Because permanent access to an expensive online resource should be free forever?

You may want it, but it really isn't a sustainable business model.

No, your "pedo glasses" will work fine without a subscription - you only need a subscription to activate longer access to some conversation focus feature (as if you care what the kids are talking about)...

Uh, you bought the car without paying for heated seats. Then, after purchase, you are offered the chance to pay to use heated seats BMW already built into the car because they thought you might want heated seats AND you might be willing to pay a subscription fee to warm your tushie on cold winter nights.

Once upon a time, DEC sold VAX computers stuffed with CPus and memory, much more than you paid for - the idea was in the future you'd want to upgrade and this feature allowed you to do so without requiring a service call from DEC.

The BMW seat warmers are the same idea, writ smaller. It was a stupid idea, I don't defend it, but your anger at it seems based on a misunderstanding of how it was structured.

I think you mean "They'll still be usable without a subscription"

I don't see the "enshitification" - charging a subscription for advanced features, offering a subset of features for free...

Do the subscriptions pay for previously free features, or are the fees for new features not previously offered? I thought it was the latter.

We don't build high-density datacenters with plans to EVER touch failing hardware. When a node breaks, it's taken off-line, not repaired. When an upgrade is needed, the datacenter is turned-over/forklift upgrade - no one runs into a google datacenter and talks about adding more RAM.

At one time we talked about dropping watertight datacenters in the ocean - this is kinda the same idea, but it includes rockets! (And, relies on wireless technology and solar panels, ocean-based datacenters could be wired into a power grid, with high-speed fiber optic cables in/out of the facility.

Of course, all these ideas started with the datacenter in a shipping container...

A space-based datacenter is far more vulnerable than an earth-based datacenter (an earth-based datacenter can't be de-orbited by rouge control signals, for example), and once size exceeds anything considered 'small' the possibility of space trash corrupting the unit increases.

Of course, this all assumes the insane cost per Kg of lifting anything into space comes down wildly making these space-based datacenters in anyway practical at any meaningful scale.

Maybe I'm being thick (I can accept that) but on earth we cool equipment by dissipating heat into the atmosphere (heatsink, fans, etc), but in space there is no atmosphere. How would you cool a processor without atmosphere? Would you have to create an atmosphere to absorb the dissipated heat, then somehow get rid of that heat?

Yes, I'm aware of liquid-cooling, but at the end of every liquid cooling system I'm aware of there are fans and heatsink/radiators that dissipate the heat into the atmosphere.

It would be interesting to see a computing system built for deployment in space - it wouldn't resemble any current rack-based or other conventional system we have today - it would likely be an interesting collection of optimizations to reflect a different set of concerns a space-based datacenter would have. For example, once lifted into space, a human will likely never interact with a physical device ever again, ease of install/removal is not an issue, etc.

Would JPL really need an entire, complete rover to test software upgrades? I understand they'll want to send updates to the rovers over the course of their lifetime, but seems to me after, say, 8-10 of working with the unit they've pretty-much nailed down basic operations, and now they are making adjustments to accommodate failures on the deployed units or optimize software and/or power consumption - things of that nature.

Let's ask the other question, how long would it take to make a fourth rover, specifically for a lunar mission? 6-12 months, or would it take years? If one can be built quickly (under 12 months), I say go for it, build a fourth, but if it's going to take years to build a fourth... maybe asking about sending the earth-bound test unit up make sense?

How many years have the other two units been on Mars? What kind of updates/changes/fixes are left to make?

Curiosity landed 13 years ago, Perseverance landed 5 years ago - I think both are well past the point of needing any major updates, but I'm not in the space program. Seems to me the platforms are pretty stable, it's not like we're going to need them to try out some Apollo 13-style rescue work since, you know, these are unmanned rovers.

You seem to imply that he wants to put something on the lunar surface in the next two years for political reasons, but it would be just as bad to artificially delay deployment until after two years out for political reasons.

You know, the folks that bought use licenses for games that require online servers, if they want to continue using the software they licensed to keep working after the developer loses interest should just offer money to keep the game going - bribe the owner to keep the system up.

Where this will wind up, I predict, is that games will be sold with expiration dates - with no guarantee they will work after a certain date in the future, say, 3 years after sales of the product are suspended.

OR, game developers might want to consider selling 'home server' software kits so that users can self-host, like personal Minecraft servers.

A sick person can walk into a hospital ER and get medical care, regardless of their ability to pay - this has been the law for decades, hospitals may try and collect payment from the patient, but they can not refuse care - the Gov't has set aside money to compensate hospitals for such charity care.

For some reason France has decided that A/C is bad, and they have lost over 1,000 French senior citizens to the heat waves sweeping across Europe.

https://www.independent.co.uk/...

There are what, 300 million privately-owned guns in America? Very few are actually involved in "Gun Crimes"

After COVID, its hard to imagine a county full of Karens that didn't take the free federal money in COVID money to improve air handling/filtering/conditioning in school buildings.