Colossal Danger

[yogi]

Mikhail Gorbachev tells the BBC: World in ‘colossal danger’

The former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev has warned that current tension between Russia and the West is putting the world in "colossal danger" due to the threat from nuclear weapons.

In an interview with the BBC's Steve Rosenberg, former President Gorbachev called for all countries to declare that nuclear weapons should be destroyed.

https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-europ ... sal-danger

[Kellemora]

Like they did the last time they were supposed to downsize the number and added more instead.

[yogi]

I think he is referring to all the nuclear powers, not just Russia.

[Kellemora]

I don't doubt that some day, the powers that be will blow up the entire planet.
Even if only to prove they could really do it!
But then they wouldn't have anybody left to brag about it too, so they are holding off for now.

[yogi]

That is the problem with giving the nuclear weapon launch codes to a leader who is demonstrably demented. That person would care about nothing other than to destroy the target. Consequences be damned. But there are other ways to kill off life on this planet: ignoring what we are doing to promote climate change, for example. Elimination of biodiversity by cutting up rain forests. Extinction of wild life forms. Polluting the environment with microplastics. It's amazing we made it this far.

[Kellemora]

I thought you would be in Orlando, Florida for the ms IGNITE convention, hi hi.

I'm all for Climate Change! I think it is great that we are living in the warming up period of the current ice age.
The downside of that is that once it gets to the bottom, it will start cooling off again until we reach the peak of the next ice age. Then everyone can complain about global cooling and the ever growing ice caps!

Brazil did not get mad at US for cutting down OUR forests to build massive cities.
So I see no reason why we should be mad at THEM for cutting down THEIR rain forests.

The way I view pollution is, we are putting stuff into our air that belongs in the ground, where it came from.
In some cases this is beneficial, in some cases not, but in all cases, it will end up back in the ground again.

Hydroelectric didn't pollute, so they built coal steam plants, but that wasn't enough pollution so they built deadly nuclear reactors, and are contaminating the whole planet with radioactive waste. But they are not happy with that and are building nuclear weapons to totally pollute the whole planet at once, probably into extinction.

I take my stuff to the recycling center, because this is the thing to do instead of filling up the landfills. However, they in turn take a good percentage of it to a landfill anyhow.
Some day those landfills will be a gold mine for future generations, if their are future generations that is. The gene pool is breaking down so fast, people may not exist and the animals will take over.

[yogi]

I like what Windows 10 is doing on my laptop. That bias should not be confused with my opinions, feelings, and understanding of Microsoft as a corporation. The truth is we did consider going down to Florida, but would be visiting a daughter on the Gulf Coast and not be anywhere near Orlando. She and her hubby recently purchase a luxury condo that we have not scrutinized yet. Although we have had some below normal temperatures here lately, we decided to forgo any decision to visit Florida until February. LOL

[Kellemora]

Had to run over to the library last night just at closing to take back a few books the frau checked out.
Two men were there who took out the two oldest computers on the front side of the computer island, and moved the other three down to that end.

What is the world coming to? These new computers are TINY!
Both of the new ones are System 76 Meercat TALL, according to the box. I guess that means they also have a SHORT, hi hi.
The guy said they have an i5 something CPU, Intel Graphics, and 16 gigs RAM (probably meant 16 megs?), UBUNTU Installed.
I went and looked it up, took me a while to find the one called TALL, hi hi
CPU is i5-8259 3.8 gHz - 120 GB SSD - 16 GB DDR4 RAM 2400 mHz - Ubuntu 18.04
They had several models, so I just checked with the info I got from the box and what the guy said.
It appears the TALL is really designed for the i7 CPU, but these two have the i5 CPU.

They also had metal cages they were drilling holes in the counter top to place over these new computers, instead of using the cable lock that is on all the others. These things are TINY, I mean super TINY, compared to all the standard sized desktops they have there.
I'll have to go back next week and see how well they work for serious stuff, hi hi.

[yogi]

Tiny it is! My tower is about 93% wasted space and I am certain my motherboard is larger than what the library has. Since you don't have a clever phone, or a smartphone, you could not appreciate what those high end devices can do; everything the library computer can do, plus make phone calls. The down side is the lack of full size keyboard and monitor, but we are being marveled by size at the moment. I'm not sure what smallness buys, if anything. It might have more efficient components which do not use as much power. Other than that it's just a form factor issue from what I can tell.

