Readit News logoReadit News
hristov commented on xAI joins SpaceX   spacex.com/updates#xai-jo... · Posted by u/g-mork
rybosworld · 8 days ago
> The basic math is that launching a million tons per year of satellites generating 100 kW of compute power per ton would add 100 gigawatts of AI compute capacity annually, with no ongoing operational or maintenance needs. Ultimately, there is a path to launching 1 TW/year from Earth.

> My estimate is that within 2 to 3 years, the lowest cost way to generate AI compute will be in space.

This is so obviously false. For one thing, in what fantasy world would the ongoing operational and maintenance needs be 0?

hristov · 8 days ago
Currently, just a cursory google search shows $1500-3000 per kilogram to put something into low earth orbit. Lets take the low bound because of efficiencies of scale. So $1500.

A million tons will cost $1500x1000x1000000= 1,500,000,000,000. That is one and a half TRILLION dollars per year. That is only the lift costs, it does not take into account the cost of manufacturing the actual space data centers. Who is going to pay this?

hristov commented on Experts warn of growing parrot crisis in Canada [video]   ctvnews.ca/ottawa/video/2... · Posted by u/debo_
hristov · 25 days ago
In the northeastern towns of la county there entire flocks of wild parrots flying around, that are escaped or freed pet parrots or descendants from such pet parrots.

I guess parrots would not survive in the wild in canada, but if you have parrot you can no longer care for, maybe you could consider releasing it in the la foothills. He will have friends there.

Maybe is the key word here. I am not a parrot expert.

hristov commented on Warren Buffett steps down as Berkshire Hathaway CEO after six decades   latimes.com/business/stor... · Posted by u/ValentineC
kwanbix · a month ago
I will never undertand this people that live all their life working, when they clearly have the chance to retire much sooner.

I will retire right away if I had 10 millions. Maybe 50 millions if I was younger than 40.

hristov · a month ago
When you are the boss work is a lot less unpleasant than when you are an employee. When you are at the highest level in the organization and also the major shareholder, you can shape your work environment and and workday in a way that you like it.

He worked for 60 years because he liked doing it, and as he became more successful, the job just getting more pleasant for him.

I cannot speak for him but from reading his annual reports and various writings and listening to the occasional interview, it seems that he enjoyed working much more than anything he would do while being retired.

You can call this great american work ethic, and that is part of it, but the other part of it is that when you are the boss you can kind of remove most unpleasant parts of your job and leave only the parts that are the most fun and interesting for you.

hristov commented on Experts explore new mushroom which causes fairytale-like hallucinations   nhmu.utah.edu/articles/ex... · Posted by u/astronads
card_zero · a month ago
So, about one mushroom species in five is poisonous. Why is the ratio so low, why are there lots of edible ones? Without hard-shelled seeds to spread, why be eaten? And the poisonous ones apparently don't use color as a warning signal, and don't smell all that bad, and some of the poisons have really mild effects, like "gives only some people diarrhea" or "makes a hangover worse". Meanwhile three of the deadliest species seemed to need their toxin (amanitin) so much that they picked it up through horizontal gene transfer. Why did just those ones need to be deadly? In addition to which we have these species that don't even make you sick, just make you trip out, a function which looks to have evolved three times over in different ways. What kind of half-assed evolutionary strategies are these? What do mushrooms want?
hristov · a month ago
The fly agaric, is very poisonous and has a very distinctive red with white dots pattern to warn about its poison. Unfortunately, that pattern looks so pretty that disney and ninetendo decided to use it as their generic mushroom coloring. So, if you are hiking with your kids, and they see a pretty mushroom just like in cartoons, don't let them touch it.

If there are enough poisonous mushrooms, it is possible that most animals decide to leave mushrooms alone regardless of distinctive coloring. That seems to be the case because mushrooms tend not to be bitten by large animals, at least when i go mushrooming. If that happens, it is possible that other mushrooms do not develop poison but rather freeload on the poison of other mushrooms.

Thus, one may guess, that first distinctive poisonous mushrooms like the fly agaric developed, then most animals large enough to eat them developed an instinct to avoid all mushrooms, and then the non-poisonous freeloading mushrooms developed.

There are some psychedelic mushrooms in the amazon that use their psychedelic effect to zombify ants and force them to spread the mushrooms spores. That is really disturbing, find a youtube video of it if you feel like having some nightmares.

