V17's recent activity
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Comment on Did wokeness leave us worse off? (gifted link) in ~society
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Comment on New AI data center in Utah will generate and consume more than twice the amount of power the entire state uses in ~tech
V17 Link ParentI think this is still a bad frame of mind that leads to disappointment and possibly supports harmful thought cycles in the broad area of "the world is fucked and everyone is against common people"...So maybe we're not where we should be today
I think this is still a bad frame of mind that leads to disappointment and possibly supports harmful thought cycles in the broad area of "the world is fucked and everyone is against common people" that seem to be quite prevalent. I don't think batteries and solar getting cheaper could be realistically done much faster than it has been. There have been huge financial incentives to innovate for quite some time now, but the reality is that it's just a hard problem to solve. But I do think this is an area where we can honestly say that "we" have been doing close to our best.
As for the rest of your comment I am simultaneously worried that too quick of a rollout of renewables is going to make energy too expensive, further lower Europe's competitiveness on the world stage and lower our standard of living, but simultaneously, probably similar to you, I am excited about what's going to be possible in a decade.
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Comment on New AI data center in Utah will generate and consume more than twice the amount of power the entire state uses in ~tech
V17 Link ParentAs Englerdy says and as I already said, using heat as storage has great losses and the lower the temperature the harder it is to extract energy back from it. The thermal battery you linked is used...As Englerdy says and as I already said, using heat as storage has great losses and the lower the temperature the harder it is to extract energy back from it. The thermal battery you linked is used for heat storage, it's not turned back to electricity, its purpose is to reduce (non-clean) electricity consumption for heating during the night by providing heat that was generated during the day basically.
Using waste heat either to heat homes or to use in other industries (chemical industry often has uses) that are located nearby is a good idea and is indeed often done, with waste heat from fossil power plants as well. Generating electricity from it is not efficient at all, unfortunately.
One thing we seem to keep circling back to is that these huge datacenters are a business and the costs to build them are already sky high. If a cheap and simple alternative existed, many of them would be doing it.
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Comment on Do you play knock-offs of celebrated indie games? in ~games
V17 Link ParentHuh, I never realized. I kind of liked Brogue, but Pixel Dungeon always bored me. Anyway, a related example is Pathos: Nethack Codex, which at first looks like a Nethack ripoff or fork (Nethack is...Pixel Dungeon is a loving homage to PC's Brogue, probably my favorite roguelike. But Brogue isn't available on mobile and PD is the next best thing.
Huh, I never realized. I kind of liked Brogue, but Pixel Dungeon always bored me.
Anyway, a related example is Pathos: Nethack Codex, which at first looks like a Nethack ripoff or fork (Nethack is free software, so forks happen), but it's actually a new game that takes many features of Nethack (creatures, special levels, magic effects, items...) but reshapes them into a significantly changed whole which removes some of Nethack's most frustrating/"interesting" qualities in general (the need to read and study extensive spoilers to be good at the game) and in the context of phones (shitty interfaces of Nethack ports).
The name itself still feels weird, but it was somehow necessary to acknowledge the big Nethack influence, and the game turned out to be the closest we have to actual traditional roguelikes on phones, so I'm really not mad at all.
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Comment on New AI data center in Utah will generate and consume more than twice the amount of power the entire state uses in ~tech
V17 Link ParentI meant it for the application mentioned in this article. The batteries would have to be 10x cheaper to start being viable for seasonal storage instead of fossil power generation. In general it's...I see what you're saying that batteries are expensive, but this seems so pessimistic.
I meant it for the application mentioned in this article. The batteries would have to be 10x cheaper to start being viable for seasonal storage instead of fossil power generation. In general it's a good thing of course.
Anyway I watched this video that discusses a new report.
Didn't watch the video, went through the relevant parts of the report. They list current prices as below 100 USD/kWh, but if I understand it correctly the number is based on information they got from the manufacturers. It is not based on real world data from projects that were actually built. My numbers are based on the costs of real projects. While the report claims <100 USD/kWh in 2025, real data usually contains claims like "cost of battery storage fell as low as 194 USD/kWh in 2025".
