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OpenCiv3: Open-source, cross-platform reimagining of Civilization III

https://openciv3.org/
450•klaussilveira•6h ago•109 comments

The Waymo World Model

https://waymo.com/blog/2026/02/the-waymo-world-model-a-new-frontier-for-autonomous-driving-simula...
791•xnx•12h ago•481 comments

Show HN: Look Ma, No Linux: Shell, App Installer, Vi, Cc on ESP32-S3 / BreezyBox

https://github.com/valdanylchuk/breezydemo
152•isitcontent•6h ago•15 comments

Monty: A minimal, secure Python interpreter written in Rust for use by AI

https://github.com/pydantic/monty
143•dmpetrov•7h ago•63 comments

How we made geo joins 400× faster with H3 indexes

https://floedb.ai/blog/how-we-made-geo-joins-400-faster-with-h3-indexes
19•matheusalmeida•1d ago•0 comments

Dark Alley Mathematics

https://blog.szczepan.org/blog/three-points/
46•quibono•4d ago•4 comments

A century of hair samples proves leaded gas ban worked

https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/02/a-century-of-hair-samples-proves-leaded-gas-ban-worked/
84•jnord•3d ago•8 comments

Show HN: I spent 4 years building a UI design tool with only the features I use

https://vecti.com
257•vecti•8h ago•120 comments

Show HN: If you lose your memory, how to regain access to your computer?

https://eljojo.github.io/rememory/
191•eljojo•9h ago•127 comments

Microsoft open-sources LiteBox, a security-focused library OS

https://github.com/microsoft/litebox
320•aktau•13h ago•155 comments

Sheldon Brown's Bicycle Technical Info

https://www.sheldonbrown.com/
317•ostacke•12h ago•85 comments

Hackers (1995) Animated Experience

https://hackers-1995.vercel.app/
403•todsacerdoti•14h ago•218 comments

An Update on Heroku

https://www.heroku.com/blog/an-update-on-heroku/
328•lstoll•13h ago•236 comments

PC Floppy Copy Protection: Vault Prolok

https://martypc.blogspot.com/2024/09/pc-floppy-copy-protection-vault-prolok.html
19•kmm•4d ago•1 comments

Show HN: R3forth, a ColorForth-inspired language with a tiny VM

https://github.com/phreda4/r3
50•phreda4•6h ago•8 comments

I spent 5 years in DevOps – Solutions engineering gave me what I was missing

https://infisical.com/blog/devops-to-solutions-engineering
110•vmatsiiako•11h ago•34 comments

How to effectively write quality code with AI

https://heidenstedt.org/posts/2026/how-to-effectively-write-quality-code-with-ai/
189•i5heu•9h ago•132 comments

Learning from context is harder than we thought

https://hy.tencent.com/research/100025?langVersion=en
149•limoce•3d ago•79 comments

Make Trust Irrelevant: A Gamer's Take on Agentic AI Safety

https://github.com/Deso-PK/make-trust-irrelevant
7•DesoPK•1h ago•3 comments

Understanding Neural Network, Visually

https://visualrambling.space/neural-network/
240•surprisetalk•3d ago•31 comments

I now assume that all ads on Apple news are scams

https://kirkville.com/i-now-assume-that-all-ads-on-apple-news-are-scams/
985•cdrnsf•16h ago•417 comments

Introducing the Developer Knowledge API and MCP Server

https://developers.googleblog.com/introducing-the-developer-knowledge-api-and-mcp-server/
21•gfortaine•4h ago•2 comments

FORTH? Really!?

https://rescrv.net/w/2026/02/06/associative
43•rescrv•14h ago•17 comments

I'm going to cure my girlfriend's brain tumor

https://andrewjrod.substack.com/p/im-going-to-cure-my-girlfriends-brain
58•ray__•3h ago•14 comments

Evaluating and mitigating the growing risk of LLM-discovered 0-days

https://red.anthropic.com/2026/zero-days/
36•lebovic•1d ago•11 comments

Female Asian Elephant Calf Born at the Smithsonian National Zoo

https://www.si.edu/newsdesk/releases/female-asian-elephant-calf-born-smithsonians-national-zoo-an...
5•gmays•1h ago•0 comments

Show HN: Smooth CLI – Token-efficient browser for AI agents

https://docs.smooth.sh/cli/overview
77•antves•1d ago•57 comments

Show HN: Slack CLI for Agents

https://github.com/stablyai/agent-slack
40•nwparker•1d ago•10 comments

The Oklahoma Architect Who Turned Kitsch into Art

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2026-01-31/oklahoma-architect-bruce-goff-s-wild-home-desi...
20•MarlonPro•3d ago•4 comments

How virtual textures work

https://www.shlom.dev/articles/how-virtual-textures-really-work/
28•betamark•13h ago•23 comments
Open in hackernews

Data Centers, Temperature, and Power

https://www.backblaze.com/blog/data-centers-temperature-and-power/
60•quectophoton•7mo ago

Comments

leConbineatort•7mo ago
Cannot browse website from france !!!??
remram•7mo ago
Works for me (from France)
jeffbee•7mo ago
Seems to be a mental mishmash. For one thing, they are taking it as given that temperature is relevant to device lifetime, but Google's FAST 2007 paper said "higher temperatures are not associated with higher failure rates".

