The energy economics in space are also a bit more complicated than usually thought. I think Starlink has been using Si cells instead of III-V-based ones, but in addition to lower output they also tend to degrade faster under radiation. I guess that's ok if the GPU is going to be toast in a few years anyway so you might as well de-orbit the whole thing. But that same solar cell on Earth will happily be producing for 40+ years.
Also the same issue with radiative cooling pops up for space solar cells - they tend to run way hotter than on Earth and that lowers their efficiency relative to what you could get terrestrially.
The elephant in the room for all lunar scenarios is lunar regolith. Even ignoring the toxicity to humans (big problem and will happen quite quickly for any humans there!), it will be a big long-term problem for robots and machinery in general.
A lot of people don't quite understand how terrible of a material lunar regolith dust is. There's not much stuff on Earth quite like it. The Moon doesn't experience any weathering, so its all super sharp and jagged compared to how smooth even the grittiest sand is here on Earth. Its electrostatically charged so it wants to cling to dang near everything. Its highly toxic to breathe in for the same reason as miner's lung. It will work its way into every joint and seal.
Really outrageous extortion. UCLA and UC as a whole are running budget deficits and facing reduced state support (as well as the grant cancelations). There's simply no money for this and the white house knows it.
That is not relevant to what I am saying at all. I am saying that there is no legal basis for demanding 1 Billion dollars in as that is 1) a made up number from Trump's head, 2) UCLA is innocent until proven guilty, 3) withholding Federal grants duly awarded violates impoundment.
How is the suspension of a research grant even related to a violation of title 9? It's bullshit, and everyone knows it, because it is actually extortionistic bullshit.
The particular type of fraud described here (paper mills etc.) is less common in the U.S. (different types of fraud may exist but that's more subtle and complex). There tend to be specific geographic clusters associated with this behavior that have to do with how university expansions have been done in many countries.
Oddly enough, pre-LLMs, I would have said most of these crap paper mill papers didn't really affect the actual fields. Yes, they cited each other but outside the citation ring didn't really alter the field in a knowledge sense. But now.. if these get picked up in Deep Research it's a problem.
It’s interesting how hard and widespread a push they’re making in advertising this - at this particular moment, when there are
rumors of more high level recruitment attempts / successes by Zuck. OpenAI is certainly a master at trying to drive narratives. (Independent of the actual significance / advance here). Sorry, there are too many hundreds of billions of dollars involved to not be a bit cautious and wary of claims being pushed this hard.
To those saying all you need is a lot of radiators.. remember that the radiators themselves gain heat from both sunlight and the Earth itself. It is a surprisingly tricky problem and, yes, all heat can be dissipated to achieve a desirable set point given sufficiently large area. But it is certainly not easier than just having say an economizer and dropping the data center in Iceland or a cold place. Makes no sense
At least for many engineering and science disciplines a solution remains to force students to actually try to learn the material: in-class, closed book exams. Nothing is ideal, but this does force students to actually engage with the material and problems. They are welcome to use LLMs all they want to help them study (though they should be careful given how often I catch them making horrible mistakes in my discipline). But the assessment will be of them and their brain.
Public schools in the US get a relatively small fraction of their budget from state funding. The distinction between public and private is not as large or substantial as one might imagine.
For example the 10-campus UC system's total budget is $54 billion of which $4.6 billion comes directly from the state's general fund.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4998 - the federal funding here is the same as for private universities, to do research or other work in the form of contracts/ grants.
I have to wonder what DOGE (including the alleged wunderkind Farritor that all the SV VCs were hailing) is planning for NSF. It’s amazing the arrogance of these people, to walk in and just do “hulk smash” on decades of hard work, infrastructure and institutional capacity.
It's fairly straightforward really. Academics will work on whatever grant topics are available, most will do anything for money, so expect lots of grants on topics directly benefiting X.ai, Tesla, Neuralink, or SpaceX.
There's multiple reasons why what you said is just wrong.
First, if academics wanted to work on topics mandated by somebody else, they would go work in industry for that somebody, and earn much more money than they earn right now.
Second, most academic scientists do not do anything relevant to Musk's companies. Do you expect a chemist to pivot to self-driving cars? Or a pure mathematician to whatever X.ai is doing?
The only thing this will lead to is a destruction of American capacity to carry out independent scientific research.
> First, if academics wanted to work on topics mandated by somebody else, they would go work in industry for that somebody, and earn much more money than they earn right now.
Very few academics become principle investigators. Most every academic who's not a PI is working on something for that PI.
The vast majority of those working for a PI are students and postdocs, which are inherently trainee positions. Though, depending on the field and the PI, trainees may also have plenty of freedom to work on their own topics. If you want an actual career in the academia, the main options are becoming a PI or choosing a teaching-focused position. There are some staff scientists and similar, but such positions are rarer than tenured professors.
Do we live on the same planet? I understand that the point of being an academic is to always be learning, but there's no place on earth I know of that thinks of someone with a PhD as a trainee.
> the main options are becoming a PI or choosing a teaching-focused position. There are some staff scientists and similar, but such positions are rarer than tenured professors.
Implying that one gets a choice is bold. My understanding is that there's a job for about 1 in 10 postdocs in academia these days.
A postdoc is a training position, where the individual further develops their skills and tries to build an independent profile while being mentored by a more senior academic. PhDs who work in someone else's projects without focusing as much on personal development typically have other job titles, such as project scientist or staff scientist.
Receiving a doctorate does not mean that you have finished your training. Some countries have habilitations or higher doctorates, which can be understood as more formal versions of postdoctoral training. Medical doctors are expected to specialize and receive more training as residents. Other fields have similar arrangements, some more and others less formal. If a full career is 50 years and the job requires a high degree of specialization, it can make sense to use the first ~15 years for training.
The number of academics who achieve a 50 year career is vanishingly small. I can think of a handful I met in a decade. To call the other 99.9% of academia in-training is a bit of a mis-nomer, whether it's the accepted terminology or not. That was my point.
And my point was that academics whose primary job is doing research in someone else's project are even rarer than tenured professors in research universities.
A postdoc is primarily a career advancement position rather than something where you are expected to contribute full time. Such positions are also pretty rare. There are something like 70k postdocs in the US, vs. almost 190k tenured or tenure-track full-time faculty in research universities.
It's true that serial postdocs exist (though schools tend to have term limits and even limits on years since PhD on postdocs), but it is certainly intended to be a trainee role. Even postdocs with fancy fellowships generally have sponsors.
Sure, but PhD students are still working on topics that they (at least partially) choose. As a PhD student in the USA, you have choice over your advisor, and hence choice over your research niche. Within that niche, you don't necessarily have full control over your project, but it is in everyone's interest to align the project with the student's interests; nobody wants a project that was half-assed because the student hated working on it.
Also the same issue with radiative cooling pops up for space solar cells - they tend to run way hotter than on Earth and that lowers their efficiency relative to what you could get terrestrially.
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