A data center so massive would probably not be physically built for 2 years, right? At least? So if the cost of the batteries has dropped by a little less than that rate from 2025-26 to like $50/kwh and then it does so again from 2026-27 to like $35/kwh then again from 2027-28 by the time the place is built, the storage would cost like $25/kwh.
Aside from the numbers likely being significantly undercut I think this has two flaws. First is that with a project that costs literally billions of dollars I don't think you can afford to make such big assumptions, that the graph of battery prices is going to look the same further on - that depends on many things, some of it not "natural development" - for a neighboring example China is now trying to halt the lowering prices of solar because their own state incentives shrank the margins too much.
Second is that even if it doesn't get built for two years, and that's an if, considering how much in a rush we are with datacenters specifically, you can't start signing deals and finalizing orders in a couple years. For an industrial project the deals are signed (and prices finalized) well in advance because the production capacity it takes is significant. Of course for a project of this scale a free battery production capacity doesn't even exist, which is a much bigger issue, but if we assumed it did.
Another interesting number from your linked report. It confirms that using batteries to store energy during the day and release it in the evening still makes spot prices of solar electricity double per kWh even with todays electricity prices. And this is still just battery storage for a few hours after dark.
Aren't they starting to use thermal batteries to heat up dirt instead of lithium? In a data center, a lot of the energy use is for cooling so this seems like a perfect fit. There is no way that dirt batteries are that expensive.
Without wanting to be mean this sounds a bit like hopium, do you have any data for real projects using these? Never heard of them (but I'm far from an expert, I just researched what's used these days and how much it costed to build). Generally using heat as storage has great losses, and the lower the heat the harder it is to extract the energy back from it (unless you use it for heating somewhere not far away).
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Comment on New AI data center in Utah will generate and consume more than twice the amount of power the entire state uses in ~tech
V17 Link ParentI agree with that. The reality though is simply that they chose the only viable option that aligns with their goals. Solar/wind with storage is impossible at this scale currently, so is something...And at this scale, that's probably going to be a huge cost, right? Using fossil fuels for a project that is going to double the energy used by an entire state,, and consuming a not insignificant amount of water in a region that desperately needs to conserve water all so Kevin "I'm not a billionaire, I just play one on TV" O'Leary can open a data center that serves the interests of practically no one seems pretty fuckin crazy to me.
I agree with that. The reality though is simply that they chose the only viable option that aligns with their goals. Solar/wind with storage is impossible at this scale currently, so is something like biogas, which is arguably better than natural gas. That pretty much leaves nuclear as the only clean option capable of handling such output, but nuclear afaik takes at least five years to get through all the paperwork and build it, usually more, and that's too long of a goal for such a project, we don't really know what the market is going to be like at that point.
We really fucked up many years ago when we collectively decided to not keep intensely developing nuclear.
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Comment on New AI data center in Utah will generate and consume more than twice the amount of power the entire state uses in ~tech
V17 Link ParentI believe that affordable energy storage is so far off (see my other comment with some math) that investing in nuclear would be a better use of this philosophy. The problem is that any such change...The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The second best time is right now.
I believe that affordable energy storage is so far off (see my other comment with some math) that investing in nuclear would be a better use of this philosophy. The problem is that any such change is going to significantly raise costs for the end user, further increasing cost of living, which is a hard sell.
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Comment on New AI data center in Utah will generate and consume more than twice the amount of power the entire state uses in ~tech
V17 (edited )Link ParentI checked the data before writing my comment and I did not use numbers for central Europe in the example in the latter half. I'll edit the comment to make that clear. Firstly the difference in...This is part of why the top-level comment brought up the fact that Utah is in the desert and gets a lot of sun, though.
I checked the data before writing my comment and I did not use numbers for central Europe in the example in the latter half. I'll edit the comment to make that clear.
Firstly the difference in sunny hours between peak summer and peak winter in Box Elder County (where the project is planned) is still threefold, in january you get less than 5 hours of sun per day on average even in the desert from what I could find.
