Microsoft cancels leases for AI data centers, analyst says • Hacker News Board

Re: Microsoft cancels leases for AI data centers, analyst says

#341

Post by traceroute66 » Wed, Feb 26, 2025, 10:22 AM UTC

cozzyd wrote: post #340

traceroute66 wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If I fully deplete the battery. I cannot immediatly turn it on with adapter's power. Why? Every windows laptop can be run with adapter even with a dead battery. First you should not be depleting modern batteries, its not good for the battery health, or indeed storage health, recall that solid-state storage integrity is not guaranteed in the absence of electrical current (a reminder to those who have a habit of back…

I'm sure people running out of batteries in the middle of a zoom call or a presentation especially enjoy waiting an additional 5-10 minutes before being able to continue.

> people running out of batteries in the middle of a zoom call or a presentation

I would remind those sorts of people of the 5 P's ...

Prior Planning Prevents Poor Performance

Starting a zoom or presentation on low battery is just a fucking stupid thing to do. There's no other way to put it.

Re: Microsoft cancels leases for AI data centers, analyst says

#342

Post by sigmoid10 » Wed, Feb 26, 2025, 1:11 PM UTC

zamalek wrote: post #211

sigmoid10 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curiously, all of these three (VR/AI/QC) are limited by hardware. But AI is the only one that has seen meaningful progress by just throwing more contemporary hardware at it. Sure, future hardware might bring advancements to all of them. But if you're making an investment plan for the next quarter, the choice is pretty obvious. This is why AI rules the venture capitalist sector instead of fusion or other long term stu…

Of the three, QC is different in that it's not a solution looking for a problem. If we ever scale QC to the point where it can do meaningful work (the "if" is doing a lot of work there - per your point about hardware), then I don't see it fumbling like the other two have. We have immediate and pressing needs that we know how to solve with QC. The other two are very much research coming up with cool toys, and product…

When considering scientists perhaps, but when you look at the general population the other two have way bigger ramifications on daily life than QC.

Re: Microsoft cancels leases for AI data centers, analyst says

#343

Post by dennis_jeeves2 » Wed, Feb 26, 2025, 1:45 PM UTC

deadbabe wrote: post #131

unsupp0rted wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nadella is looking for the world to grow at 10% due to AI enhancement, like it did during the industrial revolution. That seems like a low bar because it already is- it's just not equally distributed yet. My own productivity has grown far more than 10% thanks to AI, and I don't just mean in terms of dev. It reads my bloodwork results, speeds up my ability to repair a leak in my toilet tank, writes a concise "no I won…

Unless you’re producing 10% more money with AI you’re not doing shit.

Or fix a leaking faucet.

Re: Microsoft cancels leases for AI data centers, analyst says

#344

Post by orange_puff » Wed, Feb 26, 2025, 5:05 PM UTC

mrtksn wrote: post #69

toomuchtodo wrote: post #24

Microsoft CEO Admits That AI Is Generating Basically No Value - https://futurism.com/microsoft-ceo-ai-generating-no-value Bit of a click bait title, but it certainly seems like the realization is setting in that the hype has exceeded near term realistic expectations and some are walking back claims (for whatever reason; honesty, derisking against investor securities suits, poor capital allocation, etc). Nadella appea…

IMHO anyone who started using AI seriously: 1) Wouldn't want to go back 2) Wouldn't believe that it's about to replace human intellectual work In other words AI got advanced enough to do amazing things but not 500B or T level of amazing and people with the money are not convinced that it will be anytime soon.

I have started using AI for all of my side projects, and am now building stuff almost everyday. I did this as a way to ease some of my anxiety related to AI progress and how fast it is moving. It has actually had the opposite effect; it's more amazing than I thought. I think the difficulty in reasoning about 2) is that given what interesting and difficult problems it can already solve, it's hard to reason about where it will be in 3-5 years.

But, I am also having more fun building things than perhaps the earliest days of my first code written, which is just over 7 years now. Insofar as 1) goes, yes, I never want to go back. I can learn faster and more deeply than I ever could. It's really exciting!

Re: Microsoft cancels leases for AI data centers, analyst says

#345

Post by int_19h » Fri, Feb 28, 2025, 2:04 AM UTC

MichaelZuo wrote: post #226

aresant wrote: post #185

- This is a proper MSFT resource allocation commentary, not an industry wide canary in coalmine - MSFT CapEx is up 45% YoY, positioning for inference dominance - MSFT is prioritizing AI inference for millions of customers over massive AI training for OpenAI - Losing inference demand risks clients moving to AWS/GCP - MSFT taking bet that industry overbuild will lead to more attractive leasing terms in future vs owning…

If they are taking the bet that industry will overbuild, how is it not a canary in a coal mine? There is almost certainly at least one person in Redmond working on this that’s smarter and better informed than you, just going off probability.

