Simon van Zuylen-Wood / New York Magazine: An interview with SBF about life in prison, his serialized prison memoir titled Manfred, and more, as he praises Trump, becomes a Republican, and seeks a pardon  —  Sam Bankman-Fried is incarcerated at a federal prison in Lompoc, California, which sits northwest of Santa Barbara and is dubbed “the City of Arts and Flowers.”

Space is full of satellites and debris – data centers could one day join the mix. NicoElNino, NASA/iStock via Getty Images Imagine if one company could become the railroad, electric utility and cloud-computing provider of the emerging space economy. That potential fueled excitement around the long-anticipated initial public offering of SpaceX. Investors are not simply betting on rockets anymore. They are betting on an entire orbital ecosystem. Among the most ambitious and challenging ideas riding this wave of enthusiasm is something that sounds almost like science fiction: orbital data centers. SpaceX may be one of the most well-known companies seeking to build them, but it is not the only one. The logic is seductive: Launch the data centers into orbit, where solar energy is abundant and land, water and local power grids are no longer constraints. As artificial intelligence drives an explosion in computing demand, companies are pitching orbital data centers as a way to escape the growing environmental and infrastructure pressures of Earth-based computing. Data centers often also face backlash from the public at having these centers located in their communities. But there is a vast difference between launching satellites and operating an industrial-scale computing infrastructure in orbit. Space is unforgiving. Radiation damages electronics. The electronics generate enormous amounts of heat, and getting rid of that heat is surprisingly difficult in space. Repairs are extraordinarily expensive, and every pound launched into orbit still carries a significant cost. We are engineering professors who study data center design and space systems engineering. Building a space-based data center will involve considerations from both sides. What goes into a data center on Earth First off, consider what goes into an Earth-based data center, like those that you’ve probably begun to see pop up everywhere. These facilities power cloud computing, video streaming, online banking, scientific computing and, increasingly, artificial intelligence. But a data center is much more than a room full of servers. A data center needs several things to operate reliably. The first is electric power. Servers, networking equipment and storage devices consume large amounts of electricity, and that power demand is growing rapidly with AI. The second is cooling. Almost all the electricity consumed by servers eventually becomes heat. If that heat is not removed quickly and reliably, equipment performance drops, failures increase and the data center can shut down. Cooling systems often include air handling units, chillers, cooling towers, pumps and, increasingly, liquid-cooling equipment. In many facilities, cooling is the largest energy consumer after the computing equipment itself. A data center in Ashburn, Va., sits next to a highway. AP Photo/Ted Shaffrey The third is physical infrastructure, including the necessary land, buildings, structural support, backup power, water systems, communication networks and maintenance access. Data centers also need to be close enough to users and network backbones to provide fast digital services. In short, Earth-based data centers are large electrical and thermal infrastructure systems built around computing hardware. Placing them in space So what would it take to build these data centers in space, and why are companies finding this possibility such an interesting business proposition? As on Earth, these data centers would require massive amounts of power. In space, this power would come from solar panels. The Sun always shines in space and can’t be blocked by clouds. However, depending on the orbit the solar panels are put in, the Earth may shadow them for some portion of the orbit. And even the best solar cells available today can convert only about half the sunlight that hits them to electricity. Another potential advantage found in space is cooling. The cold background of space (near minus 455 degrees Fahrenheit, or minus 270 degrees Celsius) creates an opportunity: waste heat from the data center could escape into space through radiators, keeping the electronics cool. In principle, that design could eliminate some of the bulky and water-intensive cooling infrastructure used on Earth. However, those thermal radiators would require a large amount of surface area, and that would be in addition to the area required by the solar panels. In space, there is no air to blow across hot equipment and help heat escape. The heat has to leave as infrared radiation, which is a relatively slow process. As a result, removing 10 megawatts of waste heat can require radiator surfaces comparable to the size of two football fields. Space-based data centers could also avoid some of the local conflicts that come with building large data centers on the ground. Many communities resist new data center developments because of their land use, energy and water demand, and noise and environmental impact. A space-based system would avoid competing for local land and water resources, and it would not generate neighborhood noise or require local zoning approval in the same way. However, space is already getting crowded, and launching thousands of large orbital data centers would accelerate this issue. Orbital debris and micrometeorites are hazards because they can puncture the space data center, and a worst-case collision could destroy it and create even more space debris. The frequency of space launches necessary to send all the equipment to orbit may also become a concern for some communities. SpaceX has had protests at its launch complex in Boca Chica, Texas, from local activists who argue that its rocket testing and launches damage the surrounding environment. All that data would need to be sent between Earth and these data centers – and between the data centers themselves – using radio waves or laser communications systems. Although satellite constellations such as Starlink and Amazon Leo have demonstrated that doing this is possible, the amount of data sent to and from space would balloon. Additional challenges These data centers, along with their solar panels and radiators, cannot be launched in one piece and would need to be assembled in space. This process would require new equipment for in-space servicing, assembly and manufacturing. Another key challenge is the refresh cycle of computing hardware. Data center servers are not built to last forever. Operators on Earth usually replace or upgrade hardware every three to five years as chips improve, workloads change and equipment ages. Orbital data centers would come with significant computing challenges. And equipment failures can require replacing components. The refresh and repair processes are relatively straightforward on Earth, where workers can physically remove and replace servers. In space, refresh and repair becomes much harder. Hardware sent to orbit may be difficult or too expensive to upgrade. If the computing platform cannot be updated, or too many components fail, it may become obsolete long before the surrounding infrastructure reaches the end of its useful life. In a field where performance improves so rapidly and demand from computing continues to increase, this hurdle could prove a major economic and operational challenge. Then there is the harshness of space. These data centers would be in a near vacuum, with constant radiation hitting them. And depending on their orbit, they would go from hot when in the sunlight to cold in Earth’s shadow many times a day. All of these challenges, and more, are issues that will need to be addressed. So, do they still make sense? Despite these challenges, companies are moving forward with designing space-based data centers. SpaceX just announced the design for its AI1 Compute Satellite, which it hopes to use as an orbital data center spacecraft. However, this satellite is 100 to 1,000 times less capable than current Earth-based data centers. Not every computing task makes sense to do in space. Many data center applications depend on fast response times and close connections to users on Earth. Financial transactions, interactive AI services and most cloud applications are extremely sensitive to delay. More feasible early applications may be those that are less latency-sensitive and more tightly connected to space operations. Examples could include processing Earth observation data from satellites, military or intelligence data processing, scientific computing related to space missions, or specialized computing for satellites and other space assets. In other words, the first viable space data centers may serve space-based customers before they compete with mainstream cloud data centers on Earth. Sven Bilén receives funding from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration for additively manufactured space thermal radiators. Wangda Zuo receives funding from National Science Foundation, U.S. Department of Energy, and Penn State. He is a Fellow American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers. Besides his academic position at Penn State University, he is CTO and Co-founder of Glacian Technologies Inc, which is a Penn State spin-off company. He also holds a joint appointment at the U.S. Department of Energy's National Laboratory of the Rockies.

