racks inside?
- monochr 12y ago
  >For one, insensitivity. There could be some victims even today, and you're talking casually about an event that will wipe out the Valley and S.F. I don't see why tragedy should stop us from thinking rationally about the situation. >Second, most data centers are in tons of places for redundancy. Google, Microsoft, Amazon, etc etc. Even low cost providers like Linode And Digital Cloud have redundant data centers in 3-4 locations around the wolds. The problem is that something between 1/3 to 1/2 of all connections to Asia pass through California[1]. >Third, ever done a ping to Australia? When most of your users are in the US, it's not really a good idea to have data travel halfway around the world and back. Even if anything else improves, the speed of light will remain constant. The machine I have in Sydney pings 60ms to MIT on average. Caltech, UWS and UCLA are all down from there which probably has something to do with the Earthquake. >Fourth, you think Valley based datacenters are not built to endure earthquakes? That they are just some dumb houses or something with racks inside? Are the cables made of magic unicorn hair that doesn't break? Because if [2] or [3] happens I don't care how much like a bunker your data center is, it's not talking to anyone. Which also leads back to the problems in number 2, namely, far too much bandwidth passes through California for how dangerous it is. [1] https://www.technocrates.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/submarine-cable-map.jpg https://www.technocrates.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/subm... [2] http://www.geerassociation.org/GEER_Post%20EQ%20Reports/Italy_2009/It09_Ch02_clip_image002_0000.jpg http://www.geerassociation.org/GEER_Post%20EQ%20Reports/Ital... [3] http://www.cloacina.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/cracked-pipe-photo.jpg http://www.cloacina.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/crac...
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
justincormack 12y ago
The main digital infrastructure that matters is people. The USGS estimates [1]: "A repeat of the 1906 magnitude 7.9 earthquake, the worst case scenario for the Bay Area, is estimated to result in about 5800 fatalities if it strikes during working hours. Most scenarios, however, have maximum projected fatalities on the order of several hundred, reflecting the success of earthquake-resistant design and construction practices in California, particularly in residences. The loss of life is predicted to be highest if an earthquake occurs in the early afternoon when people are working in commercial buildings with varying vulnerability to quakes These predicted mid-afternoon fatalities are generally about 5 times higher than values predicted at 2:00 AM when the population is assumed to be in wood frame residential units." [1] http://earthquake.usgs.gov/regional/nca/wg02/losses.php http://earthquake.usgs.gov/regional/nca/wg02/losses.php
jrockway 12y ago
Does anyone have data centers in Silicon Valley? Real-estate (and electricity and cooling) costs are amazingly high, so it's not that good a place for a datacenter.
- goosmurf 12y ago
  http://www.datacentermap.com/usa/california/ http://www.datacentermap.com/usa/california/ There's 34 listed just for San Jose and Santa Clara...
- idlewords 12y ago
  There are tons all around the South Bay. And of course corporate HQs.
velodrome 12y ago
Your better off spreading the risk all over the place. If all the places go down at the same time, I think you have bigger problems. Besides, I think most of the large institutions have accounted for this already. I think the real risk here is the loss of life (bus factor). Here are some useful maps: http://www.hazardscaucus.org/presidentialdisasters65-98.JPG http://www.hazardscaucus.org/presidentialdisasters65-98.JPG http://www.datafoundry.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/natural_disaster_map.png http://www.datafoundry.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/natura...
stretchwithme 12y ago
The infrastructure of many companies is not located here or may be distributed geographically. Its in each company's self interest to plan for disaster. And if they don't, their competition stands ready to fill the gap. Of course, things like the power grid and water systems where there are no competing providers, those are more likely to leave people completely without service. Even the incentives to be robust or even safe are greatly reduced. A company with a legally protected monopoly can even blow up half the houses on a street (as PG&E did in San Bruno) and all the rebuilt houses are guaranteed customers.
- idlewords 12y ago
  Systemic effects like prolonged loss of power or water have the greatest impact, and are also the hardest to plan for. It's really hard to work out all the consequences of unplugging the electric grid in Mountain View for a week, let alone when there's multiple other emergencies happening in parallel.
EGreg 12y ago
Even more reason for a distibuted workforce that can work from home.
personZ 12y ago
Your point was diluted, the conversation misdirected, when you used Australia as the alternative. Of course there are countless options that remain in the continental United States and have far less of a risk profile. Nevada, for instance. Ultimately the coast of California is getting set up to be the biggest case of hubris and short-term thinking in human history: Where we knew for decades what the significant risks were, with ever increasing accuracy and sureness, but kept going ahead anyways. If such a major event eventually happens, as every seismic model predicts, I don't think people will say "Well, we knew this was coming.", but instead will point fingers, question why the government didn't prohibit building up there, etc.
raldi 12y ago
To what infrastructure do you refer, besides people?
ulfw 12y ago
Agreeing with you on not putting everything in the same place. In general you'd be ill advised to put anything in one place. Hedging is the way to go. There is no reason why centers of the digital age couldn't be around the world in say SF, New York, Beijing, London, Berlin, Singapore, Sydney or so. Not sure I'd still put everything in one place like the outback, far away from civilisation.
emiliobumachar 12y ago
Each individual company can probably use the time and money to mitigate against much largar risks to its individual business. (I did not downvote, btw)
mgarfias 12y ago
I'd say it's a lot less bad than putting a nuclear power plant square on top of a fault line. Yes, cooling water is nice, but they build diablo canyon in a when-not-if there's an earthquake area, and then discovered it was smack on tip of a fault later.
harryh 12y ago
No one put it there. It evolved there.
mrexroad 12y ago
plus, if in the middle of the Australian outback, the datacenters can serve as the plot device for a 5th Mad Max film.

