The whole uses lots of energy therefore bad argument is complete bullshit. Energy usage is directly proportional to technological development and technology is effectively human evolution.
Good luck, you are talking to people who think that if the billionaires passed out all their money to everyone, then we would all be able to afford way more stuff. They have no idea that more cash doesn’t mean way more products appear. Supply and demand is such a simple concept, but to them, it might as well be rocket science.
Imagine being so naive as to believe massive wealth hording deprived others! What turkeys! Amirite?
Imagine if you will that there are 5 items to be had, everyone wants them. Everyone except for the evil rich man has 10 tokens. The evil rich man has a billion tokens. Right now people are willing to sell an item for 4 tokens. One day the people kill the evil rich man and spread out all his money evenly. There’s still 5 items! They just go up in price! The rich man’s blood doesn’t create more items! It isn’t complicated. It’s very simple.
Now you imagine that the rich man undermined democracy and the rule of law, monopolized industries, and charged everyone 5 tokens a year for basic necessities.
I don’t think it’s everyone else who has a child’s understanding of economics.
And yet somehow despite all this, nearly everyone is living a much better standard of life than they would have 50 years ago, land we all far excited the kings of 200 years ago. We are rapidly progressing due to our extradoniary ability to work together. Complaining that this beautiful system of cooperation isn’t working as fast as you imagine does nothing.
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What system ever worked better? What do you compare how good standard of living should be to? The past? Well guess what, we are all hell of better off than the wealthiest 100 years ago. Do you just imagine a much better world than we have now and decide that you have somehow developed a system to get there and not enough people want it? Wow, you must be a genius to have outsmarted everyone across all cultures!
I’m gunna guess no. You don’t have an almighty better system, you’ve just fallen for the trap of thinking that nothing is connected. You think you can have all the benefits of systems you don’t like while having none of the connected realities. You are like a child putting whiteout all over their homework to make there be no questions so they always get 100%. Eventually, you will grow, realise people are trying their hardest, we have ways to improve and we are working on them. What doesn’t help is spoiled teenagers complaining that they have to do chores while saying their parents are mean because they won’t always buy them every new video game. Burning everything down that gave you everything you live won’t help. Ever.
Ok but the way I see it there are 100 people and 1000 tokens. Instead of every person getting 10 tokens, one guy has 998 tokens and everyone else argues over the remaining 2. Would killing the one rich guy not free up some tokens for the rest of us?
Yes, it frees up tokens, but it doesn’t make there be more items. As a result, people pay more for the items that do exist. It is the same as people saying the government should print a bunch of money to end poverty. They have the machines. They just don’t want us to have money, they could just print us all into being billionaires, and we could all live happily ever after!
I see what you’re saying, the tokens represent access to a finite amount of resources and creating more tokens won’t create more resources. I get that.
But if the problem isn’t with the amount of resources but with their distribution, then redistributing the existing tokens out of the hands of the greedy hoarders must help the rest, mustn’t it?
Edit: I can’t believe I’m sitting here arguing with someone on the goddamn Internet. Must be out of my damn mind
Yeah, so if bezos is actually eating 50,000 peoples worth of food every day, then splitting up his money/food would make a whole lot more people be fed. He doesn’t seem very fat to me, though. I do realise that he has a personal jet and uses lots of fuel and energy, much more that the average person. Guess who uses more energy/resources than him, though? The number of people born in a single hour. Those people far exceed his resource usage. So we could kill him and spread out all his money, but if there is really such an extreme shortage of resources, then this would be like throwing out a handful of water instead of plugging massive gushing leaks in the boat.
Who’s they? Are you schizophrenic?
The same people that think energy use is a bad thing are the people that think that if we pass out all the billionaires money, then we can all have way more value. They are teenagers or people who never learned anything beyond what they teach in middle school. They think their gut instinct must be fact, so they spew it over and over. I’m sure you’re not one of them.
For real, that dude’s tilting at windmills.
