[K-Dog]

substack.com • 2026-05-24

Hyperscale Data Centers

What's the end game here?

"If you have been led to believe wind and solar are making a significant contribution, think again. Fossil fuels are their primary source and sociopaths like Mark Zuckerberg whose products provenly harm the mental health of our children has proposed a data center the size of Manhattan."

Capitalism is fertile soil for Jevons paradox.

And Mark Zuckerberg is a capitalist. A rentier capitalist. Money for nothing. Use what he owns and pay him is the way he wants things to work out.

Wouldn't it be nice if you got a check in the mail, as a small percentage of something sold or a service rendered. You never have to do any work to get it, the check just comes. In America it takes living many years on this earth to understand that what you are doing is a theft. It should be obvious, but American culture gets in the way of this understanding. Zuckerberg will never have that understanding. To destroy the earth for unearned riches is an obvious evil. However many Americans cannot see the obvious.

Data centers are a speculative bubble feeding on itself. Capital is raised and the people raising this capital get paid today. Opaque metrics let raisers of capital sell potential capacity and build massive campuses. Transparency makes selling difficult. The AI buildout results from investor storytelling and rentier incentives, not actual verified necessity.

[RE]

The AI buildout results from investor storytelling and rentier incentives, not actual verified necessity.

Pretty much ever since the invention of the Wheel, the story of Homo Saps has been about inventing things that would make their lives easier and at first glance improve the way they lived, but none of them were truly necessary for living.  All of them, even the wheel have negative conssequences and/or reqired other things to make them really useful.  Wheels needed Roads which had to be built and maintained, which required people doing those jobs rather than hunting or farming.  The society grows in numbers and complexity and becomes dependent on the roads to function.  What once wasn't necessary for living now has become so; this is the principle of irreversibility which comes along with complexity in the growth of a civilization.

Combining this with the concept of Private Ownership is what allows some people to become outrageously rich. it has nothing to do with hard work.  Way back when of course you couldn't Patent a wheel and you didn't need a big factory, anybody could make a simple one.  Eventually of course it was improved on, Wheelwrights became an occupation, factories for making wheels with metal and rubber arrived and chemical plants that made synthetic rubber, etc etc etc.  More complexity, ownership of the means of production again makes a tiny minority wealthy because the society has become dependent on these high tech wheels with synthetic polymer tires which are made from Oil, also "owned" by whoever was powerful enough to take control of the land the oil was under.

AI is no different, it's not yet necessary, but is quickly becoming so.  Will it really improve the human condition?  I doubt it, but making it necessary will definitely make whoever has control over it extremely wealthy.  Or really just wealthier, since it's the same people who own everything else who have the money to invest in building Data Centers.

For the individual, the less dependent you are on all these accessories to living, the freer you are.  That is why there are still people like Eustace Conway around and groups like the Amish.  They give up the conveniences of techno living in favor of having more freedom.  If everyone was like this, capitalism wouldn't succeed.  Unfortunately, most people are willing to trade their freedom and independence for toaster ovens and smart TVs.

RE

[K-Dog]

For the individual, the less dependent you are on all these accessories to living, the freer you are.

In terms of AI my personal decision is Knowledge Will Set Me Free.  Diner central will soon be running on a new motherboard.  I built the bones which carry this flesh ten years ago, and now it is time for a new machine.

I have been dabbling with my own AI.

This motherboard is the perfect platform for more experiments.  Totally premium, and it is in a box behind me.

The days of the hobbyist computer is ending as component cost driven by AI demand is now out of range of the average consumer.  The memory needed for this motherboard is ECC server RAM (error correcting)  the price has quadrupled (x4) in recent months, and there is no way for prices to fall as long as the AI bubble exists.  The memory 128GB is in another box, and it cost so much that the motherboard was able to be had at a substantial discount because the data center memory needed for it to run costs so much.

A hard core nerd core of hobbyists will remain.  But the days of an average guy building their own computer are over.

The key thing about the new machine besides having several times the power the current machine has is that all four of the card slots have full capability.  This puppy can run four video cards at once.  The PCIe slots are all full width.  And if a billionaire joins the Diner and donates $18,000.00 for two RTX6000's, the Diner will use them.  The power supply is 1650 watts supplying ample room for 4GPU cards.

