Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Suggests Heating Homes With "Data Furnaces"
Some anonymous masochist submitted a story that makes me cringe from inside a heatwave. "With a temperature of around 40-50C (104-122F), the exhaust from a rack of cloud servers could be a very cost-effective way of heating your house, according to researchers from Microsoft and the University of Virginia. Dubbed the 'Data Furnace,' these racks would be hot enough to completely replace the heating and hot water system in a house or office. Instead of building mega data centers, Data Furnaces would be micro data furnaces in residential areas, providing free heating and ultra-low-latency cloud services to nearby web surfers. Microsoft Research thinks that with remote sensor networks, encryption, and other safety measures, lack of physical security won't be an issue."
Having built the shittiest forum interface in all of webdom, did you actually imagine the slashdot staff would subject themselves to such by using it?
Here's what Microsoft said:
They didn't say "data furnaces in residential houses". The plan is to build these things and connect houses to them, not build these things directly inside homes. So all these comments about kids running around, insurance, etc are not relevant.