My guess is we don't get very far (probably to the first company bankruptcy, tbh) before things start colliding and it goes catastrophically wrong.

RE: https://mastodon.social/@esoastronomy/116844616500605008

I honestly don't see how this is even possible -- it's up there with Musk's "Let's colonize Mars!" in terms of sheer not-gonna-happen. (Or at least not-gonna-go-well)

Space is big, but orbits really aren't, especially when everything's whizzing around at 7km/s in a hostile environment constantly under bombardment from above and subject to the whims and violent burps of the Sun.

On the one hand it isn't the role of school districts to compensate for the bad decisions of Capitalism. On the other hand it's a one-time capital expense that provides value for decades just in electricity, not even counting the benefits in shade they get if they go the solar-car-parking.

Frankly I could make an excellent case that any school district in an area with sufficient sun is doing themselves a disservice *not* installing solar as a long term budget win.

Oh, look, datacenters driving up the cost of power.

This is one of those cases where I'd say the school district(s) and municipal governments should install some mass solar. Schools tend to have huge parking lots you can put solar shade over, and buildings with lots of flat space on their roofs, plus an in with the planning people. Bonus is you get incremental benefits -- you don't have to wait for everything to be installed and can turn things on as they go in.

https://www.404media.co/henrico-virginia-datacenter-energy-cost-email/

does anyone want a slice of (Apple) history?

I'm selling my (working) Apple G4 Cube and bits

https://ebay.io/m/fhLhlA

RE: https://mastodon.social/@brettcannon/116837182802106809

A reminder of why you should never put your "smart" TV on the internet. And also this should just be illegal. Put some sensible regulations in place as to what apps are allowed to do.

RE: https://mastodon.social/@arstechnica/116834655824912692

I dunno, having "we obey the law" only be the fourth thing on your important rule list...

Looking at all this goose discourse I think we can all agree that Masayoshi Son has definitely laid a very big egg.

RE: https://flipboard.com/@euronews/business-m1eitu69z/-/a-a07IsLiFSNOAGJmRUazlOw%3Aa%3A89340020-%2F0

Of coruse he does. Zuck hasn't had an original idea since the "hurr hurr let's rate the hot girls" one that started Facebook.

€1.8T in four years exfiltrated from the EU, all for single-use sludge. This is why renewables are such a long term win -- replace that with wind, solar, and batteries (likely for less than €1.8T) *and then you never have to spend that money in the future*. You can do a lot with that money you didn't spend.

Which is why, I expect, all the petrostates and fossil fuel companies are so against renewables, it means cutting off their guaranteed subscription payments.

https://cleantechnica.com/2026/06/22/clean-break-eu-can-build-nearly-twice-as-many-wind-turbines-and-evs-as-it-needs-each-year/

RE: https://mastodon.social/@shoq/116799902279736832

The ground terminal issue is one I hadn't considered, and honestly it's just insurmountable in the reasonable future. Hell, I have no idea how Starlink manages enough downlink capacity for its satellites as it is, and I *really* wonder how much extra data they can sling around before it's basically saturated. (I don't recall that coming up in their S1 but I didn't look, either)

RE: https://mastodon.social/@asymco/116799724330756972

Unfortunately our industry's ability to chew through RAM has grown faster than the cost of RAM has decreased.

Well, until recently. Maybe we'll start doing some rudimentary optimizing for space and speed now. (Not that I'm expecting that, but one can hope)

RE: https://mastodon.social/@asymco/116799194389134625

Putting aside the usual "Apple is Doomed!" thing which got rolled out like clockwork for many many quarters, you *should* plan for sustainable growth. Nothing grows exponentially forever but cancer and invasive species (and then not even that), and at some point a natural equilibrium is hit. This is normal and expected and fine, but failing to acknowledge and plan for this leads to inevitable crashes.

It's preorder day and I can confirm that @grimalkina's book is up for preorder on the Kobo store for those of us who would rather not do Amazon: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/the-psychology-of-software-teams

RE: https://flipboard.com/@gizmodo/tech-fknh6odjz/-/a-OHAkA26iQ-yg-bj1mvVCDw%3Aa%3A1876139665-%2F0

I'm sure Tesla will attest that in the two seconds before impacting the house that autopilot wasn't engaged and also they have record that they warned the driver they needed to take control so it *totally* wasn't their fault and was absolutely the fault of the driver.

Lapping coal is great, don't get me wrong, but it happened because the "free market" in Texas (which isn't free, it isn't anywhere) could exploit lots of cheap land and do whatever they wanted with it. That's not the situation elsewhere, and a situation that even in Texas is going to have some serious externalities in the future.

On the upside, since coal is basically a subscription for electricity, if power demand drops (because, say, AI datacenters crater) it'll get shut off first.

It's interesting to see people mis-analyze a situation and take the wrong thing out of it. For example: "Deep-red Texas offers lessons for the liberal states that have committed to lofty climate goals yet failed to build much solar or batteries so far." except much of Texas' wins here come from a sloppy resource waste and lax environmental regs, not anything "free market".

Learning the wrong thing means making bad future decisions.

https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/solar/solar-overtakes-coal-texas-first

It looks like the heat wave may do what decades of people going "eww, gross" haven't done -- get large parts of the Seine cleaned up. That's excellent -- not going to complain about the reasons people clean a ginormous mess up, gonna focus on the mess-cleaning.

(This is, in retrospect, shade on the ideological purists. I wonder how well billionaires work as water filters)

https://france3-regions.franceinfo.fr/normandie/seine-maritime/rouen/pourra-t-on-bientot-se-rafraichir-dans-la-seine-a-rouen-un-collectif-se-bat-depuis-trois-ans-pour-creer-des-zones-de-baignade-3372733.html?utm_source=flipboard&utm_medium=activitypub

I am regularly saddened by seeing companies which have nothing at all to do with AI touting AI "compatible" features in their marketing.

It's not that they do it, I totally understand why you'd feel the need to do that (and frankly it's basically obligatory no matter how irrelevant it might be). It's that everyone's being forced by economic and management necessity to cater to this heaving monstrosity.

Here's @grimalkina bringing some serious truth.

I will point out this bit from the start of the thread: "Picture being the first person to step out onto a dance floor at a party. Scary, right? It feels a lot easier to be the second, even better to be the third or fourth"

This is where folks with comfort/privilege should exercise that comfort/privilege. There's no meaningful downside to being the first, so do that thing. You're safe, so leverage that safety for good.

https://mastodon.social/@grimalkina/116755374133880007