291–300 of 325 posts
>Presumably the real purpose of this company is to refute people who said "We'll just walk over to the superintelligence and pull the plug out", without MIRI needing to argue with them
https://xcancel.com/ESYudkowsky/status/1831899029690839549#m
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This is the best idea to come out of this whole scheme. Space solar panels are super cheap and efficient? Prove it! Launch them and transmit the energy down. This is orders of magnitude easier than the original proposal -- and yet still nonsensical.
We could use the energy to power a data center on earth!
... could we instead beam the energy down to a data center on the sea floor?
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I was trying to put these sizes in rough perspective. ISS is the largest man-made object in space, which is basically the size of a football field (half a hectare) and cost $150B. https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/comparison-of-size-of-int... The whitepaper shows a 4km x 4km solar array, which is 1600 hectares (3200 International Space Stations). Would assume the array they're proposing would be cheaper since its st…
To be fair, YC says they mostly invest in founders, not ideas. So, expect a pivot at some point.
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Perhaps a hedge in case apocalyptic scenarios disable or reduce networks on the ground?
Yes, because in an apocalyptic scenario what we all will be clamouring will be space data centres training AI and mining bitcoin.
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Perhaps a hedge in case apocalyptic scenarios disable or reduce networks on the ground?
Apocalyptic scenarios where terrestrial communication methods going back over a century are no longer feasible, but we can still readily talk to space? And maintain/replace the stuff we have up there?
How does “passive cooling” work in space?
Followup question, wouldn't nearly any cooling solution that works in space also work on the ground? Radiative cooling is the most basic/common cooling solution on the ground, the main challenge is just figuring out how to to move heat from the component to the radiator, which I don't think is solved by simply putting it in space?
I can help explain why. On earth, we are surrounded by stuff. Radiative cooling relies on thermal radiation leaving an object. Crucially, it also requires the object to absorb less thermal radiation than it emits. On earth we are surrounded by stuff, including air, that emits thermal radiation. There is a window of wavelengths, called the atmospheric window[0], that will allow parts of the thermal radiation out into space, rather than returned back. Imagine shining a flashlight on tinted glass, the light will get through depending on the color. If the light gets through, it has escaped. If not, the light is returned and heats up your surroundings again.
Also on earth the other methods (conduction, convection, and phase changes) are more effective. The earth can be used as a very big heat sink. On a spaceship or satellite, you don't have the extra mass to store the energy, so radiative is the only option.
I've been saying for a long time that we should consider remote areas for building datacenters for batch processing. At first I thought the poles (of the planet) might be good. The cooling is basically free. But the energy and internet connectivity would be a problem. At the poles you can really only get solar about three months a year, and even then you need a lot of panels. Most of Antarctica is powered diesel beca…
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Not continuous because weather is a thing. Also the sun isnt directly overhead the entire time so need a much larger array
Okay, build 12 datacenters, 30 degrees of longitude apart. I'm pretty sure it's still far cheaper.
I've been saying for a long time that we should consider remote areas for building datacenters for batch processing. At first I thought the poles (of the planet) might be good. The cooling is basically free. But the energy and internet connectivity would be a problem. At the poles you can really only get solar about three months a year, and even then you need a lot of panels. Most of Antarctica is powered diesel beca…
Geostationary is too far out