Whenever I build a computer I quickly become aware of prices and where they are going.  I find a good price for every item I buy.  Sales of components have fallen through the floor because the high prices for memory devices means that sales are now a fraction of what has supported the hobby market up to now.  Building your own computer has doubled in price and most people will happily get what big brother wants them to get when the price doubles.  The golden age of the custom computer is over.

This board has the reputation of being the most returned.  Nothing wrong with the board but it is not well understood.  It can host a few Threadripper processors and if you do not get a 'pro' you can't use all the memory slots.  Which is actually fine since the non-pro processor only has 4 memory channels anyway.  But not everybody checks things out and they can't live with dead slots.  Which are not really dead if you have a pro.  Which I do. 16GB x 8.

What I did not want to live without is the bottom slot running at GEN 4 speed.  I wanted them all GEN 5.  Selecting the right processor also takes care of that issue.  The board supports what you give it, and I got the minimum high end Threadripper that lets the motherboard go whole hog.

energyskeptic.com • 2026-05-19

Motherboards: too complicated to make after oil

Motherboards get very little respect in the computing press as compared to other components. They are perpetually the team player and not the star of the show, and are generally priced as such.

[RE]

Hopefully your new hardware can stop the spammers.

RE

[K-Dog]

AI Was Never About Helping You

The most important thing about a gadget isn't what it does; it's who it does it for and what it does it to.

Cory is a very smart guy.

[K-Dog]

THEATLANTIC.COM • 2026-06-20

The Myth of SpaceX

The company has mutated into something that defies both comparison and logic.

[K-Dog]

The new machine and Diner mothership.  The 1650 watt power supply is under the 'floor' below the second video card, as are 4 hard drives which are being formatted into a RAID array as I type this.  Whatever the setup program is doing to the hard drives now is going to take 32 hours to finish.  When finished this thing will have it's own 20TB cloud.

Connoisseurs will note that all eight memory slots are stuffed on each side of the Threadripper.  You have to choose the right Threadripper to use all eight memory channels, which I did.

The video card arrangement gives the same VRAM capacity as a RTX 5090 video card at a quarter of the cost.  It won't run as fast as the RTX 5090 but by savings $3000 I can still dream of an RTX 6000 later.  Someday. If there is a future.

One downside is the chip for the WIFI on this AI Top motherboard is too new for the Linux kernel to have a driver for it.  I have an Ethernet cable plugged in the back which is giving an internet connection just fine now, so I ordered a Wi-Fi to Ethernet Bridge.  I will keep using a cable.  Getting a driver installed for the onboard WI-Fi I can do later.  No big deal, the motherboard has dual Ethernet.

Getting it up and running was no walk in the park.  There was an issue with the video cards which needed an  NVIDIA firmware patch installed from a WINDOWS machine as there is no other software that installs the patch.  After doing the upgrade which only one of the cards actually needed, I thoroughly cleaned the gold connectors with an alcohol wipe to get the stench of the WINDOWS machine off of the video cards.  Then I finally had video and a Linux desktop.

[TDoS]

Any thoughts on whether or not any of this will stop the MIB from coming in, erasing stuff in the database, leaving no trace and making sure things can't be restored from backups, etc etc?

Noticed we've got some european/chinese spammers breaking in and posting as I do mine!!! Turn some of that fancy hardware loose on defeating the faux spammers/MIB!!!

[K-Dog]

I'll set up a system that eliminates anybody that does not contribute eventually, M.I.B. or not.  For now I'm content to just delete them as I have other priorities.

Since we have nothing to hide there is not a big rush to get the job done, but it will get done, and if the surveillance gets more aggressive I'll change my priorities.

One thing I can do is detect the language of a post and kick off anything that is not in English along with the post author.  Surveillance by itself would not be so bad, but give a man in black an inch, and the motherfuckers will take a mile, as they have before.  The 'we are not doing anything wrong so why worry' misses that point completely.  Unchecked power corrupts, and people will be the boss of you if they can.

