Paul Duane 🥔

It Is Fundamentally Impossible For OpenAI To Build The Data Center Capacity It’s Promised, As It Would Require 33.8GW of Power, Massive Pre-Ordering Of Custom Transformers, and Hundreds of Billions Of Dollars In Power Infrastructure Alone — And Most Of The Capacity Remains Unplanned In any case, as I’ve explained, the power infrastructure necessary to build out these data centers is immense. For example, the power necessary for a 900MW data center planned in Virginia will be run across three different 300 Megawatt phases, won’t begin construction until February 2027, won’t finish construction until June 2028, and won’t even complete its first 300 Megawatt phase until 2031, despite Google saying it would take 18 to 24 months to build the data center. For OpenAI to build 26GW of compute capacity would require them to secure 33.8GW of power. For comparison, the US Energy Information Administration predicts that the US will add approximately 63 gigawatts of new power capacity in 2025. Honestly, it’s hard to even calculate the amount that this power infrastructure might cost, as things vary wildly based on location (hotter climes require more cooling, and are more susceptible to transmission loss), the kinds of chips used in these facilities, and so on. There are hard, physical limits to the amount of power that you can build, with each massive power project requiring bespoke transformers and infrastructure, each in and of itself requiring anyone planning these massive deployments to pre-order them years in advance. Money can only accelerate so much, and custom projects built with electrical-grade steel cannot be accelerated if the steel itself is in short supply, a problem compounded by tariffs. Even if the steel were available, power companies require massive amounts of surveys and testing to make sure the power is reliably and safely delivered to the end customer. You need to win the approval of local governments — and, crucially, local communities, who might ta…

It Is No Longer Ethical To Trust Anyone Promising To Build Gigawatts Of Compute I cannot express this clearly enough: there is not enough power to power Stargate Abilene, and there may not be enough before the year 2028, which will be multiple fiscal years into Oracle’s $300 billion contract with OpenAI. If this is the case, OpenAI may have a case to walk away from Abilene — or pay Oracle a much smaller cut until (or if) it can get the power necessary to run the facility. Everything I’ve learned preparing this newsletter has made me question any and all claims by anybody saying it’s going to build a gigawatt data center. I can find no evidence that anybody has constructed one, no evidence that anybody has built the power sufficient to power a gigawatt of compute, and no plans that suggest anybody will successfully complete a gigawatt data center project before the year 2028. Construction is also hard, and prone to both delays and budgetary shortfalls. The amount of money, infrastructure, time and domain specific labor (there’s a shortage, by the way!) required to pull off even a gigawatt of data centers is so blatantly unrealistic that I believe the media needs to actively stop reporting on these without asking very practical questions about their feasibility. While these things might get built at some point, they’re also reliant on massive amounts of debt, all of which is contingent on people still believing that there’s massive demand for generative AI, at a time when everybody is saying that we’re in a bubble. At some point, private credit will stop issuing billions of dollars in debt for anyone who says the word “gigawatt," likely at the first sign that these projects are going over budget and require more money to keep them alive. In simpler terms, data centers are a money pit with few chances of a return.

It is impossible for OpenAI to build the 26GW of compute - which will require 33.8GW of power - that they've promised. It requires massive pre-ordering of custom electrical gear and hundreds of billions of dollars of infrastructure.

Sam Altman is lying.
www.wheresyoured.at/the-ai-bubbl...

He needs to help his brother.

Nostalgia for the Reagan era I suppose

I am reading that sentence someone at the WSJ wrote and imagining what kind of person could have this opinion and even worse, put it in writing and publish it

Never forget the core thing funding the sheer scale of the spending spree of AI investments is primarily due to the turborich wanting to solve the “problem” of having to pay wages.

I send you in a faint voice full of fatigue and despair. If you stop donations, we will waste our lives inside our worn-out tent. No food, no clothing, no blankets, no work. Do not break my kids hearts. They need $250 urgently to secure them.
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I have a copy of The Hollow Man somewhere, will see if I can dig it out for a re-read.

The Hopeless Horror of Charles Beaumont The writer died before his fortieth birthday—but left behind an influential catalogue of stories and unforgettable Twilight Zone episodes.

Today for @thebulwark.com I take a look at the short fiction of one of the great American genre writers, Charles Beaumont.

www.thebulwark.com/p/hopeless-h...

No need at all to apologise, I feel the same way!

All You Need Is Death (2023) - Projected Figures Paul Duane's folk (song) horror ALL YOU NEED IS DEATH plays out present cover versions of past love, betrayal and accursed vengeance

Folk (song) horror: @paulduane.bsky.social's funny, freaky, fucked-up ALL YOU NEED IS DEATH (2023) "plays out present cover versions of past love, betrayal and accursed vengeance". On @arrowplayer.bsky.social (UK/Ireland) from today projectedfigures.com/2023/10/13/a...

and rightly so

Hello my friends,we are very happy that the war is over and we will finally live in safety&peace Please help me survive&get out of the Gaza Strip and get out with my family when the crossing reopens to treat my daughter Massa.The arrangements are very expensive.Please support me🙏😔
gofund.me/74c01145

You are preaching to the choir, Farran

The Connolly campaign see the Presidency as an opportunity to further Catherine's lifelong mission of helping people. Fine Gael see it as a strategy game to be won at any cost. Straight from the horse's mouth #spéirgorm #Áras2025

😭😭💔🙏🙏

Apropos absolutely nothing else there is still a rather rude awakening which is yet to come for those in the Democratic Party and in the camp of liberalism writ large if they think Israel's public image is at all recoverable among young and nonwhite voters and apparatchiks.

Another €300BN in venture capital will DEFINITELY fix this problem

A shot from an AI produced short. 8 screenshots show a supposed continuous conversation between two people. On the left a woman in black sci-fi armour, with her hair tied back, on the right a man in a black polo neck. They are in a grey and black room. Every shot of the woman shows a different face and so does every shot of the man.

Had a look at some of the films featured previously at this festival plus some other AI-produced shorts to see if this aim of 'HBO-level' film was accurate, and at a basic level AI can't yet even create a convincing 1 minute scene of 2 people talking in a room without them regenerating in every shot

same

singing 'the POPE is WOKE' to myself to the tune of Ace of Spades

People have actually started migrating to mastodon and just wanna say, outstanding job to the management team here. Glad you told your users to fuck off. Real smart moves

people in Scotland thinking of themselves as British at all looks headed to become a minority position in the not too distant future

This is a pretty disingenuous bad faith hypothetical question to ask of Catherine Connolly and, I think "would have to think ..." is a v reasonable response. U wud hope any politician wud treat such serious matters as sexual violence with thoughtful reflection rather than shoot from the hip #Áras25

It really can't be said enough: the goal of the "anti-woke" movement was always to destroy social norms against bigotry. And it worked. And there's a whole lot of purportedly "left" thinkers & commentators who helped it -- indeed, it couldn't have been done without them.

They should feel bad.

Artificial Stupidity | Weird & Confusing Get more from Weird & Confusing on Patreon

I agree completely: www.patreon.com/posts/artifi...

Yeah, I thought maybe he was dim but he's evil

These are, I dunno, worse than I thought they would be

GET IN, LOSER! We are sinking under the accumulated weight of centuries of misrule over Central Europe that has produced a mindset both cravenly supplicant and splenetically hostile.

chuffed.org/project/1428...

Someone who I have actually read a book by has won the Nobel Prize for Literature for once, it's a great day for me personally.