__patchbit__'s comments

On: There is no you in your brain – your identity is a "society of the mind"

[__patchbit__]

There's this TED talk from someone knowledgeable in the brain science field who happened to experience loss of function temporarily to one side of the brain that had the affect of attenuating the self identity but widen the spread of parts belonging to the whole

On: 中文 Literacy Speedrun II: Character Cyclotron

[__patchbit__]

The polyglot og Chaz Freeman is interviewed on the CGTN YouTube channel and has amusing thumbnail sketches on his language learning journey.

On: Apple's $599 MacBook Neo Sold Out Through April Amid Surging Demand

[__patchbit__]

To work around the rounded upper corner display that don't work well with the Stickies app, the preference settings for window gap margins is needed.

Four sharp corners for the actual display and no notch are winning moves.

On: Future Long Range Assault Aircraft Officially Named MV-75 Cheyenne II

[__patchbit__]

Inferring from first principles, the down selected competitor looked to have more effective engineered lethality and manoeuvrability, smaller approach outline.

On: Apple's 'AI coding bootcamp' could help its engineers fix Siri

[__patchbit__]

Siri for Accessibility. Think about that. NextStep. Siri for Mac User Guide and desired effects in preference setting.

On: Ask HN: Who is your favourite Entrepreneur/Visionary?

[__patchbit__]

Elon Musk then Steve Jobs.

On: God sleeps in the minerals

[__patchbit__]

I wonder whether the four valence electrons occupy fixed quantum configurations or tokens for carbon approximating intellectual consciousness in life

On: Pentagon approaches automakers, manufacturers to boost weapons production

[__patchbit__]

Solid. Is the count for a small conflict 60 thousand lives ruined unwillingly or dead needlessly?

On: SpaceX Is Basically a Huge Meme Stock

[__patchbit__]

> The orbital datacentre concept is just plain nutty

It's edge computing. Obsoletes the round trip for ground based AI crunch and power draw, cooling.

[crote → __patchbit__]

You still need a round trip to space and back - which with a Starlink-like orbit means a distance of at least 400km. At that point it makes significantly more sense to place your "edge computing AI engine" at a 5G base station a few dozen km away.

[justinclift → crote]

Unless the other computing stuff isn't on Earth?

[f_devd → __patchbit__]

Except there is little cooling or power in space, depending on your position in orbit you could only have one of those at a time.

[metalman → f_devd]

military/industrial customers want this for tactical operations fully discreet low latency compute that integrates with there existing space hardware so the ability to run drones, and meatbots from space, with low hardware requirements on the ground, but with lets say 1000~2000 users max, power users, but not that many. so batteries, heat sinks,he refrigeration radiators, on a sattelite fleet. they have been trialing this for years and are pitching putting ALL of the military compute in space, no more dirty civilian hands on there toys

[tim333 → f_devd]

I saw Musk discussing that and his main argument in favour is there's unlimited solar power whereas on earth there are a lot of power constraints.

[crote → tim333]

Sure, in the same way that there is unlimited solar power on earth.

There are orbits with 24/7 or near-24/7 sunlight - but those are very undesirable if you want a low-latency data link back to Earth. Just like you can get 24/7 sunlight on the North / South Pole - but they are still pretty bad locations for a data center.

LEO orbits like those used by Starlink have far better connectivity, but about the same sunlight exposure as the surface as the planet will be between you and the sun about half the time.

Also, power is the easy part. Cooling is far harder.

On: Let's talk space toilets

[__patchbit__]

Scale up the nautilus body plan to a 200m radius shell and contain spindrive artificial gravity for collecting pellets.