Secondly Utah also gets snow - for an example look at the main Wikipedia photo for Box Elder County - this is in the easternmost part of the county under the mountains, but weather reports claim that snowfall is common everywhere.
Thirdly energy storage and firming need to account for unusually bad cases as well, there is of course a limit to it, but 10 days of minimum sunlight surely isn't it. Just turning off your datacenter when a storm comes is incredibly expensive and the utility grid won't save you because the capacity simply isn't there.
edit: In order to make solar even a bit viable I think I'd have to be about an order of magnitude off with my battery math. In reality the cost is likely an undershoot, it uses the lowest cost estimates available.
And honestly I find it disappointing that even after the clarification (but I was explicit about using some Utah numbers even before that) people still give votes to your comment but ignore mine despite being a relatively high effort explanation that expands on the article and applies to solar in general. Feels somehow reddity.
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Comment on New AI data center in Utah will generate and consume more than twice the amount of power the entire state uses in ~tech
V17 (edited )Link ParentWell now you made me look up the data, at least I'll have this comment to link to when debates on PVE come up again. That only works if you can somehow fill in periods of time in which you get...Well now you made me look up the data, at least I'll have this comment to link to when debates on PVE come up again.
I guess I thought solar + wind combined was supposed to take care of that problem, with only a small amount of batteries.
That only works if you can somehow fill in periods of time in which you get neither. I mostly have data for central Europe as that is where I reside (edit: for the example below I did actually check the data for Box Elder County, Utah and built it upon that), but in here we can pretty commonly get two weeks with minimum solar and wind and yet peak energy demand in the winter, no weather anomalies needed - and generally you need the energy grid/datacenter supply to be ready for the anomalies as well. So far coutries with a lot of non-firm renewables do this by simply importing energy from their neighbors with a bigger share of fossil or nuclear, but this only works because not everyone is on renewables yet and it usually has a downside in cost. Germany has a ton of both solar and wind farms and it's the biggest electricity importer in Europe with highest electricity prices in Europe.
I googled cost of electricity and found this PDF page: https://www.lazard.com/media/5tlbhyla/lazards-lcoeplus-june-2025-_vf.pdf
Those costs do not include storage, but the study does talk about storage costs as well. The basic numbers in the graphs are not purchase costs, we need to look a bit deeper at the methods used to get to that: utility-scale 100 MW 4 hour storage (so 400 MWh) without subsidies costs 62 - 160 mil. USD, or about 155 USD per kWh on the low end, according to them. I looked myself at some finished battery storage products like shipping container modules or modules like this and they were all 100 - 150 USD per kWh at the least, and the low end was without freight costs and imports, plus no idea about things like fire code compliance, guaranteed degradation rates and other things I know nothing about. So let's say it's 150 USD per KWh - this is the very low-end, Chinese ready made battery systems.
The first phase of the project aims at 3 GW. So to run it for an hour from batteries, we need 150 USD * 3 000 000 kWh = 450 000 000 USD. I think you already see the issue here. Let's say we get 10 days of cloud cover in january - Salt Lake City gets about 1/3 of sun hours in january vs july and the energy generated per hour is lower due to lower sun angles. So let's say we get only 20% of summer PVE capacity that is designed to feed it in full (which is optimistic imo) and the rest needs to be covered by batteries. That's 450 mil. USD times 240 hours minus 20% = 86 billion USD with the lowest cost battery modules currently available. And to get a truly firm energy source I believe 10 days is not enough, I'm trying to be optimistic to bias for possible future prices.
There's also the issue of supply limits. Afaik Tesla Megapack factories each produce significantly less than 50 GWh of capacity per year. This means less than 17 hours of battery storage to run the first phase of this datacenter produced per year in the whole factory.
As for natural gas power plants, the construction prices seem to vary between 0.8 - 2.5 billion USD per 1 GW. An order of magnitude cheaper than just the batteries (without the solar panels or the property costs which are not small either at this scale, computing how much area of solars we'd need for this is left as an exercise for the reader).
Basically, while the cost of batteries has been going down, it has been going down from such ridiculously high places that it changes nothing.
