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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 30th, 2023

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  • I always thought data centers ran clean and dirty loops of cooling (as far as computers are concerned).
    The clean loop has all the chemicals and whatnot to keep cooling blocks and tubing “safe”. The dirty side is just plain old water. And a big heat exchanger transfers the heat from the clean (hot) loop to the “dirty” (cold) side.
    Is there really that much pollution in that? Can’t be worse than rain going through storm drains or whatever.

    But AI does use a phenomenal amount of power.
    And, IMO, it’s a problem compared to the lack of value people are getting from AI.
    The new Blackwell B200 consumes 1.2kw of power, and will produce 1.2kw of heat.
    A cooling system with a COP of 5 needs to consume 240w to dissipate this.
    The backplane for the B200 holds 8 of these GPUs in a 10 RU space, and with overheads will peak 14.3kw (cooling would be 3kw consumption).
    So, a 42u data center rack with 3 of these, supporting hardware and UPS efficiencies (80%) is going to be 52kw (+10kw cooling). 62kw total, which is like 4 homes drawing their full load all the time.

    I hope they finally find an application for AI, instead of just constantly chasing the dragon with more training, more parameters, more performance etc.











  • How the Linux kernel “made it” and is still free and open source is - imo - one of the pinnacles of humanity.
    It’s inspired so much other software to adopt the same philosophy, and modern humanity/science/society stands on those shoulders.

    I think science has missed that boat.
    Or that pinnacle was before the tools to support such an open source atmosphere/community were around… So not missed the boat, but swam before the boat was built





  • No idea. Probably cause it’s a bit gate-keepy in the way I say “any tuner worth their salt” as if it’s the only way to achieve good results.
    I haven’t met a tuner that uses anything other than forks. Maybe that’s because all the pianos I’ve worked with have been in good condition, so haven’t needed drastic measures applied. As I haven’t met a tuner that uses anything else, I can’t say if they are better/faster/whatever. I just assumed it’s the industry standard, like how orchestras tune by ear