Technology Finds Its Own Uses for, well, everything

[womzilla]

From a thread on food cross-posted to rec.arts.sf.fandom and alt.usage.english*:

I remember the days when UHT [ultra-high temperature sterilized] milk became useful to those with very cheap computers; in particular, to those misguided souls who bought a ZX81.

This "computer" had a design flaw. It became overheated in use, and in that condition it started having random errors. A container of UHT milk, suitable refrigerated, was exactly the right size and shape to act as a heat sink, and the milk inside had a sufficiently large thermal capacity that the cooling effect would last for hours. And, since it was UHT milk, no one minded that the repeated heating and cooling ruined it as a potential foodstuff.

--Graeme Thomas

*Discussions of food are automatically on-topic for rec.arts.sf.fandom. It appears the same is true of alt.usage.english.