Category Archives: Technology

Human race 2015 Kardashev score

Posted on July 31, 2016 by Lee Pavelich

Armed with 2015 data (found on page 40 here, for “Total World”), we can calculate the latest Kardashev score for human civilization. Further, the new data slightly revises previous years estimates, and so I’ll calculate the values for the past … Continue reading →

Posted in Energy, Science (general), Technology | 1 Comment

2016 computer wishlist

Posted on December 12, 2015 by Lee Pavelich

My current desktop dates to Jan/Feb 2011, and is starting to get pretty creaky (in fact, the motherboard was recalled a few months after I bought it but I didn’t bother with that). That was around the time that SSDs … Continue reading →

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Top500 Nov 2015 list

Posted on November 30, 2015 by Lee Pavelich

The Top500 list of supercomputer performance is clearly on a new, slower trajectory, continuing from previous lists. This is exemplified by the Tianhe-2 holding the top spot for 3 years running, though as can be seen in the below “Performance … Continue reading →

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Human race 2014 Kardashev score

Posted on September 9, 2015 by Lee Pavelich

In 2012 I calculated the human race’s Kardashev score to be 0.7248 and in 2013 I found 0.7257. BP has now released its report on 2014 data, which can be found here (specifically page 40, “Total World”), which lists total … Continue reading →

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Top500 July 2015 list

Posted on July 29, 2015 by Lee Pavelich

The trend continues for slowing supercomputer performance. From Top500: “Total combined performance of all 500 systems has grown to 363 Pflop/s, compared to 309 Pflop/s last November and 274 Pflop/s one year ago. This increase in installed performance also exhibits … Continue reading →

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Wireless headphones and smartwatches (some thoughts)

Posted on February 25, 2015 by Lee Pavelich

I listen to a lot of podcasts and have been getting more and more into audiobooks. I initially just started out with earbuds, but for a bus or a train it’s really nice to have noise-canceling or else you need … Continue reading →

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SpaceX’s launch rate is picking up

Posted on February 14, 2015 by Lee Pavelich

On March 26, 2006, the first launch of SpaceX’s Falcon 1 rocket took off into the sky. The mission was a failure, with an explosion at T+33 seconds. This was followed by two more failures in 2007 and 2008. Since … Continue reading →

Posted in Astronomy, Technology | 2 Comments

Moore’s Law graphs annoy me

Posted on December 20, 2014 by Lee Pavelich

Moore’s Law is a famous observation relating to integrated circuits, though most people use the term lazily. The correct statement of the law not only involves the doubling of the number of transistors on a computer chip within a certain … Continue reading →

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Nov 2014 Top500 list

Posted on November 18, 2014 by Lee Pavelich

I might as well copy-paste the main summary of the June 2014 Top500 list, as the November list says much the same thing. There’s almost no change in the top 10, little performance growth compared to The Way It Was™, … Continue reading →

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Human race 2013 Kardashev score

Posted on July 22, 2014 by Lee Pavelich

Last year I went through a calculation using data about worldwide energy consumption to calculate a Kardashev score for human civilization and got Type 0.7248 in 2012. BP’s data for 2013 was recently released (page 40, the “Total World” row), so … Continue reading →

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