We’ve covered the four-day workweek in several issues: In the pre-pandemic issue 6-10, we made the case that a four-day workweek could be the norm by 2050. In issue 9-05, the cover article also said the four-day workweek may be coming and potentially much sooner than 2050 because of the pandemic. Neither of these articles, however, looked at the positive impact a four-day workweek could have on the planet and our ecosystem.

When the pandemic hit, the world as we knew it changed dramatically with everyone at home, transportation infrastructure stopped and heavy industrial production drastically curtailed. Emissions from driving, flying and industrial output were dramatically reduced. Air quality in cities around the world showed marked improvement, while global emissions plummeted.

In May 2021, environmental and social justice collective Platform London released a report detailing the ecological impact of a shorter work week. From the earliest days of the pandemic, it was apparent that fewer people commuting translated quickly to reduced pollution, clearer skies, and less congestion on the roads. The impact was global, with Americans reporting less smog in Los Angeles and Europeans famously spotting dolphins in the canals of Venice. While some of this may be exaggerated, the benefits of fewer rush hour commuters are not. Fewer people heading to the office also means a reduction in electricity consumption from fewer lights, air conditioners and elevators running.

Many estimates put the reduction in carbon footprint at around 30% simply by offering one full day off per week. A more modest 10% reduction in hours (roughly three to four hours a week for most full-time workers) still translates to a 14.6% decrease in carbon emissions.

“The one thing we do know from lots of years of data and various papers and so forth is that the countries with short hours of work tend to be the ones with low emissions, and work time reductions tend to be associated with emission reduction,” said Juliet Schor, an economist and sociologist at Boston College who researches work, consumption and climate change.

It’s what you might call a “potential triple-dividend policy, so something that can benefit the economy, society and also the environment,” said Joe O’Connor, chief executive of the nonprofit group 4-Day Week Global. “There are not many policy interventions that are available to us that could potentially have the kind of transformative impact that reduced work time could have.”

Part of the problem is that we can’t forecast what workers will do with that additional day. Many believe, and international studies like those recently done in Iceland prove, that people will eventually gravitate into more eco-friendly activities like hiking, camping and other outdoor activities. But, if people choose to spend their extra time off traveling, particularly if they use planes or automobiles, we may not see any material eco-related benefits.
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“When we talk about the four-day workweek and the environment, we focus on the tangible, but actually, in a way, the biggest potential benefit here is in the intangible,” O’Connor said. “It’s in the shift away from a focus on hard work to a focus on smart work. It’s the cultural change in how we work and the impact that could have on how we live, and I think that’s the piece that’s really revolutionary.”

Record heat all over the globe is now a potentially bigger threat to ongoing data center operations than cybercrime. In late July, Google Cloud’s data centers in London went offline for a day because of cooling failures. Oracle’s cloud-based data center, also in London, was hit and went offline, causing outages for US clients.

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) says there’s a 93% change that one year between 2022 and 2026 will be the hottest on record. “For as long as we continue to emit greenhouse gases, temperatures will continue to rise,” says Petteri Taalas, WMO secretary general. “And alongside that, our oceans will continue to become warmer and more acidic, sea ice and glaciers will continue to melt, sea level will continue to rise, and our weather will become more extreme.”

A survey conducted by the Uptime Institute, a digital services standards agency, found that 45% of all US data centers have experienced an extreme weather event that threatened their ability to provide uninterrupted service.

The problem with both US-based and European centers is that their cooling systems were designed for a cooler planet than we have today. Newer data centers are now being constructed with a forecasted weather scenario to better plan for much higher temperatures.

Most data centers don’t operate at full capacity, but recent Cushman & Wakefield research shows that eight data center markets worldwide out of 55 they investigated operate at 95% or higher capacity. These centers are only strained by high temperatures a few days a year and they have been able to adjust loads to compensate for the heat. 

As climate change alters our temperatures permanently, data centers will have to improve their cooling systems so that continuous service can be assured.

