pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
No bio...
User ID: 278
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
4hr ago
The SysAdmin guys taking care of the servers at the companies I worked for, OTOH, were always running around and tinkering with shit.
Heh, this is my day job. Most of the time, the tinkering is replacing very old stuff with less old (or, ideally) new stuff. Sometimes stuff that was deliberately underprovisioned for business reasons that has to be upgraded later. And if it's a business office, physical networking often needs to change to suit the needs of the office workers. But often as not the old stuff coming out has been operating continuously for many years on end with ~0 maintenance and still works. I routinely pick up enterprise gear from work for my home that was retired and removed in perfect working order, but is no longer supported, surplus to requirements, or replaced with something more capable and more efficient. Usually if there is a failure, it's a spinning hard disk or a cooling fan; eliminate those and enterprise gear is generally pretty bulletproof and service lifetimes of 10 years or more are not uncommon at all. You observed that desktop PC hardware is already fairly reliable, and that's after having every cost cut to the absolute bone. Enterprise gear largely avoids those cost tradeoffs for reliability.
True that upgrades in the satellite model are precluded, but after almost a decade of service they probably wouldn't be upgrading in any case. In an industrial datacenter, there is a lot of infrastructure in the form of buildings, facilities, and power distribution that makes ripping the racks and replacing a sensible "upgrade" path. In the satellite model, what infrastructure there is, is largely degradable (solar panels and mechanical components), so there's not much benefit to upgrading them. Additionally, since each node is self-sufficient, its entire lifespan can be monetized without sacrificing efficiency, at decreasing revenue rates over time, unlike in a data center where there's a constant need to cycle in new hardware as soon as possible to maximize electrical efficiency. Compute per watt efficiency just matters a lot less when your electrical cost is 0.
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
4hr ago
They're almost entirely microchips in either case. The main complication is the need for circulating coolant through passive panels, but this is not an exotic field of space engineering at all.
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
5hr ago
For small-scale nodes, i.e., AI1-sized, I suspect that the node would just either operate in reduced capacity or be retired. They probably would not be designed for serviceability. On the flip side, properly engineered, there would be few moving parts, and low risk of environmental damage. Something like 99.8% of Starlink satellites are operational with a median age of a little over 5 years, so it doesn't seem implausible on first impression that AI satellites would experience similarly low rates of failure.
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
5hr ago
Didn't he buy Cursor, and these guys were the ones who figured it out? It certainly shows a lot of political / business acumen, but I didn't get the impression that that's the sort of "it" he's supposed to have.
I disagree, that is the primary "it" that he has, and the most important one by far. It doesn't really matter how elegant your product is, how technologically advanced, how innovative. The ability to create a solid business plan and actually execute it (eventually) is the critical factor. SpaceX is the best example: none of the technologies involved are especially novel: keralox rocket engines, aluminum alloy rocket bodies, carbon fiber fairings, etc. The actual innovation of SpaceX was figuring out a way to build and operate these things in a way that made them profitable at scale. This is an unpopular view, I know, due to the implications about whig history, but is something I think is true of all the great industrialists.
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
5hr ago
Assuming the minimum viable product can even scale that small, what you're describing is not a lot different than what cryptominers were doing at home for a while, and their activities were often extremely unpopular with their neighbors. I'm curious how you plan to dissipate 50 KW of heat from under your basement stairs without annoying your neighbors. Not to mention, the $7.5K/month power/fiber bill takes a pretty big bite out of that after a 5 year operation cycle. After 10 years, you're probably not breaking even.
Interesting concept though: assuming you want to add, say, 2GW of inference capacity, that would be something like 40,000 1/3-size racks. Could you spread that out around the country enough that the increased load could be absorbed by the already-present electrical grid and generation capacity? The national average looks to be around 500 GW, so this seems plausible. I suspect the challenge would be getting people to sign up for having the noise in their homes.
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
6hr ago
I'm skeptical you have 120 KW service to your house
Please, please, pleas show me your math for this. Even use the $100 per kg to LEO price if you want to make itas favorable to your argument as possible. I would be willing to bet you $100 donated to the charity of the winner's choice if you math shows it being cheaper than a container ship (or oil platform type structure) 370 KM off the coast (i.e. in international waters) of some LNG processing hub.