Second weird thing is that it says cooling accounts for 40% of data center power usage, but this comes right after discussing PUE without contextualizing PUE with concrete numbers. State-of-the-art PUE is below 1.1. The article then links to a pretty flimsy source that actually says server loads are 40% ... this implies a PUE of 2.5. That could be true for global IT loads including small commercial server rooms, but it hardly seems relevant when discussing new builds of large facilities.

Finally, it's irritating when these articles are grounded in equivalents of American homes. The fact is that a home just doesn't use a lot of energy, so it's a silly unit of measure. These figures should be based on something that actually uses energy, like cars or aircraft or something.

dijit•7mo ago
> Seems to be a mental mishmash. For one thing, they are taking it as given that temperature is relevant to device lifetime, but Google's FAST 2007 paper said "higher temperatures are not associated with higher failure rates".

Google have been wrong a couple of times, and this is one area where I think what they've said (18 years ago btw) might have had some time to meet the rubber of reality a bit more.

Google also famously chose to disavow ECC as mandatory[0] but then quietly changed course[1].

In fact, even within the field of memory: higher temperatures cause more errors[2], and voltage leaking is more common at higher temperatures within dense lithographic electronics (memory controllers, CPUs)[3].

Regardless: thermal expansion and contraction will cause degradation of basically any material that I can think of, so if you can utilise the machines 100% consistently and maintain a solid temperature then maybe the hardware doesn't age as aggressively as our desktop PCs that play games- assuming there's no voltage leaking going on to crash things.

[0]: https://www.cs.toronto.edu/~bianca/papers/sigmetrics09.pdf

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14206811

[2]: https://dramsec.ethz.ch/papers/mathur-dramsec22.pdf

[3]: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/271300947_Analysis_...

jeffbee•7mo ago
I am not taking Google's result at face value, but the article shouldn't make assumptions without supporting evidence, either. ASHRAE used to say your datacenter should be 20º-25º which you know makes a certain amount of sense when it comes from an organization earning its money from installing and repairing CRACs. Now they admit that 18º-27º is common and they allow for up to 45º ambient designs. They are following the industry up.
adrian_b•7mo ago
"Higher temperatures" must be qualified in any statement like this.

There is absolutely no doubt that with increasing temperature the rate of failures for any semiconductor device increases very quickly. This is routinely tested by any manufacturer.

What happens is that at low enough temperatures the rate of failures caused by temperature may be small in comparison with that for failures caused by other reasons so you will see no temperature effect. However, once you raise the temperature enough, you will see an obvious dependence of temperature for the rate of failures.

Semiconductor devices are designed so that their rate of failures for a crystal temperature specified in their datasheet, usually in the range of 90 to 110 degrees Celsius, is low enough so that most devices will have a life of at least 10 years or other such value.

Which is the ambient temperature at which the nominal maximum temperature is reached depends on the cooling and on the power consumption.

If the device has a temperature that exceeds the nominal maximum temperature, it is pretty certain that you will see a strong dependence on temperature of the failure rate.

Whether you also see temperature effects at lower crystal temperatures, e.g. around 60 degrees Celsius, depends on the device and it is unpredictable unless you do a costly experiment yourself.

In general, it is expected that for low-quality devices you will not see temperature effects, because those will fail for other reasons, while for high-quality devices, which lack manufacturing defects, you will see a temperature dependence for the failure rate even at lower temperatures.

So Google might have not seen temperature effects because they were using the cheapest junk anyway.

PeterStuer•7mo ago
In the Google study all drives were kept relatively cool. None was operating >50C. Even so, failiure rates started to creep up >45C. In a completely uncooled situation, I can imagine temps rising to >50C. What would failiure rates be at 60C or 70C?
Python3267•7mo ago
This article was written for non-technical folks unfortunately. I read the phrase below and nearly puked from the corpo speech.

> So, the methodology around temperature mitigation always starts at power reduction—which means that growth, IT efficiencies, right-sizing for your capacity...

metadat•7mo ago
The person who wrote the HDD failure rate quarterly reports recently retired. Sorry for the bad news, but what other reports or blog posts published by backblaze have you enjoyed reading? For me, the answer is.. none. I hope to be declared wrong and that the legacy of quality HDD reporting will live on.
jakedata•7mo ago
I have had high hopes for passive daytime radiative cooling since I read about it 10 years ago. Converting waste heat to an infrared wavelength that flies off into space day or night is apparently not that easy or cost effective right now.

https://www.asme.org/topics-resources/content/new-solar-ener...

https://www.skycoolsystems.com/

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41377-023-01119-0

quickthrowman•7mo ago
This is unlikely to work in a data center with thousands or tens of thousands of servers emitting heat. Possibly this sort of system will some day function for buildings where only humans are emitting heat.
louwrentius•7mo ago
So Backblaze is going to invest in nuclear power?

What is the purpose of this article exactly?

quectophoton•7mo ago
(2024)

I forgot to put it in the title and I can't edit anymore.

moebrowne•7mo ago
> one megawatt is enough energy to power about 200 American homes

Disappointed that the article continually confuses power and energy.