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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: June 12th, 2023

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  • Okay, so I’m not a big AI guy. It kind of sucks at everything we try to do with it, and it’s basically a huge waste of resources right now.

    But… Sometimes it’s fun to play devil’s advocate.

    AI consumes shitloads of electricity and water, and produces nothing but slop. Even if they’re not using evaporative cooling, that water use impacts the availability of usable water downstream of the data center. Also, it’s a huge money pit - last I saw, AI companies weren’t really turning a profit.

    The article addresses electricity (Altman specifically called out a pivot to nuclear, wind, and solar), but doesn’t say a ton about the other issues… Which could all be addressed with coastal data centers.

    Don’t worry - I’m not about to suggest hearing the ocean up to cool data centers. Instead, why not pivot back to evaporative cooling, but with seawater?

    Build the data center, and put some cooling pools around it - twelve seems like a good number. Make the pools big enough that the center can be cooled without the use of all of the pools (this is important). Heat sinks are made of metal, and saltwater is bad for most metals, so slap on a few sacrificial anodes like they’re metal-hulled boats. Boom - the data center is now cooled using non-potable water without warming the ocean.

    Now, as water evaporates, salt deposits will form in the cooling pools. When a pool gets too salty, it can be drained (or allowed to fully evaporate), and the salt can be knocked off and collected. Boom - losses reduced, data center is now a salt farm. Salt’s not really worth much, but it could probably be marked up and sold to tech bros as fancy “AI powered sea salt.”

    And then, once we’ve done that, we can train the AI to do something useful, like… Uh… Clean it’s own salt pools with a little robot, I guess; it kind of sucks at everything important.


  • IIRC, the guage running from “very nearly empty” to “almost full” is an intentional thing, weirdly enough.

    On the upper end, it’s because supposedly people feel better if they fill the tank and the needle doesn’t start going down immediately.

    On the lower end, it’s to give people an earlier warning that their tank is (very nearly) empty, so they don’t run out of gas on the road.


  • MightBeAlpharius@lemmy.world
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    toComic Strips@lemmy.worldApple (SMBC)
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    5 months ago

    Gonna come at this from kind of a scholarly angle here… Yes. Yes absolutely.

    And just for fun, I’ll use the Bible to argue in your favor.

    You raise the point that even the New Testament (the half that pivots from “follow these rules” to “don’t be a douche”) shouldn’t be taken literally. Some might argue that that’s the only part that should be taken literally, but let’s take a look at how Jesus chooses to illustrate that message: by doing miracles and relating parables. He’s not regaling crowds with true tales of history, he’s telling them made-up stories to convey a point about morals.

    Hm… Made-up stories to convey a point about morals…

    Stories, perhaps, like someone turning into a pillar of salt because they chose to dwell on the past instead of moving on? Or about the value of perseverance and solidarity in the face of continued adversity? Not giving up hope, even when you’ve lost everything? How murder is just straight up bad?

    Lot’s Wife, Moses & the Pharaoh, the entire book of Job, Cain & Abel; all from the Old Testament, and all far less believable than the Good Samaritan… But somehow, those stories are to be taken as truth, while a story about a nice guy existing in Samaria is an allegory for the goodness in all of us? It’s all parables, all the way down. The New Testament is just parable-ception - it’s a made-up (or at least, very heavily embellished) story about a nice guy who tells stories about nice guys.











  • So, uh… We have the same thermostat at my job. It’s not great. You can’t just tell it what temperature you want the room to be, you actually have to tell it if you want it to heat or cool to that temperature.

    Yours is set set to 65, but if you look to the left of the current temp, it says “heat.” Someone likely forgot to change that when the weather warmed up. IIRC, one of the three unlabeled middle buttons will fix that.





  • MightBeAlpharius@lemmy.world
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    toHumor@lemmy.worldThe "coin boys"
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    1 year ago

    That is amazing.

    Best we had was some idiot who thought he could get away with smoking in the bathroom like the jocks in an 80’s movie… Someone walked in, and he threw his cigarette butt in the trash can, where it started to smolder.

    A lot.

    All told, it was a pretty boring fire. No real damage, but the school was closed for a couple of days while they cleaned up the soot.


  • In a way, it feels like we worked backwards to “cooking.” I’ve heard “cooking with gas” for ages, but just “cooking” feels more recent.

    Tbf, they’re kind of the same thing, but at different levels of speed/intensity.

    If your friend is working on something and they’re in the zone, they’re cooking like a trendy zoomer. If they’re absolutely plowing through whatever project they’re working on, then they’re cooking with gas like a crusty gen-x-er.


  • Even for those who don’t build their identity around their job, a lot of folks are just used to having something to do.

    I work in retail, and I’ve had a surprising number of old folks ask if we have any part time jobs available - they’re not looking for steady paycheck, they’re looking for something to do two or three days a week. Even if your job isn’t necessarily who you are, it’s still a reason to get out of the house.