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In this video Linus mentions the fan goes up to "70+ decibels". I'm not a physicist by any means, but shouldn't decibel measurements come with a measurement distance? Decibel is simply a measurement of pressure difference. Since the pressure goes down the farther you're away from a sound source you can't really deduce any useful information from a number like 70 dB. After some google foo I found this page: http://www.noisehelp.com/decibel-scale.html where under the section "Measuring Sound Levels" it's mentioned that "For a reported sound level value to be most useful, it is necessary to specify the conditions under which the reading was taken, especially the distance from the source." leading me to believe my suspicions are correct. Any thoughts?

After doing much research on custom builds, components, cost, and new hardware releases I have an interesting idea that I would like feedback on. The idea is to purchase components over time with a specific budget each month set to eventually arrive at all the components one would need to complete a system. "ES Prof, why would anyone in their right mind purchase components for a PC over time? We want everything at once!" - Resisting the temptation of instantaneous gratification, it makes fiscal and practical sense to purchase components over time to increase the longevity of the system. This is an interesting thought experiment that I may wish to pursue and let me break down some basics below: 1. Budget & Location Budget is $200 to $500 per month but can be flexible each month. The duration for the build lets say is 6 months. This computer would be finished by Christmas day 2017. Location is United States of Asus America. 2. Aim The system will be used for productivity (data analysis, Adobe CC), gaming, and entertainment. Goal is to have a durable and reliable system for a 3 to 5 years. 3. Monitors Dual 1080p or a 1440 wide screen. Monitors I care less about. 4. Peripherals If it works, I could care less about the aesthetics. Wired keyboard and mouse. 5. Why are you upgrading? (a) To introduce this thought experiment to the community. (b) To build a PC using this "latter" purchasing method. (c) To introduce an idea I have not seen on the internet yet (not sure if the absence of this idea is telling that it is a bad idea). Some questions for this thought experiment: In what order (purchases per month) should each component be purchased? Keeping in mind product/hardware costs, refresh cycles and the duration of product families (intel chipsets are about ~2 years). What components would you consider that are currently within the 3-year "future proof" zone? Would you assemble it once all of the main components are purchased (at the end) or simply build as you purchase components each month (build as you go)? Would it be ultimately cheaper than buying everything at once? Thanks and look forward to reading everyone's feedback! -ExSciProfessor

Have you ever wanted to participate in a twitch plays things? Have you ever wanted to help science? Why not do both at once with twitch plays robotics? On a serious note a friend of mine's lab is studying how the internet can be used to teach robots so get on there if you have some extra time and have some fun. Here is the link: https://tpr-uvm.github.io/consent.html

Hi, I'm a physics student, and i need a recommendation for the most appropiate version of Linux that will help me in my research, any suggestions?

Just saw this gem. https://phys.org/news/2019-08-approach-hvac-exchangers-efficient.html Would this benefit regular water cooling or will Linus have to break out his AC unit for another vid. More importantly for our wallets and the environment how much will this effect home and auto systems? Servers and folding rigs? Someone get me a Professor Farnsworth gif and some exited cat memes. Science!

Article: https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2017-01-31/scientists-cook-up-super-strong-graphene-out-of-soybean-oil/8223686 Experiment: https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms14217 Assuming the finished product looks the same, i would love to see what would happen if they applied the graphene film directly onto a delidded CPU and then allowed for the heat transfer to go directly onto the heatsink. Better yet, use that WC IHS they reviewed a little while back and see if they can get even lower temps at 5GHz on the same CPU they tested originally. Edit: They reviewed a product!

So I found this Tesla K40 on newegg for like $100. Are they useful for anything? Could you use them as a folding card? Its so cheap I just want it ?? https://www.newegg.com/hp-model-f1r08a/p/1DW-000D-00025?Item=9SIA5HA8JJ0069

I watch Isaac Arthur every Thursday and he covers many sci-fi ideas and technologies, but he is very broad. John Michael Godier is also good but he has a very infrequent posting schedule for videos. What.If on Facebook postulates a hypothetical scenario every 2 days or so but a lot of is never technology. The Science to Technology channel has an episode every Friday called Future Friday, but most of the stuff he covers is emerging technology. I'm looking for something that postulates unique sci-fi technology/inventions/ideas every few days or every week. Does anybody know of a blog/site/channel that does that. Extremely amateur sites are VERY welcome e.g. BlogSpot. It just has to be consistent and ongoing.

