Category: Tech

Long ago, working with minicomputer makers DEC and DG, I was very involved with the specifications and preparations for computer rooms. Today’s massive data centers are no different in one significant regard — they need electricity to power the equipment, and they need cooling for the heat the electricity generates in the equipment.

I recently mentioned the Colorado River’s drop in water level that, if it continues, will result in the Hoover Dam being unable to generate hydroelectric power. Which leads me to wonder why greater Phoenix is such a popular location for both data centers and chip fabrication facilities.

https://www.kjzz.org/the-show/2026-07-21/centers-of-attention-how-do-data-centers-work-go-inside-an-arizona-facility

Other regions of the country are trying to promote themselves as good spots for data centers. At the same time that protests against them are becoming louder and more forceful.

Crypto was the big data center thing before AI, and NVIDIA is riding the peaks of both waves. AMD is in the troughs, trying hard to catch up. The data center featured in this report is outside of Austin, Texas.

With AI now cranking out a lot of the code that used to be written by hand, seeing IT infrastructure as a specialty taking the lead in tech hiring is no surprise to me. If I were to rejoin the workforce, I would definitely look for a data center job. It’s always been my thing, installing, configuring, optimizing, and troubleshooting systems.

These new data centers are being built with borrowed money by competing AI software companies. Will they pay off, or will some of them be abandoned before they’re even brought online?

Anyone who is actively seeking an online audience can’t just choose between platforms, they must have a presence on all of them. This is especially true for those who are hoping to “monetize” themselves, which I am not.

“Everybody” is on Substack, leading me to wonder if it’s possible to cross-post from my WordPress installation onto Substack. Alas, no can do, because Substack doesn’t allow it, much as Epic Systems doesn’t like to exchange patient data with other medical records systems. This kludge approach from WordPress parent company Automattic isn’t something I’m going to bother trying.

https://specialprojects.automattic.com/2025/08/27/posting-from-wordpress-to-substack/

1983 was the year when my tech job kicked into high gear, with a lot of traveling while mastering a slew of additional duties. I enjoyed all of it, except for the pay, which was equivalent to $40,000 today.^*

One of those duties was evaluating and approving peripheral devices for use at hospitals. These included “dumb” terminals, printers and modems, about which I became something of an expert.

I didn’t see this installment of The Computer Chronicles in 1983. If I had I would have been very interested, because the discussion was about the changes in printer technology that I knew quite well were taking place. Most notably with laser and inkjet printing. There were also high-speed band printers that were later replaced with dot-matrix models.

Here in the present at home, I have my new Epson ET-2980/2985 multi-function inkjet printer. I’ve figured out how to optimize scanning so the results are as good as they were with the old Canon MP600.

The black ink clogs up the Epson’s printhead after not much idle time. I’m a bit concerned that a single cleaning hasn’t yet done the trick. This scan shows the first check, then after the first cleaning, and the second, deeper cleaning.

^* Average salaries increased at the lowest rates in more than 10 years, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ March 1984 survey of pay for professional, administrative, technical, and clerical occupations in medium and large firms.

https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/1984/10/rpt1full.pdf

This is of extreme interest to me:

On the morning of July 17, a redditor who normally pays Amazon Web Services about five cents a month opened their inbox to a wall of billing alerts and a running tab of $2.5 billion. Their whole setup was a single S3 storage bucket, untouched since 2023 and not even public.

https://boingboing.net/2026/07/19/aws-billing-bug.html

I pay AWS about fifteen cents a month. (At first it was $5/month. To Amazon’s credit, they weren’t kidding when they said costs would be greatly reduced.) Like that redditor person, all I use are S3 storage buckets, but some of mine are public.

AWS has greatly increased its security protocol, which I have completed. The fact that an internal problem at Amazon can cause such a billing mess is disquieting. I don’t need this sort of a hassle.

For a while, I’ve been contemplating cancelling my AWS account that I’ve held since almost the inception of the service. This event has given me the sense of urgency to do that.