First, you have to determine what is a minimally-viable node in each context. SpaceX is proposing essentially a single-rack node with 120KW power at a mass of about 2 tons. Let's assume that the same Nvidia racks would be used in an oceanic platform, so we can disregard the silicon costs. Starlink satellites are constructed at scale at a cost of about $1M/ton, so a reasonable cost estimate for Starmind satellites is about about $2M per satellite. Add $200K in launch costs and we're about $2.5M/node up front, with ~0 ongoing costs.
If we assume that solar arrays are impractical for oceanic data processing, the minimum viable node would have to be some kind of hull with active station-keeping and enough fuel storage to fuel a diesel generator and station-keeping for extended periods between refueling (30 days?). It starts getting sketchy here, but working with requirements of about 25 tons fuel capacity, it seems like you're looking at a 30-40 meter DP1 vessel. I couldn't find costs for new construction, but listings for similar class vessels decades old are around $3M (e.g., https://maritimesales.com/DAB17.htm), so that seems like a reasonable conservative estimate. And this the up-front cost only. Assuming it's autonomous, it will still need monthly fuel deliveries, regular PMCS and overhauls on engines, gensets, and thrusters, other seaworthiness maintenance like painting, cleaning, and lubrication, and you can expect substantial wear and tear and damage from environmental forces. Fuel replenishment alone is going to be at least $30K/month. And this is all for a single Nvidia rack!
Now of course as you start scaling up, the economics shift, but my point was that one of the advantages of orbital deployment is the ability to scale node sizes down.
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
8hr ago
And you don't really escape terrestrial legal jurisdictions any better than you would have by building the DC on a container ship out in the Pacific or something.
Antarctica is closed to economic exploitation by international treaty. It's the complete opposite of escaping terrestrial legal jurisdiction. As for oceanic datacenters, they have a lot of technical disadvantages compared to orbital components. Large vessels would be preferable for stability, security, and navigational control, but power generation becomes impractical unless you permit commercial maritime nuclear reactors, which seems unlikely, or plan to have LNG refueling tankers visit every few weeks, which is expensive. A constellation of small solar powered vessels scales a lot less conveniently in the ocean, given communications constraints from the ground, security difficulties, and the scale of ordinary maritime maintenance that is necessary.
So, I think you are wrong - there are other advantages. In orbit, security is a non-issue, environmental degradation is minimal, solar power is abundant, communications are easier, and in general the floor cost per node is lower, meaning that scaling down incurs fewer penalties.
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
19hr ago
Ok, I've been persuaded to accede that SpaceX themselves can not really be said to have delivered any payload to the moon yet.
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
19hr ago
Indeed, I've had a fully submerged mineral oil PC rig since before Covid.
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
1d ago
Basically, space is the last place you want to put your data center. Putting your computers basically anywhere else, be it in high altitude balloons, the summit of Mt Everest, the Mariana Trench, Point Nemo, downtown Manhattan, on harnesses worn by stray cats, the surface of the Moon, the rectal cavities of cybertruck drivers, Antarctica, Gaza (to just brainstorm a few not-so-good ideas) is going to be much less of a hassle than LEO.
I think you're greatly exaggerating. Deep ocean is a much more hostile and inaccessible location than LEO by almost any possible metric I can think of except, possibly, the energy cost of reaching it. The Moon is much further away, requires much more Δv, and isn't even sunny for half the time. Antarctica is extremely energy-poor and is unavailable for commercialization in any case.
While solar power is plentiful in space, computing turns the energy consumed into heat, and radiative cooling is not very efficient, especially if you want your chips to run at 400K and not 4000K.
At 400K, your panels should be able to reject over 1KW per m² to deep space, continuously. That's actually pretty efficient! You can do better with air cooling of course, so long as you don't care about environment heating at all, but that's also at some energy cost.
It is not that computing in space is impossible per se (every cubesat does some, after all), it is just that it is extremely painful compared to computing dirtside.
Dirtside computing can be infinitely painful, depending how uncooperative governments want to be with regulations and lawsuits. At least in LEO there's limited jurisdiction.
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
1d ago
I actually also agree with the main thrust of his post, but orbital datacenters make zero sense unless you’re wrongly thinking “space = cold” instead of “space = vacuum”.
Well, space is a vacuum, yes, but the radiative heat sink is extremely cold. People have suggested testing cooling in a vacuum chamber to prove the infeasibility, but this misses the critical factor that the vacuum chamber walls are not ~2 K, and the efficacy of radiative cooling scales by the differences in temperature to the 4th power.
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
1d ago
You have to be able to pay money for zero things.
You don't need a million dollars to do nothing, man. Take a look at my cousin: he's broke, don't do shit.
