Tech Storyteller

Tech Stories Issue #70 Hello Reader, Today, let's talk about life-giving water. What role does water play in the functioning of modern data centres, and what could possibly go wrong? For the former: Everything. And a lot could go wrong, it turns out. Before we go into that, a bit about what happened this week. Data Centre World Asia Some of you reached out ahead of DCW and invited me to your booths, which I duly noted on my to-do list. But I didn't actually get the chance to spend much time...

Tech Stories Issue #69 Hello Reader, It's F1 in Singapore this week. If there's one thing F1 cars and data centres have in common, it's how they look alike from afar. But look closer and the changes under the hood are astounding. There's one difference though: the sheer pace of data centre construction has created a drastic shortage of skilled talent. Today, let's talk about the silent skills crisis hitting Southeast Asian data centres, the potential of Microsoft's microfluidics to reshape...

Tech Stories Issue #68 Hello Reader, I'm travelling for work this weekend, so I'll keep this brief. Two data centre disasters struck Asia Pacific this week. On Wednesday, a ruptured liquid cooling pipe caused chaos at a Southeast Asian facility. On Friday, a fire at one of South Korea's government data centre knocked out hundreds of crucial services. Let's talk about data centre disasters this week. My friend Junhan is running a 1-day paid masterclass in Singapore called "Visualise Your...

Tech Stories Issue #67 Hello Reader, To those who signed up for my WhatsApp Channel, thank you. I set it up on impulse last Friday, figuring it might reach 100 by December. There are over 150 right now, and this response truly came as a surprise. Today, let's talk about Batam and its potential make-or-break moment. Plus, my trip to YTL's massive 600MW data centre campus in Johor got me thinking about the future of data centres in ways I hadn't considered before. Tech Stories on WhatsApp No...

Tech Stories Issue #66 Hello Reader, Can't believe we're already midway through September and crossing into the final quarter of the year soon. Today, let's talk about the continued rise of liquid cooling, Nvidia's plot twist in the data centre, and the gaming of social media. The liquid cooling landscape expands Credit: Paul Mah. DTC liquid cooling. These days, any talk about liquid cooling almost always centres on direct-to-chip (DTC) technology, which pipes chilled water directly to cold...

Tech Stories Issue #65 Hello Reader, I was in San Francisco earlier this week for HubSpot's Inbound 2025 conference, and my head is still spinning from how AI is changing content and marketing. I thought I was decent at using AI, but it turns out I’ve only been scratching the surface. For today's newsletter, let's talk about how Singapore is working to redefine the rules of data centres, contextual engineering, and optimising content for AI search engines. And finally, I explain why it pays...

Tech Stories Issue #64 Hello Reader, If you've signed up for Clearly Tech on Substack, thank you. I'll be unpacking complex issues and framing big developments for the wider tech ecosystem. This newsletter will continue to go out every Sunday with my opinions on key issues and links to my latest stories. This week, let's dig into how three Southeast Asian nations are charting distinctly different paths in the data centre race: Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand. Singapore's unwavering mandate...

Tech Stories Issue #63 Hello Reader, It's working again. After frantically trying and failing failing to fix it last weekend, the abrupt domain-wide blacklisting of Tech Stories by Microsoft suddenly evaporated. Mid-week, Sunday's newsletter started streaming into Office 365 and Hotmail inboxes, and open rates actually jumped beyond the usual 50%. If you received it late, that's why. While its great things are back to normal, I've already started diversifying my content further - and I have...

Tech Stories Issue #62 Hello Reader, I wasted over an hour on Saturday evening trying to figure out why Office 365 was mysteriously dropping my newsletter emails when everything had worked fine since last year. Turns out the answer is related to AI - and it's frustrating. More on that later. Today, I want to talk about how data centres are changing, protecting your data, and the limits of AI. The data centre complexity crisis Some really messy server racks. Ask an industry insider ten years...