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
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
The Las Vegas Sphere might have an impressive spec sheet, but its energy demands are almost as staggering.
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The power of 21000 homes for advertising.
What's most impressive is that it is even legal.
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.
We can do that, but first let’s make sure everyone on the planet has clean water first.
The money spent on this would not have been spent on giving clean water to people thousands of miles away
Does this really make it any less worthy of criticism, though...?
Yes?
We would rather have the children starve to death than being called a communist.
It was privately funded, this money would not have gone to school lunches
Is that where guillotines come in?
Maybe it would’ve if governments taxed them properly and spent that money to save the planet
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)
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)_/¯
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Advertising? This thing is essentially a theater. Yeah, it can run advertisement but anything with a screen can do that. It’s like saying a movie theatre is for advertising.
It's a 400 foot tall screen that's constantly on and in view, even at night, which plays ads like 90% of the time. Calling it "essentially a theatre" is a huge understatement.
But the energy usage is quoted as peak for the entire venue - which is literally a theater / concert hall. It opened with a live U2 performance. The energy usage isn't just for the displays, it includes all the power for the entire building, the concert speakers, heating/cooling, indoor lighting, any kitchen equipment, etc.