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
1d ago
The still-standing totally nonfunctional signals are a nice touch too.
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
2d ago
Those landing failures had nothing to do with SpaceX. They delivered the payloads to the correct insertion velocity, so the SpaceX portion of the mission was successful.
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
2d ago
Wrong, Falcon 9 has delivered several lunar missions. Disregarding even missions to lunar orbit:
| Mission | Launch Date | Spacecraft | Launch Mass |
|---|---|---|---|
| HAKUTO‑R Mission 1 | Dec 2022 | ispace lunar lander | |
| IM‑1 (Odysseus) | Feb 2024 | Intuitive Machines Nova‑C | 1,900 kg |
| Blue Ghost Mission 1 | Jan 2025 | Firefly Blue Ghost | 1,517 kg |
| HAKUTO‑R Mission 2 (Resilience) | Jan 2025 | ispace lunar lander | 1,000 kg |
| Total | ~5,417 kg (5.4 t) |
This is enough to put SpaceX above every nation except China (barely) and the USSR, with just Falcon 9/Heavy.
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
2d ago
There's a chance of this year, but given the current cautious pace, I think next year is a little more likely. BO's pad mishap has removed even the small amount of competitive pressure they were bringing, for now. If the next flight has a successful relight with no issues, they'll go for it on the flight after. If no manufacturing or testing delays, that would probably be later this year. If there are any flight glitches or testing issues, that will slip. The gigabay production facilities nearing completion in both Texas and Florida will mean an increase in flight cadence is very likely in either case.
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
2d ago
Small probes are irrelevant next to ~100 tons of soft-landed payloads.
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
2d ago
Ironically you won your bet mostly due to SpaceX being so far ahead of the competition they can afford to proceed with much more caution that they previously have. Starship has undoubtedly been capable of achieving orbit for over a year now, each launch deliberately bringing it just under that threshold, and the only reason it hasn't is because SpaceX doesn't want to run the minor risk that an uncontrolled re-entry results. This makes it likely that once they are confident that uncontrolled re-entry is a mitigated risk orbital starship launches will go from "never" to "always".
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
2d ago
Adding +1 vote for each child under 18 would also create good incentives and add balancing power to those who choose family over income. I think the problem you describe isn't too large a problem, as market forces would be constantly fighting against it.
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
2d ago
This becomes an easier problem to solve if you permit multiple votes per person. Then you could, e.g., divide the total income tax collected by the number of registered voters, and give each voter a number of votes equal to their shares of taxes paid, rounding up, with a minimum of one and a maximum of, say, 10. Rough figures put that share at about $15,000, so for every $15,000 of federal income taxes paid, you get an extra vote, up to 10, which would correspond to an income of around $500K. This would weight the franchise in favor of those with skin in the game without giving wildly disproportionate power to the ultra-wealthy. (This would also have the side benefit of incentivizing cleaning up voter roles, to decrease the denominator of the income contribution and raise the price of additional votes for the wealthy).
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
6d ago
You will be protected from the Terrible Secret of Space
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
7d ago
It's not just crime and disorder, it's mismanagement in general. Many large cities have very high taxes and struggle to deliver basic civic services beyond safety, like transit, parks, civic maintenance, or public improvements. Every year, things get shittier and worse. Tore out the flowers. Closed up the toilets. Potholes unpatched. Children can't read. Removed the benches. Tore down the statues. Closed the library branch. Closed the public pool. Stopped maintaining the beach. Stopped mowing the grass. No more leaf collection. Let brush overgrow everything. Cut the municipal office hours. Added more sales tax. Added more property tax. Added more income tax. Increased salary and benefits. It's maddening, it never ends.
ETA: Oh yeah! And no more fireworks on the 4th of July!
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
7d ago
If we go off the notion that America is a Christian nation with Christian values
It isn't, not anymore if it ever was.
then the US responsibility is really high to help
Only if you accept the hidden premise that the government is a moral avatar of the individuals it governs, which I've seen little basis for in Christian teachings.
those in need
It's not obvious why people on the other side of the planet who are intentionally and willfully giving themselves sexually transmitted diseases would fall into that category. You're wrapping in utilitarian concepts of "need" wherein saving the life of a fool you will never know or meet is a greater "need" than, say, mentoring a young man in your neighborhood so he doesn't end up in prison. And that's putting aside whether most of the help is even reaching those who need it.
Which we can see in how religious charities are some of the most helpful around in the third world.
Indeed, and who funds those I wonder?
Amazing!
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