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Comment on New AI data center in Utah will generate and consume more than twice the amount of power the entire state uses in ~tech
V17 Link ParentThe problem stays the same though because it's not abour overnight storage. Overnight storage can be done with PVE and batteries, it makes the price per KWh about 2/3 higher per some recent...The problem stays the same though because it's not abour overnight storage. Overnight storage can be done with PVE and batteries, it makes the price per KWh about 2/3 higher per some recent studies, which is still viable. The issue is that you need 10x that or more to safely get through winter, storms etc.
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Comment on New AI data center in Utah will generate and consume more than twice the amount of power the entire state uses in ~tech
V17 Link ParentThis is a fuckup that was already done in the past through not investing in cheap nuclear. At this moment it's basically either abandon the AI arms race (which is also terrible, AI is happening...This is a fuckup that was already done in the past through not investing in cheap nuclear. At this moment it's basically either abandon the AI arms race (which is also terrible, AI is happening and it might make the world a worse place, but throwing in the towel and letting China lead would almost certainly make the future worse and could be impossible to revert) or use fossil fuel to power it. A firm multi gigawatt power supply can't be done with renewables unless you build it next to something like Three Gorges Dam.
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Comment on New AI data center in Utah will generate and consume more than twice the amount of power the entire state uses in ~tech
V17 Link ParentIt sounds crazy, but I think it makes sense. Look at the sheer scale - this is more than some multi-block nuclear powerplants produce. I think a gas plant is the cheapest option here, except maybe...Utah is in the desert. There’s a lot of sun. The economics don’t make sense to me.
It sounds crazy, but I think it makes sense. Look at the sheer scale - this is more than some multi-block nuclear powerplants produce. I think a gas plant is the cheapest option here, except maybe coal, depending on supply and local emission regulations.
You don't say it explicitly, but it looks like you may be suggesting photovoltaics. There's a big misconception about photovoltaics polluting the discourse right now (which the one technology connections video sadly really didn't help) - PVE is an excellent supplementary power source to something that can be regulated on demand... Like a gas power plant.
However, unless you can tolerate blackouts, grid-level PVE is a bad main power source, because it's not firm, its output fluctuates, and to a large degree unpredictably. You need something to cover the demands in all the events when it's not producing much, and being always online is the very basis of a datacenter's business. Batteries for seasonal storage (basically a week or more) are completely financially unviable almost at any scale, at this scale the amount would additionally be so large that afaik a supplier that could cover it doesn't exist at this moment. Oh, and the size of a 7 GW photovoltaic plant would be a problem as well.
I wouldn't be suprised if they added photovoltaics as a supplement later. But starting with a gas plant seems like an obvious choice.
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Comment on Excision - Shambhala 2013 Mix | Dubstep lyrics (2013) in ~music
V17 LinkI hate brostep, so for me this was about the time when I accepted that dubstep is irrepairably fucked and the scene is never going to be the same. The lyrics make it quite funny though, great...I hate brostep, so for me this was about the time when I accepted that dubstep is irrepairably fucked and the scene is never going to be the same. The lyrics make it quite funny though, great idea.
There is one set by Excision that I used to like quite a bit at one point though, his Rottun Dubstep mix from 2007. It's dark, wobbly and edgier than a lot of other dubstep from that era, but it still has a more classic structure without being focused on bringing drop after drop, it was a definite shift towards a somewhat harsher sound, but still subbass focused, with groove and without dentist drills.
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Comment on Which covers did it better than (or put a fresh twist on) the original? in ~music
V17 LinkI'm a fan of Richard Cheese, who does jazz covers of "inappropriate" music like various metal hits, lewd hiphop songs etc. Here's his cover of Creep by Radiohead and People = Shit by Slipknot, but...I'm a fan of Richard Cheese, who does jazz covers of "inappropriate" music like various metal hits, lewd hiphop songs etc. Here's his cover of Creep by Radiohead and People = Shit by Slipknot, but the whole Sunny Side of the Moon album is excellent. Metal and jazz are two genres I've been listening to since I was about 7 years old, so naturally I love this. His style enhances the slight inherent silliness in metal that's trying to be super dark and heavy.
