> They plug the cable in to the equipment they already have, and it either works in the way they care about or it does not.

That's the thing though, I don't always have these things handy or ready to just plug something in quick and test. I'd like some kind of small device which can actually do some quick tests and see if it passes or fails at whatever power and bitrate more than just what the little identifier says it can do. Because, I agree, you can't trust the tag, there's a lot going on. And a cable that tested fine a year ago might be too messed up to work today.

In the end, it's also sometimes messy testing bandwidth given two random devices. Are they just being buggy with their handshake? Are we getting strange driver issues? Something else going on? A more dedicated tester tool can just be sure these two things definitely, without question should work just fine at whatever bandwidth they're trying to test with. And with a button press it does it and clearly gives the results. If it's not too expensive and you end up handling lots of questionable cables, sounds kind of nice!

> And the impedance changes in-use, too. A kink in the wire produces an impedance aberration at that point that can be measured, and that can also be bad enough to produce practical issues that affect real-world performance.

This is still true of a six figure oscilloscope testing the wire. If you're not manipulating the wire in realistic ways your super expensive tool isn't really going to answer that any more as the cheaper pass/fail. What might look just fine on the scope may look really bad when you bend it wrong or it gets a little internal crack or too much outside interference or something. You'll potentially be clued in to it being closer to being a messed up signal, but not necessarily.

You don't need a six figure oscilloscope or logic analyzer to know "does it work".

Starlink satellites use probably less than 1/100th the power budget of even these earlier supposed plans. They don't use much power at all in comparison. They're also big flat pancake for their body, as they want to have a good bit of area for their antenna array. So the other side can just focus on cooling very close to the actual compute parts. It's a radically different set of engineering requirements.

For something line the AI1, you're looking at a few million in launch costs for the mass of the cooling system alone and that's assuming they get Starship flying around their projected costs. What's the install cost per rack or cooling equipment on the ground? Even say I'm overshooting it 100%, those numbers still don't sound very good!

Did the Cybertruck have 500mi of range? Was there a $40k model at launch?

Anyone can make a website. Let's see them actually make it and put it in orbit.

According to another Musk website we'd be riding hyperloops and drive through solo tunnels under our cities and we'd all own our own autonomous cab companies back in 2016.

Another website said we'd be able to buy a Cybertruck for $40k and the three-motor variety for $70k.

C) SpaceX engineers enjoy their cushy salary funded by a guy who won't take "that doesn't make sense" for an answer to work on rockets and neat technology, even if it may never really work out.

All of that plumbing, all of that area, all that stuff to put in orbit just to cool one rack of compute equipment.

How much stuff do we need to put up there for each rack? The External Active Thermal Control System on the ISS is ~20,000lbs, about 10 tons. How many racks are in a single datacenter? The Colossus is allegedly ~1,500 compute racks, ignoring other equipment. So that's like 15,000 tons for just the cooling equipment if its like the ISS. At SpaceX's current public launch costs (which makes a profit for them, so not base costs) to launch that much stuff is somewhere around $40B. Just the launch cost for the cooling equipment alone for just one datacenter building worth of pure compute capacity, that isn't even that big compared to what companies are talking about building.

All of that is very rough back of the napkin math. I don't expect that to be the actual numbers at all, but I'd imagine somewhere in that neighborhood unless they've got something really radical up their sleeve.

They better have a much better way to cool these things than what the ISS is doing.

Isn't that what most people here are really wanting? I don't imagine most people here are seriously wanting to know the exact extreme measurements, just "can this cable reasonably do what I need from it? Does it do what it claims on the label generally?"

That was just the last buffer allocation request that failed, it didn't tell you by how much it failed by. It could have failed it by a few kilobytes, it could have failed it by 910MB. One would guess it probably failed it by a couple hundred megabytes in the end judging by your results.

For example, I don't need to precisely measure exactly how messed up the signal is to know if the HDMI cable works or not at a given resolution. I'll see the TV have issues displaying a picture. Either the picture is there reliably or its not. I'm not trying to fine tune the cable, I'm just trying to see if it generally works or not.

As for testing power delivery, its not that electrically complicated to put a few amps through a wire for a few minutes. That said, the user must be aware if the cable isn't up to the standards that the chip states you could have some serious issues on your hands, but I guess better to find out on the tester at the workbench or desk than at your bedside.

How does AWS then determine which files are whose when my angry clients go knocking on their doors because I've decided to disappear?

I'm mostly just wondering why they're making such a big point talking about this being a battery electric plane when the actual commercial variant they hope to sell will likely be mostly used like a plug-in hybrid (I'd imagine).

> The ES-30 is a conventional fixed-wing, 30-seat hybrid-electric regional airliner

If its >2 hour drive to the airport this plane probably isn't going to take you there on pure-electric power, that's my point. If you drive 65MPH for two hours, you've gone further than this thing can fly (on pure battery).

I'd love to see something that can do around 250mi. It would be nice to electrify transit in the Texas Triangle if we end up never being able to actually build useful HSR.

I wish them luck on continuing to try!

> bad weather has been shown to take down power grids for entire regions for days, sometimes weeks

Once again, as someone who actually lived through those scenarios multiple times, when the gas pumps go down you're usually shit outta luck on getting gas.

When the grid goes down for days, the gas you have in your gas car + any random fuel tanks you have in your garage is what you have. Don't expect anything else unless you plan to take it at gunpoint.

Meanwhile, those with solar panels not reliant on grid-tie, they can continue to charge their vehicles.