Hi Guys, I work as a scientist in infectious diseases and with my work I do a lot of data science, genomics (the study of 'BIG' digital genetic datasets) and countless other analyses and techniques in silico. I consider myself a power user, I use Linux systems primarily and have a keen understanding of Bash shell, scripting in various languages etc - however my primary expertise is not in the creation of informatic tools, but using them to complement my work in the lab. I often use janky programs written by people with varying skill levels, to get jobs done during my analyses. So I find myself compiling stuff, delving in to deep dependency holes in attempts to get stuff to work. The problem with this is that my machine (i7-7700, 64GB, 256 NVMe, 1TB HDD) running Ubuntu has started to get bogged down over the years - entirely by my own fault, I'm sure. But I've seen this as an opportunity now, to go full virtual on my next overhaul/cleanboot. I'd like to basically have my host workstation running Linux VM(s) with the highest performance possible, with a virtual image that I can offload at the end of the day, on to removable storage so I can work on it at home or on my laptop. We have HPC facilities, so I'm not worried about losing raw compute performance on the wrokstation VMs, I just want the cleanest/quickest VM user experience possible - with the 'portable aspect' incorporated. That way, when. a machine gets slow, I can burn it. Or if I know I'm going on a program installing rampage, I can do so on a burner VM until I find the right recipe. I use the 1TB HDD as a shared drive for the VMs to store all large datasets on, so I don't duplicate - and when I need to take data away, I can pick and choose the files I need to offload at the end of the day. I store the VMs on the host NVMe drive. So....I've noticed moving VHDs around is super slow for some reason, definitely not USB 3 speeds. Am I doing something wrong? Secondly, what can I do in terms of removable storage? A caddy for an M.2 drive to decant the VM on to when I want to go mobile, or will there be bottlenecks? And I think finally, are there any better solutions to what I'm trying to achieve? I use SSH a lot, but sometimes you just want your desktop environment, and all your toys, so I'd like a GUI, and TeamViewer is okay, but inherently slow, so I'm over that. I think I've effectively described my situation here, as well as providing my life story, so I welcome any help anybody has to offer. I'm really in to my hardware and going the extra mile to get added/cool functionality so hit me with your best! Thanks! Dan

Source: Phys.org Released Paper Summary: Researchers at Boston University have developed a sound barrier that doesn't restrict airflow, potential usage include jet engines and other airflow dependent devices. Media: Quotes/Excerpts: My Thoughts: This is definitely interesting to see. I can imagine several usages from the ones listed such as HVAC and drones, to tech uses like Naturally noise cancelling headphones. Granted they don't list the limitations of the designs within the news articles, however even if limited in size or shape, there'll still be tons of use for such non-electrical noise cancellation.

We tour LIGO Hanford's gravitational waves observatory! Buy Gravitational Waves Books On Amazon: http://geni.us/XnkM On Newegg: http://geni.us/vzZag

Honda in association with California institute of technology and JPL have created a room temperature flouride ion battery . They say this battery will be more stable than lithium ion batteries with less risk of overheating. https://www.auto123.com/en/news/amp/honda-ev-battery-fluoride-ion/65391/ This seems pretty cool. Imagine a Tesla with same weight and a 2000km range.

