Barcelona Supercomputing Center | Hacker News Reader

Barcelona Supercomputing Center

atlasobscura.com

99 pointsdiggan17 comments

I heard a nice saying once, can't remember the origin precisely. It goes along the lines:

Before, men believed they are the image of their Creator, and nowadays they believe they are image of their creation. I.e. it can often be heard today that humans are like computers, that they have similarities etc.

Original article goes nice with this I think. Otherwise than that, I quite like the aesthetics of supercomputer and its surroundings.

I hope that they will continue to keep Torre Girona in as close to its original condition as possible. It's not abnormal for the church to stop using buildings as churches if it makes sense, but it is a beautiful building.

I was there! About 8 years ago during a school trip. The church lies next to a picturesque small lake, and once inside its simply stunning.

I regularly took part in tours of the local super computing center (Munich), but the BSC is really something else. Would definitiv recommend going to see it (book in advance!).

I was there a couple of times. It's an amazing place for a DataCenter.

You can see the datacenter from above, from the second floor. I think it's a great place to take some shots for an evil headquarter of a spies movie.

I love this place. I want to see it in person some day, and I'm glad to hear they give tours. When the Mare Nostrum was first built, I sent the picture of it sitting in the middle of the church to a friend. He posted it on Fark, I think, and one of the comments was that the picture was an "obvious Photoshop"!

The aesthetic doesn't work for me, can't explain why, and I know a building is a building, but the dichotomy between old and new, subjective and objective, it just clashes.

I don't assert they should or need to appeal to my aesthetic, nor that the aesthetic value in any way impacts their ability or success.

Just a personal opinion and observation.

Personally I think its a bit too empty, they should expand it to two floors :)

It seems to be an allusion to the christian cathedral in Córdoba that's built around a mosque.

You have it backwards: the church was built in the middle of the mosque.

Fair enough. My analogy was about the practice of remaking a place of worship into a place to worship something else.

Funnily enough, the mosque was built atop the original Visigoth church. And God knows what was that church built atop of. Hm, maybe we should build a supercomputer on top of it!

I was there as well like 2 year ago or something. Very well decorated btw.

Having been there, its a really interesting location, quite beautiful.

IBM have the best showrooms.

Three cheers for secular humanism!

A side benefit of entire populations grown weary of fairy tales, now the land formerly reserved for tax-exempt politicking can be repurposed for economic growth that benefits even unbelievers.

The irony of this occurring in the home country of the Spanish Inquisition is (to me) very satisfying. The arc of history is long, but apparently it really does bend towards justice.

Read something about Spanish Inquisition: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Legend_of_the_Spanish_In...

I did -- it looks like 3000 people were killed in it. Less than the myths would have you believe, but still a lot of people to kill on purpose (especially if they're not actively trying to kill you). I'm just not a big fan of using fairy tales (or anything else besides open hostility from belligerents) as an excuse to kill other people.

It was certainly interesting reading, though. Thanks for the link. I learned quite a bit from reading it and the linked main Inquisition page. It does seem to be used as propaganda out of proportion to its true toll.

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