It depends on how the flash modules are maintained and their quality, but yes having freshly written data will imply better data consistency on flash media.

Flash media relies on recharging, which may or many not happen often enough.

That's a thought I hadn't had. The plastic of the disk getting so brittle it shatters in the drive due to age. I wonder what's the embrittlement profile of polycarbonate stored in reasonable condition.

I agree many Americans wouldn't have a clue if you just asked them for sambal but if you said "that spicy chili paste in the jar at Asian restaurants" they'd know exactly what you're talking about.

While similar I don't think sambal oelek and sriracha are the same. Sambal oelek is typically pretty chunky, sriracha is usually very smooth. Sambal oelek will be pretty much just vinegar, salt, and peppers while sriracha will be sweeter and have garlic.

In urban areas its not necessarily too hard to find a variety of both. Going further out it'll get harder, so the brand presence of sriracha will often win for the spot of the sole Asian-style spicy sauce on the store shelf. Asian restaurants will typically have one or the other. I think a lot of Americans prefer sriracha partially because of the brand presence but also because of its smoother texture. Americans have tended to use a squeeze bottle for condiments more, having a jar to spoon things out just isn't quite as popular. Even things like relish, jelly, and sour cream these days are moving towards squeeze packages instead of jars and tubs.

> I'd imagine the power and cooling requirements are more specialised than your average datacenter

But are they actually doing things differently than the high compute parts of the hyperscaled datacenters? Are there radical new ways of distributing heat in the datacenter that only makes sense at that level of energy usage per square foot? Is AI energy use that much higher per square foot of other high-compute parts of datacenters, or is it just that its now something like 90% of the floor plan versus maybe only 50-60%?

> handle transmitting large amounts of data over the internet

I certainly can't speak for all datacenters, and I've never been in a hyperscaler datacenter. But of all the datacenters I've spent time in, the space for the outside network connectivity was rather small compared to the rest of the space for storage and compute. Think a few small office suites dedicated to outside networks coming in and connecting to the clients in the datacenter compared to a medium to large sized warehouse full of compute and storage.