I can tell you for certain about quite a few people like that who are no longer working in Redmond because they have been canned in the last wave of layoffs.

Re: Microsoft cancels leases for AI data centers, analyst says

#346

Post by int_19h » Fri, Feb 28, 2025, 2:07 AM UTC

setr wrote: post #333

thanksgiving wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not what I see from the outside Everytime versioning comes up. My understanding is Microsoft marketing has full control over what constitutes a major / minor version bump like when typescript 4 is released vs typescript 3.9 (just an example). The people who build typescript don't even control their own version numbers.

According to this https://www.learningtypescript.com/articles/why-typescript-d... The versioning logic is fairly simple (although kind of pointless afaict?). X.1 —> X.9, and instead of going to .10 it simply increments major number. With average releases every 3 months, then major versions are simply being bumped roughly every 30 months. I think functionally it’s just a really awkward date-versioning on a 30 month ca…

It's an old school versioning system that was very popular for DOS software. I'm not surprised that TypeScript, being ultimately still an Anders Hejlsberg project, would adopt it.

Re: Microsoft cancels leases for AI data centers, analyst says

#347

Post by int_19h » Fri, Feb 28, 2025, 2:12 AM UTC

traceroute66 wrote: post #341

cozzyd wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure people running out of batteries in the middle of a zoom call or a presentation especially enjoy waiting an additional 5-10 minutes before being able to continue.

> people running out of batteries in the middle of a zoom call or a presentation I would remind those sorts of people of the 5 P's ... Prior Planning Prevents Poor Performance Starting a zoom or presentation on low battery is just a fucking stupid thing to do. There's no other way to put it.

It doesn't matter how stupid it is, the OS shouldn't make it any worse even so.

Re: Microsoft cancels leases for AI data centers, analyst says

#348

Post by sayamqazi » Fri, Feb 28, 2025, 11:33 AM UTC

traceroute66 wrote: post #324

sayamqazi wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple level of polish - I can't tell if my macbook is charging or not while the lid is closed. There is no light indicator - minimize/maximize buttons are very small given that I am using a the touchpad. I am not saying they are unsuably small but far from ideal. - If I fully deplete the battery. I cannot immediatly turn it on with adapter's power. Why? Every windows laptop can be run with adapter even with a dead…

> If I fully deplete the battery. I cannot immediatly turn it on with adapter's power. Why? Every windows laptop can be run with adapter even with a dead battery. First you should not be depleting modern batteries, its not good for the battery health, or indeed storage health, recall that solid-state storage integrity is not guaranteed in the absence of electrical current (a reminder to those who have a habit of back…

> First you should not be depleting modern batteries, its not good for the battery health,

I think most modern devices already turn themselves off before reaching true ZERO.

> Second, if you think about it, its a safety feature in to protect you from data corruption.

No its to make sure that you can not use a perfectly functional compouter without replacing a battery once it has fully died.

> I use only require a 5–10 minute charge

Are you saying apple devices are not good for watching live content?

> You risk data corruption

With autosave (which most app have) data loss would be minimal.

Before I could afford apple products, from afar everything apple looked amazing but after using them I found out, Apple UI is just pretty and only slightly more polished than Windows.

Re: Microsoft cancels leases for AI data centers, analyst says

#349

Post by EspadaV9 » Sat, Mar 01, 2025, 8:03 AM UTC

jdlshore wrote: post #250

mrtksn wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMHO anyone who started using AI seriously: 1) Wouldn't want to go back 2) Wouldn't believe that it's about to replace human intellectual work In other words AI got advanced enough to do amazing things but not 500B or T level of amazing and people with the money are not convinced that it will be anytime soon.

I went back. It’s fine at solving small problems and jump-starting an investigation, but only a small step better than a search engine. It’s no good for deep work. Any time I’ve used it to research something I know well, it’s got important details wrong, but in a confident way that someone without my knowledge would accept. RLHF trains it to fool humans into thinking it’s authoritative, not to actually be correct.

This is exactly the experience I've had. Recently started learning OpenTofu(/Terraform) and the company now had Gemini as part of the Workspace subscription. It was great to get some basic going, but very quickly starts suggesting wrong or old or bad practices. Still using it as a starting point and to help known what to start searching for, but like you said, it's only slightly better than a regular search engine.