431–440 of 675 posts
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The SSD don't last forever, after about 3 to 4 years of daily use the drive/system should be replaced. At >5 years, one could hit retention issues and corruption losses. Good excuse to upgrade though, as a $1500 recovery bill would not be cool. Best regards =3
Never used a computer less than 8yrs and never had an ssd have an issue in that time.
Can someone explain why helium is used for these purposes, as opposed to some other noble gas? I think there's more argon (it's about 1% of the atmosphere) than helium so is helium somehow special, or is it just cheaper, despite being rarer and non-renewable?
Helium has the second highest [1] specific heat capacity (after hydrogen); it's significantly higher than that of even water. It's damn efficient at cooling or heating. With that, it's chemically inert, unlike hydrogen or ammonia. There's no reasonable substitute. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_of_specific_heat_capacit... (Sort by the third column.)
Heat conductivity, on the other hand, is an order of magnitude higher for helium, compared to argon, because its atoms are moving faster due to their lower mass.
When the gas is used for cooling, heat conductivity is important because it determines the conductivity through the boundary layer near surface, where the velocity of the flow drops to zero at the surface itself, and all the heat transport is through conduction rather than advection.
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Are you in an area with a bad electrical grid or something? In 40+ years I've never had a single device get fried from a surge/storm. My "surge protector" power strips are from the 90s and probably don't even work.
This. Same timeframe and I've lived through both lots of lightning storms and in areas with lots of power failures. Some of them intermittent and essentially caused by transformers blowing up. Like earlier this winter, we had multiple storms where you'd hear a transformer blow up, in many cases even seeing the sky light up as well from it, power going out, couple seconds, power coming back, next transformer blowing o…
Instead, it's usually just overhead wires that are too close or literally touching, often from influences like wind and ice. The electricity arcs between the wires, creating bright blue-white flashes that can be seen from far away, sometimes with instantaneous heat that makes hunks of metal wire evaporate explosively. It can be violent and loud, and repetitious as different parts of even a single run fail.
Transformers can certainly blow up, but that's less common. They're (generally) filled with oil for cooling purposes, and they're massive things that tend to take time to get hot. A failed transformer can produce arcing and blue-white light, but if things are that hot then the oil is also ready to burn.
And when the oil burns it isn't blue-white -- it burns with about the same yellow-orange color we saw the last time we accidentally flambéed dinner on the kitchen stove, or a Hollywood fireball.
A bright flash without a fire is probably not a transformer.
Here's a video of a transformer actually-exploding (note the prominent fireball): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFkfd31Wpng
And here's a video of what someone describes as a transformer exploding, even though there are no transformers in the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHVh0KwG_0k
The US just finished divesting itself from its strategic helium reserve in 2024 due to the "Helium Stewardship Act of 2013"[1] But, now we have a strategic bitcoin reserve. [1] https://www.congress.gov/bill/113th-congress/house-bill/527
Big self own here
We’re about to get a preview of the world after fossil fuel extraction and some of the knock on effects. Semi is one thing, wait till you can’t get an MRI.
In related news, diesel is $7/gallon, and peets coffee is $25/lb, and computers (hardware and cloud) are up 25-50%. The official numbers claim 3% inflation. Does anyone actually believe that? We were seeing 30% YoY before Iran here in California. The discrepancy is so large, I’m wondering if there’s an official explanation or some reasonable explanation, or if they’re just not bothering anymore.
> We were seeing 30% YoY before Iran here in California. We didn’t even see that across the board during the height of Covid-flation. What metrics are you using to get that number?
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I have lived in the DC metro area inside the beltway or in Sillicon Valley my entire adult life and have only had above ground power wiring. Despite tree ordnances and wind storms and a grid so aged if we see lightning we lose power.
I've heard that before, that the US apparently loves above ground power lines. In NL it's only the long distance ones that are above ground. Even in most rural areas, I think everything is below ground.
I've developed a new fear of my 2025 desktop PC being damaged by a power surge or something, because it would cost at least $2K more to replace than I paid for it, assuming I can even find parts now. Compared to the rest of my adult life when I used to secretly pray for something to fail so I would have a reason to upgrade.
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Are you in an area with a bad electrical grid or something? In 40+ years I've never had a single device get fried from a surge/storm. My "surge protector" power strips are from the 90s and probably don't even work.
This. Same timeframe and I've lived through both lots of lightning storms and in areas with lots of power failures. Some of them intermittent and essentially caused by transformers blowing up. Like earlier this winter, we had multiple storms where you'd hear a transformer blow up, in many cases even seeing the sky light up as well from it, power going out, couple seconds, power coming back, next transformer blowing o…
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Commercial uses layered surge protectors (Type I, II, and III), which is also recommended for other users but rarely followed. In surge prone areas, at a minimum I would have good quality whole-house surge protector (eg Siemens 140 or Eaton 108), and a good quality surge protector strip for any computer/TV/phone charger. I also put surge protectors in front of expensive white goods like the fridge, washer/dryer, dish…
Are you in an area with a bad electrical grid or something? In 40+ years I've never had a single device get fried from a surge/storm. My "surge protector" power strips are from the 90s and probably don't even work.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The kind of people who voted for trump would never admit they made a mistake. They double down on stupidity instead.
That isn't true. There's actually a large number of people, probably in the millions, but probably not a majority of those who voted for him, who no longer support him in any way. And of the ones who remain, yes: they're pretty dense to still support him now. There are some lunatics who genuinely believe that the US has the right to dominate and exploit all other nations, but the majority of them simply believe the l…