qupada

Probably best to look at it as a competitor to a Xeon D system, rather than any full-size server.

We use a few of the Dell XR4000 at work (https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/ipovw/poweredge-xr4510c), as they’re small, low power, and able to be mounted in a 2-post comms rack.

Our CPU of choice there is the Xeon D-2776NT (https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/sku/226239/intel-xeon-d2776nt-processor-25m-cache-up-to-3-20-ghz/specifications.html), which features 16 cores @ 2.1GHz, 32 PCIe 4.0 lanes, and is rated 117W.

The ostensibly top of this range 4584PX, also with 16 cores but at double the clock speed, 28 PCIe 5.0 lanes, and 120W seems like it would be a perfectly fine drop-in replacement for that.

(I will note there is one significant difference that the Xeon does come with a built-in NIC; in this case the 4-port 25Gb “E823-C”, saving you space and PCIe lanes in your system)

As more PCIe 5.0 expansion options land, I’d expect the need for large quantities of PCIe to diminish somewhat. A 100Gb NIC would only require a x4 port, and even a x8 HBA could push more than 15GB/s. Indeed, if you compare the total possible PCIe throughput of those CPUs, 32x 4.0 is ~63GB/s, while 28x 5.0 gets you ~110GB/s.

Unfortunately, we’re now at the mercy of what server designs these wind up in. I have to say though, I fully expect it is going to be smaller designs marketed as “edge” compute, like that Dell system.

Unfortunately what’s shipping today seems it would offer maybe half that.

For the batteries that were announced this past week, a larger-than-refrigerator-sized cabinet held a capacity of around 15kWh.

Around half the energy density by mass of Lithium batteries, and in the order of a sixth of the density by volume.

Now if only we could come up with a system where your car could be charged while stopped at traffic lights, we might be onto a winner (:

Considering however that the price of sodium is around 1-2% that of lithium, I expect we will see significant R&D and those numbers quickly start to improve.

I genuinely hope you enjoy all the negative reviews you’re about to receive, Sony.

I’ve been seeing a lot about Sodium-ion just in the past week.

While they seem to have a huge advantage in being able to charge and discharge at some fairly eye-watering rates, the miserable energy density would seem to limit them to stationary applications, at least for now.

Perfect for backup power, load shifting, and other power-grid-tied applications though.

Came to post the same. Seems like the most awkward possible way to phrase that.

Your “Disks not included” suggestion, or heck, just “empty” would surely be better.

I too have an oddly specific one of these, which is tartare sauce.

I actively dislike all three of mayonnaise, gherkins, and capers. Mix 'em together though? Brilliant.

eSATAp! What a wild combination.

Not actually a terrible idea, even if it frequently was limited to powering 2.5" drives due to a lack of 12V. Some had extra contacts for that, but most that I saw didn’t.

It does however affect getting updates from government agencies, and others who insist on only disseminating real-time information to the public via Twitter.

For instance: https://twitter.com/WakaKotahiWgtn

This is the account for traffic events (road closures, traffic accidents, etc) in my city. Not signed in, the latest visible post is from February 2023.

Since I don’t have a twitter account, this is now functionally useless.

Since the realistic competitor here is probably magnetic tape, current-generation (LTO9) media can transfer at around 400MB/s, taking 12 hours and change to fill an 18TB tape.

Earlier archival optical disk formats (https://news.panasonic.com/global/stories/798) claimed 360MB/s, but I believe that is six, double-sided discs writing both sides simultaneously, so 30MB/s per stream. Filling the same six (300GB) discs would take about an hour and a half.

Building the library to handle and read/write in bulk is always the issue though. The above optical system fit 1.9PB in the space of a server rack (and I didn’t see any options to expand further when that was current technology), and by the looks is 7 units that each can be writing a set of discs (call that 2.5GB/s total).

In the same single rack you’d fit 560 LTO tapes (10.1PB for LTO9) and 21 drives (8.4GB/s).

So they have a bit of catching up to do, especially with LTO10 (due in the next year or so) doubling the capacity and further increasing the throughput.

There’s also the small matter that every one of these massive increases in optical disc capacity in recent years has turned out to be vapourware. I mean I don’t doubt that they will achieve it someday, but they always seem to go nowhere.

As of USB-PD 3.1 there are now nine fixed voltages - 5, 9, 12, 15, 20, 28, 36, and 48V - and two variable-voltage modes; PPS with 3.3 - 21V in 0.02V increments, and AVS with 15 - 48V in 0.1V increments.

