patrick.net

If Elon didn't buy Twitter, Tim Walz would be VP of the United States. Instead, his career was ended from a video on 𝕏.

Elon may be the only billionaire who actually deserves every penny of it.

https://x.com/ClassicLearner/status/2008315421707866429

“Something that people should be concerned about is that there's an increasing movement to place activists as judges. If you look at who the Biden administration confirmed as federal judges and who have been confirmed at the state level in far-left states, increasingly, they don't care about following the law; they care about social justice, not justice justice, what they call social justice. Activists as judges. Now you've got a real problem. If that continues, we will not have a real justice system.” - Elon Musk, Interview with Tucker Carlson, October 7, 2024

Patrick says

https://nypost.com/2026/01/01/us-news/musk-signals-hell-back-republicans-in-2026-months-after-feud-with-trump-and-pledging-to-start-new-political-party/

Billionaire Elon Musk signaled Thursday that he’ll fund Republican candidates ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, arguing the country is doomed if Democrats take control of Congress.

“America is toast if the radical left wins,” Musk wrote on X. “They will open the floodgates to illegal immigration and fraud.

“Won’t be America anymore.”

He is aiming for favor trading. Third party is nuclear option, because if it controls swing states it’s the only one that matters.

https://www.coffeeandcovid.com/p/awkwardness-saturday-january-31-2026

This morning’s entry comes courtesy of PC Magazine, which yesterday reported, “SpaceX Eyes 1 Million Satellites For Orbital Data Center Push.” That’s not a typo: the space giant seeks official permission to launch one million satellites. ...

SpaceX currently has more satellites than any other company or government, totaling around 9,600. It would even be remarkable if they doubled it.

But a million of them? For what?

The filing explained that the proposed massive satellite array is intended to support artificial intelligence. Here is the formal description from the application:

SpaceX is designing its satellite system to accommodate the explosive growth of data demands driven by AI, machine learning, and edge computing, where processing needs are already beginning to outpace terrestrial capabilities. To deliver the compute capacity required for large-scale AI inference and data center applications serving billions of users globally, SpaceX aims to deploy a system of up to one million satellites to operate within narrow orbital shells spanning up to 50 km each (leaving sufficient room to deconflict against other systems with comparable ambitions). This system will operate between 500 km and 2,000 km altitude and 30 degrees and sun-synchronous orbit inclinations. SpaceX plans to design and operate different versions of satellite hardware to optimize operations across orbital shells.

This is strange. They are going to be compute devices in the sky?

I can see that there is a lot of solar power up there, but CPUs still rapidly get obsolete, so it seems kinda crazy to spend so much to launch them.

Jeff Childers points out that China has an undersea data center:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/suwannagauntlett/2025/10/20/china-has-an-underwater-data-center-the-us-will-build-them-in-space/

China’s Highlander has launched an underwater data center in Hainan, the first project like it to be deployed at commercial scale. The energy demands of Ai data centers come largely from the cooling requirements of the servers, and China has answered this question by placing their Ai data centers underwater. This is something that’s been successfully experimented with by Microsoft among others but hasn’t been deployed commercially before now. The benefits of submerged data centers include a reduction of 90% in cooling costs as the ocean’s currents do what fresh water would otherwise; this translates into 40% more compute than a comparable land-based system. When coupled with renewable energy the costs drop further as this project is largely powered by an adjacent offshore windfarm; the company says that it’s 95% powered with renewable energy.

Ah, SpaceX is counting on space to dissipate the heat.

Patrick says

Ah, SpaceX is counting on space to dissipate the heat.

I've wondered why nobody (apparently) has considered Alaska. Electrons travel easily.

SpaceX is putting out missiles on the moon and into space, it’s not for peaceful purposes.

FortWayneHatesRealtors says

SpaceX is putting out missiles on the moon and into space, it’s not for peaceful purposes.

The idea of military use of the Moon has been considered 50-60 years ago and was laughed out of the room.

Dissipatiing heat in space (radiation) is much less efficient than convective cooling (using a fluid to carry heat away). Why do you think the ISS has those gargantuan heat radiators? If they could take advantage of convection, they would only need a 30 ton HVAC.

Patrick says

Ah, SpaceX is counting on space to dissipate the heat.

Not a good idea. Space is a vacuum, which is the perfect insulator. The only way to lose heat in space is to radiate it off.
Why not Install the devices in Antarctica? Maybe this is another reason Trump wants Greenland.

True:

Dissipating heat in space is extremely difficult because the only mechanism available is thermal radiation, as convection and conduction require a medium like air or fluid, which does not exist in the vacuum of space.

Radiation is the sole method: Heat must be radiated away from a spacecraft as electromagnetic waves, governed by the Stefan-Boltzmann Law, which states that the power radiated is proportional to the fourth power of the absolute temperature and the surface area of the radiator.

Large surface areas are needed: To reject heat efficiently, especially at lower temperatures (e.g., around 300 K), spacecraft require large radiator surfaces—sometimes hundreds of square meters—leading to significant mass and volume challenges.