[Kellemora]

The computer I bought for Debi was a mini-tower.
No room to add another HD, which is no big deal really since I use mostly external drives for storage anyhow.
It seems to run fairly fast with Linux, so don't know what the major problem with Win10 was with it.
As you know, I got a copy of Win10 and tried installing it on the machine, it still ran just as slow, perhaps a tad faster, but not much. It appears the machine was designed around Win8.1 and that is all the company says will work on it.

I don't see how those tiny computers can run very fast without overheating. Something new I don't know about I guess.

[yogi]

Part of the solution to excess heat in microprocessors is to reduce the size of it's components. The last I read is the runners are now 8 µm (microns) which is mind boggling considering they are lithographed onto the silicon. Of course more goes into heat generation than the size of the transistors and it's runners but size is a big factor. The cores are pretty much at their limit which is something like 1.4 GHZ clock speed. All those higher numbers advertised are just referring to cores running in parallel with an "effective" transfer rate. They have the heat problem under control in my clever phone, for example, which has about the same computing capacity as the laptop. Now that I think about it, the laptop doesn't generate much heat either. It might if I ran some programs to test its limits. There is a switch on the keyboard that will turn on an auxiliary fan should things get too hot. When I opened it up one time that fan was clean. It never had been used.

[Kellemora]

I bought a little external fan to set my netbook on when I used it at writers meetings.
I never saw a difference in the monitored temperature using it or not using it though.

Seems like it would take more power to get more speed which would create more heat.
Also seems like if the little components were a boon, then they would use them to build the supercomputers and save all that electric and AC to keep the arrays cool. Hmm.

I'm hoping to get up to the library tomorrow and see if folks are using the new Ubuntu computers.

It would be nice if they really could make computers run cooler and use less power.
Every computer I bought in the last decade, each had to have a larger power supply than the one preceding it.
I've basically gone from 250 watt power supplies up to 350, 375, 400, 475, and then a jump up to 600 watt.
On the bright side, all the computers keep my office toasty warm all winter, with the AC kicking on to help cool things down, hi hi.

[yogi]

Cooling fans can only do so much, particularly in the case of laptops. Moving air around inside those devices is nearly impossible. Outside fans will keep the plastic case at ambient temperatures, but I don't see how they would do anything to transfer the heat from the processor. A large heat sink does more than moving air. The best auxiliary cooling for my laptops has always been to use it on a marble, or some other stone, countertop. It's amazing how much heat the stone will absorb just from radiation inside the laptop. Unfortunately, it's not always convenient to sit at such a countertop and do the computer thing.

I have a 650 Watt power pack in the ASUS tower and that's about 40% overrated. The only time the system draws a lot of power is when I use graphic intensive software. That's when the GPU kicks into high gear and twice as much heat is generated. I'm pretty sure, however, the nVidia card is only a 200 Watt device; 250 max. The processor and the cooling fans could take up to another 200 Watts, but I seldom if ever reach that level of activity. Not for very long anyway. The laptop I have is amazing regarding keeping it cool. I'm not sure what they did to get it that way, but then, I don't test its limits as I do with the tower. I'm using that gaming laptop for testing out operating systems, and as such they don't draw a lot of power.

[Kellemora]

The fan on my little netbook draws air in from the bottom, which is why you can't set it on a pillow, it won't get enough air.
But the little fan box I have it sits on, draws its air in from the two ends and blows it out the top into the fan vent on the bottom of the netbook. It was made for this netbook by the way so has little tabs that slip in slots on the bottom of the case. The air blows out of the netbook via a row of small slots almost the length of the back of the netbook.
I rarely use this thing, because I have to hook up a keyboard and mouse and find a comfortable place to use it.
I have a card table with a whirlybird I work jigsaw puzzles on, and under that is a wooden TV tray I usually use to eat dinner on, hi hi.
I can set the netbook on top of the puzzle board, and the keyboard on the TV tray and I'm off and running when I'm sitting in the living room.
About the only thing I do on it is writing or editing and that's about it.