This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. This man with ALS is the first “power user” of a brain implant that lets him speak Casey Harrell has had a set of electrodes embedded in his brain for almost…

Traditional machine learning pipelines for predictive tasks like text classification usually rely on extracting structured, numerical features from raw text — for instance, TF-IDF frequencies or token embeddings — to feed into classical models such as logistic regression, ensembles, or support vector machines.

Enterprise Document Intelligence [Vol.1 #6a] - Why a user question deserves the same parsing as the document, and how it splits into a retrieval brief and a generation brief before either runs The post RAG Questions Need Parsing Too: Turn the User’s String Into Briefs for Retrieval and Generation appeared first on Towards Data Science.

Lucinda Shen / Axios: Atom Computing, one of the nine quantum computing startups backed by the US, raised a $100M Series C led by Third Point, bringing its total funding to $300M  —  Quantum company Atom Computing raised a $100 million Series C led by Third Point Ventures, it tells Axios exclusively.

The restrictions include a nationwide ban on Telegram until June 22 and a requirement to disable the app's message editing feature.

Here's what GitMind ($50) actually does and why it matters for professionals managing information overload. The post At $50, GitMind Turns Info-Overload Into Organized Visual Knowledge appeared first on TechRepublic.

Instead of heating metals, Foundation Alloy beats them into submission. The startup has raised $22 million to scale up production of its alloys.

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The deal is supposed to help SpaceX's struggling AI division. The company told IPO investors it sees a $26 trillion addressable market in AI.

SearchLeak exploit shows why the industry's approach to LLM security fails over and over.

Aisha Malik / TechCrunch: Meta says Threads now has 500M MAUs, adds a “Your Algo” tool that lets users control what they see in their feed, and brings Communities out of beta  —  Nearly three years after launching as a competitor to Twitter (now X), Threads has reaches 500 million monthly active users, the company announced Tuesday.

