Ask HN: What do you use excess computer and storage for?

2 points by samsquire 3y ago ↗ HN

I am always on the look out for new hobbyist or power usages of computers. I know some people are interested in financial models and run their own smart trading algorithms.

I am interested in database design and internals so I write reference implementations of data structures and I have a toy SQL and Cypher database which I plan to change to be multi model.

I find the idea of processing trillions of records efficiently interesting.

I want to see how fast multiplying a trillion numbers by another trillion numbers is and maybe use the GPU to do so.

At one point I used OpenGrok to store sourcecode of large projects to try understand how they worked but I didn't do enough studying.

Storing sourcecode is one use of storage capacity for building in parallel with distcc.

I don't store music I use Spotify and I don't store video since I use Amazon Video.

The question becomes, what's a power usage of computers when you have all the processing power and storage space you need but nothing to process or store.

I tried to understand Gentoo but I didn't enjoy any of the instructions.

I can only read so much code a day.

I've looked at Kaggle and I didn't find any interesting data sets.

I am designing a Postgres synchronization solution for sharded postgres which I find interesting.

The truly interesting data is kept secret. This means I cannot store it or process it for insights. So what do I do instead?

4 comments

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32gbsd 3y ago ↗

At some point you realise that its niether storage or processing. Making things faster or having more stuff doesnt solve the core problem of physics. Alot of modern solutions are just old stuff with new names. We really need new stuff and not remixed reimplementations.

samsquire 3y ago ↗

Yes! It seems computers are inherently limited in what they can do, as calculating machines.

They calculate. But don't solve societal or social problems or do work in the traditional sense of work

I am always trying to think of new uses of computers.

One idea could involve attaching new input or output devices so that you can gather new kinds of data to analyse, process and outout. the mouse keyboard screen combo might be holding you back. Another idea could be simulation, making new data from old data using a process.

I am interested in the semantic web and automated reasoning and inferences.

I think natural language processing is fascinating and GPT is impressive.

I want an innovation that can give everybody an income. If you could earn money by using your phone or using a computer directly by solving puzzles that map to complicated problems