by monochr 12y ago

rasur 12y ago

Perhaps the people down-voting you might like to share _why_ they think you said something wrong. FWIW, I would tend to agree - in general terms.

sohailk 12y ago
I didn't downvote, but it seems that all these companies would(should) have backups outside of the bay area. I can't imagine major services going down for an extended period of time. I do foresee a significant drop in overall productivity in the area for a longer period though.
- rasur 12y ago
  > I do foresee a significant drop in overall productivity in the area for a longer period though. True, though there are a lot of people working in that area. Deaths at the wrong time could be catastrophic.

ghshephard 12y ago

Latency and Bandwidth. You want your Data Centers to be close to improve performance. You also want to have massive amounts of bandwidth - Australia is particularly bad for both. Also - there are a ton of data centers out in Nevada, Oregon, DC, etc...

monochr 12y ago
Nielsen's law means that we have to build half the pipes we have every year. It doesn't have to be Australia, just some place where natural disasters don't happen. The places you mention don't warrant much more optimism than California: http://www.usa.com/nevada-state-natural-disasters-extremes.htm http://www.usa.com/nevada-state-natural-disasters-extremes.h... http://www.usa.com/washington-state-natural-disasters-extremes.htm http://www.usa.com/washington-state-natural-disasters-extrem... http://www.usa.com/washington-dc-natural-disasters-extremes.htm http://www.usa.com/washington-dc-natural-disasters-extremes....
- lifeisstillgood 12y ago
  Could you explain Nielsens law ? Build half the pipes to keep growing - is this like Moores law? Nielsen just triggers UI design in my synapses you see
  - monochr 12y ago
    Pretty much[1], but the growth is at 50% a year as opposed to 60% so networks get slower compared to processors from the same generation, combine this with Kryder's Law[2] which states that magnetic storage grows at something like 100% a year and we have the fact that the internet is most likely a fad which will pass once we can store essentially all the information we could possibly need in a convenient physical package. It will be literally cheaper and faster to send homing pigeons with hard drives around their necks than to have to wait for the same amount of data to be downloaded [3] and [4] will become a viable way of implementing ip. Probably the first industry to be hit by this new disruption will be music or books when every song/book in the world could be stored on a phone. For example the spotify library at 320kbps would take up something like 250 Terabytes, which will be the size of a laptop hard drive in 8 years give or take. The upside to this is that movie studios will probably push 16k screens and extremely high frame rates to keep files big enough that you can't just have one drive with a few thousand movies on it. [1] http://www.nngroup.com/articles/law-of-bandwidth/ http://www.nngroup.com/articles/law-of-bandwidth/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Kryder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Kryder [3] http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/carrier-pigeon-faster-than-south-african-isp-20090910-fi9h.html http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/carrier-pig... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_over_Avian_Carriers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_over_Avian_Carriers

TeMPOraL 12y ago

Yes, this point was also raised by Maciej Ceglowski (hn: idlewords) in the talk that keeps circulating in HN comments: http://idlewords.com/bt14.htm#america http://idlewords.com/bt14.htm#america "And speaking of California, let me try another tack. This festive map shows seismic hazard in Northern California, where pretty much all the large Internet companies are based, along with a zillion startups. The ones that aren't here have their headquarters in an even deadlier zone up in Cascadia. Now of course, each company has four zillion datacenters, backed up across the world. But how much will that matter when there's a major quake, and Silicon Valley can't get to work for a month? All of these headquarters are going to be shut down for a long time when the Big One comes. You're going to notice it. So even if you don't agree with my politics, maybe you'll agree with my geology. Let's not build a vast, distributed global network only to put everything in one place!"

