Why Texas Is Making Data Centers Wait(a16z.com) |
Why Texas Is Making Data Centers Wait(a16z.com) |
And they want to mostly power it with on site GAS?!
What is even happening.
They're mostly not opting into some change from no appliances to a houseful of hardcore gaming, they're being led from a houseful of servicable traditional appliances to a houseful of elaborate whizzbang futurist appliances that don't actuallg change much about what they get done in a day.
And all the absurdly more costly resource demands of these received whizzbang doohickies are off-site, so yes, people get pretty shocked and confused when confronted with those extreme hidden costs.
I don't think it's that big of a trend. There are a lot of people around forums like this who use it (I am one) and a lot of business leaders who want it so they can tell people like me that they need to find somewhere else to work. For the average person, it feels like living in Uncanny Valley and puts their livelihood at risk. They don't like it.
The resistance to AI is real. You don't see moratoriums and protests like this come out of nothing. People don't want to subsidize the infrastructure construction costs for an industry known for its insanely wealthy individuals, especially not if doing so could realistically put them out of a job within the next decade.
Most of the state's electricity comes from NG, so clearly there is a market for it. Not to mention heating, cooking, exports, ...
If those incentives come from that taxpayer then this is a roundabout transfer of tax money to gas companies.
This is a bubble. AI just got hot a few years ago and it takes years for the semiconductor industry to design and produce new kinds of chips at scale. I expect tons of new chips to hit the market in 27 and 28. These will run models much faster with less power because they are designed for this specific use case.
Meanwhile there’s constant ongoing research on more efficient models and ways of quantizing them without performance loss.
Oh, and the energy market that underpins the Texas grid was designed by Enron, literally.
https://www.npr.org/podcasts/1004840920/the-disconnect-power...
If the new capacity uses gas to deliver the power it will consume more gas than the USA exported last year.
So basically it will drive up costs _globally_ to a comic scale, for limited return (its already expensive to train new models, this will make it ruinously expensive to both train _and_ run)
the thing that people _will_ notice is that they will not be able to afford LNG (ie heating), but that will also drive up peak energy price, so summer nights will be very hot because peak generation can't kick in because all the gas is contracted out.
Then if AI actually works, more than it does now, it'll put loads of people out of work. This means that money supply dries up. This pushes up the cost of debt. Meaning that infrastructure gets _more expensive_
that and mass unemployment.
It just seems that all these clever people live in thier own little worlds, without bothering to look at how people around them will be affected.
This is not just a wild-eyed thing invented by HN's favorite bad guy.
https://research.google/blog/exploring-a-space-based-scalabl...
Is it a good idea? Most likely not, the amount of issues they are going to have is going to be amazing.
oh and then solve data affinity whilst training.
oh and connectivity.
Oh and lossless RDMA over free space lasers.
Well we will know for sure on Nov 4 :) But I expect 99.999% of the reason is Midterms, that way politicians can say "We are stopping Data Centers". I expect that will change once they have to account for their bribes, known as political contributions in the US.
Normally that would earn you a 2AM all caps tweet labeling you a RINO or worse, and getting primaried. Instead, not a peep.
Which tells you its a ruse and he's in on it.
Texas rolled out the red carpet to corporate interests --- and then discovered that their electrical grid operation is totally inadequate to deal with the impact.
This is just one isolated example of a much larger issue related to the "AI race".
AI is power intensive and the "winner" of the "AI race" is likely be whoever can produce lower cost power and lots of it.
> This entire essay is so obviously Claude
Much as I hate musk, I do love the engineers that managed to make practical high bandwidth inter satellite communications possible. the optics and sensing needed to do that is wonderful.
but data centres in space is just such a stupid fucking idea. Sure you need to solve those problems, but like add some fucking solar panels to datacentres on earth and solve the same problem locally. Its literally the same problem. but you have connection, cooling and less cosmic rays
The ISS dissipates roughly 70kw of heat through 5000 square feet of radiator.
70kw is about 1-3 racks of ai compute.
In 2025, Texas vented or flared enough natural gas to generate roughly 2 gigawatts of useful electrical power continuously for the same period.
https://www.eia.gov/dnav/ng/NG_PROD_SUM_DC_STX_MMCF_A.htm
A lot of gas is burned off simply because it cannot be delivered. Pipelines have a maximum capacity and short term storage is limited.
I also would not be so confident about it never happening again, handling the summer well does not indicate necessarily that the winter will go smoothly, they’re different loads.
> "Great since the freeze"
I take it you know nothing about the back story and didn't listen to the podcast. Prior to this "great freeze" there was another "great freeze" and thing went well for a long time between them until they didn't. Virtually nothing structural that caused the conditions of the failure have changed.
I'm saying it was a problem, it's been addressed. We had one of our hottest Augusts on record this year without a single issue.
If you think it's structurally broken there are energies futures markets you could use to make a lot of money on.
> Austin Energy: ERCOT expects tight grid conditions, requests conservation Tue., Jan. 16, 6-9 am. Similar conditions expected Wed. morning. More info: ercot.com/txans . Conservation tips: austinenergy.com/alerts . > > ERCOT espera condiciones de red ajustadas, solicita conservación Martes, 16 de enero, 6-9 am. Se esperan condiciones similares el miércoles mañana. Más información: ercot.com/txans . Consejos de conservación: austinenergy.com/alerts . Responde STOP para cancelar. Reply STOP to cancel.
> it's been addressed. We had one of our hottest Augusts on record this year without a single issue.
No significant changes to weathercation regulation. No significant changes to the energy market. What exactly, from a systemic perspective, do you feel "has been addressed"? What little I see is too little.
> If you think it's structurally broken there are energies futures markets you could use to make a lot of money on.
What on earth? My problem is that the market is built to incentivize profit over preventing human pain and suffering. That's not a "make money here" opportunity.
1) That's assuming that they actually did fix the problems
2) The idea is to plan and regulate so you don't have market forces fixing problems when the problems are dozens of people freezing to death, massive structural damage to buildings, fires, and business stoppages.
With zero threats from government?
The wind turbines were plentiful but lacked de-icing capabilities (another cost cutting measure).
Batteries are good, but my power was off for 72 hours. Some lost it for double that.
To your point "great since the freeze" why would a corporation take on significant costs for a thing that happens only once every decade or so. Much cheaper to let people freeze to death in their own homes.
Regulations don't take away the cost. But they level the playing field. Without them, the market will punish "excess" aka "redundancy". An operator who does the right thing will find themselves unable to compete. Not just decreased margins but possibly put out of business.
Which is why the real failure is the design of the market. And that fundamentally hasn't changed.