Reuters blocks my VPN and the Wayback archived version doesn't display anything.
this post was submitted on 26 Oct 2026
465 points (97.0% liked)
Technology
89137 readers
3607 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
My ideal scenario:
-
The AI bubble lasts a little bit longer, they put data centers in space.
-
The bubble pops immediately after this, all the companies go broke and nobody maintains the satellites.
-
Free PC components rain from the skies, I sit out on the roof surrounded by buckets catching RAM and SSDs.
-
They're a bit scorched but I'll take what I can get.
- Data centers in space
- Overheat as there is no way to disperse heat in a vacuum
- AI companies go broke
- Can't maintain the useless space centers
- They crash and collide starting Kessler Syndrome
- We don't know who struck first, us or them, but we know that it was us that scorched the sky
I actually work in the space industry designing/building/testing satellites.
The answer is big fuggin radiators and perpetual night time sun synchronous orbit while the other vaporware/grifters trying to shill orbital power beaming blast your solar arrays with the power of a thousand suns every now and then.
There is math for it, and I have a fuck load of doubts, but people are funding this bullshit.
We don't know who struck first, us or them, but we know that it was us that scorched the sky
That sounds familiar, like a quote from some movie or game. What's it from?
The Matrix
The Matrix wasn't a movie, it was a documentary.
A pre documentary
I still want a cell phone like that... and I want payphones back.
That tracks with the context. Thanks!
Overheat as there is no way to disperse heat in a vacuum
This is incorrect. You cannot do convection heat removal in a vacuum because there's no air. However, you can still do radiant heat dispersal.
So you dump your heat into something that has a lot of surface area with which to radiate it away from your components.
Space is either very hot or very cold, depending on whether you are in light or shadow. If one side is constantly exposed to light, then there must be radiators on the other side to radiate that heat back off into the cold.
Exactly. Look at pictures of the ISS: it has radiators. It has to get rid of its heat, and it works. And those radiators aren't even as big as the solar panels. The radiators really aren't the problem.
The problem is scale. The ISS has about enough power for a single server rack. If you want entire datacenters in space, you're going to need thousands of times the scale of the ISS.
And radiateing heat is the worst way to remove it.
It's the only way to do it though, so you have no other choice.
Now calculate the size of the radiators a full scale data centre would need.
About 2000 sqm per MW, according to Google. Given an average data center load of 100 MW, about 200k sqm. Add that again for the solar panels you'd need, and you're at a cool half a million sqm. Compare the ISS, at a measly 7000 sqm. The mind (and budget) boggles.
Why doe people think data centres in space well work? What so you do with the heat?
Claude, defy physics for me. Make no mistakes
Genius!
Please please may all of this implodes and all tech giants go broke because people realize whe don't need them, we already have the fediverse and open-source softwares so can build a fair digital economy and get rid of the GAFAM and their friends.
That's not how bubbles popping works. If the bubble pops, AI is here forever. It's a bubble because there are more investors than there can be profit takers. The pop, is those investors losing money. But a TON of people that invested early, or make the product, become incredibly wealthy, and the companies that survive because household names for the next generation.
Damn you and your sad truths. Where are my rose-coloured glasses?
That's not even the worst, or IMO most likely outcome.
IMO nobody who "invests" will come out ahead. This whole thing is a combination ponzi-scheme + ball-and-cup game with IPOs invested in other IPOs and circular revenue streams respectively. As such the bubble will only burst when the billionaire class decides to stop bailing it out. When that happens, companies are liquidated and their assets are sold off at a discount to priveledged buyers. AKA the billionaires will just own it directly and by that point we wont be able to do shit.
We are at a pivotal shift in technology where computing power matters more than money. When the bubble bursts the physical assets that let them control the internet and us will remain.
Thats why they want killer robots. Once they have those they basically win.
So China has already gotten ahead of the US on AI...
view more: next ›