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Microsoft has sunk a data centre in the sea to investigate energy efficiency

bbc.com

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Re: Microsoft has sunk a data centre in the sea to investigate energy efficiency

#271

Post by gnode »

criley2 wrote: post #249
d0lph wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, diamonds just cost human lives.

"Right, diamonds just cost human lives." If we're going to play that game, where did the electricity come from for your watt-hour-sucking GPU? A coal plant? How many died mining it? How many got life long illness or injury/disability mining it? How much poverty did the abusive mining industry inflict on poor dependent communities? How many hundreds of thousands of people were affected by it's emissions? How many thou…

> If we're going to play that game, where did the electricity come from for your watt-hour-sucking GPU?

Pointing out that diamond mining is also not without externalities doesn't mean d0lph is an exponent of Bitcoin mining.

Re: Microsoft has sunk a data centre in the sea to investigate energy efficiency

#272

Post by zrobotics »

OnMyPhone wrote: post #175
apk-d wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That must be one of the silliest hacks I've ever heard, right up there with oven-baking electronics to fix loose solder joints. I love it!

Not OP, but I have had the freezer trick work more times than not. It's a last case type of deal, but when there's nothing to lose try it. Just make sure the drive is sealed up nicely.

Worked in HS for a local computer repair shop. One trick to improve success with the freezer method is to place the drive in a sealed plastic bag with some desiccant packs. Placing a bare drive in the freezer can kill it due to condensation. Leave the drive in the bag at least a few hours to give the desiccant time to work. Like others have said, this is a last ditch effort, and if you really care enough, don't do it if you are willing to send it to a specialist, since it can ruin a recoverable drive. But it does seem to work ~30% of the time (at least w/ deathstars) and I did have success on a clicking Seagate drive last year.

Re: Microsoft has sunk a data centre in the sea to investigate energy efficiency

#273

Post by jerkstate »

wglb wrote: post #210
ethbro wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the same vein, I'd be curious how much energy gets consumed by HFT.

And how much by machinery to run advertising?

you're not going to hear the media complaining about that, though

Re: Microsoft has sunk a data centre in the sea to investigate energy efficiency

#274

Post by bduerst »

rtkwe wrote: post #234
d0lph wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, diamonds just cost human lives.

But that isn't an inherent fact of a diamond. Mining them doesn't require that people lose their lives it's a fact of shitty people. And most diamonds consumers will encounter aren't from that stream.

Yep. Human nature is a different problem set altogether from being intentionally designed to waste electricity.

Re: Microsoft has sunk a data centre in the sea to investigate energy efficiency

#275

Post by kingbirdy »

rounce wrote: post #183
apk-d wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That must be one of the silliest hacks I've ever heard, right up there with oven-baking electronics to fix loose solder joints. I love it!

As a teen I managed to 'rescue' 1000's of £/$'s worth of graphics cards from eBay listed as spares/repair with this method. I recall this working about half the time; then again at least 3/10 cards from eBay listed as broken worked immediately when plugged in.

Did you have any "signals" you looked for on the listings to indicate they might just need an oven reflow, or did you just buy everything cheap and hope it worked?

Re: Microsoft has sunk a data centre in the sea to investigate energy efficiency

#276

Post by sebleon »

gwbas1c wrote: post #222
gnode wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Naturally scarce stores of value like Bitcoin, gold, diamonds, etc. have always "wasted" resources, whether they be power, human resource, or polluting the environment. On one hand you could regard them as immoral because of this, on the other hand they enable the freedom to store value without trust.

At this point, we know that Bitcoin doesn't scale to handle the volume of transactions needed for a global digital currency. Ultimately, if you own Bitcoin in hopes of the value going up, it will only go up if someone is willing to pay more for it. There's no other utilitarian use of it. This means that Bitcoin is a 0-sum game*, and a tremendous waste of resources. At least with gold mining we end up with a material…

> we know Bitcoin doesn’t scale to handle the volume of transactions needed

No longer true. I used to believe this as well, but I’ve been blown away by the work from Lightning Network [1]. Subsecond transactions that happen off the Bitcoin blockchain, scales beautifully.

[1] http://lightning.network

Re: Microsoft has sunk a data centre in the sea to investigate energy efficiency

#279

Post by cpeterso »

dorfsmay wrote: post #269

I wish somebody worked on using that unwanted heat, like they do in swimming pool / ice rink combos, rather than finding ways to just disperse it faster in the environment.

Arthur C. Clarke wrote a short story about an power generator based on the temperature difference of a long pipe reaching into the cold ocean depths. I think the story was The Deep Range.

Re: Microsoft has sunk a data centre in the sea to investigate energy efficiency

#280

Post by deegles »

rtkwe wrote: post #219
d0lph wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're all arbitrary stores of value whos intrinsic value is not justified by the market price?

Only Bitcoin requires the continuous consumption of energy to continue being a useful asset though.

Physical gold still needs to be mined, smelted, transported, and guarded. When you buy it and move it around energy is spent too. So if you really want an apples-to-apples comparison you'd have to count the energy needed to mine each oz. of gold.
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