We stumbled upon a narrative this week that actually raised our eyebrows and made us marvel if we had been lacking one thing. The gist of the story is that U.S. Secretary of Power Chris Wright, who has levels in each electrical and mechanical engineering, has floated the concept of utilizing the nation’s fleet of emergency backup turbines to scale back the necessity to construct the handfuls of latest energy vegetation wanted to gasoline the AI knowledge heart constructing binge. The total story appears to be a Bloomberg unique and thus behind a paywall — hey, you don’t get to be a centibillionaire by giving stuff away, you recognize — so we could be lacking some important particulars, however this sounds fairly silly to us.
Initially, saying that 35 gigawatts of technology capability sits behind the large diesel and pure gas-powered turbines tucked behind each Dwelling Depot and Walmart within the land could be technically true, but it surely appears to disregard the truth that backup turbines aren’t engineered to run repeatedly. In our expertise, even the very best backup turbines are solely good for per week or two of steady operation earlier than one thing — often the brushes — provides up the ghost. That’s completely acceptable for one thing that’s designed to be operated only some occasions a 12 months, and perhaps for 3 or 4 days tops earlier than grid energy is restored. Asking these items to run repeatedly to supply the bottom load wanted to run an information heart is a recipe for speedy failure. And even when these turbines could possibly be operated repeatedly, there’s nonetheless the problem of commandeering non-public property for frequent use, in addition to the truth that you’d be depriving important amenities like hospitals and hearth stations of their backup energy. However no less than we’d have chatbots.
Effectively, that gained’t buff proper out. Roscosmos, the Russian area company, suffered a severe setback final week when it broken the launchpad at Web site 31/6 throughout a Soyuz launch. That is unhealthy information as a result of that facility is at the moment the one one on this planet able to launching Soyuz and Progress, each essential launch automobiles for the continued operation of the Worldwide Area Station. As regular, the very best protection of the accident comes from Scott Manley, who has all of the gory particulars. His sources inform him that the “service cabin,” a 20-ton platform that slides into place below the rocket as soon as it has been erected, is at the moment located contained in the flame trench relatively than being safely tucked into a distinct segment within the wall. He conjectures that the service cabin by some means obtained sucked into the flame trench throughout launch, presumably by the detrimental strain zone created by the passage of all that high-velocity rocket exhaust. No matter the reason for the accident, it causes some issues for the Russians and the broader worldwide area group. An uncrewed Progress launch to resupply the ISS was scheduled for December 20, and a crewed Soyuz mission is scheduled for July 2026. However with out that service cabin, neither mission appears possible. Hopefully, the Russians will be capable of get issues tidied up shortly, but it surely may not matter anyway since there’s at the moment a little bit of a site visitors jam on the ISS.
We noticed a very nice write-up over at Make: Journal by Dom Dominici about his impressions from his first Supercon go to. Spoiler alert: he actually appreciated it! He describes it as “an intimate, hands-on gathering that feels extra like a hacker summer time camp than a tech expo,” and that’s about the very best abstract of the expertise that we’ve seen but. His response to looking for what he assumed could be a big conference heart, however solely discovering somewhat hole-in-the-wall behind a pizza place off the principle drag in Pasadena, is priceless; sure, that thriller elevator truly goes someplace. For these of you who nonetheless haven’t made the pilgrimage to Pasadena, the article is a good take a look at what you’re lacking.
And eventually, we all know we had been somewhat tough on the Russians a few weeks again for his or her drunk-walking robotic demo hell, but it surely actually served to reveal simply how laborious it’s to imitate human strolling with a mechanical system. In any case, it takes the higher a part of two years for a brand new human to even get the fundamentals, and a hell of so much longer than that to get previous the random face-plant stage. However nonetheless, some humanoid robots are higher than others, to the purpose that there’s now a Guinness Guide of World Information class for longest stroll by a humanoid robotic. The present document was set final August, with a robotic from Shanghai-based Agibot Improvements happening a 106-km walkabout with out falling or (apparently) recharging. The journey happened in temperatures approaching 40°C and took 24 hours to finish, which suggests the robotic stored up a reasonably brisk strolling tempo over the course, which we suppose didn’t have any of the standard obstacles.