For the past few years I've been struggling with depression. Part of my treatment has been neurotherapy. It's really fascinating technology. The basics are that your therapist places electrodes (I think that's what they're called) on your head that are connected to a computer. Then the software uses the location of the electrodes, plus visual and audio elements from a tv, to help your brain build healthier pathways. You can watch movies, or even play some games, while the software does it's work. Oh, and I haven't experienced it, but they're working on a VR version as well. For me, it's been very effective. I'm on medication as well, but when I've missed a neurotherapy session for longer than normal, I definitely feel it. There's been times where I'm at a 5, on a 1 to 10 scale, at the start of a session, and by the end I'm up to a 7 or 8. (Haven't reached 10 in years... Depression sucks.) The place I go for both neurotherapy and Counseling is CAFA. (Christian As Family Advocates) http://www.cafaweb.com/ Their offices are in Eugene, Oregon. They provide a lot of family and mental health services. Don't let the "Christian" part scare you. Both my therapist, and I, are committed Christians. Yet he still only brings as much of our faith into our sessions as I want. If you are not a Christian, they are not going to push any religion on you. If you live near Eugene, and are struggling with depression, I highly recommend calling and getting on a waiting list, or just seeing if you can see someone quickly for neurotherapy. (Yes, they are that busy.) The system CAFA uses is Cygnet. http://www.beemedic.com/cygnet.html Ok, so here's the video idea. I think this does fit LTT's interest in the intersection between daily computer stuff and the deeper science stuff. Like the recent video on the gravitational waves observatory. Plus, there are games. Seriously. "Play games to fix your brain!" sounds like a good LTT video title. :) If I were to plan the video, I'd do a section on the theory and science behind the technology. Then a section on how it's used in the real world. Ideally at CAFA, rather than a place with the money to have all the bells and whistles. That would give people a good idea on what it really looks like in the real world. Finally, and this is what made me think the idea through... It would be a fun to see LTT work with their sponsors to get CAFA some hardware upgrades. There are times I can hear the laptop's fan roaring at max, even over the sound of the tv... So some more powerful pc's might help. Also, they are using the TV speakers. A sound bar, or something, would be pretty cool. Finally, I don't think CAFA is going be able to get on the new VR features any time soon. So outfitting them with some VR sets compatible with their software and systems would be amazing. Of course, I really have no idea what all they actually need. So you'd want to double check what you get them will be useful. Anyway, there's my idea. :D Oh, and if anyone in the Eugene, OR area wants to talk or hang out, email me at me@davidreagan.net. Especially if you're like me and depression and other issues make it hard to get out and find friends.... *coughs*

Budget (including currency): Around 5,000 USD Country: Mexico Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Bioinformatics software, R Bioconductor, Illumina RNA-Seq, STAR Aligner, samtools, etc. Other details (existing parts lists, whether any peripherals are needed, what you're upgrading from, when you're going to buy, what resolution and refresh rate you want to play at, etc): Im helping my brother who just finished his Phd on bioinformatics and will most probably be working as freelance when his university grant ends next this year. I want to help him build a good PC so he can do work. lucky he has some freelance jobs lined up so I believe it would be a good investment to get something good. I have in mind a Threadripper 3970X altrought I would probably wait to see what comes out on the Zen 3 presentation. I have a doubt regarding RAM I know that he needs quite a bit of RAM but I was wondering regarding the usage of getting ECC UDIMMs instead of regular RAM. His currently lab computer form the university is a Mac Pro circa 2012 with dual 6-cores Xeons, so I guess the Threadripper would wipe the floor with this. Any thougts or suggestions, I have never build a Threadripper nor used ECC Ram Thanks

Hello! I am starting college this upcoming year and I will be majoring in computer science, (probably switching to cybersecurity, but I will stay within the CS realm) and I need a laptop for school. I currently have a very powerful and nice desktop I built 4 years ago. 980 TI build, but I am not taking that to my university. I made the decision, the one I never thought I would make, to purchase a laptop. Haha. I want something reliable, fast, and durable. I will be carrying this with me a lot and it will be bumped around in backpacks a lot. I have no idea what to look for in a laptop. Please help, thanks!

Found on: https://www.giga.de/extra/forschung-und-wissenschaft/news/schlimmste-befuerchtung-wird-wahr-das-handy-zerstoert-unsere-augen-und-mehr/ (arcticle in German) Original Source: https://www.sehen.de/presse/pressemitteilungen/seh-gesundheit-und-technik/digitales-sehen-fortschritt-mit-risiken-und-chancen/(press release in German) A german study released this month shows that looking at digital devices like smartphones, tablets and monitors is really bad for your eyes. A growing screen time was measured for people of all ages. Experts say this leads to increasing numbers of people with related issues like myopia, strabismus, eye stress symptoms and even other (neck, shoulders etc.) and psychological issues. Even though some counter measures are know, they are not implemented or used in most cases? What do you do to prevent health issues related to the digital lifestyle? Or do you think we will have to live with it?

Sources: KIT Phys.org Nanowerk TL;DR Previously only achievable under near absolute zero and in only liquid, new material usage allows normal temperatures and solid materials to be used paving the way for major changes in the future and the limit of minimization. Quotes/Excerpts: My Thoughts: Well... we did it. Computer chips will reach as small as they can go unless some sub-atomic transistor is created. Let's just hope Intel can finally get past 14nm. Maybe after 14nm# or 14nm++++.

