These “makeshift” structures are housing hardware that costs millions of dollars in total.
“Putting AI servers inside tents, officially called “rapid deployment structures,” is one of the more unique approaches to the AI build-out, Thomas said. They’re certainly not as sturdy as physical buildings made from steel and concrete, with one commenter comparing it to the “classic $10k racing bike with a $9 lock” situation.”
Uses jet engines for power?
Welp. Guess we know what happened to the old Spirit Airlines fleet.
It’s pretty common for natural gas electric plants to use Brayton cycle turbines, which is the same thermodynamic cycle that the turbojet engines on airplanes use. But you can optimize the designs on the ground for efficiency (and zero thrust) instead of thrust-to-weight.
It’s also common to use “combined cycle” technology which mashes the Brayton cycle engine together with an older-style steam loop for extra efficiency.
After reading the article, I think they’re just saying they installed some miniaturized natural gas plants. I don’t think they’re literally running aircraft engines on the ground.
There’s at least one company that does tweak (iirc used) airliner turbofans by taking the fan part off so they just have the turbojet (which is already tuned to mostly generate rotational energy to drive the fan turbine rather than produce thrust itself) and use that to spin a generator. Obviously, it’s a bit more complicated than that in reality, but there are quite a lot of old engines no longer certified for flight out of an abundance of caution but that still work fine, and a market for high-power generators that don’t need to be the pinnacle of efficiency (originally as backups just for occasional use, and now because of AI companies caring only about speed and not about cost).
so much waste. why bother flying in your personal jet to burn the world down when you can just leave it idling on the ground?
Idling? What makes you think that these things won’t be running at full blast 24/7?
Those servers have better housing than the ICE kidnapping victims
jet engines
AI
How to burn endless amounts of fuel in order to make more noise than sense 😁
Zuckerberg FOMO, at his finest.
Even among tech bros, it really is amazing how insecure he is.
Because he stole every idea and did so by stepping on many many toes.
Rally around me my tweakers, for we shall grab all the copper and gold this day.
How is this like Mad Max?
They rolled poorly on their “x thing in real life is like y dystopian art piece” dice
deleted by creator
meta is basically a naked guy running through a field.
I guess calling it „Agriculture in Spain“ didn‘t have the same ring to it but believe me it‘s almost as dystopian.
Come ooooooon hurricane season. You have the chance to do the funniest thing
Please stop using AI, please.
If you’re required to use AI for your job, then sabotage the efforts.
I beg of you.
Pure wishful thinking like this is just as useful as thoughts and prayers.
This is a overhyped technology just like the internet was before the dotcom bubble popped.
The best you can hope for is for the AI bubble to burst and then see what AI is like when it normalises.
Because to think this technology will just go away is going to end the same way as for the people who said the internet is just a temporary fad.
When the dot com bubble bursted, the typical internet speed was 56k modem speed and cellular internet practically didn’t exist. At that point the internet still needed years of exponential technological advancement to allow for stuff like streaming amd mobile services. The difference with the AI bubble is that they try to brute force their way out of infancy by throwing ludicrous amounts of money, energy and other recources at it instead of waiting for the much needed technological progress
Then 9/11 happened and suddenly we have Wi-Fi and Bluetooth competed with infrared before it dominated. Bluetooth’s wlan not getting good is still sad to me.
While everyone had 56k modems, they laid millions of miles of finer optic cable. That sounds like brute forcing to me. Most of it laid there dark for 20 years.
I’ve been cruising with the most expensive model at work for a while now. After github’s pricing model change they finally asked us to be more conscious about which model we’re using (which was hilarious after we were constantly asked to use more AI), but eh, it’s easier to just leave it on Claude 4.8. I figure eventually the costs will catch up with the company.
It’s not even necessary. It will come down on its own. Recent reportings in my company says we’ve increased our productivity by 10℅ while the number of defects rose by 40℅. And the cost increases with every month. It’s unsustainable.
wouldn’t it be easier to sabotage tents with data farms in them
Oh yeah… This feels like a super sustainable industry
/S
The author has clearly never seen Mad Max.
I watched the Mad Max movies. This looks absolutely not like anything in them.
I’ve seen Mad Max and I’m going to disagree. This looks LITERALLY EXACTLY LIKE MAD MAX to me and you can’t diminish that, because it’s entirely subjective. But also correct. The resemblance is uncanny.
I also am a qualified expert on what does and doesn’t look like mad max, and I concur.
Mad Max? More like the opening scenes to Bladerunner 2049.
God this page is mobile cancer, even with an adblocker
Yup, Tom’s is the last of the originals still running (HardOCP, anandtech and sharkyexteme are all gone), but it’s absolutely a garbage site now.
In Chrome, choose reading mode. Generally works to strip all the bs.
Does this somehow get around local building codes?
Like homeless camps but for servers.
