5 ms·

If you discount random experiments hosted on someone's laptop or something, there's probably something in La Paz, Bolivia which would get us to around 4000m ele

If you discount random experiments hosted on someone's laptop or something, there's probably something in La Paz, Bolivia which would get us to around 4000m elevation. Chile has a data center at 5000m elevation but it's for a supercomputer. Some Googling indicates China thought they were on to something with a data centre in Lhasa at around 3600m elevation: https://www.passionateinmarketing.com/china-to-build-the-worlds-highest-altitude-data-center/ https://www.passionateinmarketing.com/china-to-build-the-wor...

MarioMan 4y ago
Surely we could do better by hosting something in orbit. I found an interesting case: the USS (Unix-Space-Server) Langley, launched in 2015: https://spaceflight101.com/spacecraft/uss-langley/ https://spaceflight101.com/spacecraft/uss-langley/
- petercooper 4y ago
  Perhaps an interesting way to further qualify "highest web site" might be to demand it's available directly from the broader Internet. While even a permanent TCP/IP based device in space would be pretty cool (and, I imagine, actually exists) the cost of the connection is probably onerous to make it open to public use(?) So perhaps if someone could rig up a microwave link to a solar powered Raspberry Pi Zero hanging off of a weather balloon or something.. we could have a truly publicly accessible Web server at above jet-liner height? :-D This feels like something Tom Scott might try..
- rendall 4y ago
  We could definitely do better, but could something in orbit truly be considered "highest in the world"? I'd probably not credit a website as highest in the world unless it were actually on the world, say, on a mountain, or maybe arguably inside the atmosphere.
  - chrisshroba 4y ago
    The ISS has to periodically correct for atmospheric drag, so it is technically in the atmosphere ;)
josephwegner 4y ago
I had an interesting discussion with my 8yo recently about the highest mountain. It had never occurred to me, but "highest" does not have an agreed upon definition. There are actually a few competing definitions[1]: There's Muana Kea, which is the _tallest_, meaning the furthest distance from the mountain's base to its peak. There's Mount Everest (which I had assumed was the agreed upon "highest"), which has its peak at the highest altitude. Chimborazo has the most unexpected definition of "highest", which is a peak that is furthest from the center of the Earth! We don't live on a perfect sphere, so some mountains can be "shorter" but still further from the core! Would be interesting to see if the "highest websites" differ for each of these definitions! [1]: https://geology.com/records/highest-mountain-in-the-world.shtml https://geology.com/records/highest-mountain-in-the-world.sh...
- petercooper 4y ago
  I share a propensity for getting interested in things like this more than I perhaps should(!) In most cases, Everest doesn't really look particularly impressive given its low prominence in relation to its neighbors, although Wikipedia seems to treat sea level as being its true "base" as a sort of special case so it still comes in at #1 on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mountain_peaks_by_prominence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mountain_peaks_by_prom... ! Chimborazo is a fun one and I would accept a strident enough argument for it to be #1. It truly looks like a magnificent mountain too, indeed perhaps the archetypal 'mountain', if we can take aesthetics into account ;-)
  - CrazyStat 4y ago
    > Wikipedia seems to treat sea level as being its true "base" as a sort of special case so it still comes in at #1 This is due to the definition of prominence, which is roughly "how far down do you have to go from the summit before you can go up to a higher point." This is undefined for the highest mountain, since there is no higher mountain to go up to, so height above sea level is used instead.
  - hervature 4y ago
    You make it seem that something funny is going on with Everest's prominence. That's just the definition of prominence: > prominence measures the height of a mountain or hill's summit relative to the lowest contour line encircling it but containing no higher summit within it By definition, this means that the highest mountain's height is its prominence.
stavros 4y ago
I can put my phone in my plane later today and host a website from 6 km if it'll work, though mobile antennas don't really aim high so they don't work well at altitude.

MarioMan 4y ago

Surely we could do better by hosting something in orbit. I found an interesting case: the USS (Unix-Space-Server) Langley, launched in 2015: https://spaceflight101.com/spacecraft/uss-langley/ https://spaceflight101.com/spacecraft/uss-langley/

petercooper 4y ago
Perhaps an interesting way to further qualify "highest web site" might be to demand it's available directly from the broader Internet. While even a permanent TCP/IP based device in space would be pretty cool (and, I imagine, actually exists) the cost of the connection is probably onerous to make it open to public use(?) So perhaps if someone could rig up a microwave link to a solar powered Raspberry Pi Zero hanging off of a weather balloon or something.. we could have a truly publicly accessible Web server at above jet-liner height? :-D This feels like something Tom Scott might try..
rendall 4y ago
We could definitely do better, but could something in orbit truly be considered "highest in the world"? I'd probably not credit a website as highest in the world unless it were actually on the world, say, on a mountain, or maybe arguably inside the atmosphere.
- chrisshroba 4y ago
  The ISS has to periodically correct for atmospheric drag, so it is technically in the atmosphere ;)

josephwegner 4y ago

I had an interesting discussion with my 8yo recently about the highest mountain. It had never occurred to me, but "highest" does not have an agreed upon definition. There are actually a few competing definitions[1]: There's Muana Kea, which is the _tallest_, meaning the furthest distance from the mountain's base to its peak. There's Mount Everest (which I had assumed was the agreed upon "highest"), which has its peak at the highest altitude. Chimborazo has the most unexpected definition of "highest", which is a peak that is furthest from the center of the Earth! We don't live on a perfect sphere, so some mountains can be "shorter" but still further from the core! Would be interesting to see if the "highest websites" differ for each of these definitions! [1]: https://geology.com/records/highest-mountain-in-the-world.shtml https://geology.com/records/highest-mountain-in-the-world.sh...

petercooper 4y ago
I share a propensity for getting interested in things like this more than I perhaps should(!) In most cases, Everest doesn't really look particularly impressive given its low prominence in relation to its neighbors, although Wikipedia seems to treat sea level as being its true "base" as a sort of special case so it still comes in at #1 on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mountain_peaks_by_prominence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mountain_peaks_by_prom... ! Chimborazo is a fun one and I would accept a strident enough argument for it to be #1. It truly looks like a magnificent mountain too, indeed perhaps the archetypal 'mountain', if we can take aesthetics into account ;-)
- CrazyStat 4y ago
  > Wikipedia seems to treat sea level as being its true "base" as a sort of special case so it still comes in at #1 This is due to the definition of prominence, which is roughly "how far down do you have to go from the summit before you can go up to a higher point." This is undefined for the highest mountain, since there is no higher mountain to go up to, so height above sea level is used instead.
- hervature 4y ago
  You make it seem that something funny is going on with Everest's prominence. That's just the definition of prominence: > prominence measures the height of a mountain or hill's summit relative to the lowest contour line encircling it but containing no higher summit within it By definition, this means that the highest mountain's height is its prominence.

stavros 4y ago

I can put my phone in my plane later today and host a website from 6 km if it'll work, though mobile antennas don't really aim high so they don't work well at altitude.