• 0 Posts
  • 16 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
Cake day: September 28th, 2023
  • mark3748@sh.itjust.workstoTechnology@lemmy.world•The First Nuclear Clock Will Test if Fundamental Constants ChangeEnglish
    11·
    6 days ago

    The Idaho researchers observed that reversing the intrinsic angular momentum, or “spin,” of thorium-229’s outermost neutron seemed to take 10,000 times less energy than a typical nuclear excitation. The neutron’s altered spin slightly changes both the electromagnetic and strong forces, but those changes happen to cancel each other out almost exactly. Consequently, the excited nuclear state barely differs from the ground state. Lots of nuclei have similar spin transitions, but only in thorium-229 is this cancellation so nearly perfect.

    Basically, thorium-229 can be excited by conventional lasers instead of gamma rays. Instead of millions of electron volts, it takes less than 10, which means it’s more reliable and more precise.

  • mark3748@sh.itjust.workstoSelfhosted@lemmy.world•Power outage worriesEnglish
    3·
    9 days ago

    You’re saying that data centers are replacing batteries constantly…just imagine the labor costs on that (and the down time), not even considering the material cost.

    I’m the tech doing the battery replacements. The big boy UPSes are typically a 3-5 year replacement cycle. Something like this:

    (I just picked the last one on my phone so not a great picture, they’re about the size of a small refrigerator)

    On rack mount and desktop style UPSes 18-36 months isn’t unreasonable. Some of the smaller UPSes, like APC 750s, go through batteries even faster. My personal theory is that they just get and stay too hot.

    There is typically zero downtime while servicing any of them, every critical system has redundant power supply and battery replacements usually don’t interrupt power output anyway. It would take multiple failures to cause any sort of significant downtime, and if it would, we just do them during scheduled downtime.

  • mark3748@sh.itjust.workstoLinux Gaming@lemmy.world•Suggestions for Linux DistributionEnglish
    4·
    4 months ago

    I need some advice on what to throw on this laptop - and some suggestions on how to squeeze the best performance out of this (Optimus vs. Proprietary NVIDIA vs. Open source drivers).

    Optimus isn’t a driver, but a way for the laptop to use both the integrated graphics and the discreet card. It doesn’t work well with Linux so you’ll want to disable it in EFI. This will increase heat and energy use.

    If you do end up wanting to use Optimus, the Arch wiki has a lot of good information. You should use the proprietary driver in nearly all cases.

    As far as distros, take a look at Bazzite, it’s a gaming-focused distro and similar to the steam deck’s OS.

  • mark3748@sh.itjust.workstoLinux@lemmy.ml•RAID setup for Ubuntu media server
    1·
    6 months ago

    They’ll have to get a new SAS controller unless the RAID controller has an HBA mode. Running ZFS under a RAID controller is the best way to lose all of your data.

    ZFS is wonderful but it takes quite a bit of planning and specialized knowledge to implement properly. Your fear of a failed RAID controller is a bit much, too. I’ve had to deal with a single controller failure in 30 years of IT (and I’ve done warranty work for all of the major OEMs in corporate IT for most of those 30 years)