Anti-rich/billionaire/capitalism agenda is quite widely subscribed to by a large amount of Lemmings
That pretty much describes all of Vegas.
Ok, so it’s “capable of drawing” enough power for 20,000 homes in the area. How much does it actually use day to day? Does it dim at night and brighten in the daytime to keep those ads rolling in the sunshine?
It’s funny, I think Vegas is perfectly fine as the city of sin so things like this really don’t phase me. It was built on the idea of crime and excess.
What does seem weird to me is how in a desert, why isn’t everything solar? The sun is their only natural resource besides sand. Every rooftop and parking lot and flat surface possible seems like it should be a panel.
Vegas is surrounded by empty desert, they don’t need to use rooftops and parking lots
even deserts host life. it’s kind of a ecological misnomer that we could just cover the deserts of the world in solar panels. that would have serious repercussions.
What repercussions could covering a few acres more in the mojave with solar panels have?
Also, the ocean is a desert with its life underground and the perfect disguise above.
Solar only works during the day. During night you need batteries which are not renewable. Mining lithium trashes ecosystems and we probably have enough for like 50 more years at this rate, cobalt is extracted through slave labour. And we’ve seen how well recycling works for other materials which are less complex. So all these renewables aren’t all that green in every aspect. Unless we solve the energy storage problem it isn’t as simple as putting up more panels.
You know, I’m getting really sick of these comments where people think they know what they’re talking about and repeat a bunch of talking points about lithium.
Lithium is not going to be the basis of a renewable grid. We need it for EVs because it’s the best Wh/kg that we have right now, but we don’t care so much about weight for grid storage. Cost/kg is the main measure we care about there (though there are some other considerations in specific conditions). We already have tech being deployed in the field that’s better than lithium for grid storage. Flow batteries, flywheels, pumped hydro, or just heating up sand or rocks. Others, like sodium batteries, are being manufactured and will probably find their way into real products in the next few years.
Chill, no need to be stressed. Part of the ideas you mentioned are already implemented in some cases, but they are not without drawbacks. Pumped hydro is good, but has high maintainance costs, messes with the fish and requires large bodies of water, how do you get tbat in the desert? Flywheels have good inertia, great for stabilizing the grid, Ireland has some for that exact reason, but can’t store a whole lot. And heating up roxks and sand may work if you need heat at night, but you need electricity, so you need water to turn into steam to produce it. Sodium batteries look the most promising, we’ll see how they develop. But until we get these storqge facilities built, adding more solar would only destabilise the grids even more.
So if you knew this which is a reasonable post why do you post the propaganda piece before?
What propaganda? I think you have to go back and read my post once more… The thread started from solar panels in the desert. At the moment the most widely used grid storage is pumped hydro, how will you do that in the desert? Next most used tech RIGHT NOW is lithium batteries. Other solutions exist, but how many are there implemented and ready to capture that energy right now? Oh, not so many? Then putting up more solar panels hoping that one day we have the storage for them is foolish, these panles lose efficiency over time. I don’t have an agenda to spread, there is no propaganda, I am only talking about the an issue which exists, which is energy storage, for which we have some solutions, with their pros and cons, but not close to being implemented.
Sodium batteries (which are on the market now) are way more environmentally friendly than Lithium batteries.
The materials are very accessible by comparison to Lithium batteries and they’re way more stable.
At every stage of it’s life cycle; the Sphere has been the dumbest thing imaginable
And because some rich people got scammed into buying in now everyone has to advertise it
Currently, an agreement is under review to ensure that 70% of the Sphere’s power needs will come from solar sources, with the other 30% from non-renewable energy that will be offset by renewable energy credits.
Nevada has pledged to achieve net zero emissions of greenhouse gases by 2050, and the solar project under construction to help offset its energy debt is estimated to complete in 2027.
How stupid is it that somebody can claim “Net Zero” greenhouse gas emissions when 30% of their power is greenhouse gas.
Just gonna throw this out there. Fuck credits, charge a carbon tax.
