This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
It's becoming painfully obvious that there is no way to ethically use frontier models powered by these monstrosities. It is currently 100 F in Tuckahoe, the largest city in Henrico County... and they're asking people to not use electricity so that these heat-and-pollution-generating slop factories can use it instead.
This is insanity.
Tuckahoe
It is currently 100 F in Tuckahoe, the largest city in Henrico County… and they’re asking people to not use electricity so that these heat-and-pollution-generating slop factories can use it instead.
In other words, this shit is killing people? I don't think many houses in the US are made so that you can survive 38°C outside without A/C ?
This administration has killed a lot of folks.
They are being paid. Why else would they doom their own people? You won’t stop it if you don’t stop them.
The only reasonable response to these requests is fuck you figure out your data center power issues yourself.
Power is for the people.
Oh, there are definitely ethical ways to use these models. It's just that those methods are not being enforced by local counties or your governments. Thus, companies are able to do whatever the hell they want, which means it's going to be unethical by default.
What we need is regulation, enforcement, and a stop letting these companies trample all over everything they want to.
No, there really isn't. The frontier models are created through massive plagiarism. They're designed to be addictive to use. They consume massive amounts of resources to feed you slop. They are inherently unethical. We're burning the planet down to keep them running, and we don't even have a demonstrable financial ROI to show for it.
Stop using them. If your employer makes you use them, maliciously comply by wasting tokens until the financial pain is too great for them to bear and they stop. If you yourself are addicted, switch to small, local, open-source, open-weight models you can run yourself. You won't burn the world down running a small model on your own computer.
You have that backwards. The only thing you gain from running local models is privacy. It is not cheaper, it is not more efficient. You are actively hurting the environment MORE by using a local model on your own. LLM efficiency sky rockets the more users there are on a single loaded model.
IMO the only way we get to efficient LLM usage would be by having very efficient non frontier models running only for its local community to use, where you can have assurances on whether its power source is clean or not. That doesn't help with the plagiarism aspect though
If Virginians aren't surrounding the county government building, 24/7, with firearms...
Your fucking state motto is Sic Semper Tyranis.
Live up to it, or never be taken seriously, about anything, ever again.
You know what happened in Iceland in the 07/08 financial crisis?
Something like 1/3 to 2/3 of the entire population of the island surrounded parliament, literally with pitchforks, untill they actually prosecuted the criminal financiers for their actual financial crimes.
Iceland is basically the only Western country that didn't bail out their bankster fraud artists, and sent them to fucking prison, instead.
Ya'll gonna let your selves get outdone by Iceland?
Ya’ll gonna let your selves get outdone by Iceland?
I've seen, firsthand, how Icelanders group up and solve problems together as a unit. They have a cultural tradition of outdoing other cultures, because of this.
The state of Virginia cries about the battle flag the 1rst Minnesota took during the Battle of Gettysburg from the 28th Virginia on the July 3 day of the battle to this day.
They have asked for the flag back 4 times. Each time we say No!. The 1rst Minnesota took that flag in open battle and the 70% casualties was the blood paid for it. The blood of 4 men directly paid for its capture.
Their state motto hasn't meant much since that battle.
If you actually read the article, nobody is asking individuals to reduce usage, the local government is trying to save on its own bill by... Turning off unused lights and computer monitors at work.
The real crime is variable rate power plans and price hikes. Shouldn't exist. It's a utility, why does it need a market price? Should be provided by government, not private companies...
Iceland has 400,000 people, and is an island. America has 340 MILLION people, and is 3000 miles wide.
In America, it's a LOT more difficult to gather a large population in one place. We tend to get gatherings in multiple cities, instead. The last big one had 3,300 hundred different protests around the nation, with over 7 million people.
Iceland has 400,000 people, and is an island. America has 340 MILLION people, and is 3000 miles wide.
Lets reread the first line of the post you quoted:
If VIRGINIANS aren’t surrounding the COUNTY government building, 24/7, with firearms…
They are talking about a county in a state. Not America.
Why are residential and critical infrastructure electric rates uncapped? Prices should not be allowed to be hiked. The material ability to produce the electricity is there no matter what and demand is functionally inelastic--this price hiking doesn't cover any increase in cost of production, it just goes directly to utility company profit lines. We need to stop fucking negotiating with power companies.
