Elon Musk's purchase of Twitter may soon go through

[BrawlMan]

What happened after Tesla opened a diner in Los Angeles?

The novelty of eating at a diner owned by the richest person in the world seems to have worn off in just a few months

www.theguardian.com

Well, ignoring the Musk/Tesla connection, I suppose that's what happens when you open an advertisement for cars that just so happens to serve mediocre overpriced food in a city that offers plenty options both better and cheaper.

What idiots thought it would be a good idea to eat there in the first place? What were they expecting?

 

[Thaluikhain]

What happened after Tesla opened a diner in Los Angeles?

The novelty of eating at a diner owned by the richest person in the world seems to have worn off in just a few months

www.theguardian.com

Well, ignoring the Musk/Tesla connection, I suppose that's what happens when you open an advertisement for cars that just so happens to serve mediocre overpriced food in a city that offers plenty options both better and cheaper.

“Best part was that it wasn’t crowded at all,”

What idiots thought it would be a good idea to eat there in the first place? What were they expecting?

Musk still has fans One wonders why, but maybe it's one of those things were it's a good sign that one can't really understand the thinking.

 

[Chimpzy]

What idiots thought it would be a good idea to eat there in the first place? What were they expecting?

Pretty typical story actually. Some celebrity launches a mediocre to bad product, relying on their status and their stans to hypebeast the shit out of it. Enough for normal people to come check it out, discover its mid, and make it a one time thing. Until all that's left is the cult, and that's usually not enough to sustain a business. See also Mr Beast Burger, Rihanna, Beyonce, Kardashian or anything that pre-presidencyTrump has ever done that's not real estate.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Pretty typical story actually. Some celebrity launches a mediocre to bad product, relying on their status and their stans to hypebeast the shit out of it. Enough for normal people to come check it out, discover its mid, and make it a one time thing. Until all that's left is the cult, and that's usually not enough to sustain a business. See also Mr Beast Burger, Rihanna, Beyonce, Kardashian or anything that pre-presidencyTrump has ever done that's not real estate.

I believe Rihanna's Fenty (or however it's spelt) cosmetic line is well regarded beyond having her name attached to it, but otherwise, yeah.

 

[Schadrach]

What were they expecting?

Hopefully just something slightly novel. Otherwise they were bound to be disappointed.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

I believe Rihanna's Fenty (or however it's spelt) cosmetic line is well regarded beyond having her name attached to it, but otherwise, yeah.

That might just be a product of Rihanna being smart enough to attach her name to a good product (which, all by ltself, would make her leagues smarter than many other celebrities).

 

[Agema]

That might just be a product of Rihanna being smart enough to attach her name to a good product (which, all by ltself, would make her leagues smarter than many other celebrities).

I'm not sure that's true. Look at the vast swathes of shit Trump slapped his name on over the years (up to an including actual fraud), and yet look where he's got.

In fact, it's his real business. He's been failing as a real estate developer for over 30 years. Alongside tax avoidance and fraud, it's branding and merchandising etc. that he's made his money on since then.

 

[BrawlMan]

X Faces Bans in Several Regions Over Grok-Produced Images

Grok is reportedly producing over 6,500 sexualized images every day.

www.socialmediatoday.com

https://parade.com/news/social-media-platform-x-twitter-could-be-banned-united-kingdom

Government accused of dragging its heels on deepfake law over Grok AI

The End Violence Against Women Coalition said it had been a year since the inital law was suggested

www.bbc.com

UK banning X Twitter over regulatory concerns

UK banning X Twitter is under consideration as authorities raise concerns over regulation, online safety, and platform compliance.

cedarnews.net

 

[Seanchaidh]

What were they expecting?

Food and service with the most well-known mascot in Corporate America?

 

[BrawlMan]

Food and service with the most well-known mascot in Corporate America?

A pack of deluded fools.

 

[BrawlMan]

Fuck Sweeny, and he can burn in hell.

Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney argues banning Twitter over its ability to AI-generate pornographic images of minors is just 'gatekeepers' attempting to 'censor all of their political opponents'

Not the hill I'd die on, but I'm not a billionaire.

www.pcgamer.com

 

[Schadrach]

How do you tell the difference between AI and reality, especially as technology moves forwards? Is that a picture of a real child made sexually explicit by AI? What if a sexually explicit picture of a real child is altered to look like AI? And so on. There is a case that with sufficient risk of harm, a wider ban is reasonable.

