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tjmc

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tjmc
·29 days ago·discuss
This is why I'll never be a fire protection engineer
tjmc
·last month·discuss
Thank you. A big omission from the original article.
tjmc
·2 months ago·discuss
Data center mech eng here - from our perspective it's higher rack densities typically due to GPUs. It's certainly possible to have high densities due to CPUs as well but I've seen a significant spike in rack densities in the last couple of years which has caused a switch from air cooling to liquid to chip.

One side effect of higher density is less footprint on the building to exhaust the heat, which is one reason (the main one being efficiency) that cooling towers and indirect evaporative cooling are favoured over air cooled condensers which leads to large amounts of water consumption.

Cooling towers are also much quieter than air cooled condensers which is a significant factor near any residential areas. It would be great to see more use of data center waste heat for process or district heating to save on water consumption.

Another issue with AI training in particular is huge (multi-MW) swings in power consumption at the start and end of each training run which must be a nightmare for the sparkies.
tjmc
·3 months ago·discuss
That's a reasonable take - Apple had a gun to their head regarding tarriffs and exposure to China, but I'd still love to know how Steve would have played the same hand.
tjmc
·3 months ago·discuss
54yo here. We (GenX) grew up with computers. It’s the Boomers and Silent Generation that have trouble.
tjmc
·4 months ago·discuss
You should see the price of noise cancelling aviation headsets. Bose are killing it.
tjmc
·5 months ago·discuss
The issue is maximum take off weight. Presumably the discharged battery weight would be the one you use in the pre-flight MTOW calculations, because the worse case scenario is one where you're landing an almost discharged battery and have to go around.
tjmc
·5 months ago·discuss
Looking forward to seeing solid state batteries for aviation, but the scary part is that they get heavier when they discharge as oxygen from the air turns into solid oxide.
tjmc
·8 months ago·discuss
And we're even happier if you keep it!
tjmc
·10 months ago·discuss
I can see a future for microreactors powering container ships. Outside nuclear subs and aircraft carriers there are already nuclear powered icebreakers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear-powered_icebreaker
tjmc
·3 years ago·discuss
"They can afford it" is a terrible argument. There's literally no upside for Apple providing their infrastructure for free to third parties, particularly given that it's a potential vector for flooding their customers with spam.

Up until quite recently, most phone carriers metered the number of texts you could send per month and then charged extra. Many still charge per text when you're roaming overseas. Perhaps Apple could offer API access on commercial terms to third parties but that's their decision.