And as far as you are concerned, you should know better than to deny my lived experience again.  Perhaps you were not aware that I had met them face to face and have talked to them.  I keep quiet about it knowing that nobody else is going to give a rip, but that does not change the fact that it happened.

The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.

Which is exactly what will happen if the actual reality and details of American Freedom are laid out before the average Joe Six Pack.  It happened to me, and I went mad with the revelation for a little while.  I found out America does not drive your daddy's Oldsmobile like you may think America does.  Not like you learned in school.  No illusion of fair.  The actual truth is more like what the Supreme Court is showing to America now.  The Powell memo 2.0.

Not giving a rip is much more peaceful.  The safe default that everyone takes rich and poor alike. 

RE and I have not called this the F.S.O.A. for several years without reason.

[TDoS]

And as far as you are concerned, you should know better than to deny my lived experience again.

A point that cuts both ways.

Perhaps you were not aware that I had met them face to face and have talked to them.

I recall you mentioning that you talked to someone back...in the Bush years was it? In the someone following you days?

I keep quiet about it knowing that nobody else is going to give a rip, but that does not change the fact that it happened.

I make no claim it hadn't happened. My erased points related to the logic of spammers wanting anything to do with this place, with foreign languages no less, and thinking they are anything other than spammers.

The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.

Which is exactly what will happen if the actual reality and details of American Freedom are laid out before the average Joe Six Pack.

I don't believe that for a second. Joe Sixpack falls hook line and sinker for whatever they have a propensity for. Peak oil, alien lizard overlords, all government conspiracies (real or imagined), Charlie Kirk being killed by an exploding microphone (just learned this at LATOC), Guy McPherson and the BOE event....a decade ago....oops.

Please. Joe Sixpack. PhD's fall for nonsense with as much enthusiasm as amateur hour folks. I know a genius geologist who can sell BigFoot better than Ugo ever did peak oil. Joe Sixpack mostly see's what they WANT to believe first, what they are predisposed to fall for naturally. And it applies all the way up the ladder to PhD's as well. Or really smart folks who thought Tesla would do backrupt a decade ago. Brains/intelligence  aren't the determining factor. Can't say I know exactly what combination of talents are required, but you can usually figure it out after talking to someone on an interesting topic within 30 minutes. Ever XOM geologic researcher I've ever met hits on all cylinders. On the internet finding someone like that is 1:10000 at best. 21 years online and I've only found 1 in all my peak oil years, an engineer invovled in setting up LIGO. I know at least 2 dozen IRL, but my professional associations don't run to what populates the internet forums.

It happened to me, and I went mad with the revelation for a little while.  I found out America does not drive your daddy's Oldsmobile like you may think America does.  Not like you learned in school.

I never learned any of that in school, so nothing to get mad about I guess. And I didn't learn about what "America" was in school. Just the history they made you memorize in the books. My "America" was just trying to not end up like everyone around me in the holler.

RE and I have not called this the F.S.O.A. for several years without reason.

Everyone has their reasons.

[K-Dog]

The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.

Which is exactly what will happen if the actual reality and details of American Freedom are laid out before the average Joe Six Pack.

I don't believe that for a second. Joe Sixpack falls hook line and sinker for whatever they have a propensity for. Peak oil, alien lizard overlords, all government conspiracies (real or imagined), Charlie Kirk being killed by an exploding microphone (just learned this at LATOC), Guy McPherson and the BOE event....a decade ago....oops.

Please. Joe Sixpack. PhD's fall for nonsense with as much enthusiasm as amateur hour folks. I know a genius geologist who can sell BigFoot better than Ugo ever did peak oil. Joe Sixpack mostly see's what they WANT to believe first, what they are predisposed to fall for naturally. And it applies all the way up the ladder to PhD's as well. Or really smart folks who thought Tesla would do backrupt a decade ago. Brains/intelligence  aren't the determining factor. Can't say I know exactly what combination of talents are required, but you can usually figure it out after talking to someone on an interesting topic within 30 minutes. Ever XOM geologic researcher I've ever met hits on all cylinders. On the internet finding someone like that is 1:10000 at best. 21 years online and I've only found 1 in all my peak oil years, an engineer invovled in setting up LIGO. I know at least 2 dozen IRL, but my professional associations don't run to what populates the internet forums.