I wouldn't point to power companies as the sole culprits here. These data centers shouldn't be getting approval in the first place based on their power and water demand, but they promise more money and jobs coming to the area and these dipshits keep believing them.
So long as fuel prices fluctuate, power prices will fluctuate. Some price variation is more for curbing costs than for padding profits. I'm not the guy running those numbers at my power plant, but I see power rates swing with demand and prices/MW. The past few days in VA were pretty demanding on us.
I think there's plenty blame to be laid at the feet of data center owners and local permitting morons, for sure. That said, at the end of the day, National Grid NA has posted year on year record profits and continues to argue that price hikes are necessary due to short term fuel cost spikes. Meanwhile, regulators and legislators insist that we need to "negotiate" pricing when most of the infrastructure and labor for generation and transmission is subsidized by the state, is a critical infrastructure, and the operators are still fully capable of netting immense profit despite everything. It just doesn't make sense. They are not going to go away because their profits are fewer billions this year than last year's billions, and if they did, it would be more than fine for the state to step in and take over in providing critical infrastructure for the operation of society, even if it is a cost center, because it's one of the key fucking reasons humans collect into cooperative society in the first place.
100% reasonable and fair take. No notes lol.
If I lived in Virginia County, I'd do my part and use as much electricity as I could. Bring the grid down, piss everyone off, and call out the fucktards who are blaming "the people", rather than the data centers.
Why couldn't they ask data centers to conserve power?
But how would I ask Claude the best way to cook beans at 2000ft above sea level?
At 2000 ft? Just cook them. I don't think you really need to make adjustments until you're about 3x higher in elevation than that...
Thanks, beans on the menu tonight now
This is off topic, but toms hardware is one of a growing list of pages using “ad recovery” services that intentionally break their own page and then blame DNS-level filters for the problem. It’s disingenuous at best and I really don’t think a site willing to employ a such deceptive tactic should be allowed to get page views.
No reliable national grid and no coordinated expansion of power plant capacity and an economy built on IT services. That's a bold strategy.
Long story, the US has three main grids last I heard. East, West, and Texas. The grid could be reliable, but why when can raise rates and not?
That’s capitalism! Planning is an anathema.
Oh, so Virginia is going to be the sacrificial state, good for them.
They voted for all this shit.
I believe VA has more data centers than any other state.
I don't know who needs to hear this, but NEVER fly a drone near a transformer
That sucks. I remember everyone pointing and laughing at California because the state was being defrauded by Enron, which caused regular brownouts.
I ain't do that. If you are in Virginia (or anywhere else, but since this post is about Virginia) and need help cooling off, pour water on your forearm. I learned it as left forearm because it's barely closer to your heart, but I haven't noticed a difference. You're getting better air cooling because of the water, and it's on your forearm which gets a lot of bloodflow. Also you aren't getting your clothes wet. Old farmer's trick.
Mentioning Enron never ceases to make my blood boil. People died for market manipulation. Arguably the best public utility in the US was cannibalized for corporate profits.
The reason Texas didn't bother connecting to the grid was because it had a higher uptime than the rest of the nation. It was literally, the energy capital of the world.
They privatized the public utility and within a year Texas went from the cheapest electric in the nation to the most expensive.
Worst of all, no one at Enron got the chair for their murders. In fact, because it was based in Texas when things went to shit and the execs took their golden parachutes. A judge ruled that no return of the stolen assets was required because one of the executives died. Imagine robbing a bank, giving the money to your wife, and then dying and your wife gets to keep the money.
Fuck those stupid fucking conservatives and the republicans representing them. Ultimately, the tolerance of their corruption and greed has brought the USA to its knees.
one of the worst parts was all the accounting students thinking "wow! i can do that someday too!"
I lived through those brownouts but I was a teen and didn’t understand what was going on, just that it was annoying. We had just moved into a house in a very hot part of town where the wind goes to die and it suuuuucked.
sure would be a shame if someone hooked up the 4X4 to the power line and knocked it down. or got a back hoe and dug it up.. just saying thats a great way to conseve power. i hope to hear about the AI outage black outs all next week...