[yogi]

There are quite a few cooling pads one can attach to their laptop. Some are more effective than others. A heat sink is still the best way to transfer heat, but maybe not as practical as a cooling pad. Just to test things out, I actually put the laptop on my lap a time or two and tried to use it there. I'm lost without a mouse and have disabled the touchpad wherever I can. The bottom line is that I find it very uncomfortable to use a laptop on my lap. It may be a good idea in the winter to keep my legs warm, but not useful for much else. LOL

[Kellemora]

I agree with the Heat Sink being the best cooling device!
The frau's computer is liquid cooled, and a hose broke inside once.
Made a mess, but after we dried it out, they fixed it for us and it suffered no damage.
Talk about luck! Perhaps the liquid they use don't conduct electric?

[yogi]

I don't know what they use in liquid cooling systems. I do know there is more than one option. Pure water is an insulator as far as electrons are concerned. The impurities, such as salt, do conduct. Thus I would assume the damage comes after the water dries. Alcohol, likewise, is an insulator. Those two would be my first guess for liquid cooling, but I don't know for sure. I never liked liquid cooling because of the necessary external cooling tower that goes with it. I will say the tubing looks cool, but I think it's just a vanity thing. Fans and copper heat sinks work best.

[Kellemora]

Her computer case is larger than the Silver Yogi, and twice as heavy, the water cooling tower is inside the case.
It's like a large rectangular shaped heat sink with three fans blowing across it. A hose from the CPU goes in the bottom and comes out the top, through a pump and back to the CPU again. All I can say is her computer puts out more heat than any computer we've ever owned, so I don't know if the liquid cooled is a good idea. I know it being Alienware was a super bad idea, hi hi.
I was at the home office for Cook Out not to long ago, and they have a tall cabinet, probably a blade cabinet, didn't see inside of course. But they had an air conditioner with a duct with a box in-line that went into the back of the cabinet and a tube that came out of the top and out through a wall. I don't know if it went back to the AC or not. I assume the box the AC went into was some type of air dryer to keep moisture out of the cabinet.
All of their restaurants connect to this computer/server system.
I was actually surprised, because other businesses usually don't have their own computer systems anymore, they use a hosting service somewhere through a company who provides the equipment and software to the businesses.
Even businesses that do have a large mainframe in their home office, still rely on hosting services for their individual stores or offices.

[yogi]

Being the geeky type guy I am, should i ever have a business need for a server and clients it would be of my own making and located on my premises. Of course, that depends on the size of the business. There are some advantages of leasing a service vs owning your own. You don't have to buy the computer or maintain it is probably the best reason to go with an outside service. I'd also be pretty concerned about security, which may or may not matter. That too depends on the kind of business I would operate. The service company has free access to my data, plus being bigger then me they would be a more likely target for a security intrusion. Restaurants aren't good at computers so that it makes sense for them to defer to experts.

There is some irony to water cooled computers. The fluid takes the heat from the source but it takes fans and heat sinks to cool down that liquid again. In the end it's just a matter of where you put the fans, but fans are always needed. The liquid cooler I was eyeing for the Silver Yogi had an external tower with fins and a fan blowing up the middle. One side advantage of that arrangement was that I would locate it under my desk and keep my toes toasty warm in winter. But then, there is summer. So I decided against it. I can't be certain at the moment but I am confident the processors I've looked at lately do not exceed more than 200 watts of power consumption. I'd guess the Silver Yogi is well under 100 watts. What I'm getting at is the effort and expense required to liquid cool such a small burner is excessive. It's mostly for show in home computers.

[Kellemora]

I have little thermometers with wired remote sensors. I place the remote sensor where the most air blows out of a computer. In the Silver Yogi, the main air output is through the power supply. It normally reads about 85 degrees doing normal document writing, but when I'm on websites especially when I'm playing Farm Town it jumps up to around 97 degrees, but rarely if ever goes over 100 degrees. All the rest of my computers, at idle are about 74 to 76 degrees, but when in use they jump up to about 78 to 80 degrees, perhaps 85 if I'm doing graphics.
Now Debi's water cooled computer, when she's playing Farm Town, her temp goes from about 80 all the way up to 105, sometimes higher, read at the fan output from the cooling tower.
I'm with you though, I think air cooled is better!