The data center buildout makes no sense.
I don’t want to work for a Trump lapdog, so MAGA++ recruiters can go pound sand.
I don’t think SV leadership realizes how f—-ked they are.
So true.
I remember hearing somewhere that Mark's residence in Los Gatos there has RPG proof windows in it. Like 9(?) inches thick. Even the sea lion windows at the zoo aren't that thick. The optical distortion on such a window is just immense.
I've worked with glass that thick before for radiation stuff (leaded glass though, so quite yellow, caveats apply) and it's hard to describe how it feels looking into a room via glass that thick. You can't get an angle on things the way you'd like. Tapping on it to get someone's attention is pointless, like tapping on a concrete bench. You can see in 3-D, but the subtle variations in the optical patterns make it so that focusing and moving your head is hard, your eyes always have to adjust and go a teeny bit crosseyed all the time. Then the refractive index makes things appear where you know they are not, so you're never quite sure of the location of things. Also, glass absorbs light at different frequencies at different ways. So the color you see is always going to be a bit dulled in the reds (typically), though I'm not sure what the spectrum absorbtion is for 9 inch thick RPG proof glass.
Look, point I am trying to make is that Mark really does see the world differently than we do. Like when he wakes up and looks out the window, it really is distorted. And this is but one example of how his reality is so much different than ours.
It's been true for likely 300,000 years that the oligarchs have a different reality and pressures than we serfs do. This time is absolutely no different. And the source is always the same: hubris.
Only in the MAGA world are we somehow given a choice between NDA-laden, Coal powered loud turbine data center projects or no data centers at all.
Feels like there’s always been an easy middle ground no? I agree nothing in the MAGA world has forced tech to pursue it, but it’s always been there.
Using taxpayer money and kickbacks to ram through data center construction is bad, but it's not even top ten on the list of crimes the executive branch committed in the last two years.
Is there actually any evidence we're short on inference compute, let alone by a factor of 2.5? To me it always seemed the data centers were about accommodating some extreme predictions on future demand, scaling up training and trying to outdo one another in capturing the limited hardware.
Most people seem to be fudging around with reasoning levels to get through the day and that's pretty telling.
You’re not seeing this? I just had a 20 minute conversation with an engineer about how he’s managing his Codex resets and optimizing his workflow to work around the ways Claude limits his work. It’s extremely stringent rate limiting and you have to pay a lot more for priority pro plans.
Like yes it could be worse, they could just limit customers but that’s exactly what I’m hoping to avoid.
All of this was preceded by the first economic shocks of the bubble bursting, and now it's truly underway. By this time next week it's entirely possible there will be fewer SV "Leaders" in a position to do more than wonder when exactly it all went so wrong.
Hint: It was the beginning.