Brazil's Top Supercomputer Turned Off Due To Lack Of Cash

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At first, I was like "what a bunch of tight asses" for not wanting to pay the electric bill to keep this supercomputer on. Then I saw that it was $150,000 a month and totally understood why they flipped the switch. :eek:

Brazil's largest supercomputing complex is largely inactive since May due to lack of cash to pay for the electricity bills at the institute where it is based. Electricity costs to maintain the resource up and running surpass R$500,000 ($147,986) a month and funding from the Rio de Janeiro state government, currently at the brink of default, has not been readjusted to meet these demands, according to a report from Brazilian radio CBN.
 
Quix said:
Wasted the money on a bunch of useless sports events. Apparently entertainment is more important than science in Brazil.
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Lol, kind of true. I don't get why they did the World Cup in 2014 and are now doing Olympics in 2016 when they have some real issues to work out. Maybe they thought it would bring in more money than it cost though?
 
Why the hell did they decide to host the Olympics? Prestige? All it's doing is showing the world how much of a poor 3rd world country they are. They are almost making places like Greece look fiscally responsible.
 
GotNoRice said:
Why the hell did they decide to host the Olympics? Prestige? All it's doing is showing the world how much of a poor 3rd world country they are. They are almost making places like Greece look fiscally responsible.
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Things were good when they bid and won. The question is why the Olympic committee keeps picking dictatorships and corrupt third-world shit holes to hold the Olympics?

The answer is bribes.

Plus who the hell would even want to host a World Cup or the Olympics in this day and age? The cost is astonishing.
 
-Strelok- said:
Lol, kind of true. I don't get why they did the World Cup in 2014 and are now doing Olympics in 2016 when they have some real issues to work out. Maybe they thought it would bring in more money than it cost though?
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If they thought it would actually result in a net gain, they're idiots. It is possible to turn a profit, but it's also possible for losses to end up in the billions(nevermind the non-financial issues that come with hosting this mess). Hell, Tokyo was the other final candidate and if you look at the IOCs feasability scoring, Rio's was atrocious by comparison and that was from 2008.
 
Quix said:
Wasted the money on a bunch of useless sports events. Apparently entertainment is more important than science in Brazil.
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It's more important than crumbling roads, out of control crime, abysmal hospitals, basic sewage systems, etc. I live in Brazil and seeing money spent on the world cup and olympics while citizens suffer, while paying outrageously high taxes, makes my blood boil.
 
Considering how many countries are going crazy for solar, you'd think they'd switch to solar? Isn't that country very sunny too?
 
CacaSapo said:
It's more important than crumbling roads, out of control crime, abysmal hospitals, basic sewage systems, etc. I live in Brazil and seeing money spent on the world cup and olympics while citizens suffer, while paying outrageously high taxes, makes my blood boil.
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Science is what drives the economy in countries around the world. It can even alleviate the cost of fixing roads, out of control crime, and hospitals.
 
Quix said:
Wasted the money on a bunch of useless sports events. Apparently entertainment is more important than science in Brazil.
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Agree with you 100%. For the cost of the 2016 Olympics, this computer could have been operated for the next 65333 years.
 
Quix said:
Wasted the money on a bunch of useless sports events. Apparently entertainment is more important than science in Brazil.
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But did you see the game?! So worth not having a super computer doing useful work.
/sarcasm.
 
DukenukemX said:
Considering how many countries are going crazy for solar, you'd think they'd switch to solar? Isn't that country very sunny too?
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going solar isn't exactly cheap. we need to recycle all the waste heat that massive computers produce. I don't mean just heating schools and what not during the year. Tho noise too
 
Twisted Kidney said:
Things were good when they bid and won. The question is why the Olympic committee keeps picking dictatorships and corrupt third-world shit holes to hold the Olympics?

The answer is bribes.

Plus who the hell would even want to host a World Cup or the Olympics in this day and age? The cost is astonishing.
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Not sure what you mean. I'm not sure any of the Olympics in the last 25 years took place in Dictatorships, but I assume you mean Russia and China...that's 2 out of 14 countries and AFAIK not one is a 3rd world country, including Brazil.

Nevertheless, I think it makes a lot more sense to hold them in areas that already have much of the needed infrastructure. I don't know about the Olympics, but I really don't get the World Cup on Brazil. Several of the stadiums, AFAIK, will never be used again. But as you said, when they bid on it, they thought they could afford it and if it was just one of the events, I'd say maybe it makes sense, but both?
 
nilepez said:
Not sure what you mean. I'm not sure any of the Olympics in the last 25 years took place in Dictatorships, but I assume you mean Russia and China...that's 2 out of 14 countries and AFAIK not one is a 3rd world country, including Brazil.

Nevertheless, I think it makes a lot more sense to hold them in areas that already have much of the needed infrastructure. I don't know about the Olympics, but I really don't get the World Cup on Brazil. Several of the stadiums, AFAIK, will never be used again. But as you said, when they bid on it, they thought they could afford it and if it was just one of the events, I'd say maybe it makes sense, but both?
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There have been many articles by reputable news publications about how corrupt the Olympic selection process is. It's a metric crapton of "legalized bribery".

