Comment by treadful@lemmy.zip on Las Vegas' dystopia-sphere, powered by 150 Nvidia GPUs and drawing up to 28,000,000 watts, is both a testament to the hubris of humanity and an admittedly impressive technical feat

I love this kind of shit. Building things for the sake of it is worth it. Not only as just expression, which may be hubris but it’s still expression. Also entertainment, inspiration, pushing the art of engineering, and just giving people something to do, and all the good that comes with that like personal and trade growth.

A purely utilitarian life is a life only spent on survival. Not a life I want to live.

Sure but we’re burning tons of coal to have this thing advertise minion movies, not anything artistic or worthwhile.

This isn’t pushing any boundaries, though. This is off the shelf technology. Anybody can do something big by throwing a shit ton of money at it. It would be pushing boundaries of tech or art if it was for instance super power efficient, or mind bending in any way. This is a fucking sphere, it’s the simplest shape and a rip off of the pyramids but less original and not even comparable in terms of durability.

It is absolutely pushing boundaries to be driving this many pixels at a frame rate that doesn’t take minutes to refresh. I build a lot of projects with addressable LEDs and the typical hobbyist stuff chokes out when you start trying to control more than a thousand or so. This thing has 256 million pixels inside and 1.2 million outside.

Could it not be argued that building this thing now gives people a chance at looking at the power draw and attempting to make it super efficient? Like now people have a tool to test things on.

They did mention that they are working on making 70% of this powered by solar panels. Maybe this will push forward solar technology in some way.

A purely utilitarian life is a life only spent on survival. Not a life I want to live.

Well, that hubris won’t afford you a livable world for much longer.

We could have respected the planet that birthed us, and taken only what we needed. Instead we extracted every natural resource we could find, and left behind countless shattered ecosystems. Even as the walls close in, we accelerate our pettiness and perform acts of wastefulness that alone do measurable ecological damage, and we celebrate it because it is “cool”.

If this is something you feel strongly about, then please stop eating factory farmed meat and animal products if you havent already. It is something you personally can actually do. It helps, and it will genuinely make you feel better. You may not have much power, but using the power you do have to help the team you claim to be on instead of the other team is a massive step forward.

It helps,

no, it doesnt. despite the existence of vegans, meat production increases every year, year over year.

And there’s crime so you might as well rape. What a pathetic cop out. You’re lucky there are so many people taking care of you.

And there’s crime so you might as well rape

the claim is that by not consuming factory farmed meat, you make an impact on the amount of emissions from its production. this is not true. it is also not analogous to raping anyone.

You honestly think that factory farm emissions font change if people don’t give them money for their product? If your head was any further down in the sand, the magma would melt it.

Analogies don’t indicate a similar level of morality. They are used to explain points to people who, for some reason, are unwilling or unable to otherwise understand.

Look, you’re not really wrong, but you get that this shit is why people get irritated with vegans right? We were talking about being wasteful with energy resources for the sake of capitalism and you came in with a lazy segue to animal rights and nutritional health.

It’s a conversation that we should be having, but it’s also insufferable to constantly be shoehorning it into every conversation.

That’s not veganism, that’s environmentalism. Veganism is recognizing that animals have the right not to be treated as property and have atrocities visited upon them. That the experiences of animals are real and matter. That their suffering is identical in nature to your own.

Avoiding animal products for the good of the environment has nothing to do with veganism. At least understand what your childish knee-jerk reactions are actually reacting to.

You came in here with your absolutist utilitarian life above all else or we all die post just to respond with this because someone suggested you to stop eating meat. Beautiful.

I don’t agree. The comment points out the single most effektive move an individal without political nor financial power can make to cut personal co2-emissions with just a change of habit. It’s not about veganism, animal rights or your health, it’s just about sanity. Us still eating meat even though we know better is an incredibly dumb waste of energy for the sake of pleasure, exactly like this shitty powereating globe.
As long as >95% of the global population still consumes meat I understand the urge to bring this topic everywhere.

The comment points out the single most effektive move an individal without political nor financial power can make to cut personal co2-emissions with just a change of habit.

eating meat doesn’t emit co2

Producing that meat does.

Note that the commenter didn’t say to quit all eating meat. They just said to quit eating “factory farmed” meat.

It’s not about eating meat, it’s about factory farming the meat and the damage to the environment caused by it.

Take a train instead of a flight. Cycle to work or take public transport instead of driving. Install a heat pump or solar in your house. There are a million things people can do to cut down their emissions that can be as effective as becoming herbivores, depending on each one’s personal situation.

Plus, I don’t have the numbers in my head but I’m pretty sure a locally grown fillet of chicken is more environmentally friendly than an avocado that has travelled across the Atlantic, so “buy local” would be probably better advice.

Yeah, so many things one should do. Yet nothing is as simple as paying for a different product next time you’re shopping your groceries.
Avocados are way less harmfull to our planet than local meat. People keep bringing this up so often it’s #20 on the Vegan Bullshit Bingo.

Oh, you’re one of those “you can save the planet with your personal habits” people…

You enjoy your salad. I’m wondering what it takes to firebomb an oil refinery.

And you are one of those “every problem on the planet is the fault of someone else other than me so I can do whatever I want with no regard for it’s affect on anyone else” people. Stay away from us if you can’t be bothered to carry your own weight, you just drag down people who actually give a shit about something other than their own immediate selfish gratification.

I understand that perspective, but does it really have to be advertising?

I’d prefer if it weren’t. Though that’s not the only use for this thing.

We can do that, but first let’s make sure everyone on the planet has clean water first.

You sound like the people criticising NASA for spending money on science. “Who do X when Y is still an issue?”

I doubt you make that kind of prioritization with your own money.

NASA also consistently provides new innovation and new science.

What will the dome keep contributing to society for the absurd electricity cost it takes to keep running? Advertisements?

Yeah, there not really the same argument.

This is the equivalent of saying “Eat all your dinner cause there’s starving children in Africa”.

Sure, this sounds nice, but this logic falls apart the instant you start thinking about it.

The money spent on this would not have been spent on giving clean water to people thousands of miles away

Doesn’t flint still not have clean water?

Those are two different states, plus flint does have clean water now (although the effects of contamination and lead exposure still remain in people who grew up drinking it)

It was privately funded, this money would not have gone to school lunches

We would rather have the children starve to death than being called a communist.

So we might a well build some shit.

Hey, it’s just $2,300,000,000

Can’t even feed a packed homeless shelter for that much ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Maybe it would’ve if governments taxed them properly and spent that money to save the planet

Is that where guillotines come in?

Does this really make it any less worthy of criticism, though…?

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Las Vegas' dystopia-sphere, powered by 150 Nvidia GPUs and drawing up to 28,000,000 watts, is both a testament to the hubris of humanity and an admittedly impressive technical feat | PC Gamer(www.pcgamer.com)

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