5 ms·
One thing we saw with the dot-com bust is how certain individuals were able to cash in on the failures, e.g., low cost hardware, domain names, etc. (NB. prices
by 1vuio0pswjnm7 11mo ago
One thing we saw with the dot-com bust is how certain individuals were able to cash in on the failures, e.g., low cost hardware, domain names, etc. (NB. prices may exceed $2)
Perhaps people are already thinking about they can cash in on the floor space and HVAC systems that will be left in the wake of failed "AI" hype
- blibble 11mo agoI'm looking forward to buying my own slightly used 5 million square ft data centre in Texas for $1
- WhyOhWhyQ 11mo agoYou're out of luck because I am willing to pay at least $2.
- blibble 11mo agothey'll be plenty for everyone!
- jsheard 11mo agoTired: homelabbers bringing decommissioned datacenter gear home. Wired: homelabbers moving into decommissioned datacenters.
- reverius42 11mo agoMore of a labhome than a homelab at that point.
- spacecadet 11mo agoColo!
- phantasmish 11mo agoYOLO Co-Lo Casa House
- Jgrubb 11mo agoLegend
- renegade-otter 11mo ago"Loft for rent, 50,000 sq ft in a new datacenter, roof access, superb wiring and air conditioning, direct access to fiber backbone."
- nvader 11mo agoNever worn.
- viccis 11mo agoI miss First Saturday in Dallas where we honest to god did buy decommissioned datacenter gear out of the back of a van.
- trhway 11mo agoIn TX? In Russian blogosphere it is a standard staple that Trump is rushing Ukrainian peace deal to be able to move on to the set of mega-projects with Russia - oil/gas in Arctic and data centers in Russian North-West where electricity and cooling is plentiful and cheap.
- voidfunc 11mo agoOil and Gas in The Arctic I can see, but data centers in Russia... good luck with that.
- ekropotin 11mo agoSounds like kremlebot’s, however it’s unclear for me the motivation behind pushing this narrative. Also, why don’t build DCs in Alaska instead?
- trhway 11mo agoactually it is more of the opposition's narrative, probably a way to explain such a pro-Russian position of Trump. I think any such data center project is doomed to ultimately fail, and any serious investment will be for me a sign of the bubble peak exuberance and irrationality.
- oblio 11mo agoWhat could go wrong with placing critical infrastructure on the soil of a strategic rival?
- cheema33 11mo agoBuild trillion dollar data center infrastructure in Russia. What could possibly go wrong? Ask the owners of the leased airplanes who have been unsuccessfully trying to get their planes back for about 3 years.
- octoberfranklin 11mo agoEquinix certainly is.
- PunchyHamster 11mo agothe constant cost of people and power won't make it all that much cheaper than current prices to put a server into someone's else rack.
- kerabatsos 11mo agoWhy do you believe it will fail? Because some companies will not be profitable?
- rzwitserloot 11mo agoIt wasn't an 'it' it was a 'some'. Some of these companies that are investing massively in data centers will fail. Right now essentially none have 'failed' in the sense of 'bankrupt with no recovery' (Chapter 7). They haven't run out of runway yet, and the equity markets are still so eager, even a bad proposition that includes the word 'AI!' is likely to be able to cut some sort of deal for more funds. But that won't last. Some companies will fail. Probably sufficient failures that the companies that are successful won't be able to meaningfully counteract the bursts of sudden supply of AI related gear. That's all the comment you are replying to is implying.
- hkt 11mo agoGiven the amounts being raised and spent, one imagines that the ROI will be appalling unless the pesky humans learn to live on cents a day, or the world economy grows by double digits every year for a few decades.
- marcosdumay 11mo agoIf the entire world economy starts to depend on those companies, they would pay off with "startup level" ROI. And by "startup level" I mean the amounts bullish people say startups funds can pay (10 to 100), not a bootstrapped unicorn.
- ulfw 11mo agoI mean that is how capitalism works, no?
- matt-p 11mo agoTo be honest ai datacentres would be a rip and replace to get back to normal datacentre density, at least on the cooling and power systems. Maybe useful for some kind of manufacturing or industrial process.
- alphabetag675 11mo agoCheap compute would be a boon for science research.
- scj 11mo agoIt'll likely be used to mine bitcoin instead.
- BanazirGalbasi 11mo agoThe GPUs, sure. The mainboards and CPUs can be used in clusters for general-purpose computing, which is still more prevalent in most scientific research as far as I am aware. My alma mater has a several-thousand-core cluster that any student can request time on as long as they have reason to do so, and it's all CPU compute. Getting non-CS majors to write GPU code is unlikely in that scenario.
