Yes it's a little blurry because ENIAC was not strictly programmable at first, more like re-wireable, but eventually it was retrofitted to read programs from a tape.

I believe it was Fortran designer John Backus that lamented that ENIAC was a parallel data flow computer before von Neumann got involved in converting it to sequential programming.

But IMO cryptanalysis doesn't count because it ain't general purpose, it's just a fancy adding machine, which puts it squarely behind Babbages plans.

(To add something else, last time I was digging into this history, it was apparent that those early computer engineers hadn't actually come across the work of Charles Baggage, after all he couldn't complete his machine so why would anyone have heard of it until historians a hundred years later looking for who was first.)

Really? That is so interesting - which ones? Any ancestors of commonly used ones today?

Not to go heads I win, tails you lose, but even if we go down this path - it's the same story because militaries are investing heavily in LLM stuff, both overtly and covertly. Outside of its obvious uses in modeling, data management, and other such things - there also seems to be a fairly widespread belief, among the powers that be, that if you just say the magic words to somebody, that you can make them believe anything. So hyper-scaling LLM potential has direct military application, same as Starlink and Starship.

> This is a question that analysts don't even ask

On the contrary, data centers continue to pop up deploying thousands of GPUs specifically because the numbers work out.

The H100 launched at $30k GPU and rented for $2.50/hr. It's been 3 years since launch, the rent price is still around $2.50.

During these 3 years, it has brought in $65k in revenue.

5 to 7 months given they want 100kw Per ton and magical mystery sauce shielding is going to do shit all.

Overview energy has done interesting work in this area.

Why would you transfer the energy to earth? The energy powers ai compute = $

It's always better to generate electricity on the ground than attempt to beam it to the ground from space. The efficiency loss of beamed power is huge.

Perhaps parent was being sarcastic.

Sure it is, just not economically at that scale yet. But if Starship brings the cost to orbit down significantly, maybe.

We have radiators on the ISS. Even if you kept the terrible performance of those ancient radiator designs (regularly exposed to sunlight, simplistic ammonia coolant, low temperature) you could just make them bigger and radiate the needed energy. Yes it would require a bit of engineering but to call it an "unsolved problem" is just exaggerating.

That is a fun thought experiment, as we wouldn't want to manufacture too far away from earth we may still be within the earth's atmosphere. I wonder what effect dumping greenhouse gases into the very upper levels of the atmosphere would have in comparison to doing it lower down. My assumption is it would eventually sink to a lower density layer, having more or less the same impact.

> Bezos has been pushing manufacturing-in-space for a long time, as a ideal candidate for what to do in space that you might prefer to not do on Earth. Robotics, AI automation, manufacturing - combo it in space, let the robots manufacture for us in space.

LOL, this seems so far off from the reality of what manufacturing looks like in reality. - sending raw materials up there - service technicians are necessary ALL THE TIME, in fully automated production lines - sending stuff back down

Maybe I lack vision, but data centers in space is a 1000x times better idea and that is already a terrible idea.

It's worth noting that the EACTS can at maximum dissipate 70kW of waste heat. And EEACTS (the original heat exchange system) can only dissipate another 14kW.

That is together less than a single AI inference rack.

And to achieve that the EACTS needs 6 radiator ORUs each spanning 23 meters by 11 meters and with a mass of 1100 kg. So that's 1500 square meters and 6 and a half metric tons before you factor in any of the actual refrigerant, pumps, support beams, valve assemblies, rotary joints, or cold side heat exchangers all of which will probably together double the mass you need to put in orbit.

There is no situation where that makes sense.

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Manufacturing in space makes sense (all kinds of techniques are theoretically easier in zero G and hard vacuum).

Mining asteroids, etc makes sense.

Datacenters in space for people on earth? That's just stupid.

The ISS consumes roughly 90kW. That’s about *one* modern AI/ML server rack. To do that they need 1000 m^2 of radiator panels (EACTS). So that’s the math: every rack needs another square kilometer of stuff put into orbit. Doesn’t make sense to me.

The distinction is that what they are doing for Webb is trying to dissipate small amounts of heat that would warm up sensors past cryogenic temperatures.

Like on the order of tens or hundreds of watts but -100C.

Dissipating heat for an AI datacenter is a different game. A single AI inference or training rack is going to be putting out somewhere around 100kW of waste heat. Temps don't have to be cryogenic but it's the difference between chiselling a marble or jade statue and excavating a quarry.

That's a solution for minuscule amounts of heat that nevertheless disturb extremely sensitive scientific experiments. Using gold, no less. This does not scale to a crapton of GPU waste heat.

Anything is possible here, it's just there's no goddamn reason to do any of this. You're giving up the easiest means of cooling for no benefit and you add other big downsides.

It's scifi nonsense for no purpose other than to sound cool.

Seems a bit of both. But no disparagement to your floor mopping (as I once was a dishwasher in a commercial kitchen myself), but there's a big gap between cleaning a floor, or a dish, and creating frontier models and spaceships.

That said: I think solar is niche, and a moon-shot for how they want it. Nuclear is the future of reliable energy for human civilization.

I think the K-scale is the wrong metric. I don't think we should be trying to take all the sun's energy as a goal (don't blot out the sun! don't hide it in a bushel!), or as a civilizational utiltiy - I'm sure better power supplies will come along.

I'm not aware of this - What's that?

I disagree, I think the idea of a cabal of reactionary comrades inside SpaceX is activist fantasy. I think SpaceX only does what it does with full committment of its people: mind, body, spirit.