The question was why would WE want it?

Because otherwise, you’ll have no car and no computer.

It’s classic capitalist rent-seeking. Take away your access to something, then rent it back to you.

You can’t legally put shatterproof glass in a car.

???

Plenty of armored car makers do it every day.

CyberDumpster is fugly, and lacks fun.

Every aspect of its design is openly hostile, both to its driver and passengers and everybody outside. It’s as if pure robotic hatred of all mankind was distilled into a pickup “truck”.

Very low orbits are less of a concern, though. Because if the worst happens, they and the vast majority of their debris will be slowed by atmospheric drag and fall relatively quickly.

You’d think… But a laser or microwave emitter that big would also be quite an undertaking.

Honestly, hacking seems the most likely option to succeed on a small scale.

Trying to put something in reverse orbit is even more difficult and requires a much more powerful rocket. Normal orbits follow the same direction as the earth’s rotation, because that allows you to take advantage of the earth’s already-existing rotational speed to give you a head start on achieving enough speed to reach orbit.

Putting something into reverse orbit (while possible) is significantly more difficult, because now the earth’s rotation is working against you. It has been done a few times, but it’s significantly more expensive and difficult to achieve, which is going to be a problem for amateurs trying to shoot down a space station.

Anyway, the difference between orbital velocity and a (relatively stationary) rocket that has been fired straight upward will be plenty of speed difference to cause lots of damage on impact.

And I don’t know if the space datacenter is quite as untouchable as he thinks…

It will obviously be in a very low orbit, because that’s the easiest to reach and construct…

• Maybe it would be within reach of some fairly advanced amateur rocketry? We don’t have to reach a stable orbit, which makes things much easier. Just shoot it straight up, with much less velocity needed than for orbit. In fact, the speed difference between our rocket and his orbital datacenter will be very useful – that speed difference will lead to a very energetic impact.

• Maybe it could be vulnerable to some directed energy weapons? Very strong lasers, highly directional microwave beams, that sort of thing.

• There’s always hacking. For extra irony bonus, use Space Grok to vibe code the tools you need to hack its orbital control systems. Then you can de-orbit it or collide it with other objects in orbit.

Why?

Nobody else would want it.

It will eventually be bought by and merged into xitter.

Even then, with so much money greasing politicians’ palms on both sides, I don’t think the Dems are going to even attempt to pass any meaningful datacenter restrictions.

…

And, honestly, is that even the priority right now? If I’d just been elected to Congress, I’d want to focus on:

1. Rule of law – investigations and impeachments for obvious crimes; also ensuring real election integrity, which means safeguarding USPS from being fucked with, investigating voting machine companies, clarifying and amending some of the loopholes Republicans have been trying to exploit.

2. Abolishing ICE (or at least putting them on a much tighter leash). Take away the president’s private army. Make explicit laws against the worst of their practices – such as violent agents who refuse to identify, deportations to 3rd countries, deportations to dangerous countries, deportations to foreign prisons, indefinite detention in substandard domestic prisons, family separation, etc. Lean on “the power of the purse” for that. Oh, and see if you can find something within Congress’s power that would help purge ICE’s ranks (and other government agency payrolls) of Nazis, white nationalists, and other extremists.

3. Reduce or entirely eliminate the President’s ability to start wars without the approval of Congress. End the war in Iran. Try to end the genocide in Gaza. Try to renew support to Ukraine.

4. Address the affordability crisis. (Ending the Iran war would help with that.) Close whatever loopholes Trump still has left to unilaterally enact tariffs – make all tariffs require congressional approval. Look into housing and food supply policy, looking for ways to improve affordability for those who aren’t rich. If possible, raise taxes on the ultra-wealthy and spend the money on social programs to help middle-class and lower Americans. If possible, craft some kind of law to ensure that power-hungry datacenters pay for their own infrastructure, rather than raising energy prices for everyone. And last but not least, of course, some version of Medicare For All. (Maybe even UBI if we want to get really ambitious, though that’s not likely to get much support even among the mainstream Dems.)

5. Environmental actions – renewed and strengthened protections for public lands, some kind of action on climate change.

You may disagree, of course. But that would be my personal priority list if I were elected to Congress right now.

Nah – Bird Bird Triangle

Mozilla would like a word…

Well, I never got ‘confronted’ at least.

I usually go for pretty small stuff. Statute of limitations will probably run out before I rack up enough to hit felony level.

and nobody will know what “Kafkaesque” even means.

Most people already have no idea what it means.

How many people have actually read Kafka? How many of them have read more than one?

Only the dumb, obvious ones.

I assure you, I’ve shoplifted quite a bit from Lowes without ever drawing suspicion.

If they actually opt to use it. Which is a big fat fucking if.

Also, Trump might just steal it from somewhere. (Where has all that Venezuelan oil money gone?) And who’s going to stop him? The Supreme Court has already ruled that he can do basically anything he wants.

If you can’t afford bread, you should just eat cake the rich.

AI hate is bipartisan and no national-level politician is dumb enough to throw public money at them.

Trump loves him some AI bros, though. And could easily “justify” dumping shitloads of public money into them because using AI in the military (bad idea in the first place) makes AI a “national security priority”.

Bullets and toilet paper. 📈