There are precedents for this. Many government regulations create limits for certain things (e.g. pollution), without necessarily needing to demonstrate that exceeding a limit would create harm to any specific individual. Many countries ban guns because of the risk that people might use them to kill others, and others ask whether it is reasonable to stop people owning gun just because a minority will use them to cause harm. Guns are an interesting sort of borderline territory for where society tends to tolerate restrictions on people's freedoms.

So for instance, is it the contention of anyone here that child pornography is equally or more vital to fundamental, individual freedoms than gun ownership?

I'm aware there's lots of grey area likely. But broadly, I think courts often do a pretty good job of settling on a reasonable boundary, so for instance broadly I think they could understand the difference between sexualised images of children designed for sexual titillation, and sexualised images of children designed for other artistic or documentary purposes.

I don't think you even really need new laws for this: A pornographic image created by using digital art tools to sexualize a non-sexual image of a real child should be treated the same whether those tools are Photoshop or AI. An image created by using an image created by sexually exploiting a real child should be treated like any other image made by sexually exploiting a child, even if you use digital tools (or analog ones for that matter) to make it look less realistic. An pornographic image of a fictional child created from scratch without sexually exploiting a child should be treated like any other pornographic image of a child created from scratch, regardless of whether it was created with ink, paints, Photoshop or an image generator. In this context, AI is no different than any other digital art tool and the use of such a tool doesn't change whether or not the image was produced by the sexual exploitation of a minor.

Historically SCOTUS decisions on the topic seem to tend to align with the idea that the point is to protect children from the abuse and exploitation inherent in the production of such things, but also to minimize 1st Amendment exceptions and thus to not criminalize (for example) drawings unless those drawings were made by sexually exploiting a child (either directly or second hand - for example making a painting of an photo made by sexually exploiting a child).

 

[BrawlMan]

​

 

[Agema]

So, Musk has used one of his companies (SpaceX) to buy another (xAI). The value of this combined firm is $1.25 trillion, although contextually that's something of a made-up number as there's insufficient trade of stocks (that isn't Musk himself) to really know what either is really worth.

What I did find odd was to see a justification for the merger including "orbital data centres". I think there's a problem here.

A massive problem with AI data centres is heat production - all those microchips producing oodles of heat. Hence all the stuff about problems with water usage for cooling. Heat moves by convection, conduction, and radiation. But because of the nature of a vacuum, there's no convection and conduction, just radiation. This means that it's very hard to get rid of heat in space when compared to Earth. Space is not necessarily cold - vacuum doesn't have a temperature, because there has to be something there to have temperature. About where we are in the solar system, anything facing the sun long enough is going to heat up to over 100C: things like an AI datacentre that needs solar panels facing the sun. An AI data centre that's also producing whopping oodles of heat because of all the microchips. So unless Elon Musk has discovered some incredible kind of super heat radiation device no-one else knows about, his space data centres are going to burn up very quickly. That's on top of the genuinely absurd costs of getting everything into space and maintaining it whilst it's up there.

The long and short of it: orbital data centres are, by my understanding of physics (which is not the highest) somewhere between practically and economically impossible by any tech we'll have for decades, and someone proposing them in this manner is potentially lying to conceal something.

 

[Thaluikhain]

The long and short of it: orbital data centres are, by my understanding of physics (which is not the highest) somewhere between practically and economically impossible by any tech we'll have for decades, and someone proposing them in this manner is potentially lying to conceal something.

Also not an expert, but yeah, that's ludicrous. I didn't bother thinking about the heating issue, which is one, but just getting everything up there when it can work fine down here. Maybe he's lying, maybe he's off with the pixies, maybe he thinks space is cool, and AI is cool so sticking the two together will give him fans.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

A massive problem with AI data centres is heat production - all those microchips producing oodles of heat. Hence all the stuff about problems with water usage for cooling. Heat moves by convection, conduction, and radiation. But because of the nature of a vacuum, there's no convection and conduction, just radiation. This means that it's very hard to get rid of heat in space when compared to Earth. Space is not necessarily cold - vacuum doesn't have a temperature, because there has to be something there to have temperature. About where we are in the solar system, anything facing the sun long enough is going to heat up to over 100C: things like an AI datacentre that needs solar panels facing the sun. An AI data centre that's also producing whopping oodles of heat because of all the microchips. So unless Elon Musk has discovered some incredible kind of super heat radiation device no-one else knows about, his space data centres are going to burn up very quickly. That's on top of the genuinely absurd costs of getting everything into space and maintaining it whilst it's up there.

