You seem to think that expensive to run online-only tools are somehow equivalent to locally run tools that take only the computer you're using to run them.

When a game server stops making the company money, the plug gets yanked out on whoever is still play the game.

The spend is the problem. It's all out of proportion, insane. It's going to be a huge crash only because of how big the spend is.

Doubt it. Nothing much has changed since all the excitement began. Just more examples of smoke-and-mirrors keep popping up. eg: LLMs doing coding is a dumpster fire. Self-driving cars has gone nowhere at all.

Sounds like USA is jealous and just wants to catch up. No shortage of pro-surveillance talk all round. Especially in AI circles.

The last point is off base. They're angling to lock out alternative competition. Cement their existing positions.

And be beholden to the algorithm (with hidden controls). No thanks, I think I'd rather have at least some transparency.

Obviously that is done as part of investing in education. You don't just say, here's more money, you also say these are the skills to learn for jobs that are plentiful.

Promotion is reward. If promotion is possible then people will lie their way up.

Yup, expect many random panels to be punctured in data-centre lifetime. As each PV cell fails the reverse blocking diodes would allow the string to continue providing power at a reduced voltage. Each cell is about 0.5 V. but the diodes are usually across a series of 20 or so cells. So 10 Volts would be lost per puncture.

The only reason any of this is even a discussion is because of insanity with AI bubble. Once that pops, the talk of space based solutions will vanish.

I know that both TechPowerUp and TechSpot serve some of their ads as articles. They look like news items at first glance. And of course they don't get blocked. Or at lest not by the anti-tracker tools that I use.

Download???!! That's SOOOO inconvenient. You've lost 99% of the fakes right there. I know when I talk about downloading from YouTube, most people just glaze over.

Of course 1% can still be massive numbers.

I'm not in any way in favour, but your reasoning is incorrect. Efficiency is about doing work with an amount of energy, before it becomes heat. Not about how much heat that can be dumped.

On the energy supply side of the equation, it's very much limited by the area of solar panels. And conveniently, the larger those collectors are the larger the area of shade is available for heat dumping as well.

As for speed of light considerations. All of the proposals will be for LEO. Starlink being the poster child here.

I can't see how doing data-centres like this could ever be economical but that's the thinking.

Being a smokescreen of talk is highly likely. Same as building new fission nukes.

Especially given how easy it is to just drop down more PV on land.

Sadly, that's more likely the individual people at Apple, rather than Apple per se. Same story at M$ and every other corporation. The internal fighting for higher pay means the individuals are stealing and backstabbing each other within.

There's the mass of unlicensed scraping too. But that's another story.