You totally miss the point.  People will only believe in conspiracies that really do not scare them.  Detached realities that are half make-believe, and somewhere else far far away.  Safe horror movies.  The shadows of their conspiracies never enter their personal lives.  But if you mess with the actual foundations of their 'true' realities, and the conspiracy becomes personal.  The situation becomes quite different.


Joe will sail De-Nile between the shores.  Defend his turf like a rabid guard dog.  Reason flies away from him not because Joe finds an attractive deception to play with as you describe, but rather because Joe can't handle the truth.  The truth is that most people are weak, and I have a Pulp Fiction clip about that.  Weak at heart.  Having the heart of a lion will wear your ass out.

[TDoS]

You totally miss the point.  People will only believe in conspiracies that really do not scare them.

I disagree. People are scared by UFOs and aliens. People were scared by peak oil as pitched by the conspiratorical folks. Ruppert for example. GovCo knocked down the towers to hide peak oil! Pops at peakoil.com. gave up a decent career to grow food and tend pigs in Missouri. People invented conspiracies about Covid shots because they were scared. The exact favorite of one of the moderators at LATOC. They are TERRIFIED of the conspiracy, and BELIEVE it.

Joe will sail De-Nile between the shores.

Pops is EMBARASSED by not his denial of the conspiracy, but of falling for it and losing a decade of his life. He moved back to California, remodeled houses for folks, enjoys his monster truck and all the fuel that is available. His name was Pops, and he was a moderator on peakoil.com

Defend his turf like a rabid guard dog.  Reason flies away from him not because Joe finds an attractive deception to play with as you describe, but rather because Joe can't handle the truth.

Pops handled the truth he was spoon fed by PhDs who scared him into doing something. He handled the CROCK he was spoon fed....he had a perfectly normal amount of IQ points....and bought sales pitch because he really liked the idea. He handled the LIE perfectly okay.   

The truth is that most people are weak, and I have a Pulp Fiction clip about that.  Weak at heart.  Having the heart of a lion will wear your ass out.

I agree. Most people are weak. And even more lack the ability to follow a path through the cloud of nonsense, stories, sales pitches and conspiractorial claims which the internet only increased exponentially with its growth. Heart is great. You can have a strong heart...and without a functioning central processor make a good sucker for every story that comes down the pike. I liked the days of Planet X and the Mayan calendar myself, it was popular on one of RE's old websites.

[K-Dog]

Pops is not typical and 99% of people would not have dropped out to grow veggies and raise pigs. You still do not get it.  People do not challenge that which contradicts their world view.  Perhaps I am not being clear so I'll repeat that.  People do not challenge that which contradicts their world view.

Some people are prone to conspiracies and seek them out.  That actually makes more my point than yours.  I am not talking about a simple propensity to believe bullshit which I agree with you is as common as green grass.  I am talking about people being convinced that the world works a certain way, and society reinforces the message.  It becomes a core belief.  Core beliefs become part of a persons identity and are not given up easily.  Consider this 'America follows the path of justice.' 

Joe and Suzie Creamcheese may be the sons and daughters of lawyers from the other side of town.  They have never seen poverty up close.  They think the world is totally fair.  Poor people are only lazy.  'America follows the path of justice.' To them that statement is true and if they are presented with evidence that what they believe is not true, they will deny it with a passion they do not know they have.  They will be like Nietzsche watching the horse be beat retreating into the safety of madness rather than see the truth.  Fanciful justifications and elaborate stories will be created to smooth over contradictions to which they might be exposed.

They may have a Damascus moment, it is possible.  But that is unlikely.

INDEPENDENT.CO.UK • 1996-09-22

US spy base `taps UK phones for MI5'

THE Berlin Wall came down, the Cold War ended, and the military might of the West was reduced - but not Menwith Hill in Yorkshire, the biggest US overseas spy base. Now MI5 and MI6, the security services, are believed to be evading British regulations on telephone-tapping by asking the Americans at the base to do it for them.

