To the people trying to read between the lines here, do you think OpenAI cares about what they said or didn't say and won't do a 180 if it means more profits? Like a blog post will stop them?
You will need ICs to review the code, approve the PR, and this will go to the pipeline and eventually get released. So you won't avoid engineers having the context of this piece of work.
In my opinion, an EM should use these 10-15 minutes for any of the responsibilities that they have in their role.
I've had countless questions closed and received even more patronizing comments from mods. I wonder who these people were and why were they empowered in such a way by StackOverflow the company.
I routinely spend more time tweaking a prompt than Claude Code spends creating something. The better the prompt, the faster it seems to work (with better results). So I can totally relate to your comment.
It's awesome to be amazed by some cool new technology but let's not be naive.
And the voters who elected Trump because he promised to stop with "nation building".
But with Venezuela's +300bn oil barrels at Trump's disposal now, I bet the gas prices will plummeted. I wonder how the MAGA fanbase will react (probably will be happy to let just this one "nation building" project to slip through their ethics).
If you remember the aftermath of the Iraq2 invasion (which a lot of people claimed was about oil) gas prices did not plummet at all but the reverse. Gas doubled at the pump, maybe slightly more.
Because the US completely botched stabilizing the country despite 10s of thousands of troops on the ground for years. Meanwhile the indigenous insurgency and the previous to the invasion non-existent but subsequently massed foreign Al-Qaeda in Iraq both ensured no meaningful exports could be accomplished.
In Venezuela it's extremely unclear how suddenly creating a giant power vacuum will allow the US to obtain Venezuela's oil.
On one hand, this seems classic from the Trump Admin in that rash actions have been taken with no future plans in place (cf. DOGE), on the other hand this does appear in line with the promise of "no forever wars" (no sustained US ground presence) and if the US does actually end up with the oil, then it will be at a very low cost (in terms of US blood and treasure).
Legacy automakers EVs are just ICE cars with the engine swapped out. Whereas BYDs, teslas etc are a ground up rethink, vertically integrated with battery manufacturing and software.
Classic innovators dilemma - it seems to be almost impossible to align incentives inside legacy auto to do the necessary revolutionary change. Every individual and sub group are internally invested and short term focused on their legacy frames, drivetrains, layouts, electronics, software and supply chains. That’s why you keep getting offered the same car, but now as a sub par EV. So they will lose, because they can’t adapt.
They are getting a lot better in the drivetrain at least, watching videos of teardowns (like Munroe Live) - a couple of years ago a lot of the legacy car brands were using OEM motors and inverters etc. from companies like Bosch, but the newer models are getting a lot more advanced. Probably Lucid had the nicest motor and electronics package and everyone seems to have converged on motor windings a lot like theirs (including Tesla and the legacy brands).
But there is still a lot to be desired in legacy EVs, but generally at least some of the brands are slowly moving in the right direction.
point taken on the motors. But perhaps drivetrain was the wrong word for what i was trying to focus on - perhaps "platform" is closer? As an elaboration - the legacies are still proudly talking up their upcoming "unified platforms", that allow them to build models in a single factory and interchange ICE and EV powertrains in the same model based on demand. Same cars in everything but drivetrain.
That's the sort of thing that sounds great to a legacy incumbent (yay think of the reuse!), but inevitably leads to building bad EVs compared to the new companies who are building reimagined EV-only platforms from the ground up. Handling, suspension, range, battery integration, software are always going to be better in an EV-first design. The incumbents are trying to have their cake and eat it too - building EVs, but not cannibalizing their main ICE profits.
> the legacies are still proudly talking up their upcoming "unified platforms", that allow them to build models in a single factory and interchange ICE and EV powertrains in the same model based on demand. Same cars in everything but drivetrain.
I still remember when ford was _super_ proud of their ability to push OTAs to their mach-e mustang and lightning. This was in 2020, not 2010 when it would actually have been considered innovative and cutting-edge.
> So, they will lose. Its their kodak moment.
Agree. It's only a question of how many years the decline is stretched out over. We'll learn a lot about the long term viability of US auto over the next 36 months as slate/teleo/scout start to ship.
well they were a battery company first. I cant know for sure but i presume they bought the ice car manufacturing lines always with the intention of going fully electric over time.
US dealers and manufacturers have no financial incentive in promoting and selling EVs. They can’t survive on fixing window chips, rotating tires and occasional bodywork alone. It’s a huge industry with long tentacles.