I'm also a big fan of Nomeansno who did a couple covers, my favorite and probably the most interesting and high effort one is Bitch's Brew, originally by Miles Davis.
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Comment on “60s lounge” and Laufey in ~music
V17 LinkCan't believe nobody has listed the ultimate source of lounge music, the ULTRA LOUNGE collection, which is something like 25 CDs of lounge sorted by various subgenres and themes. It used to be...Can't believe nobody has listed the ultimate source of lounge music, the ULTRA LOUNGE collection, which is something like 25 CDs of lounge sorted by various subgenres and themes. It used to be hard to get, but these days most or possibly all of them are on Spotify.
A lot of lounge is kind of silly, fun music, less serious than what you posted, but you should still be able to find interesting interprets and pursue their other releases outside of Ultra Lounge.
I love lounge music, but I'm focused more on the sillier, livelier and jazzier kinds, so I can't give you any interprets off the top of my head apart from maybe Julie London who was already mentioned.
But do try some of the other Lounge styles, maybe you'll like them too.
A Lot Of Livin To Do by Nancy Wilson has great energy.
Gopher Mambo by Yma Sumac is one of my favorite songs because it's just so fun.Oh, and also try Samara Joy who's more of a classic jazz singer, but she's so incredible she will for sure be viewed as one of the greats along some of the very best jazz/lounge singers, and she's just 26 years old.
Finally, I think this is a good place to plug the band I play in, Perfect Time. Unfortunately a lot of lounge music needs a big band, but we try to make functional arrangements where possible and we do have two great loungy songs recorded on video - Le Paradis Pour Toi from 1960 and Aruanda from 1963. More music to arrive on the channel soonish, though not exactly this style.
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Comment on METRO 2039 | Official reveal trailer in ~games
V17 (edited )Link ParentMetro 2033 game is great and considered by some to be the best of the three. It was quite demanding on hardware when it came out, but it is pretty old now, so give it a try. I think the Redux...Metro 2033 game is great and considered by some to be the best of the three. It was quite demanding on hardware when it came out, but it is pretty old now, so give it a try. I think the Redux version may actually be better optimized, but I don't remember for sure.
Regarding the books, I think there Metro 2033 is considered to be the best pretty universally. Each of the sequels has a different vibe and a different kind of story. The first book is the only one that could be cut down and adapted into a game relatively directly, being one person's journey of discovering the Metro, though the game has much more shooting.
The second one is a tragic story where it's obvious Glukhovsky had an overarching concept that he built the entire book around, but in my opinion the result just doesn't work that well and the book suffers from him insisting on sticking to the concept.
The third one is again a story of discovering and learning about the metro. But compared to the first one it's bleak and depressing. It's a transparent metaphor for Glukhovsky saying that the entire current day Russian establishment and parts of culture/social attittudes should be burned to the ground, pissed on, the earth salted and the only thing to do is just to leave somewhere far away and start over. Which is a sentiment I identify with, but it's not exactly hopeful. After I finished the book I had to go check - surely he doesn't live in Russia anymore, releasing a book like this? No, he doesn't.
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Comment on METRO 2039 | Official reveal trailer in ~games
V17 LinkI appreciate that they showed actual in-engine footage at the end, but overall this gets a profound meh from me. I'm definitely a fan of Metro 2033, I enjoyed Last Light, but Exodus was a...I appreciate that they showed actual in-engine footage at the end, but overall this gets a profound meh from me. I'm definitely a fan of Metro 2033, I enjoyed Last Light, but Exodus was a disappointment and I suspect this will be similar.
One thing I hated about Exodus was how it insisted on being "cinematic", specifically in two ways. Firstly super long cutscenes, 5+ minutes long, but with bad voiceacting, bad voiceline timing, and animations and sets that really tried to look like a movie and in some ways did look great, but in others very much didn't, and the result for me was that my brain stopped seeing the cutscenes as a technologically and budget limited videogame where I easily suspend disbelief and let fantasy take over, and started seeing them as attempts at an actual movie. And as an actual movie they're not quite on The Room level, but they're way below an average B grade flick.
