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Comment Re:Look around old men's garages (Score 1) 49

My local Sears (in the Capitola Mall) had all kinds of departments. They did tires and batteries, had sizable camping and exercise equipment sections, a fairly decent electronics section with I think three different computers, appliances, housewares, jewelry and watches, and probably some other things I'm forgetting besides clothing obviously. And they had a fairly active catalog and layaway department, as Sears still had a fairly large catalog at the time. They were fairly easy to deal with, their prices were decent, they had good sales. They also had parts departments and you could get replacement parts for most of their tools many years later, and of course the hand tools had lifetime warranties (except for torque wrenches, even if the failure is not related to the torque part... sigh.)

The one complaint I did have about vintage Sears is that those parts were usually stupidly expensive, like they'd sell you a $5 primer bulb for a string trimmer for $20 plus shipping.

Comment Re:Nadella is missing the mark here (Score 1) 49

You're viewing this from completely the wrong angle.

The fact that Azure is popular isn't a coincidence. It's in part because it's the easiest thing to get to from Windows, and Windows is still dominant in business and government. As you say, integration.

So if you're using less Windows at home, Azure is less appealing. There's still a case for it, you might still choose to use it etc, it's just less likely. That's why whether the customers are running Windows or not matters. And Windows is becoming steadily more offensive — can you ever trust it with your data on any basis? And oh yeah, Microsoft has had several embarrassing failures of security in Azure-related services.

Comment Re: Remember how Sears used to be a thing? (Score 1) 49

Sears fate was sealed the moment Amazon was created.

I don't agree. As long as they still had real estate and shipping, they were in a position to make a comeback if they only demonstrated some competence. But instead of that, the real estate was sold off and the web site was never made not trash. As I recall they mostly hung on to the shipping and did some deals there, and they also had a line of business doing largely incompetent repair work, but selling the property was a huge failure.

Comment Re:fire is nice if it weren't for those nasty flam (Score 2) 111

and for reasons that escape me there's a cult of personality around him.

1) Prosperity theology is the dominant religious belief system in America. If you are successful, it's because God loves you!
2) Lots of people are stupid enough to think he had a lot of money before he got access to the presidency and therefore bribes from all sides, instead of a lot of property which was worth less than the amount of debt he had. Therefore they can believe that he was wealthy, which means God loves him. (See point 1.)
3) They love that he says the kinds of things they say and wants to hurt the people they want to hurt.

Comment Re:why not use some of the waste heat? (Score 1) 75

The heat pump's working fluid doesn't have to be water, it'd be whatever fluid can phase change at a "convenient pressure". The released heat on the high pressure side would be used to boil water into steam, which could then be moved to a turbine to generate power.

That "working fluid" woud be what is circulating on the low pressure side, through the cooling blocks.

Comment Re:After they had already failed... (Score 1) 49

Sears used to own a bunch of real estate and a trucking fleet. This let them ship things anywhere in the country in a reasonably timely fashion and keep costs low on both ends. They did absolutely, pathetically flub web sales, but it really wasn't too late to fix that. They at least had done the work of getting the product information digitized, even if the web site was otherwise a loss. (It really was terrible, and so were the prices, wtf.)

Comment Re: Mind the Meatsack Gap. (Score 1) 75

Compared to cryptocurrency, LLMs are dramatically useful. They don't do just of the things their proponents claim they do, and probably never will, but at least they do some things. Cryptocurrency is only a way for a different group of assholes to get rich enabling crime. It does nothing you couldn't do with just another normal fiat currency.

Comment why not use some of the waste heat? (Score 2) 75

I'm surprised I haven't seen anyone trying to use the waste heat that all this computer power is generating? I realize that would impact cooling a little, but surely SOME of this can be recovered efficiently? Steam turbines are the usual way to turn heat into electrical power. Is there no way to do it for data centers?

For example, use a heat pump to concentrate the heat to above boiling temperature then use that to boil water to run a steam turbine. The heat pump would require some power to run, but I think you could run that at a net-positive for power?

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