By the way, a followup note: I agree with you that the current Shor's algorithm records shouldn't really count for much. The primary disagreement here seems to be whether it is more useful to look at component metrics (number of qubits, coherence time, efficiency of error correction schemes), or to look at practical applications. I am favoring the first, and you are favoring the second. Let me suggest that the first is right now more important because that's where we can usefully measure if there's been improvement or not. An analogy here that may be helpful: It wasn't until Yuri Gagarin that any human went into space and only a few years later that humans went to the moon among other things. If you look at the improvement of rockets from the early 1930s until 1961, you'd see massive improvement in rocket capabilities, but your metric for humans in space would keep being zero until 1961 when you get Gagarin, and then Titov, Shepard and Gus Grissom all in one year and a lot happening after that. Using a metric which is at close to zero and where we know why that metric would stay at zero even if we see improvement isn't a great way to understand what is happening.

This is the blandest, most watered-down way to say "lost their job" yet. Quite nauseating.

The only way you can lose heat in space is through radiation. But radiation carries momentum. Not much per photon, but it was enough to cause the Pioneer probes to move in unexpected ways. This means you have to emit equal amounts of heat towards Earth and towards space. If your resultant is zero, then you're fine. You can even direct some of the heat backwards. It won't do a huge amount, but every bit of atmospheric drag you overcome, the less fuel you need to use to stay in orbit.

So you basically need absolutely gigantic radiators behind the space-based data centre, located inside a parabolic dish that will generate drag of its own (not to mention a potential difference betwen the lower and upper sections).

This is an insane level of complexity. You're better off parking it in a stable orbit between the Earth and the moon, so it's absolutely clear of atmospheric effects. You're still going to need radiators, but it's marginally better as you don't have to do quite so much directing of it. The latency would be horrible, maintenance would be next to impossible, and there's all kinds of other issues to consider.

No, I don't think you can make this workable.

However, space might be useful. This very same issue of heat only being radiated means that you can make wafers with much more even loss of temperature, no dust, bacteria, or dirt, and much lower gravity. If you were to make extremely high quality wafers (silicon or gallium arsonide) in space, then you should be able to make WSI processors, which should in turn reduce the demands that datacentres make.

The time it would take to set all this up would be about the same time as it took for IBM to perfect its stacked transistor topology. Intel was talking 90 cores per wafer-scale CPU a few years back - the shrinkage in transistors since then plus the x10 density IBM proposes might push you to 1800 cores per wafer, provided you can get the quality high enough. Which, in space, is quite possible.

You wouldn't need your datacentres in space. Your wafer-scale CPU plus packaging would be about the same size as a CD drive. You could pretty much dispense with datacentres at that point. A typical tower will have two spare bays. "Cartridge datacentres" could simply be plugged in as needed. A regular CPU-based cartridge for heavy general-purpose computing, a GPU-based cartridge for LLMs. Yes, home users would have power usage through the roof, but then it's no longer your problem.

LEO is used for most satellites because it's by far the cheapest orbit, which you can easily reach with a two stage rocket. Everything above LEO needs much bigger rockets and is thus much more expensive to reach.

Kilowatt-hours are also used in countries which use the Metric System. And the S.I. units don't use camel case. It's kilowatt and Megajoules, albeit the abbreviations are kW and MJ.

Additionally, diesel generators need regular diesel transport, while a solar+battery installation, once in place, does not require outside resources. You could even transport solar panels and batteries with a motorcycle along a foot path, which is much more complicated with a diesel generator. And a solar+battery installation is easily scalable, while a diesel generator is not.

I can get a 2 kWh battery here around for 300 EUR (after taxes), and Hawaii will subsidize the same capacity with $400? I should buy a container full of them and ship them to Hawaii immediately.

The app receives a token when you present your ID, and uses that token in subsequent age verifications, it does not need to contact the central authority each time. The scheme and app are open source, so you can verify what data is communicated when and with whom.

It is not. Or they get hold of their dad's passport, or whatever. No system is going to be proof against a curious teenager. Does it have to be?

The system now being trialed in the EU is promising. You don't have to present ID every time you visit an adult site, you do it once and receive a token that's stored on your device. That token is used to prove your age to a website. That means:
- No 3rd parties get a scan of your ID, only the government age verification service does (and only once for every device)
- Websites don't get your identity or even an identifier, they get Kid / Adult, and nothing else.
- The government (nor anyone else) does not get to see which websites you visit.

"Thank you Vera much."

My grandmother lived near an airbase, and every day, there were at least two supersonic aircraft in the skies. When they were flying above us, you could not understand the other guy talking. And we have to consider the distance in the line of sight. A starting aircraft on an airbase on the other side of the valley might be 10 miles away from you. A starting airplane right above you is quite different.

I wonder why most other nations also had a ban of non-military supersonic flight in place, nations with supersonic passenger jets, a.k.a. France and the United Kingdom, and those without, like Brasil or Germany.

Supersonic flight is incredibly noisy, and you don't want it above you.

Better than a dyslexic genie. No one wants a 12 inch pianist.

The summary explicitly mentions "a shortlist of candidates most likely to succeed in experiments"- so they are very aware that these systems may be wrong. If there's a legitimate criticism here, it is that it isn't obvious that these aren't short lists very similar to if not identical to the lists an expert would come up with. But that's a different claim.