And when they do or did have incentives, they were not passed on to the consumers. My 2025 Hyundai Ioniq 5 had a $57K sticker. That’s not what I paid for it and cheapish leases are aplenty- but - when the federal $7500 credit expired, they simply dropped the MSRP by that much if not more. BMW and others are pursuing the same strategy in the states. The car was never worth near that much to begin with. They were and are jacking up prices and pocketing the change.
Decades from now we're going to look at the oil patch lobbyists as the villains that killed countless jobs in NA and enabled China to take over whole industries.
You had some politicians like Justin Trudeau that tried to create a frame work that would guide and advantage capital toward investing in innovative green technology and future jobs, but then politicians saw the advantage in politicizing and opposing everything and they tore this all down.
Now China has continued to move ahead meanwhile NA remains at square one with increasingly backward technology, with no incentive to change.
Japanese engineers disassembled a BYD vehicle said BYD's E-Axle drive system was so advanced it would take them 10 years to replicate it. BYD's blade batteries are also a major competitive advantage.
The problem is that few people in "the west" wants EVs.
It's basic supply and demand - the sales are tanking, and without subsidies nobody will buy them, and the car companies are realizing that.
A few models (Teslas, for example) do okay with the upper class, but the lower and middle class can't afford them, don't have anywhere to charge them, and have to drive too much to depend on them.
Even in a trendy, wealthy city like Boulder, CO which is all about saving the environment and going green there isn't nearly enough charging capacity for everybody to use EVs.
An EV is better than no car at all, but they're a downgrade from an ICE in most cases.
The "west" doesn't want expensive EVs. The most popular (or the second most popular) EV in China now costs $5000 for the base model. And for $15k you can get a very reasonable car.
Beefing it up to the US/EU safety standards and even accounting for higher labor cost, it would be around $20k. I'm pretty sure consumers would be quite interested in something like this.
It depends where you live and your driving distances. The US is the worst case for EVs because of longer driving distances and cheaper gas. I plug mine in at my own home so I never have to stop to fill it up a tank which is really nice. A renter might struggle to find anywhere to charge though. ICE is horrible to drive in comparison. They are noisy and lack torque and lots of moving parts need maintenance.
For sparsely populated areas or city to city driving plug-in hybrids should bridge the gap and allow people do most driving on electric and get the benefits of EV performance.
EVs are a superior car if you have a private garage and rarely take long trips or have multiple cars so you don’t need the EV for trips. Great for suburban living, which is where most Americans live. Never having to go to the gas station is legitimately a game changer and it’s worth swapping to EVs for that alone given you check the 2 boxes. Then you consider the better torque and lower noise and easier maintenance and it’s a no brainer.
Boulder is not a great EV town because everyone road trips all the time. 70% of Americans live east of the Mississippi where road trips are less common.
Eh not sure why OP chose Boulder, it is a great EV town. I commute into Boulder in an EV every day I need to be in the office. I almost exclusively charge my EV in Boulder at the office. The proportion of EVs I see driving in and out of Boulder is very high.
I also road trip around Colorado in my EV and it works great.
Consumers in the US haven't actually been given a chance to show what they "want". The cheap EVs have been kept out, of course the $100k ones arent selling that well. Remove the tariffs and import restrictions, and then people will show you what they actually want!
> An EV is better than no car at all, but they're a downgrade from an ICE in most cases.
Totally disagree. ~70% of americans live in single family homes. If you can charge at home which they can, and you dont have some edge case super distance driving needs, EV is better in every way.
> US/EU automakers are still struggling to offer anything barely competitive.
Imagine yourself being one of the top management guys in one of those legacy car makers, you've spent your entire life building what you "earned" in that company...Suddenly the company tells you that you will be sidelined so more resources that once thought to be under your control can be allocated to an EV project so you can be further marginalize in the near future. what will be your reactions? You offer to help in the project (by building junks with your legacy understanding on cars) or you do anything possible to sink that project.
The result is the same - your legacy carmaker company is fxxked.
It is not like just US/EU legacy automakers struggling to offer anything competitive - Chinese legacy automakers that have been in the exact same market for decades with direct access to the exact same supply chain and government subsidies are suffering from the exact same problem. It is not about regulations, market access or subsidies. It is just human nature.
I don't believe the West can sustain its lead. The US became rich by being the worlds manufacturing powerhouse in 1900. Over time, they grew comfortable, developed a massive upper class, and pivoted toward service and 'knowledge' jobs. They outsourced production to China or simply allowed China to take it over.