You're absolutely right, but don't be fooled. The likes of Musk aren't thinking about the logistics of it all- they crave having data centers outside of any country on Earth (and therefore their laws).

 

[Seanchaidh]

A massive problem with AI data centres is heat production - all those microchips producing oodles of heat. Hence all the stuff about problems with water usage for cooling. Heat moves by convection, conduction, and radiation. But because of the nature of a vacuum, there's no convection and conduction, just radiation. This means that it's very hard to get rid of heat in space when compared to Earth. Space is not necessarily cold - vacuum doesn't have a temperature, because there has to be something there to have temperature. About where we are in the solar system, anything facing the sun long enough is going to heat up to over 100C: things like an AI datacentre that needs solar panels facing the sun. An AI data centre that's also producing whopping oodles of heat because of all the microchips. So unless Elon Musk has discovered some incredible kind of super heat radiation device no-one else knows about, his space data centres are going to burn up very quickly. That's on top of the genuinely absurd costs of getting everything into space and maintaining it whilst it's up there.

I wonder how large a satellite would have to be in order for its dark side to be cold like Mercury's (assuming it never changed its facing with respect to the sun). Too large, I should think.

 

[Chimpzy]

That's on top of the genuinely absurd costs of getting everything into space and maintaining it whilst it's up there.

And unless they make the satellites capable of reentry or have some other way of recovering them, both of which would substantially increase both complexity and cost, all the resources going into these data centers would also be effectively lost. I would say they might as well dump it all directly into a landfill, but that would actually be considerably less wasteful.

 

[Satinavian]

The long and short of it: orbital data centres are, by my understanding of physics (which is not the highest) somewhere between practically and economically impossible by any tech we'll have for decades, and someone proposing them in this manner is potentially lying to conceal something.

You are absolutely correct.

But cooling is only one of the issues (and it could be solved by basically making them bigger or less powerful meaning even more ridiculously expensive and less useful). The whole idea is soooo stupid. The immense cost of bringing all that stuff into orbit. The fact that you want immense stream of nonpublic data broadcasted in both directions. The issue with the already cluttered orbits and the high change to lose your data centers any minute. And the fact that all those chips under constant high usage have a lifetime of ~3 years until failures accumulate, even ignoring that they become obsolete eventually and you can't reasonably replace them.

This has so many drawbacks and it has a perfectly fine alternative on earth at a fraction of the cost and without all those problems.

I mean, we all know this is just to generate hype, maybe get some investment capital of clueless idiots who need a neew shiny thing, maybe also angling for US taxpayer money again. But even then it is just too stupid.

 

[Drathnoxis]

So, Musk has used one of his companies (SpaceX) to buy another (xAI). The value of this combined firm is $1.25 trillion, although contextually that's something of a made-up number as there's insufficient trade of stocks (that isn't Musk himself) to really know what either is really worth.

What I did find odd was to see a justification for the merger including "orbital data centres". I think there's a problem here.

A massive problem with AI data centres is heat production - all those microchips producing oodles of heat. Hence all the stuff about problems with water usage for cooling. Heat moves by convection, conduction, and radiation. But because of the nature of a vacuum, there's no convection and conduction, just radiation. This means that it's very hard to get rid of heat in space when compared to Earth. Space is not necessarily cold - vacuum doesn't have a temperature, because there has to be something there to have temperature. About where we are in the solar system, anything facing the sun long enough is going to heat up to over 100C: things like an AI datacentre that needs solar panels facing the sun. An AI data centre that's also producing whopping oodles of heat because of all the microchips. So unless Elon Musk has discovered some incredible kind of super heat radiation device no-one else knows about, his space data centres are going to burn up very quickly. That's on top of the genuinely absurd costs of getting everything into space and maintaining it whilst it's up there.

The long and short of it: orbital data centres are, by my understanding of physics (which is not the highest) somewhere between practically and economically impossible by any tech we'll have for decades, and someone proposing them in this manner is potentially lying to conceal something.

On the other hand, once you've gotten them into space it may be the best way to do all this processing from an environmental standpoint. You are cutting out all the middle steps of dumping all that heat into the atmosphere and dealing with the side effects while still needing to wait for it to radiate through a vacuum to be done with it.