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.”
Like homeless camps but for servers.
Please stop using AI, please.
If you’re required to use AI for your job, then sabotage the efforts.
I beg of you.
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.
wouldn’t it be easier to sabotage tents with data farms in them
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.
Come ooooooon hurricane season. You have the chance to do the funniest thing
Those servers have better housing than the ICE kidnapping victims
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?
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?
I guess calling it „Agriculture in Spain“ didn‘t have the same ring to it but believe me it‘s almost as dystopian.
They rolled poorly on their “x thing in real life is like y dystopian art piece” dice
I suppose Mad Max was also about people living with a lack of government oversight, allowing the powerful to do as they please.
meta is basically a naked guy running through a field.
Does this somehow get around local building codes?
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.
Oh yeah… This feels like a super sustainable industry
/S
So they’re using gasoline to run jet engines that rotate turbines that generate electricity? wtf
Article about this: https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/data-centers-turn-to-ex-airliner-engines-as-ai-power-crunch-bites
Not unusual in the slightest. They’re often used as peaking plants that fire up when energy prices are driven high enough by demand. Can be setup to run on all sorts of different fuels.
Here’s an idea: cut all the RTO orders and retrofit all those useless offices into data centers. No one wants to live in the city or suburbs anyways.