Maybe, I mean just maybe, they can run this thing only as long as the solar generated power lasts, and then turn it off 30% of the time.
Run it at 70% percent brightness.
The word net does a lot of heavy lifting and it’s just a scam
You can use 100% coal power and claim net zero by buying a forest
Exactly. Carbon credits for the win! I love me some Pigouvian taxes. :)
Well you don’t understand what “net” means.
It doesn’t mean literally zero. It means colunm A and column B average out to zero.
To acheive a real net zero, they have to save energy somewhere else that takes that column past 100% (Such as if their solar panels produce more energy than they use during certain times.)
They probably just make some shit up to say their are saving extra somewhere they aren’t (so to that point, yes…credits are bullshit.)
They never claimed net zero. They plan to achieve net zero by 2050
We’ll also ignore the fact that that solar could have been used to offset actual needs instead of this BS.
If only Las Vegas were located somewhere that the sun shines almost all day every day. \s
And yet they still couldn’t cover the last 30%.
That’s probably at night
Regardless, that energy could be going to offset other energy currently being produced by non-renewables no matter which way you slice it.
So build concentrated solar power and store the heat for after the sun sets. Bonus - thermal power plant turbines give inertia to the grid, which photo-voltaics don’t.
I highly doubt the operating hours of this ball of decadence match the time when solar power peaks
Fuck credits, charge a carbon tax.
IMO it seems RECs are a better solution than carbon taxes at least in situations like this. With RECs you’re buying renewable energy to offset non-renewables, with a carbon tax the company is just giving the government money for use of non-renewables. Only funds spent on RECs in this case actually go to supporting the renewable energy sector. I’m no expert in this stuff so I could be off, just how I understand it.
“Capable of drawing 28,000,000 watts of power” doesn’t tell us anything. As was noted, it should’ve been given in megawatts (28 mW) or kilowatts (28,000 kW). Clickbait aside, how many kilowatt-hours (kWh) does it actually use?
28 mW isn’t that much energy, relatively speaking. As of 2015, Forbes estimated LV uses 8000 mW on an average summer day.
The potential is impressive. I doubt it pulls anywhere near that. Unless I did my math wrong, this seems sensationalist.
I don’t get it, are they implying that each GPU can draw 200kW? a home is like 10 max. Wtf is a gpu that can consume more power than 20 homes? Mine at home draws peak 300W…
Each of those GPUs feature over 10,752 cores, 48 GB of memory and have a 300 W TDP, for a grand total of 1,612,800 cores, 7,200 GB of GDDR6 memory, and a potential maximum power draw of 45,000 W at full tilt (via Wccftech).
ok, monster gpus, got it.
Just Fyi, mW is milliwatts, and MW is megawatts. Agreed though, I doubt it draws that much day to day.
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That’s the outside. The inside is 256 million pixels.
They say there are 16 screens inside, each with a 16k resolution. Such a screen would have 16x as many pixels as a 4k screen. The GPUs power those as well.
For the number of GPUs it appears to make sense. 150 GPUs for the equivalent of about 256 4k screens means each GPU handles ±2 4k screens. That doesn’t sound like a lot, but it could make sense.
The power draw of 28 MW still seems ridiculous to me though. They claim about 45 kW for the GPUs, which leaves 27955 kW for everything else. Even if we assume the screens are stupid and use 1 kw per 4k segment, that only accounts for 256 kW, leaving 27699 kW. Where the fuck does all that energy go?! Am I missing something?
Yeah, 4k phone and 4k plasma tv don’t consume same ammount of energy.
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In the future there will be myths that we once had standards such as html but after we tried to build this sphere, god cursed us to use only incompatible proprietary protocols
This is a complete shot in the dark but could the huge power draw come from needing some intense industrial cooling/airflow stuff in/on the sphere?
Edit: forgot a word
complete shot in the dark
Man, I wanna delay the stupid edgy joke I’m making but I can’t help myself
More likely it’s the thing that generates all that heat in the first place.
