PXL News
Everything the anchors say on this tape, story by story.
GRANT BRICKMAN: While you were asleep: Aldi Süd lined up four Lego-compatible Christmas sets from its own Toylino brand, on sale from 12 November.
GRETA FOOTNOTE: Jules Verne imagined Paris in 1960; his publisher called it implausible and too bleak, and it sat unpublished for 131 years.
GRANT BRICKMAN: And heise rounded up developer news, from dotnetup to Node, plus a Rust conference on 26 November.
GRANT BRICKMAN: Nvidia now sells more networking than Cisco's whole business made in the same quarter. Vera has the board.
GRANT BRICKMAN: Now the full story: Nvidia, the graphics people, are now in networking. Vera, is it like the old station switchboard, only with more plugs? ▶
DR. VERA VECTOR: In Q2, Nvidia's networking revenue topped 17.5 billion dollars. The report says that is bigger datacenter Ethernet sales than any other vendor. ▶
DR. VERA VECTOR: For scale: Cisco's revenue in that same period, across all products, was 17.3 billion. Networking alone topped the whole of Cisco. ▶
GRETA FOOTNOTE: So how did the graphics card company end up here? ▶
DR. VERA VECTOR: In 2019 it paid 6.9 billion dollars for Mellanox, known for ConnectX NICs and InfiniBand switches, not for Ethernet switching. ▶
DR. VERA VECTOR: The report says datacenter customers wanted clusters, not GPUs or even servers. Clusters need interconnect, so Nvidia became a system builder. ▶
GRANT BRICKMAN: So the cables are the story. Greta, I always assumed the cables were the part behind the desk. ▶
DR. VERA VECTOR: The catch: outside supercomputing and one big Microsoft deployment, InfiniBand was not widely deployed in hyperscale datacenters. ▶
DR. VERA VECTOR: Huang talks about co-design: parts and software built for specific jobs, not to be the best single GPU, switch or NIC. Open question: does that last? ▶
GRETA FOOTNOTE: Short version: a 6.9 billion dollar bet in 2019, and now the graphics company is also a networking company. ▶
GRETA FOOTNOTE: A see-through fridge that cools with fire. Nova is at the lab to explain.
GRANT BRICKMAN: Now the full story: a refrigerator that cools with a flame. Greta, is that a warranty issue? ▶
GRETA FOOTNOTE: It's an absorption refrigerator, Grant. Ben Krasnow built a see-through, 3D printed one so people can watch how it works. ▶
NOVA: Greta, thrilling! Absorption fridges sit in camper vans and industrial plants. They run on waste heat alone and have no moving parts. ▶
NOVA: Most use ammonia and water, but the ammonia needs pressure that glass or plastic can't hold. This design adds a third liquid as refrigerant. ▶
NOVA: In footage of the see-through build, the boiler boils the ammonia out of solution, and the gas makes the refrigerant evaporate by lowering its partial pressure. ▶
NOVA: Then the gases mix with water, the ammonia dissolves, the refrigerant vapor condenses and the cycle restarts. A loop driven by heat. Cosmic, really. ▶
NOVA: Usually the refrigerant is butane. With an open flame in the build, they chose something else. The report cuts off before naming it. I'm devastated. ▶
GRETA FOOTNOTE: They may not deliver the highest efficiency, but that was never the point here. The point is you can see it work. ▶
GRANT BRICKMAN: Cooling with fire. Like the 1987 weather map: nobody understood it either, and it worked fine. ▶
GRANT BRICKMAN: What is live on Twitch this morning: GTA, Overwatch and a Halloween trip to Japan.
GRANT BRICKMAN: Good morning. It's The Feed, what's trending on Twitch right now. Vera has the board, Gary has opinions. ▶
DR. VERA VECTOR: Number one: xQc, Grand Theft Auto V, 26,706 viewers. Live for 13 hours, with 12,645,671 followers. ▶
DR. VERA VECTOR: Two: OW_ESPORTS_JP, Overwatch, 14,635 viewers, running OWCS Korea Stage 3. Three: jasontheween, Just Chatting, 14,474 viewers, Halloween in Japan. ▶
GARY: Thirteen hours live is a survival run, no torches. Overwatch is a clean tournament level, and Halloween in Japan is a sushi side quest. Sorry, Popcorn. ▶
GRETA FOOTNOTE: Gary, I'll note the title for number one is mostly capital letters and no spaces. ▶
GRANT BRICKMAN: Thank you, Gary. Still no word on whether any of it is in the cloud. ▶
GRETA FOOTNOTE: Good morning. A quick note on tech hygiene: when did you last restart your router, or look in your downloads folder?
GRETA FOOTNOTE: Wickerwell sorts your files into little baskets, so the document called final_final can finally retire.
GRETA FOOTNOTE: Update on a Saturday, tidy your folders, and nobody has to hunt for the file called final. Now you know.
STORMY BYTES: Good morning. Hype is building over the datacenters, with a strong networking front moving in.
STORMY BYTES: A warm, steady pressure system sits over the Twitch coast. Expect Halloween showers in Japan.
STORMY BYTES: The outlook: fire-cooled fridges, mild interest, and a chance of a flame.
AI-written satire. The text of the news items comes from the linked articles. Plain text