The power of 21000 homes for advertising.
What's most impressive is that it is even legal.
this post was submitted on 12 Jul 2024
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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.
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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".
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I understand that perspective, but does it really have to be advertising?
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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.
Ahh yes, energy credits. AKA bullshit.
Hey!
They’re not always BS. Just most of the time!
Or are they? Some of the companies who are the best at it and seem to be genuinely trying have been shown not to be able to guarantee one way or the other.
“Wait, someone cut down that forest we planted?!” (no joke)
Edit: see REC clarification below (thanks!)
Just to be clear, renewable energy credits are different than carbon offsets, and easier to guarantee because they're often tied directly to a metered renewable energy source.
That said, there are still junk RECs on the market, like those tied to energy that was produced up to 2 decades ago that nobody got around to claiming / retiring. Or RECs tied to energy sources that may have happened regardless of the REC sale.
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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.
We'll also ignore the fact that that solar could have been used to offset actual needs instead of this BS.
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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
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Las Vegas in general is a testament to the hubris of humanity and an admittedly impressive technical feat. Does it even exist without the Hoover Dam?
I don't know about power, but Vegas is actually incredibly water efficient. Due to the way the water rights work with the Colorado river, they're not allowed very much, but it doesn't "count" if you put it back in. So nearly every drop they use is treated and put back (probably cleaner, tbh). Boggles the brain, but somehow it's actually a fairly sustainable city. More than any other other major metro, in any event.
Considering they are in a literal desert, they would have to be fairly sustainable to exist in the first place. Not saying it's not super impressive, my dad lived out there when they were building up a lot of the expanded infrastructure and he has some cool stories about how he saw the desert on the outskirts disappear as they added in all the water and transportation stuff
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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.
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28,000,000 watts
That's usually written as 28MW. I know some Americans don't like metric much, but one of the points of metric is that you don't ever need to write that many zeroes - you just need to use the right prefix (kilo, mega, giga, tera, etc) on the unit.
True, but 28 million watts really puts things in perspective when your average PSU is less than 1000w.
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Wait, why do they need 150 GPUs for a 1.2 megapixel display?
That's less than 1080p!
Who engineered this monstrosity?
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?
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
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.
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And a waste of electricity?
I believe that's implied in the "hubris" bit.
Its one of the smaller atrocities in Vegas, particularly when compared to the Bellagio Fountain or the food waste generated by all those casino dining halls.
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I don't know what they need so many GPUs for. There's 16 displays inside, and the sphere itself has fewer pixels than even 1 of the internal displays. You could probably run the sphere off a laptop if you aren't trying to do anything fancy.
Maybe they plan on doing crazy live simulations on it or something. I can't imagine what kind of displayed image would actually use all 150 of them. Nvidia A6000 cards are damn powerful.
Probably have a few cards running the displays and the rest of them mining some sphere-themed memecoin
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Add a solar array and battery bank, a you might even have electricity left over. It’s in the desert after all.
Still a waste of energy because that could be used for the general grid
I wouldn’t say entertainment is a waste of energy even if there are nobler uses for the power.
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I hope the name “dystopia sphere” catches on.
Is the 'dystopia-sphere' trying to compete with the torment nexus or something?
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Using the max power use of a video card to math this is ridiculous. It's not at full TDP pushing this content. They aren't playing max FPS 3D raytraced gaming, they're playing videos.
What.
The article says that, for the GPUs, they can have a "maximum power draw of 45,000 W at full tilt".
The 28 million W comes from the full system, and surely the massive displays, LEDs and eventually sound system makes up the bulk of that, the gfx cards are a rounding error...
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Might as well just give up on the earth right now I guess
If they reversed it (displays inside), it would be the best immersive gaming setup ever.
Edit: looks like they are inside.
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It would be impressive it could be done without destroying our planet. This should impress no one.
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