The big power draw is because of the sheer amount of light it dumps out. You try lighting up 54,000 square meters of LED panel to a few hundred nits like a pc monitor, and see how much power it takes.
Says 16K, where’s the disconnect? (I don’t know display tech)
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Anything most likely driving factor here?
Extreme resolution requirements, massive number of LED elements, real-time rendering and synchronization needs, complex content processing, load distribution and redundancy, future-proofing capabilities, fraudulent kickback scheme
Normally I’d be suspicious of these kinds of megastructure projects but Vegas is the city that figured out how to get damn close to net zero water use from the Colorado so I’m willing to start off with the benefit of the doubt for the city leaders that ok’d this.
In 2030 this will just be the standard system requirements for AAA games because optimization is hard.
because optimization
is hardcosts money and they dont have enough from the 60 USD you paid70*
The power of 21000 homes for advertising.
What’s most impressive is that it is even legal.
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.
Horrible and should be illegal.
Or profitable
Is it? Last I‘ve heard it was bleeding money.
Makes sense. Gimmicks are gimmicks.
Probably because they’re not doing much with it. It’s $100/person to see the basic “Planet Earth” showing and almost $200 to see The Grateful Dead show. Previously they showed a Phish show. That’s it for options, and none of it sounds really appealing to me.
U2 played in it, too.
I’m sure these bands are all appealing to some, but it seems like they’re really squandering the potential with them playing the same two shows over and over for months.
U2 is the best band ever, Bono told me that.
This way some faulty internet lore. The money losses were from a fluke of timing the opening date of operations versus when quarterly finances were reported. Big startup costs meant the first numbers looked silly until they had enough events to get steady profits. They’re doing fine now.
Internet should’ve known better too. It’s hard to lose in Vegas and the investors obviously knew what they were doing. The power costs are shocking for sure though. Yikes!
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.
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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.
No it doesn’t, Commie
you’re cherrypicking.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/meat-production-tonnes?tab=chart&country=~OWID_WRL
What is your point?
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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.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.
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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.
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.
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.
The money spent on this would not have been spent on giving clean water to people thousands of miles away
Maybe it would’ve if governments taxed them properly and spent that money to save the planet
Is that where guillotines come in?
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)_/¯
Doesn’t flint still not have clean water?
Does this really make it any less worthy of criticism, though…?
Yes?
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.
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.
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.
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.
Sure but we’re burning tons of coal to have this thing advertise minion movies, not anything artistic or worthwhile.
Worthwhile for who
I mean it is cool. But really a testament to why we deserve extinction at this point…
It would be impressive it could be done without destroying our planet. This should impress no one.
The non-stop anti-humanity propaganda is exhausting.
We need more nuclear power ASAP
There’s no such thing as “ASAP” for nuclear power. If you had the permits signed off today, it would take 10 years before a single GWh of new nuclear energy goes to the grid.
Instead, maybe we shouldn’t build giant spherical advertising displays?
There’s no such thing as “ASAP” for nuclear power
Sure there is. It’s just that the P stands for “20 years from now.”
Vegas is almost entirely powered by the hoover dam. It’s already pretty green as far as energy goes. The question will be where do they get their power from in a few years when lake mead dries up.
That’s not true. The Hoover Dam contributes to Vegas’s power supply, but it’s nowhere near “almost entirely powered” by the dam, except in Fallout: New Vegas.
Turns out you’re correct. I appreciate the correction.
In addition to the other thing, dams have a dramatic and disastrous impact on the ecology in the immediate area and the entire riparian system they connect to. It’s “green” in terms of emissions but they’re still harmful and we should be phasing them out for lower impact alternatives as much as possible.
Should? Definitely, but let’s be realistic, we can barely get people off of coal and oil right now.
In the world we live in, Dams have some of the lowest environmental impact compared to the other places we get our energy.
So we probably shouldn’t be trying to phase them out while there are much more severe effects being felt from the other base load facilities.
