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Comment by delichon

18 hours ago

They all forward to one guy in a closet who types really fast, and he has a dentist appointment.

Someone please do the math on how fast this guy would have to type, and how his typing speed would physically affect the surrounding environment

  • > how his typing speed would physically affect the surrounding environment

    Tiny sonic booms (whip cracks) resonating throughout a data center in Virgina.

  • This is a wonderful Minute Physics or What If? idea.

    I’d love to know the required bandwidth of the keyboard, too. PCI-e keyboard? Or would it have to be mainlined right to the NIC?

    • Some napkin math - total Internet bandwidth is estimated to be 3-4 petabits per second. Let's say 1% of that is inference traffic - 35 terabits - then that's ~4.375 trillion characters per second at 8 bits per character. A single keyboard press might require 2 mJ, so you need roughly 8.75 GW (electricity required for ~9 million homes) of continuous mechanical force to keep pace. This would cause the keyboard to heat up 175 million degrees C per second. Disappointingly, this is not enough to create a black hole but I'm sure Randall Munroe could tell you how the guy's pet T-rexes would be vaporized into previously unknown types of plasma and how satisfyingly whimsical that would be.

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  • Surely the keyboard switches would start to fail within minutes.

    • The keyboard springs are sooooo weak. It takes forever for them to recover after a press. Our dude would have to grab the key after each character and pull it back up so it can keep up with him.

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