+1 from Belgium!

They say there are 16 screens inside, each with a 16k resolution. Such a screen would have 16x as many pixels as a 4k screen. The GPUs power those as well.

For the number of GPUs it appears to make sense. 150 GPUs for the equivalent of about 256 4k screens means each GPU handles ±2 4k screens. That doesn’t sound like a lot, but it could make sense.

The power draw of 28 MW still seems ridiculous to me though. They claim about 45 kW for the GPUs, which leaves 27955 kW for everything else. Even if we assume the screens are stupid and use 1 kw per 4k segment, that only accounts for 256 kW, leaving 27699 kW. Where the fuck does all that energy go?! Am I missing something?

They are very busy charging an arm and a leg for crappy software with shit support.

Makes sense, you clearly thought about this! From a world-building perspective I do have a follow-up question: 86.4k seconds is our definition of a second, but it is essentially a convention and there is no reason for it. In a society that throws out the hours and minutes, why did they keep our second? It seems like it would have made sense for them to define the day as 100k of some new (slightly smaller) unit. That could have given them 10 “hours” of 100 “minutes” of 100 “seconds”.

Why split the day into 8?

You definitely have a point with base-12 though. If base-10 wasn’t so ingrained already, base-12 would be a very logical choice. You can even count to 12 easily on one hand, using your thumb to keep track of where you are and counting on the segments of each of your 4 other fingers.

According to this article, an average smartphone uses 2W when in use. That number will largely be dependent on the screen and SOC, which can be turned off or be placed in a lower power state when the phone isn’t actively being used. (The 5W - 20W figure is for charging a phone.)

With 8 of these cells, you’ll have 800μW, or 0.0008W, and you need 2W. You will need to add a few more batteries… About 19,992 more. If 8 of these batteries are about the same size as a regular smartphone battery, you will need the equivalent of 2,500 smartphone batteries to power just one phone.

Too bad they don’t say how much the new batteries weigh! It would have been fun to see…

If we ballpark it and assume something the size of a regular smartphone battery is 50g (1.7 oz), then our stack of 20,000 of these new batteries could be about 125kg (275 lbs).

I won’t be replacing any of my batteries just yet.

That may be true for the exact hardware you used, and the exact tests you have done. For Microsoft the problem would be that they need to actively continue supporting older and older devices. At some point it makes sense to drop active support. If it works, that’s fine, but they won’t continue testing and fixing for unsupported configurations.

Phrased differently: Microsoft announces the end of support for a product. If you want to pay for it, they will make an exception and continue to support it just for you.

I understand people dislike Windows 11, but complaining about life cycle management isn’t going to help that.