Researchers at Rutgers University have created techniques using WiFi broadcast and receivers to image the interiors of baggage and backpacks. Pretty interesting. I wonder if the folks at LMG would want to try to build their own WiFi imager. https://m.techxplore.com/news/2018-08-common-wifi-weapons-chemicals-bags.html

The moment we've all been waiting for. A scientific study on memes has been uploaded to arXiv, investingating meme topics/contenst, the most popular memes and how they propagate through the web. On the Origins of Memes by Means of Fringe Web Communities arXiv PDF I figured this would be fun to share, but not really worthy of any official section

So I was looking through the specs sheet for the galaxy S8+ and saw that the port on it is actually Thunderbolt 3 compliant. Has anyone tried hooking up an external GPU to one to see what would happen? I realize that the CPU/APU will be a MASSIVE bottle neck but there are some emulators out there that let you force hardware rendering so would this help with that? Am I just some crazy guy who saw something on a spec sheet and is taking it to the extreme?

Hi everyone, I got a problem that i believe most of you guys never saw before. I need to choose a cpu/motherboard for a computer that will be operating in space-like environment for a short (10hours) mission. I already got a computer in my lab but its cpu (i7-7700K) is quite a bit too high on the heat dissipation side. I would need a much lower tdp so that conduction cooling would be enough, as you may remember space means no air so i will send the heat of the cpu into the structure of the aircraft. I said this for you guys to understand that tdp is critical in my application. 1: Is it possible to use a i7-7700T instead of the i7-7700K that i got? My motherboard says that it is supported (asus p10s ws) but the it employee in here said that those cpu are meant for mobile devices and that we cant use them in a consumer/workstation grade motherboard, witch i find really confusing. 2: I saw that really recently the i7-8700T came out with the same tdp but a higher performance, lets say i get this board (ASUS Prime H370M-Plus/CSM) would i be able to use this one cpu? 3: For any of those two cpu, does using Ubuntu16 would give me some fatal compatibility issues? During the mission the computer will be in non-graphical mode but having it available for debug would be nice. If you guys can add some explanations/sources to your answers it would be perfect.

I do not know what to do for my science project, but I want it to be tech related. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Hi, I would like to ask if anyone had tested Ryzen in scientific programs specifically in Numerical Weather Prediction applications such as Weather Research and Forecasting Model (WRF). Is there any bench available? http://www2.mmm.ucar.edu/wrf/users/download/get_source.html

Hey all, so I've just started a PhD in theoretical physics and was planning on building a computer for number crunching. I'm not sure what type of processor to get, or how important fast ram is. I'm wondering if having more cores will help do many different calculations at the same time, or if having fewer cores but faster ones is better. I also understand that more ram is better in this case, but I was unsure as to the importance of it's speed. Lastly, because I wont be gaming on this the graphics card doesn't need to be great but I love having multiple screens. If anyone has any experience it would be appreciated. If you want more specifics I'm going to be doing a lot of numerical integration, solving high order polynomials, diagonalizing massive matrices, and probably using mathematica too.

So I have been mulling over in my brain how to build a self contained freeze dryer, with computer controls that monitor moisture, temperature, and pressure levels. From what I can gather. freeze drying is all about sublimation. Basically, I have to get the item around -25 C, drop the pressure, and then slowly begin warming the environment, and the ice should sublimate into vapor, leaving the item's structure intact. My goals: Self contained - I don't want to have to babysit the unit, adding any chemicals to the system to keep things running. Most of the cheap homemade one's use dry-ice/alcohol to achieve the ultra low temps needed. Computer controlled - during the process, some variables will need to change for optimal drying Homemade - I can buy a pre-fab unit to do this already, although it costs about $3,500 Cost: I'd like to see all this built for less than $500, but I don't see how this is possible. Hence why I'm even here. A few challenges: Freezers capable of -25 C are very expensive. The only other way I've seen this done is using ethanol alcohol in junction with a water cooler Excess moisture has to go somewhere. I see only two ways out of this: 1) Find a vacuum pump that can pump out moisture. 2) Create an ice trap chamber that drops to -70 C and traps the ice. So either another even more expensive freezer or a specialty pump. Finding sensors that the Pi can use. As it stands, I see know way of getting this done without the cost going into the stratosphere. However, if it could be done, oh man... the mountains of freeze dried ice cream we could make. So, ideas?