baddox 12y ago
> But how much will that matter when there's a major quake, and Silicon Valley can't get to work for a month? Well, putting everything in the Australian outback doesn't help that much, because there are good reasons why thousands of tech workers can't work there. This is essentially an argument against having any population centers in earthquake zones.
- jpgvm 12y ago
  > This is essentially an argument against having any population centers in earthquake zones. Which is an interesting point in and of itself.
  - raldi 12y ago
    Is it? What American city is not in an earthquake zone, or a tornado zone, or a hurricane zone, or a blizzard zone?
    - timw0j 12y ago
      Phoenix. Sure they have drought, but not much other weather or natural catastrophes to speak of.

rtpg 12y ago

For one thing Australia is pretty far from everybody. Also, while a lot of companies are in the SV, I don't think many servers are actually there. Google wouldn't disappear from an earthquake. An earthquake is not an endgame either. Sendai and Kobe are still on the map. Though I don't know how prepared SF is for this.

itazula 12y ago

It's one reason (the other being cost) we moved out of a datacenter located in San Francisco's SoMa district.

arnorhs 12y ago

Which portion of the world's digital infrastructure is in the bay area? Where the companies are located doesn't really have that much to do with where their servers are. Maybe to some extent, but less than you might think. Also, if it helps you sleep better at night, none of the root dns servers are in the bay area: http://public-root.com/root-server-locations.htm http://public-root.com/root-server-locations.htm

tlrobinson 12y ago

Maybe it's not a great idea, but it wasn't someone's "idea" or conscious decision, so there's not much you can do about it. Good luck convincing millions of people in the Bay Area to relocate to the Australian outback.

ingenieros 12y ago
Try rebranding it as a year long Burning Man and see how they flock by the thousands.
- smsm42 12y ago
  I'm pretty sure one of the big enjoyments of such outings as Burning Man is an ability to come back to civilization as soon as it's done.

NamTaf 12y ago

Because you'll be swapping the issue of death-by-earthquake with death-by-enough-heat-to-melt-silicon-PCBs. Why not build it in some frozen area instead? All the same advantages and your cooling costs are ridiculously cheaper.

walterbell 12y ago
Put it next to the Svalbard seed vault in Norway, http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/svalbard-seed-bank http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/svalbard-seed-bank ?
- BugBrother 12y ago
  Ok for the general area (Alaska, north of Scandinavia, etc) for stuff that needs chilling and stable geology/politics. But don't put anything close to the seed bank, which a crazy with a nuke (IS, Putin, Iranian ayatollahs, etc) might want to target... Edit: Maybe not Alaska for geological stability.

natch 12y ago

"Destroyed" is an overly dramatic word, and wrong. Earthquakes don't destroy digital infrastructure. At most they might dislodge a few things temporarily. Historically you might note that fires have sometimes occurred as a result of earthquakes, but then it's unlikely those fires were in data centers. Stuff does sway around a bit, but it's not a huge deal for the digital infrastructure.

idlewords 12y ago
Earthquakes destroy water and power grids, and transmission lines, which is a big deal for the digital infrastructure.

coldtea 12y ago

>To the people down voting me: please explain why you think it's a good idea to put our digital infrastructure in a place which might well be destroyed in an afternoon when it can be put quite literally anywhere. For one, insensitivity. There could be some victims even today, and you're talking casually about an event that will wipe out the Valley and S.F. Second, most data centers are in tons of places for redundancy. Google, Microsoft, Amazon, etc etc. Even low cost providers like Linode And Digital Cloud have redundant data centers in 3-4 locations around the wolds. Third, ever done a ping to Australia? When most of your users are in the US, it's not really a good idea to have data travel halfway around the world and back. Even if anything else improves, the speed of light will remain constant. Fourth, you think Valley based datacenters are not built to endure earthquakes? That they are just some dumb houses or something with racks inside?

monochr 12y ago
>For one, insensitivity. There could be some victims even today, and you're talking casually about an event that will wipe out the Valley and S.F. I don't see why tragedy should stop us from thinking rationally about the situation. >Second, most data centers are in tons of places for redundancy. Google, Microsoft, Amazon, etc etc. Even low cost providers like Linode And Digital Cloud have redundant data centers in 3-4 locations around the wolds. The problem is that something between 1/3 to 1/2 of all connections to Asia pass through California[1]. >Third, ever done a ping to Australia? When most of your users are in the US, it's not really a good idea to have data travel halfway around the world and back. Even if anything else improves, the speed of light will remain constant. The machine I have in Sydney pings 60ms to MIT on average. Caltech, UWS and UCLA are all down from there which probably has something to do with the Earthquake. >Fourth, you think Valley based datacenters are not built to endure earthquakes? That they are just some dumb houses or something with racks inside? Are the cables made of magic unicorn hair that doesn't break? Because if [2] or [3] happens I don't care how much like a bunker your data center is, it's not talking to anyone. Which also leads back to the problems in number 2, namely, far too much bandwidth passes through California for how dangerous it is. [1] https://www.technocrates.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/submarine-cable-map.jpg https://www.technocrates.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/subm... [2] http://www.geerassociation.org/GEER_Post%20EQ%20Reports/Italy_2009/It09_Ch02_clip_image002_0000.jpg http://www.geerassociation.org/GEER_Post%20EQ%20Reports/Ital... [3] http://www.cloacina.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/cracked-pipe-photo.jpg http://www.cloacina.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/crac...

