Facebook is to build a server farm near the arctic circle. [Telegraph]

  • xenphilos

    With polar bear IT personnel, I hope.

  • Aeron

    Not to be outdone, Google will soon announce it’s plan to build an underwater fortress and/or moon base.

    • Chester Moy

      Or build a heat-powered server farm on top of Facebook servers

  • http://borborygmist.influxofdust.com/ Wayne Dyer

    Hmmm…move the hot stuff closer to the stuff that’s melting.  That’ll impress folks in the Great and Glorious Online Global Warming Flamewar, I’m sure.

    • Lobster

      Can’t wait for the first climate change denier to point to THIS as the sole cause of shrinking glaciers.

    • ookluh

      Facebook Status: I totally killed a polar bear with all my posting today, LOL!

  • ZikZak

    Actually, as a point of trivia, a moon base would be a miserable place for passive cooling.  Vacuum is a very effective insulator, preventing heat from conducting or convecting.
    However, the deep sea would be really good for cooling, both because it’s really cold and water is great at absorbing heat.  And hey, the oceans are already heating up and acidifying…why not just hurry the process along and get it over with?

  • CSBD

    Are they going to build it near one of the Apocalypse seed banks?

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svalbard_Global_Seed_Vault

    • ookluh

      Norway, Sweden, what’s the difference, amiright?  Actually, Svalbard would probably be a better place to have a server farm since it’s much, much further north than the Sweden site.  Then you’d be in danger of having server downtime due to polar bear attacks.  http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3584210.stm

  • Ben Mettey

    reminds me of  Robopocalypse & Archos. Maybe Facebook is…Archos…?

  • machinestate

    i agree with wayne & lobster — the permafrost is not a heatsink. 
    but as a non-user i say “build it”, and watch it quickly sink into the bog it makes for itself… er as in physically and literally speaking.

  • Guest

    “He’s mister farm server, he’s mister hundred and one”

    • alephxero

      You’re too much.

  • dculberson

    Actually this wouldn’t be a bad thing for the arctic ice since the cooling would be more efficient and wouldn’t release carbon.  If you burn fossil fuels to achieve X btu of cooling, you not only use more than X btu of energy, releasing that heat into the environment, you also release carbon dioxide and other pollutants which contribute to arctic ice loss.

  • Brainspore

    Is the subhead of the article accurate- they’re putting ALL their servers there? Seems like a global entity like Facebook would want more redundancy if a single natural disaster could wipe out the service indefinitely.