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Alternative clouds are booming as companies seek cheaper access to GPUs

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Re: Alternative clouds are booming as companies seek cheaper access to GPUs

#281

Post by ipython »

relativ575 wrote: post #276
ipython wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sure, you are welcome to contact your insurance BEFORE you obtain services and find out what they will cover. In fact, its incumbent upon you to do that, and not expect HCP's to do that for you. Had experience with that too. Insurance company will not give you a straight answer as to what’s covered or not- as for example the anesthesiologist may be out of network and you’ll never know until it’s too late. The healt…

> as for example the anesthesiologist may be out of network and you’ll never know until it’s too late Are you sure you don't make this up? Any insurance that I've ever had always let you search if a particular provider is in their network. I just verified on the website of my current insurance. Dozen of anesthesiologists nearby are listed. In fact they often go out of their way to notify you if your doctors leave the…

So let’s say I want to book an outpatient surgical procedure. I know my surgeon is in network and the facility I visit for the procedure is in network. However there are always other services required that you may not be aware of - anesthesiologists are the most common. This is a very common occurrence which I have encountered (thanks for calling me a liar).

See for example https://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/comments/ho49d5/ane... - first hit of many for “anesthesiologist out of network”

Especially if you have an emergency surgery it’s not like you’re picking your anesthesiologist from an approved list before entering the OR, even if you took the time to make sure the hospital you visited is in network.

Finally look at the fine print for your insurance company’s website. You’ll see multiple disclaimers noting that the information may not be accurate - for example from blue cross blue shield:

> Blue Cross and Blue Shield Licensees have made reasonable efforts to ensure that the list of providers displayed is up to date and accurate. Please call the provider before making an appointment to verify that the provider continues to be part of the network.

Then when you call the provider to confirm, they shunt you back to your insurance provider. It’s hilarious if it didn’t have significant financial consequences.

Re: Alternative clouds are booming as companies seek cheaper access to GPUs

#282

Post by nothercastle »

latchkey wrote: post #255
margorczynski wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder what Lisa tells the shareholders & board when they ask why billions fly past their noses in valuation. Curious why ATI/AMD never could be on par to Nvidia regarding the software stack (drivers mainly), I would assume bad leadership and goals.

I'd call it a focus on very profitable ventures, like gaming. Nvidia effectively created this AI world by building tooling and software for something we didn't know existed up until not too long ago. AI was created on the shoulders of the work that was done. AMD wasn't taking the risk on the unknown, for whatever reason. Water under the bridge. The ship is certainly busy course correcting now. Give it some time.

Well they didn’t have any money. They bet big on cpu r&d and they did great but there wasn’t enough money left over for other moon shoots. AMD was at risk of becoming a failed company not too long ago so they recovered quite well.

Re: Alternative clouds are booming as companies seek cheaper access to GPUs

#283

Post by nothercastle »

latchkey wrote: post #257
nothercastle wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amd will never figure out drivers and software stuff. That’s always been their weakness

Amd will never have a CPU with more core's than Intel. I'm sure people said that too and look at where we are at today.

I don’t think anyone ever said that. Back when amd was lagging badly the core war wasn’t really a thing

Re: Alternative clouds are booming as companies seek cheaper access to GPUs

#284

Post by HeatrayEnjoyer »

Scarbutt wrote: post #279
distantsounds wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OVH and Hetzner have offerings at that price range. you can use a tool like serverhunter.com to find all sorts of economically-priced servers.

Does OVH asks for passport verification too, like Hetzner?

Why would they ask for a passport? Many people don't even have one.

Re: Alternative clouds are booming as companies seek cheaper access to GPUs

#285

Post by s1artibartfast »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #267
s1artibartfast wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The intuitive answer is competition, where customers move from user-hostile companies to new ones. The problem in my mind is that the largest companies have too much efficiencies of scale to compete with on price. When competition can't undercut on price, it is hard to argue that customers aren't being served by monopoly mega corps.

Yeah, this is a pretty standard answer to the same market failures that so many people have been talking about recently. It assumes though that low prices are the best possible benefit consumers might get from competition, and it also assumes that megacorps necessarily lead to the lowest possible prices for consumers. Chokepoint Capitalism is a pretty okay book that kicks the legs out from under both assumptions.

I don't think I'm making any assumptions about what's best. I bring it up because the most common argent levied against mega corps is using monopoly power to drive up prices, which I don't think is always true.

If people specifically want to break them up to drive down prices, I don't think that will always be successful.

Re: Alternative clouds are booming as companies seek cheaper access to GPUs

#286

Post by yolovoe »

oooyay wrote: post #98
baobabKoodaa wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you rent a dedicated server from AWS, you will be hit for various additional fees which will likely dwarf that $40/month. So the issue here is not really shared vs dedicated instances. The issue here is that a particular cloud provider (namely AWS) has set up an opaque fee structure.

I suspect they're not getting a dedicated server from Amazon. Anyone doing that is either foolish or is so locked into AWS infrastructure that it cost-wise makes more sense than to expand a network to another provider. Fun times, indeed. What I started doing is just running my own "cloud" out of my house for personal projects. I have all of the things I need. There's some overhead in terms of maintenance and up-front…

> I suspect they're not getting a dedicated server from Amazon.

If it's literally called a dedicated server, why would you suspect otherwise?

Source: I worked in the core EC2 dataplane for a couple years. PEs and leadership there would not be happy with misleading customers. We constantly thought of the customer experience there.

Re: Alternative clouds are booming as companies seek cheaper access to GPUs

#287

Post by Scarbutt »

HeatrayEnjoyer wrote: post #284
Scarbutt wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does OVH asks for passport verification too, like Hetzner?

Why would they ask for a passport? Many people don't even have one.

The worst part is they ask for it after you have enter your credit card details. Maybe they have policies per geographic region for this.

Re: Alternative clouds are booming as companies seek cheaper access to GPUs

#288

Post by oooyay »

yolovoe wrote: post #286
oooyay wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect they're not getting a dedicated server from Amazon. Anyone doing that is either foolish or is so locked into AWS infrastructure that it cost-wise makes more sense than to expand a network to another provider. Fun times, indeed. What I started doing is just running my own "cloud" out of my house for personal projects. I have all of the things I need. There's some overhead in terms of maintenance and up-front…

> I suspect they're not getting a dedicated server from Amazon. If it's literally called a dedicated server, why would you suspect otherwise? Source: I worked in the core EC2 dataplane for a couple years. PEs and leadership there would not be happy with misleading customers. We constantly thought of the customer experience there.

Generally you get a "dedicated host" from AWS, not a "dedicated server" so that was kind of my first tip off. There's a very big difference; the only usecase I'd really consider for dedicated hosts is security related and, frankly, they're far more expensive than any colo box. Dedicated Hosts are also far more restrictive than what you get at a colo DC. Second, even if AWS offered to let you have full control of a rack box you'd have to be economically out of your mind with AWS' network costs compared to a colo DC.

Re: Alternative clouds are booming as companies seek cheaper access to GPUs

#289

Post by latchkey »

nothercastle wrote: post #283
latchkey wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amd will never have a CPU with more core's than Intel. I'm sure people said that too and look at where we are at today.

I don’t think anyone ever said that. Back when amd was lagging badly the core war wasn’t really a thing

> the core war wasn’t really a thing

Core performance has always been a thing.

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