How many switch/telegraph operators would it take/coal used to run in modern day - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: Beamin
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 16, 2019, 06:58:11 pm
content: I think we need some job security and bring back old positions. If you took all the cell phone and land line calls how many switch board operators would you need? How many copper pairs and how thick would the cable be? If all emails texts and words on the internet were sent by telegraph operators with Morse code how many would you need? For example to make this thread we would need one operator for about ten or fifteen (had to change this number after I finished the thread!) minutes as of the first post. Doable right? Or if we wanted to downgrade all the worlds servers how many blocks or units or rope core memory would you need? How big would it be? Or if we went with vacuum tubes how many would you need and what would be the current consumption?Another fun thing to think about: not how many we need today but how many in 10, 20, or 50 years? Or how many did we have before we came out with vacuum tubes or transistors? Imagine if the LHC ran on tubes the current consumption or even an iPhone? I heard to make a tube iPhone it would be the size of LA and use more electricity then LA. Or what about relays instead of tubes? Or Babbage's analytical engines/ mechanical adding machines running things?As an aside what is the true energy and computer resources needed to run a modern-day i/smartphone? I heard to use an iPhone with its data, you are not using a watt of electricity from the battery, but rather about as much as a refrigerator once hooked up to all the supporting servers not counting the tx antennas and towers energy. What activity on your iPhone uses the most electricity? If I played with my iPhone all day what's the real world cost in coal burnt or CO2 released? The CO2 generated/coal burned to send a single tweet/ text? I'm one of those people that feels guilty when I waste or create CO2 and tend to think of things in environmental absolute costs. Throw away an aluminum can instead of tossing it in the recycle bin because you couldn't be bothered to spend an extra two seconds to sort? That's a lump of coal the size of your fist and enough CO2 gas to fill the interior of a car (PV=nRT I think helps figure that one out). What formulas would you need to figure this stuff out? How many coal miners died so that you could play candy crush with your iPhone?I think this post has the record for most "?'s" used and would be interesting to see what it would take to answer them all/ how much CO2/Coal I wasted making this post and getting people to click on it. That's coal we will NEVER get back and lives of coal miners that died digging it up. Maybe if we used clean coal instead, you know where they dig it out of the ground then wash all the black off the coal? Technically "he" was right about that; if you could completely clean ALL the black off a piece of coal it would be 0 emissions, or maybe just some sulphur and nitrogen compounds. I wonder what kind of soap they use or how many jobs there are for coal cleaners? They probably have a coal cleaning machine though which is powered by clean coal so zero net emissions. One day we will all drive zero emission electric vehicles plugged into to coal fired power plants, clean, freshly washed 0 emission coal of course. Imagine if we had to dig up our own coal or pedal a bicycle to an electric generator? People would be really fit and waste conscious.

author: soldar
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 16, 2019, 07:05:38 pm
content: Your post makes as much sense to me as the text under your avatar which is to say "not much".

author: Beamin
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 16, 2019, 07:33:23 pm
content: Quote from: soldar on August 16, 2019, 07:05:38 pmThat's kind of how my mind works. Basically I am asking what's the true cost or consequence of seemingly simple things like a smart phone.The avatar is a joke add "lls" to the end. Bonus points if you can identify the picture.

author: soldar
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 16, 2019, 08:37:21 pm
content: I can't see how we could meaningfully calculate energy usage of a smartphone but using older technology. I mean, if you are using older technology you are not using a mobile phone. You can't make a mobile phone with relays and wires.Or maybe I am misunderstanding the question.And I have no idea what the avatar is. It looks like jukeboxes or something similar.

author: Zero999
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 16, 2019, 08:57:47 pm
content: No human operator can transmit videos, pictures et.c. and lots of the text is Unicode.A modern computer simply wouldn't work if it were built from huge thermionic tubes because it would be too big. The signal would take such a long time to get from one part of the processor to the other, that the whole CPU wouldn't be able to stay in sync.The amount of CO2emitted, when doing X on a computer, depends on where the energy comes from to power it and the infrastructure. If it's renewable, then it's a zero. The figure will depend on the location and time of day.

author: Beamin
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 16, 2019, 09:33:31 pm
content: Quote from: soldar on August 16, 2019, 08:37:21 pmhaha jukeboxes never thought of it like that. Its a teller ulam design juke box and a bit smaller, which is scary.The avatar goes fission-> fusion-> Xrays ->fission ->fusion-> fission and all happens in hundreds of nano seconds. Whats intriguing is the first stage, round ball at the top, explodes then crushes the second stage with radiation pressure from xrays- using light to squish metal. This process crushes the fusion "spark plug" before the radiation and pressure even have time to burst the casing. Plastic foam is used to channel the xrays, another hard to believe part of the design, but I'm guessing is chosen because its rich in hydrogen.. In even conventional HE this happens very fast and will burst any material known.