Furthermore it should be noted that the poison or the psychedelic effect may not even be relevant for evolution. The poisonous or psychedelic compound may be produced for completely different purpose or as a byproduct of the production of another useful compound.

hristov commented on US blocks all offshore wind construction, says reason is classified   arstechnica.com/science/2... · Posted by u/rbanffy
alecco · 2 months ago
Occam's Razor: offshore wind requires a lot of rare earths for their magnets and whatnot. US military-industrial complex needs the little remaining global supply not under China's export controls.
hristov · 2 months ago
Any electricity produced by turning generators will require rare earths. This includes, every current non-trivial electricity source with the exception of solar. Gas, oil, coal and nuclear all work by heating steam and running it through a turbine that turns a generator that makes electricity. For hydro, the falling water turns the turbine/generator.

So any source of electricity that may replace these wind turbines (other than solar) will require about the same amount of rare-earths. And lets face it, Trump is doing his best to hamstring solar as well. He has cancelled all solar subsidies and has hit solar with major tariffs.

I think Occams Razor would lead to a very different conclusion.

hristov commented on US blocks all offshore wind construction, says reason is classified   arstechnica.com/science/2... · Posted by u/rbanffy
lateforwork · 2 months ago
The Saudis have enormous influence over Trump through business deals. So does Qatar through the jet they gifted Trump, and the UAE through crypto deals.

These oil rich countries are no fans of clean energy.

Is it merely coincidence, then, that Trump is canceling wind and solar projects in the United States?

Previously Trump also canceled the largest solar project in the United States. Known as Esmeralda 7, the project planned in the Nevada desert would have produced enough energy to power nearly two million homes.

hristov · 2 months ago
The Arab Gulf states have also been pumping billions into Jared Cushner investment vehicles.

https://www.newsweek.com/jared-kushner-says-15bn-qatar-uae-c...

hristov commented on What will enter the public domain in 2026?   publicdomainreview.org/fe... · Posted by u/herbertl
hristov · 2 months ago
The maltese falcon (the book, not the movie) is entering the public domain next year!
hristov · 2 months ago
Also of interest is vile bodies, which is a very good but characteristically depressing book by evelyn waugh.
hristov commented on What will enter the public domain in 2026?   publicdomainreview.org/fe... · Posted by u/herbertl
hristov · 2 months ago
The maltese falcon (the book, not the movie) is entering the public domain next year!
hristov commented on AMD signs AI chip-supply deal with OpenAI, gives it option to take a 10% stake   reuters.com/business/amd-... · Posted by u/chillax
nerdix · 4 months ago
The title didn't make this obvious (at least not to me) but it's OpenAI that has the option to buy 10% of AMD. Not the other way around.

In case you're wondering how OpenAI could afford to buy 10% of AMD while they are hemorrhaging money -- the terms of the deal allows OpenAI to buy 160 million shares at 1 cents a share.

I could be thinking about this the wrong way but it appears that AMD is basically subsidizing the cost of the GPUs with equity.

hristov · 4 months ago
It sure seems that way. The stock options are worth, at the current price of AMD stock, about 32.8 Billion dollars. AMD is giving out these stock options essentially for free in exchange of open ai purchasing chips from AMD.

So open ai are getting a 32.8 billion dollars rebate. But on what? Here the press releases are a bit vague. They say that Open ai committed to buying six gigawatts of AMD chips. Anybody know how to convert that into money?

hristov commented on US economy added just 22,000 jobs in August, unemployment highest in 4 yrs   cnn.com/2025/09/05/econom... · Posted by u/mgh2
mrtksn · 5 months ago
Okay, so there will be rate cut soon and the USD will become even weaker, right? Then with those tariffs, which are consumption tax on imports, will become even more pronounced as US added value part will be smaller percentage of the overall final price tag. So everything will be quite expensive if people still have money to pay, if not the margins and as a result the profits of businesses will go down.

Is this an attempt to reduce the infamous American consumerism? Also maybe force companies to build more in US but wouldn't that require strong immigration as the unemployment is actually still quite low and those who lost jobs wouldn't be plug-n-play employees for manufacturing jobs that didn't exist before.

hristov · 5 months ago
No this is an attempt to shift the burden of taxation to the middle class and poor. It is a consumption tax pure and simple. If you tax everything like sneakers and toothpaste the tax burden shifts to the middle class and poor because a billionaire can make income 100 times larger than a middle class person but he does not use a hundred times as much toothpaste and does not buy 100 times more sneakers.

This of course will depress consumption which will seriously damage the economy but the current administration just does not have the brains to consider these effects.

Furthermore, the immigrant chasing is seriously reducing jobs openings. This seems quite the opposite from the intended effect. But it is done so chaotically and with such cruelty that it is flat out destroying businesses rather than allowing them to hire citizens to replace illegal immigrants.

u/hristov

KarmaCake day11374March 26, 2009View Original