“There are a deceptively large number of legacy data center sites built by banks and financial services companies needing to be refreshed and refitted,” says Simon Harris, head of critical infrastructure at data center consultancy Business Critical Solutions. As part of that rethink, Harris advises companies to look at design criteria that can cope with climate change, rather than solely minimizing its effects. “It’ll be bigger chiller machines, machines with bigger condensers, and looking more at machines that use evaporative cooling to achieve the performance criteria needed to ensure that for those days things are still in a good place,” he says.

Companies are trying novel approaches to dealing with the climate issues. Microsoft ran a three-year trial of a data center set 117 feet below the sea offshore of Scotland to insulate it from temperature fluctuations. Other companies are building centers in even more northern climates, but that probably won’t be a viable solution for those organizations who use edge computing and need their centers close to where data is consumed, often in hotter, urban areas.
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We all have to do everything we can to reduce the impact of climate change, but now is the time for all data center management personnel to better plan for the increased temperatures we will experience for the foreseeable future.

It’s summertime and we’re out at the beach, by the pool or at the amusement park. We bring our smartphones, tablets, e-readers, and even laptops with us and, unfortunately, some of us will experience that terrifying moment when our piece of electronics ends up underwater. It could even be as simple as a drink overturning onto your keyboard for your laptop. 

You need to know what to do and NOT to do and react quickly to save your device.

Be Prepared. You should have at home an electronics first-aid kit. You can get all the items from Amazon and you’ll be ready. Get a tub of silica gel (DampRid). 

You should also have one or two rescue packs (Kensington 39723 EVAP Wet Electronics Rescue Pouch) that you can pack with your other stuff to take with you when you’re out and about. This will work well for a smartphone or an iPod.

There’s a chance (about 70%) that you’ll be able to dry the device completely and put it back to work. In most cases, it won’t be quick, and you’ll have to make a bit of a mess. But you could save yourself a trip to the electronics store for a replacement.

Steps:

1. Get it out of the water as soon as possible — An unprotected device has less than 30 seconds before water leaks into the hardware.

2. Turn it off completely — If the device is still on when you fish it out of the water, turn it completely off. Even if the device is still functioning, turning it completely off may prevent any circuits from shorting out. This is NOT simply putting the device to sleep or turning off the display. Shut the device completely down.

3. Remove the battery, if possible — As the power source, this is more likely to be damaged by water than the actual device, especially if the item was on when contact was made with the water. If the device is a smartphone, skip this step. Opening the device will void the warranty and you probably don’t have the right tools to open it, anyway.

4. Remove the memory and SIM cards if possible — Because in many cases your data is stored on these instead of the actual computer or phone, you’ll probably want to protect them as much as possible. Fortunately, they’re fairly durable, so you’ll be able to dry them initially with a cloth towel, then let them air dry for a day before reinserting.

5. Remove any cables or peripherals and set them aside to air-dry — This is especially true for smaller devices, as there’s not a lot you can do beyond this. Headphones, in particular, are tiny, but extremely water resistant, even capable of surviving multiple trips through a washing machine and dryer.

6. Remove any covers and external connectors — This will open up as many gaps, slots and crevices as possible for drying, and help ensure that no moisture is trapped inside the device.

7. Get rid of all the water — This is where things get difficult. You may need to wipe it with a cloth or gently shake the water out. The following are other ways to remove water and completely dry your device.

Can of compressed air – You’ll need to be careful here, as compressed air likes to blow VERY cold and can momentarily freeze the surface of items it’s sprayed on. Any way you approach this, the device needs to be as water-free as you can get it before going to the next step.

Hair Dryer –   If you don’t have compressed air, a hair dryer can help speed up the drying process, but ONLY with cool air settings. Do not bombard your device with hot air. This can be better than the compressed air, as a constant stream of swift blowing room-temperature air can be directed at your device without the worry of quick-freezing parts of it.

Alcohol – Using a cotton swab, wipe small amounts of alcohol on the affected areas and then blow on them again to evaporate the alcohol. Use this sparingly, but because alcohol evaporates faster than water, mixing the two may help remove water from stubborn places.

Cover the device with a drying agent – Here’s where the silica gel pellets come in handy. Some people use white rice, but that can cause many more problems than it solves. Get an airtight container and completely cover your device in the drying agent. Leave the device in the container for AT LEAST 48 full hours. Your device may require more time in the drying agent, depending on how long and how completely submerged it was. In some cases, the device may need to sit for multiple days or up to a week – WITHOUT trying to see if it will turn on again.