It is a reciprocal arrangement, and I know that as FACT.  And my point is that 99% percent of people will forget about the reality of this news article and the certainty of any reciprocal arrangement as soon as they scroll away.  This being an example of one truth that Americans can't handle.

When a reader encounters a piece of evidence as concrete as this 1996 Independent article, they have a glimpse of the truth. However, a truth that is inherently "un-liveable" for most people. To acknowledge deep intrusion as a permanent, foundational fact of daily life requires them to fundamentally change how they engage with the state, technology, and their own feelings of safety.  And the fact is, they are not fucking going to do that.

Access to the truth is not the bottleneck, the bottleneck is the capacity to endure truth.

[TDoS]

Pops is not typical and 99% of people would not have dropped out to grow veggies and raise pigs. You still do not get it.

Of course get it. You make absolute statements...that aren't. I just happen to notice.

People do not challenge that which contradicts their world view.

This I MIGHT agree with. For example, you do not challenge your world view of the MIB being after you, and therefore spammers must be the MIB. Pops DID challenge his world view of being a normal white collar professional type, to become a pig farmer in Missouri because he went for peak oil hook, line and sinker.

Perhaps I am not being clear so I'll repeat that.  People do not challenge that which contradicts their world view.

Thank you for clearing that up. Telling someone black is white more than once is sure to convince them who are they to beleive, you, or their lying eyes.

Some people are prone to conspiracies and seek them out.  That actually makes more my point than yours.

It depends. Lately, YOU have been making my point for me, I sort of figured that meant you were coming around.

I am talking about people being convinced that the world works a certain way, and society reinforces the message.

THIS seems like a reasonable statement. Yes...I have no doubt people are convinced that the world works a certain way. And we all might think it works differently, your perspective versus mine for example. I can agree that society reinforces A message (different than THE message). The message society gives you and I have zero requirement of us thinking we got the same message. Different life experience, different innate capabilities, different mindsets from birth, different IQs, etc etc.

It becomes a core belief.

For SOME. Maybe for you. Maybe for me. Maybe we collected different core beliefs from the same message. Maybe one, or both of us, can see BEYOND whatever the message might be, and figure things out. I'll bet you would think that about yourself. Just as would I. You have your MIB proof. I have mine in peak oil.Fundamentally there is ZERO requirement we both develop a core belief, or ANY belief, fed to us by society. We have the ability to think....beyond. With ZERO requirement two educated and intelligent people arrive at the same conclusion. 

Joe and Suzie Creamcheese may be the sons and daughters of lawyers from the other side of town.  They have never seen poverty up close.  They think the world is totally fair.  Poor people are only lazy.  'America follows the path of justice.' To them that statement is true and if they are presented with evidence that what they believe is not true, they will deny it with a passion they do not know they have.

You are lecturing to a true believer. I learned this from dealing with peak oilers, not Joe and Suzie next door. As you say, presented with evidence they believe is not true, they will deny it with a passion they do not know they have.

This characteristic works for the generally conspiratorial as well I might add.

When a reader encounters a piece of evidence as concrete as this 1996 Independent article, they have a glimpse of the truth. However, a truth that is inherently "un-liveable" for most people. To acknowledge deep intrusion as a permanent, foundational fact of daily life requires them to fundamentally change how they engage with the state, technology, and their own feelings of safety.  And the fact is, they are not fucking going to do that.

Peak oil slots right into this example, circa 2000-2005. So I agree what you say is possible, including with people in general in terms of their view of the society they live in.

But I do have one comment. YOU don't have the lock on ALL perspectives. You might have a lock on J6P from your experience. Or the MIB. But your perspective isn't required to be mine just because you believe yours.

Access to the truth is not the bottleneck, the bottleneck is the capacity to endure truth.

Again, I agree. And peak oil proved it PERFECTLY. I provided access to as much truth as those doomers could handle. Not just some abstract truth, but scientific FACT. But because they believed, it must be true. To heck with BELIEF....they deny the basic precepts of SCIENCE itself.

[K-Dog]

For example, you do not challenge your world view of the MIB being after you

I told you not to deny my direct experience.  Back to the cooler with you.  The MIB are a topic that is off-limits to you permanently.