Ocado's burning robotic warehouse

Re:Ocado's burning robotic warehouse by ucaetano on Thursday February 07, 2019 @10:34PM (#19111298)

> But let's not forget there's a good reason why data centres full of computer servers are often built inside icy mountains or under oceans. Electronics get hot.

Gell-Mann amnesia effect applies here. This is pretty bad reporting.

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Re:Ocado's burning robotic warehouse by zeristor on Friday February 08, 2019 @04:43AM (#19112758)

Thanks

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect

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Re:Ocado's burning robotic warehouse by ddeokbokki on Friday February 08, 2019 @06:37AM (#19113309)

You mean to tell me my ap-south-1 instances are not actually inside Mt. Everest?!

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Re:Ocado's burning robotic warehouse by ucaetano on Friday February 08, 2019 @12:23PM (#19116469)

Nope, they're in an orbiting datacenter. You can't beat the dead cold vacuum of space.

PS: You can, the vacuum of space is actually terrible for cooling, I was making a joke.

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Re:Ocado's burning robotic warehouse by close04 on Friday February 08, 2019 @04:52AM (#19112806)

Your objection is probably to the usage of the word "often" which is... debatable. It's probably also unrealistic. Otherwise yes, nobody ever built a DC underwater [0] or in the icy mountains [1] or underground [2].

[0] https://news.microsoft.com/features/under-the-sea-microsoft-...

[1] https://greenmountain.no/

[2] https://royal.pingdom.com/the-worlds-most-super-designed-dat...

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Re:Ocado's burning robotic warehouse by 7j on Friday February 08, 2019 @07:59AM (#19113705)

Reporter was claiming that warehouse was freezing cold to keep electronics of robots cool. It's total nonsense. These robots probably emit less heat than regular forklifts.

The only reason for the freezing temperatures is to keep foodstuff fresh.

Also datacenters underground is only a marketing trick (we keep you servers in a bunker). If anything it only complicates getting rid of extra heat (eg. problems with London underground [1] )

[1] https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/london-...

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Re:Ocado's burning robotic warehouse by mhw on Friday February 08, 2019 @08:29AM (#19113901)

Given that the article also has no information about the cause of the fire ("The firm has not yet commented on the probable cause of the blaze and the investigation could go on for quite some time") it's also fairly easy to read the earlier "electronics get hot" as trying to point towards a suspected cause.

As you say, it's total nonsense - even if the cause does turn out to be an electrical fire, it's unlikely to be due to insufficient cooling of the whole warehouse.

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Re:Ocado's burning robotic warehouse by close04 on Friday February 08, 2019 @11:33AM (#19115843)

I don't she meant to suggest that improper cooling led to the warehouse burning down.

She implied that DC are built underwater/in mountains (true) often (false) because electronics get hot (true...ish). And then drew the conclusion that this is one of the reasons the warehouse is cold (false) on top of the obvious one:

> The temperature was to protect the cold food, I was told.

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