Germany and the EU followed a similar path. We know how to build machines and industrial products; precision and detail are our stereotypes and trademark. However, we also grew comfortable, focusing on services and high-level strategy while we did not invest to fix energy prices, raw resource dependencies and labor/automatisation.
How long is China looking fo resources in Afrika? Despite China being huge and having plenty of?
China overtook Germany as the leader in industrial exports in 2018, and now in 2026, the gap is already to broad. China has mastered machine building, controls the entire supply chain, and possesses modern technology; all while maintaining lower labor costs and a massive workforce.
Even if the USA and Germany try to avoid Chinese products, the rest of the world will not. We are entering a new era: the mass production of affordable, precise machinery globally, powered by China. If regions like Africa buy their solar, wind, and batteries from China, their entire energy grid and the machines running on it will be Chinese. They will look to China, not the West.
For example, a German company making weaving machines recently noted their price must be €60k to stay profitable, while a Chinese machine of the same quality costs only €20k. Once technology reaches its peak, differentiation is no longer possible to justify higher prices. The car industry is next; cars are becoming a commodity with shrinking profit margins. This shift will make China incredibly wealthy over the next 20 years.
And it wasn't even out of the blue. The shit was written on the wall and despite that what happens? We in germany discuss bureaucracy, if we should change our energy grid, IF investments in cheaper energy is reasonable etc.
We can’t even build our own infrastructure anymore. Look at the SuedOstLink disaster: while China builds massive 'Super Grids' in record time, Germany has spent over a decade and billions of Euros just arguing about a single power cable. Because we are stuck in bureaucracy and 'Not In My Backyard' protests, our energy costs are skyrocketing, while China doesn't care but still beats us in renewables.
It’s the perfect example of a society that has become so comfortable it has forgotten how to actually build the physical foundations of its own wealth.
And adding on top of all of that: AI and Robotic progress is fast, so crazy fast than when its here, we might have solved the other issues i mentioned...
Every car maker selling cars in the EU needs to comply with EU laws.
That's why Europe is mercifully free of Cybertrucks: they can't legally operate on roads within the EU, because they don't meet the safety requirements (one of your "little things").
They only had to comply with EU laws when they were already a big player in China. EU manufacturers need their new vehicles to be compliant on day one. That is, if they want to launch in the EU market first. Audi recently launched a China-only car (AUDI E5 Sportback).
If/when the AI bubble pops and we're left with hundreds of underutilized datacenters, I think this could be good for hosting customers by driving prices down across the board. Maybe it will make self-hosting even more cheaper than public clouds.
The GPUs being used for AI training aren't useful for running games, I highly doubt they could be repurposed for that.
They can run other ML stuff but I don't see how the world could absorb the amount of compute/RAM for these other workflows.
Since the hardware itself depreciates quite fast compared to the buildings, the long lasting physical structure is probably the best bet, being repurposed for more general computing (since all HVAC, electricity, and other expensive infrastructure is already in place).
I think the interesting thing would be if something like Euclyd is successful, and the 10 GW become 100 MW, and the giant server halls become 800 cabinets total.
Then the inference mega datacentre investment becomes a losing proposition for those who paid too much for the wrong kind of computers, but AI users still get more compute, lower prices etc.
I think it will also allow later down the board for more competition down the line for the hardware 3-5 years down the line.
But I don't really think that focusing on GPU market is gonna work as I don't really see much reason to cater to GPU intensive workloads unless you are affiliated with AI (for most part, some GPU compute is good but datacenters shouldn't really invest so much in GPU compute)
I feel like I am more optimistic about buying stuff (preferably compute) 3-5 years down the board when things might become cheap in my opinion
But this is still a very long time. On one hand I want Ai bubble to burst asap to lessen the impacts of financial crisis but on the other I really think about the financial crisis and think if there are any ways to mitigate the economy's loss so that it doesn't become 2008 crisis
But reality to me feels as if the chances of Bubble popping up is inevitable, the only question is if we can do anything to lessen the strain on the average person all around the world. I think America will be impacted the most but I wonder how geo-politically this might impact other countries as compared to the 2008 crisis.
I don't really think the american govt. is doing anything to lessen the strain the bubble can cause tho, perhaps even promoting things like stargate/AI bubble itself.
It's just sad for 3-4 years. Lets hope economy gets better and more reasonable than AI hype
Don't these data centers have pretty elaborate cooling setups that use large volumes of water?