- marcosdumay 11mo ago> Getting non-CS majors to write GPU code is unlikely in that scenario. People mostly use a GPU-enabled liblaplac. Physics, chemistry, biology, and medicine departments can absolutely use the GPUs.
- bc569a80a344f9c 11mo agoI provide infrastructure for such a cluster that is also available to anyone at the university free of charge. Every year we swap out the oldest 20% of the cluster as we run a five year depreciation schedule. In the last three years, we’ve mostly been swapping in GPU resources at a ration of about 3:1. That’s in response to both usage reports and community surveys.
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 11mo agoFrom the article: ""It's my view that there's no way you're going to get a return on that, because $8 trillion of capex means you need roughly $800 billion of profit just to pay for the interest," he said."
- bitexploder 11mo agoRight, THEY can't, but cloud providers potentially can. And there are probably other uses for everything not GPU/TPU for the Google's of the world. They are out way less than IBM which cannot monetize the space or build data centers efficiently like AWS and Google.
- ekropotin 11mo agoCan’t wait for all this cheap ddr5 memory and GPUs
- jmspring 11mo agoI was looking at my Newegg orders recently. 7/18/2023 - 64GB (2 x 32GB) 288-Pin PC RAM DDR5 6000 (PC5 48000) --> $260. Now, $750+.
- ekropotin 11mo agoDon’t even get me started on this. I recently been shopping on eBay for some DDR4 memory. You may think - who’d need this dated stuff besides me? Yet 16Gb 3200Mhz is at least 60$. Which is effectively the price you paid for DDR5 6000. Crazy, right?
- tempest_ 11mo agoI have 4 32gb sticks of DDR5 6400 in my machine. The RAM in my machine being worth more than the graphics card (7900XTX) was not on my bingo card I can tell you that.
- 3eb7988a1663 11mo agoHoly cow. I have 96GB of DDR5 I bought at start of year for a machine which never materialized. Might have to flip it.
- ekropotin 11mo agoNever in my dreams I could imagine PC parts could be an investment. Someone should start ETF tracking the prices.
- 3eb7988a1663 11mo agoFor a while with bitcoin, it seemed GPU investing was almost a thing. I just checked, the kit I bought in February was $270, today it is showing up for $1070. Woof. Now I have to decide if I should keep it on the off chance I do get around to that machine or dump it while the getting is good. Then again, who wants to buy RAM of unknown provenance unless they themselves are looking to scam the seller.
- pseudosavant 11mo agoThe dotcom bust killed companies, not the Internet. AI will be no different. Most players won’t make it, but the tech will endure and expand.
- bigstrat2003 11mo agoThe difference is that the Internet was actually useful technology, whereas AI is not (so far at least).
- ProjectArcturis 11mo agoMore use cases for AI than blockchain so far.
- 7thaccount 11mo agoI think you're exaggerating a little, but aren't entirely wrong. The Internet has completely changed daily life for most of humanity. AI can mean a lot of things, but a lot of it is blown way out of proportion. I find LLMs useful to help me rephrase a sentence or explain some kind of topic, but it pales in comparison to email and web browsers, YouTube, and things like blogs.
- pseudosavant 11mo agoIn the last month I personally used (as in, it was useful) AI for this: - LLM-powered transcription and translation made it so I could have a long conversation with my airport driver in Vietnam. - Helped me turn 5-10x ideas into working code and usable tools as I used to. - Nano Banana restored dozens of cherished family photos for a Christmas gift for my parents. - Help me correctly fix a ton of nuanced aria/accessibility issues in a production app. - Taught/explained a million things to me: difference between an aneurysm/stroke, why the rise of DX12/Vulkan gaming engines killed off nVidia SLI, political/economic/social parallels between 1920s and 2020s, etc... Maybe everyone isn't using it yet, but that doesn't mean it isn't useful. Way too many people find real use every day in a lot of AI products. Just because MS Office Copilot sucks (and it does), doesn't mean it is all useless.
- lawlessone 11mo ago>cash in on the floor space and HVAC systems that will be left in the wake of failed "AI" hype I'd worry surveillance companies might.
- cagenut 11mo agoyou could stuff the racks full of server-rack batteries (lfp now, na-ion maybe in a decade) and monetize the space and the high capacity grid connect most of the hvac would sit idle tho
- jollyllama 11mo agoThere is a way of viewing the whole thing as a ruse to fast-track power generation through permitting.