Combined with a few different current limits, some of these features being optional, and then doubling down with what your cable does or doesn’t support, amazing anything gets charged at all.

Induction elements “cycle” on and off – hundreds or thousands of times per second […] There is no human perceptible duty cycle

See unfortunately what you’re describing here are good induction stoves, which is not the majority of what is on the market.

I’ve seen far too many of the bad kind, with duty cycles measured in the tens of seconds. Your 7/10 on the dial could be - like a non-inverter microwave - something in the neighbourhood of 7 seconds on / 3 seconds off. At that point they can actually be worse to use than old halogen glass cooktops, which at least remain hot during the off part of their thermostat’s cycle.

This is not even just cheap no-name crap either, have witnessed it with big-name-brand in-bench stovetops with four-figure pricetags.

If you’re doing something like poaching eggs (which typically calls for a wide, flat pan), you’ll actually see the water starting and stopping boiling in a cycle as it switches. Absolutely terrible.

Sony pioneered that one, I reckon over the lifespan of a phone - especially since people tend to keep phones longer these days - it does make a difference. I’m glad other manufacturers have done the same (I believe Apple has something similar, and maybe one other Android OEM).

My Xperia 1ii (mid 2020) still reports around 83% of its original battery capacity, and it’s been plugged in overnight more or less every day of its life.

do they even offer any?

On non-LTS releases? Almost certainly not.

You’re 100% on the money, if a broken non-LTS release - which you can still upgrade to from an earlier release with do-release-upgrade, or install from the server ISO then apt install the UI - something has already gone horribly wrong, and a couple of days wait for a re-released ISO is by far the least of your problems.

Not OP, but genuine answer: because I loathe being forced into their way of doing things. Every little thing on the Mac seems engineered with an “our way or the highway” mentality, that leaves no room for other (frequently, better) ways of achieving anything.

Adding to that, window/task management is an absolute nightmare (things that have worked certain ways basically since System 6 on monochrome Mac Classic machines, and haven’t improved), and despite all claims to the contrary, its BSD-based underpinnings are just different enough to Linux’s GNU toolset to make supposed compatibility (or the purported “develop on Mac, deploy on Linux” workflow) a gross misadventure.

I just find the experience frustrating, unpleasant, and always walk away from a Mac feeling irritated.

(For context: > 20 year exclusively Linux user. While it’s definitely not always been a smooth ride, I seldom feel like I’m fighting against the computer to get it to do what I want, which is distinctly not my experience with Apple products)

Agree with all these points about the Nexdock.

We bought a bunch of them at work to be KVM consoles for computers without network out of band management, and at that they excel.

That said, I don’t think I actually knew it had speakers, wasn’t really part of my use case :)

It also makes me wish that USB-C connectors on GPUs hadn’t been such a short-term deal, the one-cable hookup is definitely a great thing.

I’m curious if this $69 watch turns out to be any good:

https://intl.cmf.tech/pages/watch-pro

https://www.theverge.com/2023/9/26/23891328/nothing-cmf-buds-pro-watch-charger

Claims more than a week of battery life, and while not offering 100% of the features of a Wear OS device, if you’re used to a Pebble it might be a comparable feature set.

Frankly even if (4) was your only goal here, that feels like more than enough reason.

Not sure how it goes where you are, but where I’m from (New Zealand), FTTH is widely available but the exact locations within houses where ONTs get installed often leaves a lot to be desired.

If you don’t want your router in one corner of your house where it only provides WiFi signal to half your rooms, you either have to have an installer who’ll tolerate your request (due to the way they’re paid for installations if you suggest something that takes more time you’ll often meet some resistance), run cables of your own from the ONT to a better location for the router, or go with better access points.

That’s great, unless the store you’re in is a giant concrete bunker.
Mobile data barely works in my neighbourhood supermarket; even text-based communication is frequently dicey, but you want to send someone a photo of something as a “should I buy this”? Fuhgeddaboudit.

Sadly not so much on the CM4, which is what a lot of people are after these days.

Seem to be plenty of special-purpose bring-your-own-Pi carrier boards (like the Home Assistant “Yellow”) that people haven’t been able to get CM4s for in going on a year at this point.

What protocol?

Solid Explorer works fine for me through a VPN with SFTP. I’ve not tried SMB though.

Speed isn’t amazing (was only getting 600kB/s testing just now), but it does work.