Secondly the game insisted on taking control away from me for cheap little cutscenes like unavoidable monster ambushes all the time. And even if it wasn't a monster ambush but something less time critical, it also unnecessarily pushed me to look at the important thing as if I'm too dumb to notice (which also happened in those long cutscenes, where it was perhaps even more annoying, it's like taking the worst from static video cutscenes and in-game events). It's like the opposite of Half Life.
Looks like Metro 2039 is sadly still firmly in this genre.
Another thing I thought was weak in Exodus was antagonist variety. There were like 3 different but really not much different types of cultist groups. Here it seems like we get nazis, which, on one hand I appreciate the absolute bleakness in which they were described in the 2035 book and it seems like some of it may have spilled here, but on the other hand this is again not exactly original. But they can still be great with good writing, it's just that after the cultists in Exodus I'm not very optimistic. The monsters looked good though, if we could get something like the dark ones again, something more than just dumb aggressive beasts, I'd take it. I loved even just the masked enemies in Caspian that looked like semi-invisible statues until you came close enough.
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Comment on A.T.L.A.S: outperform Claude Sonnet with a 14B local model and RTX 5060 Ti in ~tech
V17 Link ParentI just used openrouter.ai because it's simple, it allowed me to test all the models before finding one that's good enough and while obviously they need to have an overhead cost to be sustainable...I just used openrouter.ai because it's simple, it allowed me to test all the models before finding one that's good enough and while obviously they need to have an overhead cost to be sustainable it seemed low enough to be inconsequential for me.
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Comment on A.T.L.A.S: outperform Claude Sonnet with a 14B local model and RTX 5060 Ti in ~tech
V17 LinkRunning locally is great for privacy, but also if this is that good, then even renting it through buying credits for some datacenter provider could be awesome, because the price per task is about...Running locally is great for privacy, but also if this is that good, then even renting it through buying credits for some datacenter provider could be awesome, because the price per task is about 10x lower than the big providers like GPT or Claude.
Ever since I needed a visual-language model for OCR for a hobby project and found out that I can OCR 9000 webcomics for about 2.50 USD because even the biggest QWEN model ran through an independent provider is that much cheaper than ChatGPT and for this task just as good, I've been quite excited about similar models.
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Comment on Britain mandates heat pumps and solar panels in new homes from 2028 in ~enviro
V17 Link ParentI think it's two reasons. First is that individual solar still costs a lot to purchase and install and efficiency varies a lot based on the amounts of sunlight you get (trees, landscape or taller...I think it's two reasons. First is that individual solar still costs a lot to purchase and install and efficiency varies a lot based on the amounts of sunlight you get (trees, landscape or taller buildings nearby) - centralized solar in appropriate locations is cheaper than individual rooftop solar.
Second is energy storage. Solar is incredibly cheap as a supplement, but it sucks as a main source because it's not constant, it's dependent on things we cannot influence, while the energy grid needs to be reliable and stable. And energy storage is an unsolved issue. Even just storing energy in batteries overnight almost doubles the cost per kWh (which is still a competitive price), seasonal storage during winter (lowest output + peak energy demand) is just completely financially unviable. Hydroelectric dams are much better for storage, but viable locations are limited. Currently countries with a lot of solar/wind energy production like Germany partially solve this issue by importing energy from other countries (they're the biggest importer in Europe), but that only works because not everyone has such a high proportion of non-firm sources.
I really don't see it that way. It may be a minority of people, but it's loud enough to create real consequences.
One example that I immediately thought of because it was the first publicized instance that I've seen: the scientist who helped land a probe on a comet but wore an inappropriate shirt because he's a nerd: The controversy follows the revelations from the scientist’s sister Maxine that he could be “useless” in everyday life. Portraying her tattooed sibling as absent-minded, unable to find his car in the car park, and sometimes lacking in common sense, she told the Evening Standard, he didn’t like making decisions.
That shirt probably warranted a HR visit explaining to wear plain clothes for press conferences next time, but I find the reaction to be much more disgusting than what he wore.
I think it's also emblematic that this is essentially friendly fire. I doubt a nerdy scientist is the enemy of progress.