My Brazilian friends tell me (and online articles have confirmed this) that Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff nabbed the World Cup and Olympics in order to distract the Brazilian masses with "panem et circenses" from the major economic/social/political issues going on in Brazil (expected an easy World Cup win for Brazil in 2014, amongst other things. We all know how that went). I'm glad that many Brazilians weren't nearly as dumb as Rousseff & Co. assumed/implied they were, and refused to be taken in by the "entertainment".
 
tungt88 said:
There have been many articles by reputable news publications about how corrupt the Olympic selection process is. It's a metric crapton of "legalized bribery".

My Brazilian friends tell me (and online articles have confirmed this) that Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff nabbed the World Cup and Olympics in order to distract the Brazilian masses with "panem et circenses" from the major economic/social/political issues going on in Brazil (expected an easy World Cup win for Brazil in 2014, amongst other things. We all know how that went). I'm glad that many Brazilians weren't nearly as dumb as Rousseff & Co. assumed/implied they were, and refused to be taken in by the "entertainment".
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Regardless, that doesn't make it a dictatorship or a corrupt third-world shit hole, which is what my post was about.
 
You'd think somebody somewhere would be interested in buying time on the supercomputer...
 
Quix said:
Wasted the money on a bunch of useless sports events. Apparently entertainment is more important than science in Brazil.
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In Brazil? Where in the world is that not the case? Last I checked pro basketball players BASE salary for exceeds anything probably anybody at NASA makes.
 
nilepez said:
Regardless, that doesn't make it a dictatorship or a corrupt third-world shit hole, which is what my post was about.
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The colossal mismanagement of Brazil's many resources by the "powers-that-be" is rapidly making it a corrupt third-world craphouse, despite what Brazil's current ruling party wants the world to believe. A shame, too, because Brazil has immense potential and talent (as its BRICS membership indicates). Hopefully some responsible leaders will clean up the mess and lead Brazil into a new and better future, unlike guys like Eike Batista (once the world's seventh-richest man, he's now massively in debt, and only due to major court settlements is he still holding on to a "mere" $200 million USD, with most of his assets pledged to the judiciary should he default. Last reports had him resorting to psychics and mediums, including tossing several hundred thousands USD of gold coins into the Pacific Ocean, in attempts to regain his wealth). The Brazilians I've met (middle and upper middle class types) have been warm, welcoming, hardworking, honest, and friendly people -- but there are "plenty of crooks" at the very top.

And yes, the Brazilian babes are real lookers. They know how to catch your eye (I once met this girl that I swear looked like the clone of Alessandra Ambrosio; she was dressed sexily w/o being slutty, and was smoking hot).
 
Can't they do like 99% of Brazil and just splice into the power poles outside of the meter? :D
 
DukenukemX said:
Considering how many countries are going crazy for solar, you'd think they'd switch to solar? Isn't that country very sunny too?
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So long as they keep destroying the rain forest they could possibly have more than enough land for solar power facilities.
 
DukenukemX said:
Considering how many countries are going crazy for solar, you'd think they'd switch to solar? Isn't that country very sunny too?
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Solar is terrible. Super expensive and terrible efficiency/capacity compared to pretty much anything else.
 
DukenukemX said:
Science is what drives the economy in countries around the world. It can even alleviate the cost of fixing roads, out of control crime, and hospitals.
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That's absolutely true, but if your kid is getting a crap education and drop out, gets robbed and beaten on the way to school, lingers in a hospital hallway, gets an infection and dies or has a limb amputated, he's not going to be a scientist.

The infrastructure and security issues a critically important, and even trump research, at least for the immediate future.
 
cthulhuiscool said:
In Brazil? Where in the world is that not the case? Last I checked pro basketball players BASE salary for exceeds anything probably anybody at NASA makes.
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Yes, professional sport players are paid excessive wages. But we do that for TV stars universally.

It's not such a waste of money when you run the numbers. There are only a few thousand actual players between the NFL, NBA and MLB combined.

NBA is around 400, NFL is around 1500, and MLB is around 1200.

There are FAR MORE scientists on earth, and they have a far less exciting job from a spectator point of view, so they get paid less :D
 
defaultluser said:
Yes, professional sport players are paid excessive wages. But we do that for TV stars universally.

It's not such a waste of money when you run the numbers. There are only a few thousand actual players between the NFL, NBA and MLB combined.

NBA is around 400, NFL is around 1500, and MLB is around 1200.

There are FAR MORE scientists on earth, and they have a far less exciting job from a spectator point of view, so they get paid less :D
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Then there's how the NFL and NBA blackmail municipal governments into building their facilities for them....and they fall for it.
 
DukenukemX said:
Considering how many countries are going crazy for solar, you'd think they'd switch to solar? Isn't that country very sunny too?
Click to expand...


Actually my former company owned part of Electropalo in which is one of the main power companies in Brazil and they invested heavily in hydroelectric power.
 
CacaSapo said:
It's more important than crumbling roads, out of control crime, abysmal hospitals, basic sewage systems, etc. I live in Brazil and seeing money spent on the world cup and olympics while citizens suffer, while paying outrageously high taxes, makes my blood boil.
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I feel you, my blood boils when our beloved government keeps cutting funds to nasa, schools, Medicaid, etc, but have zero problems in maintaining the war machine.

Heck, they have a lot of people working in creating fake enemies to maintain the perpetual war.

Meanwhile, innocents keeps dying here and whatever poor country they decide to destroy.
 
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