Need to let loose a primal scream without collecting footnotes first? Have a sneer percolating in your system but not enough time/energy to make a whole post about it? Go forth and be mid: Welcome to the Stubsack, your first port of call for learning fresh Awful youā€™ll near-instantly regret.

Any awful.systems sub may be subsneered in this subthread, techtakes or no.

If your sneer seems higher quality than you thought, feel free to cutā€™nā€™paste it into its own post ā€” thereā€™s no quota for posting and the bar really isnā€™t that high.

The post Xitter web has spawned soo many ā€œesotericā€ right wing freaks, but thereā€™s no appropriate sneer-space for them. Iā€™m talking redscare-ish, reality challenged ā€œculture criticsā€ who write about everything but understand nothing. Iā€™m talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. Theyā€™re inescapable at this point, yet I donā€™t see them mocked (as much as they should be)

Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldnā€™t be surgeons because they didnā€™t believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I canā€™t escape them, I would love to sneer at them.

(Semi-obligatory thanks to @dgerard for starting this)

  • froztbyte@awful.systems
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    2 months ago

    I was also momentarily nerdsniped earlier by looking up the capacity of space power tech[0] (panel yields, battery technology, power density references), but bailed early because itā€™ll actually need some proper spelunking. doubly so because Iā€™m not even nearly an expert on space shit

    in case anyone else wants to go dig through that, the idea: for compute you need power (duh). to have power you need to have a source of energy (duh). and for orbitals, youā€™re either going to be doing loops around the planetoid of your choice, or geostationery. given that youā€™re playing balancing jenga between at minimum weight, compute capacity, and solar yield, youā€™re probably going to end up with a design that preferences high-velocity orbitals that have a minimal amount of time in planetoid shadow, which to me implies high chargerate, extremely high cycle count ceiling (supercaps over batteries?), and whatever compute you can make fit and fly on that. combined with whatever the hell you need to do to fit your supposed computational models/delivery in that

    this is probably worth a really long essay, because which type of computing your supposed flying spacerack handles is going to be extremely selected by the above constraints. if you could even make your magical spacechip fucking exist in the first place, which is a whole other goddamn problem

    [0] - https://www.nasa.gov/smallsat-institute/sst-soa/power-subsystems/ (warning: this can make hours of your day disappear)

    • skillissuer
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      2 months ago

      dusk-dawn orbit is a thing if you donā€™t care too hard about where exactly to put it

      but itā€™s gonna be so fucking expensive, what theyā€™re trading off so itā€™s even remotely worth it? do they think itā€™s outside of any jurisdiction?

      • froztbyte@awful.systems
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        2 months ago

        dusk-dawn orbit is a thing if you donā€™t care too hard about where exactly to put it

        yeah I thought about that but I took it in light of ā€œdata centerā€, i.e. presuming that youā€™d want continuous availability of that. part of what I mean with it being worth a long essay - thereā€™s a couple of ways to configure the hypothetical way this would operate, and each has significant impacts on the shape of the thing

        but itā€™s gonna be so fucking expensive

        yep. thatā€™s the thing thatā€™s so wild about this fairy picture. option 1) make your entire compute infra earthside[0], launch it all, and get ā€¦ the node compute equivalent of 3 stacked raspberry and a 2017 gpu, at a costpoint in the high 4 digits or moreā€¦ or option 2, where you just shove a dc full of equipment for the price of like 20 such nodes, and have the compute equivalent of a significant number of mid-range hosters

        even if (and this is extreme wand waving) you could crack non-planetbound production for the entire process and fab all this shit in space (incl. the mining and refining and ā€¦) as a way to reduce costs, you still have all these other problems too. and itā€™s not like this is likely to happen any time soon

        guess they better hope 'ole ray has another vision soon, to get a fixed date for the singularity. canā€™t see how you do your scrum planning for this fantasy without a target date provided by the singularitian prophet

          • froztbyte@awful.systems
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            2 months ago

            dunno if the aforementioned jazz is (I didnā€™t check), but rayboi is the easiest ā€œand then compute things just become magically solvedā€ touchstone for me to remember

            too many of the fucking nutjobs to properly track whoā€™s the steering committee for each insane idea