One of the selling points they mention is that they won't need to use any fresh water for cooling.
My understanding was that water-demands on Earth were an overblown issue and minuscule when compared to other uses of fresh water such as watering one acre of farmland.
Not to mention, "used" water is just "warm" water that can then be used again for other purposes.
So are they perpetuating a myth here? Or is water use a bigger issue than I thought?
Well, for one thing you can't eat GPUs, so I'm ok with farmland taking up more water.
Also, the "warm" water has already destroyed ecosystems because the data centers are just dumping it. It's a completely solvable issue if we had any common sense regulations.
It's not a real issue, but it's truthy enough to generate real opposition to datacenter buildout and catalyze AI hate. So definitionally avoiding it from the get-go might end up being worth it.
It really depends where they get the water. If they're pumping an aquifer fry and doing evaporative cooling they could be just boiling an entire areas water source. If they could figure out how to use salt water it'd be ideal.
Round-trip to GEO will add 238.7 milliseconds to whatever other infra you have over the last 200 km vertically* and whatever along the ground. It's probably fine for some things, but not for everything.
* while there could, in principle, be no extra infra in the last 200 km vertically, that means someone on the ground is talking directly to GEO. As per similar discussion about big PV space stations beaming power to the ground, your minimum ground spot size for a transmitter this big and this far away is still tens of km, which limits the other parts of your overall system design.
This is what I do with my "Daily Brain Dump". I use Apple Notes bc it syncs up nicely with my phone. Every day I add a new entry to the top of the note. Mix of TODO's and a journal. Actually have two files, one for my life in general and one for work.
Exactly this. I realized that full featured tools like OmniPlan made increased my anxiety because it is too easy the build up to do items that you would never do. Having a simple note pad forces me to delete unnecessary cruft every week since I have to manually copy it. Also the notes approach gives me one place to look for and summarize all of my activities.
Teens are old enough to find their way around any content bans. This seems like a good way to introduce teens to VPN's and skirting content regulations early. It's also dumb because YouTube can teach you almost anything, I'd say it's the "best of the worst" when it comes to social media on the internet.
My teens, and each one I have encountered through them, cannot discern a pixel from a wallsocket. They are tech consumers. Not tech savvy. My dad (82) is more tech savvy.
They're not tech savvy because they didn't need to be.
That will change. One thing that has not changed from our parents generation to our generation to the upcoming generations is that teenagers will be troublemakers, push boundaries, get caught doing a number of things that displease you, and get away with many more things that you won't find out about for decades - if ever.
I'm not sure why you're being dismissive. I have no doubt that these sorts of restrictions are coming for something they actually use and care about.
And speaking more broadly, teenagers are in the process of growing into adults. With that comes the forging of their own identity, and part of that journey is trying things and discovering who they are - in no small part outside of your watchful gaze.
Your kids don't need to be savvy, just a small number of kids will create the culture and technology to circumvent these laws and other kids will consume it. And the sharpest kids will always outflank the adults because their perspectives are fresher and their motivations are far more personal and urgent.
My 13yo wanted to install some dotnet disassembly or injection tool so he could download mods and inject new code into existing games on steam. All his friends were doing it and I'm the mean dad because I won't let him download any random code from the internet and run it.
They don't know what they are doing, but they know how to follow instructions on github.
Exactly, teens have tons of access to tech. But that tech is just a straw through which to consume an endless stream of content. It's not a tool to master and manipulate.
A point sometimes missed is that government bans on access to knives and aerosols aren't so much designed to actually make it "impossible" as to impose a social barrier, which demands active bypassing, and so clarifies the responsibility across the boundary.
Speeding isn't made impossible by speeding fines. It sets a civil penalty, non-compliance with the penalty in turn sets a criminal penalty, which in turn can lead to significant consequence.
When people say "you can just do things" this is what they mean. Fun article, I hope everyone reading this who wishes they had something like it in their neighborhood starts this weekend by inviting their nearest friend for coffee on the stoop.
Haha, I came here to post this and I was beaten! This is one of the clearest expressions of anarchist praxis I've seen in a while. (Of course, people will not understand this, because anarchism is seen as a weird, deviant, punk subculture.)
You definitely still can just show up and do cool hacks.
Also hackathons are really easy to host if you keep them under 50 people. All you really need at that size is a co-working space and some pizzas.
So if you don't like the vibe at your local hackathons, why not host your own one weekend?
I think the key is really the size of the thing. Giant hackathons with big sponsors and prizes are always going to be more "serious" feeling than your local self-organized hack-days.
One thing I'd like more info on is in what ways Nestlé and other water companies have contributed to the problem.
I've long heard that they lobby to prevent the local Government in CDMX from providing potable water in order to protect their bottled water and water-delivery business, but I actually don't know how well substantiated those accusations are.
On the positive side of things, Mexico City gets a ton of rain during the wet season which can be harvested with rooftop collectors.
When I lived in Oaxaca it was a massive issue with portable water only being available through private means from private springs in the nearby area. All hotels and tourist attractions had access to water, while the rest went without, some for months.