So they're sitting on real estate with access to massive amounts of water, electricity, and high bandwidth network connections. Seems like that combination of resources could be useful for a lot of other things beyond just data centers.
Like you could probably run desalination plants, large scale hydroponic farms, semiconductor manufacturing, or chemical processing facilities. Anything that needs the trifecta of heavy power, water infrastructure, and fiber connectivity could slot right in.
> Don't these data centers have pretty elaborate cooling setups that use large volumes of water?
Depending on where, and (more importantly) when you last read about this, there's been some developments. The original book that started this had a unit conversion error, and the reported numbers were off by about 4500x what the true numbers are (author claimed 1000 times more water than an entire city consumption, while in reality it was estimated at ~22% of that usage).
The problem is that we're living in the era of rage reporting, and corrections rarely get the same coverage as the initial shock claim.
On top of this, DCs don't make water "disappear", in the same way farming doesn't make it disappear. It re-enters the cycle via evaporation. (also, on the topic of farming, don't look up how much water it takes to grow nuts or avocados. That's an unpopular topic, apparently)
And thirdly, DCs use evaporative cooling because it's more efficient. They could, if push came to shove, not use that. And they do, when placed in areas without adequate water supply, use regular cooling.
I always find water use and farming weird. Living in part of planets where water for farms mostly if not fully rains down from the sky. So it getting on farm land is inconsequential one way or an other.
Still, I do feel there must be some difference between farming and cooling use by evaporation. As at least part of water is run off back to rivers and then seep back to ground water. These again depend largely on location.
I have no idea what book you're talking about, and I never claimed water "disappears" or made any argument about consumption statistics. Why would you assume I think water vanishes from existence? That's absurd.
My point is simple: the utility infrastructure is the hard part. The silicon sitting on raised floors is disposable and will be obsolete in a few years. But the power substations, fiber connections, and water infrastructure? That takes years to permit and build, and that's where the real value is.
Building that infrastructure (trenches for water lines, electrical substations, laying fiber) is the actual constraint and where the long term value lies. Whether they're running GPUs or something else entirely, industries will pay for access to that utility infrastructure long after today's AI hardware is obselete.
You're lecturing me about evaporative cooling efficiency while completely missing the point.
Water usage of the DC itself can vary a lot. If they're in an area where clean water is cheap, then they might use evaporative cooling which probably has the most significant water consumption (by volume and the fact that it's been processed to be safe to drink). In other areas they may use non-potable water or just a closed loop water system where the water usage is pretty negligible. The electricity is going to be the much larger consideration on the larger scale (though still affected by local grid capacity). Also, the capital cost is a very significant part of these systems: there's a pretty big gap in pricing between 'worth building' and 'worth keeping running'.
(I recommend this video by Hank Green on the subject: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_c6MWk7PQc . Water usage of data centers is a complex and quite localized concern, not something that's going to be a constant across every deployment)
Semiconductor manufacturing might make sense here but I also don't think it might not simply because it would require probably a lot of expertise and knowledge and complex machinery with experience in this industry which I assume would be very hard to gather even for these datacenters.
I don't see any reasonable path moving forward for these datacenters for the amount of money that they have invested.
Semiconductor manufacturing needs supply chain a lot more than it needs fast internet. Wafers, fine chemicals, gases, consumable parts. A lot of this comes from petroleum refining, so it helps to be near a lot of refineries, although not enough to be decisive in site selection.
Agreed. Your point is true and as such too I don't really think that they could really be used for semiconductor industry.
And all other industries also don't really seem to me to have any overlap with the datacenter industry as much aside from having water access and land and electricity but like I doubt that they would get used enough to be justified their costs, especially the costs of the overpriced GPU's and ram and other components
In my opinion, These large datacenters are usually a lost cause if the AI bubble bursts since they were created with such a strong focus of GPU's and other things and their whole model of demand is related to AI
If the bubble bursts, I think that auctioning server hardware might happen but I doubt how much of that would be non-gpu / pure compute related servers or perhaps gpu but good for the average consumer.
The overlap between the datacenter needs of AI and those of crypto are hard to miss. If/when the AI bubble pops I'd be willing to bet that we see another crypto surge.
I can't be the only one who's noticed that the volume of crypto stuff being pushed slowed as the AI fervor ramped up?
I wouldn't be sure. I think just like AI the crypto has been there due to excess liquidity. Thus when "wealth" gets cancelled the crypto will follow with it. I believe it will go down with rest of the markets.
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