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In the book Wade Watts powers his Oasis console and a small heater using a battery that he recharges in a van by pedaling a stationary bike. This seems quite far fetched. The console itself appears to be a thin client with only enough CPU Aand GPU power to render the Oasis and a little extra to contribute to the server for distributed computing if needed. The power needs of such a device are likely to be quite low so i figure a regular smartphone size battery (20 to 25 watts) would be fine. However, the heater is the problem. The smallest electric heater i have ever seen is still 200 watts. A normal human can produce ~100 watts of power per hour according to this site. If the Oasis console uses ~5 watts per hour this would leave him with 95 watts with which to run his heater. That would allow him to run his heater for ~28 minutes per hour and only if he spent the entire previous hour pedaling to recharge the battery.

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[-] gyrfalcon@beehaw.org 12 points 1 year ago

A human pedaling on a stationary bike IS a heater, if he's getting 100 watts continuous at the generator then he's probably producing a 2-3 times that amount in heat. Plus that's heat injected directly into him, so it's well retained by wearing warm clothes, no space heating needed.

[-] shortwavesurfer@monero.town 7 points 1 year ago

True, but the book does mention a space heater. You are right. To maintain 98.6F the human body puts off ~200 watts of heat

this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2023
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