Wency Chen / South China Morning Post: Alibaba's AI unit Tongyi Lab launches the Qwen Robot Suite, its first family of AI models for robots, in pilot testing with some enterprise clients  —  Alibaba unveils Qwen robot models to push AI beyond chatbots, as embodied intelligence becomes the next frontier in global AI

In the decade-plus since Playground Global's founding, it has built its investment thesis around the idea that breakthroughs in science and engineering — not just software — would create the next generation of valuable companies. Company co-founder Peter Barrett breaks it down in this Crunchbase News Q&A.

The Meta-owned social platform announced a series of new features launching today, including a "Your Algo" tool that lets users control what they see in their feeds

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The chatbot still remains the most popular AI assistant worldwide with over 1.1 billion monthly users, followed by Gemini with 662 million and Claude with 245 million.

The European Union has published its AI content labelling playbook, a voluntary Code of Practice meant to help companies meet transparency rules that become law across the bloc on August 2 onwards. The European Commission released the final Code on 10 June, setting out practical steps for the businesses that build and use generative AI to mark […] The post EU publishes its AI content labelling playbook ahead of the AI Act’s August deadline appeared first on AI News.

Toptal CEO Taso Du Val said that it's beneficial for innovative teams to be in person. Shauna Clinton/Sportsfile for Web Summit via Getty Images Toptal CEO Taso Du Val used to be a proponent of remote work and regular company off-sites. He said he now believes that teams focusing on innovative AI initiatives should work in person. Du Val said the company has spent millions on off-sites and didn't find them that productive. A little over six months ago, Toptal CEO Taso Du Val told Business Insider he believed in what he called an 80/20 model: 80% remote work and 20% in-person work at quarterly off-sites. Now, that 80-20 ratio means something different to him: 80% of the workforce can be fully remote and 20% should show up in person. While he said still believes remote work is here to stay — and plans to keep his roughly 700-person company largely structured that way — he said he's come to believe over the past few months that some complex AI-related work is better done in-person. "I hate to say it, because I wish everything could be done remotely just as proficiently as it could in person," Du Val told Business Insider. "But there's just something about the intensity, and the brainstorming, and the sparking of ideas that needs to be in person." The revised 80/20 model Du Val has operated the global hiring company remotely since its founding in 2010, and he's still bullish on that structure. However, he's now considering building a headquarters for the fraction of employees focused on highly innovative AI work. Du Val said the shift reflects changes in the software development lifecycle. Until recently, most software development — even advanced SaaS — was relatively straightforward, he said. Teams could tweak features, and ship updates as needed. Now, he said, the nature of the work is evolving. While some traditional development cycles still exist, developers increasingly need to focus on building datasets that AI models can effectively use. That means thinking carefully about how large language models create agents that can perform narrow and specialized tasks, he said. "It's much more scientific work. It's much more creative. You have to actually do math and science, and talk about new techniques, and there's a lot of brainstorming," Du Val said. The CEO said that in some ways, remote workers are thriving in this new development cycle, especially when it comes to managing AI agents and related workflows. But in other areas, Du Val said, being in person can make a meaningful difference, particularly when certain technical teams are trying to drive breakthroughs. As an example, he pointed to seven recent PhD hires specializing in AI and reinforcement learning who report directly to him. The group is focused on "intense" work and transforming data into new initiatives. A pause on off-sites Du Val said the company has moved away from its previous goal of bringing employees together 20% of the time. For now, only Toptal's "very innovative pockets" are meeting in person, rather than routine quarterly gatherings for every team. He said Toptal ramped up off-sites in 2021 after the pandemic, holding as many as 62 in a single year, and spending "many" millions. The company has hosted off-sites in a number of locations including Turkey, Thailand, France and Spain. Cost wasn't the main reason Toptal reduced its number of off-sites, Du Val said. He said the company ultimately found that many of the gatherings weren't productive enough. "It really wasn't driving value, so I realized, 'wow, this is really pointless, unless you're doing very specific intent-driven work,'" Du Val said. Du Val said Toptal paused routine company off-sites in the last six months because the firm lacked the right leadership for its gatherings. However, he said it plans to hire people who can help facilitate more productive gatherings in the future. Du Val said he still sees value in off-sites under the right circumstances, though. He said he recently spent a month in a 15-bedroom villa in Turkey with a team building a fintech branch for the company. He said the setup worked well. Even as Du Val considers creating a physical office for innovation-focused teams, he said he remains unconvinced that even the teams that benefit from concentrated in-person time always need to be together. In Turkey, he said, there came a point when the brainstorming had run its course, and people needed to return home to execute. "It's still like, 'OK, we've brainstormed enough, now let's go do the work,'" Du Val said. Read the original article on Business Insider