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 17, 2019, 04:57:28 am
content: Quote from: Beamin on August 16, 2019, 06:58:11 pmThat's very application dependent and while I can see the energy use of the cloud being significant where a lot of remote processing is needed, if it's just storing and forwarding data, it will be minimal. Even a Raspberry Pi can serve a video file to several devices at once very easily.If energy efficiency is the goal, at short distances, nothing beats direct P2P. The only devices that need power would be the phones or whatever themselves, no infrastructure needed. With some radio technologies, that "short" distance could be miles. Of course, long distance P2P wireless is exactly what the carriers don't want.The good news is that an increasing percentage of smartphones are purchased by the customer, as opposed to financed through the carrier as was once almost always the case. Thus the manufacturers have incentive to add features that benefit the customers but not the carriers. And we need to embrace the idea of making smartphones bigger but with more useful features to justify increasing the size. (Even that skinny model smaller than 99% of the adult population wants a bigger phone...) That could then mean smartphones being less reliant on the cloud for a lot of things.

author: Beamin
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 17, 2019, 05:46:28 am
content: Quote from: NiHaoMike on August 17, 2019, 04:57:28 amThat lady would have no channel if it wasn't for her bad fake boob job. She should have spent money to fix her face, "busted in the mug" is a phrase the man in me thinks when I see her. The female in me is offended by the boobs to lure you to watch. Excrement.The phones now are ridiculously expensive. I was quite surprised when I called Verizon to get my free/low cost iPhone upgrade every two years, to find it no longer exists. I had to bitch to get a free iPhone 7 which is discontinued for my free phone. No iPhone ten for me unless I want to spend a months rent. No thanks its a phone that I use about 2 apps barely justifying the $50 monthly data plan. Smart phone= $800 phone plus 50 extra a month for two years. That two grand the phone company makes plus the plan! 2000$ for a telephone! I sound like an old person "I remember back when an iPhone costs a nickle and you got change back!"

author: MosherIV
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 17, 2019, 10:01:41 am
content: QuoteHave you people seen this :http://www.ominous-valve.com/vtsc.htmlThe Vacuum Tube Supercomputer Centre(Fyi It is a joke - just for you amusment)

author: Zbig
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 17, 2019, 10:28:27 am
content: Quote from: Beamin on August 17, 2019, 05:46:28 amPersonally, I'm sick and tired of this whole "How much? It's only a phone, dammit!" mantra. You know fully well it is not. Would you feel better if it was called a Tricorder? Then call it that, FFS. Does it really have to be reminded over and over again that these bloody things are powerful computers that just happen to fit in your pocket and have a "-phone" as a part of their name? Computers whose raw computing power could put to shame supercomputers of the yesteryear. Yet you somehow feel entitled to get a latest and greatest one for free because "it is only a phone and you use two apps on it"? Guess what, it's not mandatory to have a smartphone, let alone the latest one. Should I bitch and moan that I got an expensive, powerful laptop but I'm too lazy to do anything other than browsing the web and reading silly forum threads on it? I wouldn't think so.To be clear: I'm not defending Apple's pricing strategy or discussing prices of iPhones versus other, similarly specced Android smartphones. It's just about the "But it's only a phone! I need it to make calls and texts!" nonsense. Get one that only makes calls and texts and be done with it.

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 17, 2019, 01:06:10 pm
content: It's surprising how cheap a decent smartphone can be. In particular from budget brands like Xiaomi. What's really mindblowing are the $10 smartphones, apparently intended to get kids using smartphones at an early age.Quote from: Beamin on August 17, 2019, 05:46:28 amShe has an amazing reach to the "less technical" audience which is what we want for the general public to be aware of advancements in technology. And when even a skinny model isn't exactly happy about the trend to make smartphones crazy thin, that really makes you think about it.That said, easier than getting the phone manufacturers to make a radical change in design would be to make a companion device whose purpose is to handle long range P2P communication, with a BLE link back to the host smartphone.

