Why trying to 'accept' the thermal challenge if you can just buy an HP/Dell/whatever 1U box that already has the engineering effort done for you. Or even better, why buy a box at al, just use cloud.
In the old days, I used to tinker with my machines, improve airflow, better CPU cooler, liquid cooling etc. Now I just want stuff to work, so I buy a laptop.
I think when one works on software long enough, a sort of pressure starts to build up making the person long to work on hardware in any way possible. I've resorted to woodworking, DIY car repairs, and VHDL... all very therapeutic :)
Why not just use cloud? Because it costs way more, and the convenience factor is rarely worth it, especially when you consider that you could just run a hypervisor yourself and get most of the same conveniences within the raw hardware limitations of your cluster.
The 'cloud' is still composed of physical machines which somebody is responsible for. Many of those people (as compared to the general public) read Hacker News.
In the old days, I used to tinker with my machines, improve airflow, better CPU cooler, liquid cooling etc. Now I just want stuff to work, so I buy a laptop.
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