Comment Re:Oh, dear! (Score 2) 78
Anyone want to buy a $100,000,000,000 data center at fire-sale prices?
Does this mean I’ll finally be able to buy 64gb 5600Mhz ddr5 rdimm for less than $1,000,000?
Anyone want to buy a $100,000,000,000 data center at fire-sale prices?
Does this mean I’ll finally be able to buy 64gb 5600Mhz ddr5 rdimm for less than $1,000,000?
Let's say one nation is using unfair labor and environmental policies to attain a 20% reduction in manufacturing costs in order to attract clients. A retaliatory tariff of 20% removes that advantage, leveling the playing field.
Only if every country does that too and every country is equally invested in that sector. Your argument assumes a 2 sided trade system where both are equal in production and can meet their own needs. If a country like say the US, is only meeting 1% of its needs from domestic production like with solar panels, and proceeds to impose tariffs on every imported one then rather than being protective it is crippling. A far more effective strategy in many cases, especially in areas of national security like power and certain technologies, especially when those are vastly under represented domestically, is to simply subsidize them so as to insulate them from external harmful influence while at the same time nurturing growth. Nurturing stagnation is a guaranteed fail.
It's also a reminder of one of the biggest flaws with AI today-- Its complete lack of judgement. And I don't just mean safety guardrails. It's all over everything it does.. from unnecessarily verbose writing to fixing compiler errors by doing crazy things like looking up symbols dynamically at runtime to avoid a missing interface. AI is happy to achieve a goal, with no sense of the larger picture.
This is correct. It does not lie, it does not hack, it does not cheat. It simply optimizes variables under its control to achieve its goals. Implying it does those things implies intelligence and an understanding of the physical implications of morality and how it reduces quality of existence for everyone else. It 100% lacks reasoning of that nature, and it’s dubious to call the orchestrating layer a thinking layer when thinking is implied in the human or even animal sense.
Have you ever owned a cat? Or more accurately, has a cat ever enslaved you with little morsels of affection in exchange for lavish feasts, on-demand massages, free healthcare and being generally treated like royalty?
Some people don’t realize that when you lock wills with an animal for dominance and domestication it’s possible to lose. Incidentally, those that don’t realize this have a much higher chance of losing for some strange reason...
So in which scenario does that help
With 50k satellites it can become an effective space weapon. Assume about 250ish miles orbital altitude. also assume the satellites you target with this weapon are at about the same altitude. That makes for roughly 140 miles average between satellites in the cluster and target, but much of the time there will be multiple satellites closer than this. Even low amounts of light coming from unexpected angles can blind sensors like surveillance cameras, but at shorter distances if the mirror has appropriate focal length and multiple mirrors can be used, it can dramatically increase the heat experienced by the satellite but far more importantly it can push the heat from unexpected directions. Satellites often employ heat shielding to stop the direct heat from the sun from baking the satellite and also have heat pumps to push it out the dark side. By heating that avoids the heat shield, or better yet, raises the radiator to a high temperature, the satellite bakes and self destructs. The focused energy does itself not need to come close to baking the satellite on its own. The use case is very compelling for destroying enemy satellites while getting funding and permission by pretending to solve a civilian purpose.
Solar + batteries is basically locking in your power rates for 30 years, vs the 10-15% annual increases we're seeing. That makes the ROI shorten fast.
Two problems with that are,
1) this only locks in the rate of the system, and building, or far worse renting, the system to meet 100% of needs into the future is basically unaffordable on a cost basis and specifically because you could take the 5-6 figures and invest it in markets or such creates a vast lost opportunity gap. Even breaking even long term is very bad for this reason. And.. I’m close to 45 latitude, and in a climate that sees quite a few overcast days. This greatly reduces the efficacy and thus increases the cost for installed kWh you actually receive and can use. This compounds the problem in #1. This is why I’m all for starting a trade war on solar panels and getting China to glut the market with crazy excess capacity to the point homeless are sleeping under perfectly good discarded solar panels because cardboard is too expensive. We don’t even manufacture them to 3% of our needs and the cost of the government subsidizing domestic production is only a tiny fraction of the wealth we would extract from china, not to mention the saving the planet as a byproduct. But until panels cost what cardboard does, and until storage costs drop (lithium isn’t even the most cost effective given chemistry maturity, something like sodium ion would be vastly superior for home grid), it does not make financial sense at all.
Woooo AI games here we come
Of course, with just a touch of polish they are so shiny and gleam. With the consumer push for physical media, wouldn’t you want games made with element 13?
again though, you're kind of gambling that a hurricane isn't going to trash your panels).
Haven't they invented home insurance in Florida yet? I guess then no one should build anything.
Getting insurance dramatically changes depending on home construction. If you have a ground level 60s style house where they took regular building practices and simply put it on a beach or within a hundred or so miles of the ocean then you get total destruction and unaffordablity. However, if you put it high on stilts that are 18’ above high tide on the coasts to avoid surges (height depends on location), use hurricane proof windows, siding, roofing, and internal bracing, etc. The cost may go over double per square foot but it will survive hurricanes largely without substantial damage the majority of the time. You can actually see aftermath videos where ground level old construction homes are completely absent and modern construction stilted homes are unscathed and they used to be neighbors after a major hurricane.
"Engineering meets art in the parking lot and things explode." -- Garry Peterson, about Survival Research Labs