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Submission + - Data factories dump costs to citizens (tomshardware.com)

Submitted by noshellswill
noshellswill writes: Rather than pay for build-out of supporting electric power infrastructure, data-centers try passing that cost off to taxpayers. And the pass-off cost is not proportional to use as Maryland taxpayers discover.

Comment Re:Screens don't teach. (Score 1) 51

What can be done and what is nominally done are two different matters. Books and paper have smell, taste and texture ... and weight. And contingency ... that is a student may place a book or paper on her desk ... change  its position or remove it. In schools the computer  screen becomes a permanent  necessary part of the environment, over which the student has no agency except to remove themselves. Small beans? Not really; it's the difference between OR & XOR logic and the deficit is being trained into very young children.

Comment Re:Diversifying supply chain from single source (Score 1) 25

by noshellswill (#66135004) Attached to: Apple, Intel Have Reached Preliminary Chip-Making Agreement
Free markets seek out peaks in the cost / benefit landscape. Those peaks are points of unstable equilibrium.  A robust, risk-intolerant culture finds that financial behavior undesirable. Too many black swan events leading to financial/cultural disruption. A crafts/guild based system speaks to that desired stability. OTOH a slave or sociopath  culture might find the adrenaline rush of financial panics fulfilling, while a militaristic nation sees hope in rapid weapons development.

Comment Re:This is a systemic problem, not an isolated one (Score 0) 42

by noshellswill (#66134970) Attached to: The Canvas Hack Is a New Kind of Ransomware Debacle
**Government shouldn't be funding private enterprise.**  Since when ?  Egyptian pyramid builders were private contractors, paid by pharaoh. Who do you think owned the Athenian navy? Tax collectors were private enterprises, financed by the Roman government that took its cut of revenue. Dutch city-states where merchants literally owned the government? Brit East India Company.  USA railroad expansion in the West was financed by "generous" government set-asides of (Indian) land for company shareholders. Please advise me of a serious governmental system that did NOT pay private enterprise.

Comment slop (Score 1) 69

by noshellswill (#66134858) Attached to: AI Hard Drive Shortage Makes Archiving the Internet Harder
No dispute ... *.ai generates strings one-billion times faster than humans. And AI grows AI so it's exponential . But archived slop is still slop. In deep time,  when acetic acid emitting microbes grow over the SSD / HD we still can say "no information was harmed during this process". So we wasted money and time on what ...?

Comment Re:I won't forget (Score 2) 69

by noshellswill (#66134744) Attached to: AI Hard Drive Shortage Makes Archiving the Internet Harder
You would think, but ... in the late 19-th and early 20-th Centuries coal companies sowed rape and pillage throughout Lackawanna and Luzerne  Valleys  in Pa. What did they reap? A couple governorships  a couple Senators  & judges by the score  ... rivers so polluted even catfish can't live and land so decimated it burns night and day. Be damned careful what you sow.

Comment single point of failure (Score 1) 42

by noshellswill (#66133944) Attached to: The Canvas Hack Is a New Kind of Ransomware Debacle
Canvas ? An un-needed single point of failure  needed for administering ... just what? Truth is CANVAS was not needed, but desired as a centralization tool. Individual profs can't keep everything in their own personal hand-written logbook ... like every faculty I ever worked with. I mean, a university is just a collection of knowledgemasters funded by wealthy patrons of arts & sciences ... right ? Wonder who gets fired for this  systematic centralization error ?

Comment risk adverse (Score 1) 69

by noshellswill (#66133930) Attached to: Motherboard Sales 'Collapse' By More Than 25%
DIY home uses who build & maintain multiple systems do not fear shortages. We maintain a risk-adverse attitude, and robust systems function has been designed in. That's why our legacy systems all run Crucial ram and enterprise-grade hard-drives. We pay up-front for stability. Now ...  for those bandwagon jumpers or  just-in-time "entitlests" who want-want-want  now-now-now ... we have no empathy.  Computer equipment in short supply?  Haha ! They can wait--wait--wait.  while "the market" passes them by.

Comment robust (Score 1) 159

Just enough/just-in-time really really sucks; On principle.  That 40% usage just about matches the requirements for "robust"  service: true for electric service, true for roadway service, true for water/sewer service, true for restaurant service ... if you want unhurried server delivering a piping-hot meat-loaf and potatoes. Likewise, home electric users with 60% headroom can then add/subtract any personal comfort feature to their dwelling W/O fear of blowing fuses L&R. A last thought ... given current rates of improvement 40,000 squ-meter data-centers will be reduced to the size of a sound-card ( Homo.sapiens do this already). With NVIDIA   about to announce their new CPU with  built-in ......

Comment Re:Reddit for the win (Score 1) 52

When our two fundamental theories of matter and light are mutual contradictions, how much "silver bullet" truth can you expect from current understanding of human behavior ? You want/demand certainty when no such certainty exist, even for the most basic observations of the simplest events. ' ~r/XXX' probably does better than one could expect.  If you are basing your own actions on some perceived certainty, then best take a "breather"  chugging  a big cold mug of skepticism.

Comment Re:Burn this mf down! (Score 1) 27

by noshellswill (#66130556) Attached to: Using Drones for Cloud-Seeding Can Trigger Rain, Company Claims
No burn no earn .... humans return to neolith hunting and gathering. I know that is Greenbeaner heaven, where tools that convert  energy are forbidden ... female slaves excepted. Classical thinkers acknowledged such cultures, but thought further.** You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes you just might find  ... you  get what you need.** Even if that need is a whale-blubber oil-lamp.

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