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

justincormack 12y ago

The main digital infrastructure that matters is people. The USGS estimates [1]: "A repeat of the 1906 magnitude 7.9 earthquake, the worst case scenario for the Bay Area, is estimated to result in about 5800 fatalities if it strikes during working hours. Most scenarios, however, have maximum projected fatalities on the order of several hundred, reflecting the success of earthquake-resistant design and construction practices in California, particularly in residences. The loss of life is predicted to be highest if an earthquake occurs in the early afternoon when people are working in commercial buildings with varying vulnerability to quakes These predicted mid-afternoon fatalities are generally about 5 times higher than values predicted at 2:00 AM when the population is assumed to be in wood frame residential units." [1] http://earthquake.usgs.gov/regional/nca/wg02/losses.php http://earthquake.usgs.gov/regional/nca/wg02/losses.php

jrockway 12y ago

Does anyone have data centers in Silicon Valley? Real-estate (and electricity and cooling) costs are amazingly high, so it's not that good a place for a datacenter.

goosmurf 12y ago
http://www.datacentermap.com/usa/california/ http://www.datacentermap.com/usa/california/ There's 34 listed just for San Jose and Santa Clara...
idlewords 12y ago
There are tons all around the South Bay. And of course corporate HQs.

velodrome 12y ago

Your better off spreading the risk all over the place. If all the places go down at the same time, I think you have bigger problems. Besides, I think most of the large institutions have accounted for this already. I think the real risk here is the loss of life (bus factor). Here are some useful maps: http://www.hazardscaucus.org/presidentialdisasters65-98.JPG http://www.hazardscaucus.org/presidentialdisasters65-98.JPG http://www.datafoundry.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/natural_disaster_map.png http://www.datafoundry.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/natura...

stretchwithme 12y ago

The infrastructure of many companies is not located here or may be distributed geographically. Its in each company's self interest to plan for disaster. And if they don't, their competition stands ready to fill the gap. Of course, things like the power grid and water systems where there are no competing providers, those are more likely to leave people completely without service. Even the incentives to be robust or even safe are greatly reduced. A company with a legally protected monopoly can even blow up half the houses on a street (as PG&E did in San Bruno) and all the rebuilt houses are guaranteed customers.

idlewords 12y ago
Systemic effects like prolonged loss of power or water have the greatest impact, and are also the hardest to plan for. It's really hard to work out all the consequences of unplugging the electric grid in Mountain View for a week, let alone when there's multiple other emergencies happening in parallel.

EGreg 12y ago

Even more reason for a distibuted workforce that can work from home.

personZ 12y ago

Your point was diluted, the conversation misdirected, when you used Australia as the alternative. Of course there are countless options that remain in the continental United States and have far less of a risk profile. Nevada, for instance. Ultimately the coast of California is getting set up to be the biggest case of hubris and short-term thinking in human history: Where we knew for decades what the significant risks were, with ever increasing accuracy and sureness, but kept going ahead anyways. If such a major event eventually happens, as every seismic model predicts, I don't think people will say "Well, we knew this was coming.", but instead will point fingers, question why the government didn't prohibit building up there, etc.

raldi 12y ago

To what infrastructure do you refer, besides people?

ulfw 12y ago

Agreeing with you on not putting everything in the same place. In general you'd be ill advised to put anything in one place. Hedging is the way to go. There is no reason why centers of the digital age couldn't be around the world in say SF, New York, Beijing, London, Berlin, Singapore, Sydney or so. Not sure I'd still put everything in one place like the outback, far away from civilisation.

emiliobumachar 12y ago

Each individual company can probably use the time and money to mitigate against much largar risks to its individual business. (I did not downvote, btw)

mgarfias 12y ago

I'd say it's a lot less bad than putting a nuclear power plant square on top of a fault line. Yes, cooling water is nice, but they build diablo canyon in a when-not-if there's an earthquake area, and then discovered it was smack on tip of a fault later.

harryh 12y ago

No one put it there. It evolved there.

mrexroad 12y ago

plus, if in the middle of the Australian outback, the datacenters can serve as the plot device for a 5th Mad Max film.