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 17, 2019, 02:15:45 pm
content: I think there are several points/questions in the OP's post.My understanding and trying to sum it up:- How much of old technology would be required to do the equivalent of what we do we modern technology?- How much energy does any given modern technology actually consume if we take everything needed to produce and run it into account? (This one is much harder to answer than it appears...)Corollary questions:- Is what we do with current technology actually more efficient or less efficient from a global POV compared to older technology for any given task? (Again this one is harder to answer, especially because some modern 'tasks' didn't exist before, but then we can consider how useful those are and if they could not be fulfilled with other means in the past. Not easy...)- How sustainable what we currently do is compared to what we used to do before? (Again not necessarily trivial to answer because we would have to find a common reference...)- How "green" many, if not most attempts at being green really are? Quite often, we are still just displacing waste from one point to another...Most of those questions are actually very hard to answer IMO. An interesting and very tricky one, in particular, would be about efficiency. Are we really doing things more "efficiently" (on a global scale) now than we used to in the past? I have no definite answer, but my impression at the moment is that it's not as obvious as it may seem. (I'm sure many would just answer: "of course we are!")

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 17, 2019, 02:36:15 pm
content: Quote from: SiliconWizard on August 17, 2019, 02:15:45 pmFor example, the criticism of online video for its energy usage is not reasonable considering it uses vastly less energy per viewer compared to driving to the video rental store. (That's not counting the difficulties in maintaining a physical inventory - shipping media uses far more energy than electronically transmitting it, although it might be faster in some cases if there really is a lot to transport.)Likewise, ebooks have an even more favorable energy use compared to driving to the library. A single micro SD card can easily store a rather large library worth of books. And the bandwidth requirements would be tiny.

author: Alex Eisenhut
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 17, 2019, 02:42:11 pm
content: Sounds like you should read this. Your avatar shows the stages of a fusion bomb exploding.

author: soldar
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 17, 2019, 05:54:41 pm
content: Quote from: NiHaoMike on August 17, 2019, 02:36:15 pmYes! I get tired of all this idiocy about how much energy servers use. If I can't watch a movie or use the computer what am I supposed to do? Play with my pizzle all day long?

author: Beamin
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 18, 2019, 12:01:52 pm
content: Quote from: Zbig on August 17, 2019, 10:28:27 amI understand that, back in the day when free phones were invented, and I had the displeasure of working at a place selling phones (there was some serious money to be made when the majority of people didn't own one) people would say "I broke my phone how much is a new one? $200!!! I paid nothing for it?!" Then explain to them that companies like nokia wouldn't be in business long if they gave away free phones.My gripe is this: instead of paying $30 a month for my phone I pay $50 extra just for data and pay for a voice plan on top. That in business is the ultimate upgrade and with all that extra profit they could subsidize the phones a little bit BUT since all the phone companies bought up the competition you only have a few choices, If they all decide to charge $900 you have no choice or you have to go without. Coopetition keeping prices in check no longer works when the choices become too small and now it's shareholder based pricing.

author: Beamin
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 18, 2019, 12:13:11 pm
content: Quote from: Alex Eisenhut on August 17, 2019, 02:42:11 pmYes but I like the jukebox answer. Did you already see the graphic or the explanation? Technically a fusion bomb is actually a fusion boosted fission bomb. People seem to think there are pure fusion bombs that don't create or minimalize fall out.

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 18, 2019, 12:34:02 pm
content: Quote from: Beamin on August 18, 2019, 12:01:52 pmWhy do you need a voice plan if you have data? There are free VoIP services like Google Voice. Also, you can get pretty good value with cheaper phones that are well supported by the XDA community.

author: Beamin
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 18, 2019, 06:57:03 pm
content: Quote from: NiHaoMike on August 18, 2019, 12:34:02 pmBecause my phone is first and foremost a... phone. Its complicated enough as it is I would hate to deal with trying to use a cell phone as voip to save a few dollars also I didn't think you could get a data plan without a regular plan. Sometimes its worth paying a little more to keep things reliable, my phone is pretty important.