Waterproof Your Technology. There’s a high-tech and a low-tech way to do this.

The high-tech way is to buy a waterproof case or bag designed for your device. Check the submersion factor, a gauge of how many feet underwater the case will stay waterproof for at least 10 minutes. 

The low-tech way is to use zippered plastic storage bags. This will work for smaller devices like music players, e-readers, and tablets. If you’re listening to music, keep the device in the plastic bag and use wireless ear buds.
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Preparation is the best defense for summer water catastrophes. Set up your first-aid kit, get a couple of rescue pouches and BE CAREFUL when you get close to any water!

America should be a leader in computer science education, but most of the country’s secondary schools don’t offer any courses on this technology foundational subject.

To get something started on this important topic, 500 notable people in business, education and the non-profit sector have issued a call for action and funding by Congress.

Dear Members of Congress and fellow Americans,

As business leaders, elected officials, educators, and members of the public, we join forces to deliver a bipartisan message about opportunity and the American Dream. 

Technology is transforming society at an unprecedented rate. Whether it’s smartphones or social networks, self-driving cars or personalized medicine, nothing embodies the American Dream so much as the opportunity to change or even reinvent the world with technology. And participating in this world requires access to computer science in our schools. We ask you to provide funding for every student in every school to have an opportunity to learn computer science. 

Support for this idea is sweeping our nation. Ninety percent of parents want their children to have access to computer science education at school, and teachers agree. They know that technology opens doors. A hundred thousand teachers have taken matters into their own hands and already begun teaching computer science. Over 100 school districts are rolling out courses, from New York to Chicago to Los Angeles, from Miami to Las Vegas. Twenty states have passed policies and are now looking to support professional training for new computer science teachers. Private donors have collectively committed tens of millions of dollars to solving this problem, including $48 million of new commitments announced today by many of the undersigned.

Despite this groundswell, three-quarters of U.S. schools do not offer meaningful computer science courses. At a time when every industry in every state is impacted by advances in computer technology, our schools should give all students the opportunity to understand how this technology works, to learn how to be creators, coders, and makers—not just consumers. Instead, what is increasingly a basic skill is only available to the lucky few, leaving most students behind, particularly students of color and girls.

How is this acceptable? America leads the world in technology. We invented the personal computer, the Internet, e-commerce, social networking, and the smartphone. This is our chance to position the next generation to participate in the new American Dream.

Not only does computer science provide every student foundational knowledge, it also leads to the highest-paying, fastest-growing jobs in the U.S. economy.There are currently over 500,000 open computing jobs, in every sector, from manufacturing to banking, from agriculture to healthcare, but only 50,000 computer science graduates a year. Whether a student aspires to be a software engineer, or if she just wants a well-rounded education in today’s changing world, access to computer science in school is an economic imperative for our nation to remain competitive. And with the growing threat of cyber warfare, this is even a critical matter of national security. Despite this growing need, targeted federal funding to carry out these efforts in classrooms is virtually non-existent. This bipartisan issue can be addressed without growing the federal budget.

We urge you to amplify and accelerate the local efforts in classrooms, unlock opportunity in every state, and give an answer to all the parents and teachers who believe that every student, in every school, should have a chance to learn computer science.

            Sincerely,
            Business Leaders, Education Leaders, and Non-Profit Leaders

After the letter was published, all 50 governors signed a pact supporting the effort stating, “On July 14, 2022, the National Governors Association announced that 50 U.S. governors have signed on to the Governors’ Compact To Expand K-12 Computer Science Education, committing to (1) increase the number of schools offering CS, (2) allocate funding for CS, (3) create post-secondary career pathways in CS, and (4) increase participation in CS from traditionally underserved populations.”
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Separately, some signers also expressed their support on Twitter. “Coding is one of the most valuable skills a person can learn,” Tim Cook wrote. “It can open new doors, jumpstart careers, and help big dreams seem like achievable goals.”

 “When I was 13, computer science changed the course of my life,” Bill Gates tweeted. “I was really lucky to have access to a computer that early on. I hope this initiative will give every student the same opportunity.”