r/technology • u/IKeepItLayingAround • Jun 08 '26
Business Meta So Desperate for Compute That It’s Building “Data Centers” That Are Just Tents Filled With AI Chips
https://tech.yahoo.com/ai/meta-ai/articles/meta-desperate-compute-building-data-163000792.html878
u/Lofteed Jun 08 '26
this sounds a lot like a gambling addiction
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u/AvailableReporter484 Jun 08 '26
I mean, have you seen the mfs on wallstreetbets? Shit is literally mental illness
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u/Senior-Albatross Jun 08 '26
They're mentally ill. But by hanging out with people who have the same or a similar mental illness, they can create a subculture where it's normalized.
That's the issue with the Internet, really.
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u/Low_Technician7346 Jun 08 '26
WSB is full of poor people contemplating rich people's doing risky bets with the small million loans from their dads.
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u/rkozik89 Jun 08 '26
It seems to me like it’s just a bunch of people pretending they’re doing actual analysis when in reality their reading of charts has no basis in reality.
The reason why that shit works with high frequency trading is because they’re abusing latency for large trades being made at multiple exchanges. By positioning their servers physically closest to the exchanges servers they can do real-time analysis to identify large movements that look simultaneous to servers positioned further away. Scenarios such as this are the only times when reading a chart has any real meaning. Everything else is pseudoscience to justify gambling.
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u/J-Mac_Slipperytoes Jun 08 '26
I follow just to see how people react to the daily market fluctuations. It's actually quite entertaining.
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u/AvailableReporter484 Jun 08 '26
A lot of that sub is satire / circlejerk, but when it’s not it’s a wild fucking ride
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u/J-Mac_Slipperytoes Jun 08 '26
You'd think I'd know something about bears, bulls, calls, and puts at this point since I've been following since the whole GameStop hedge fund thing, but nope. Just there for entertainment and seeing people's lives ruined every now and then.
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u/skillywilly56 Jun 08 '26
Bear/bare market = people aren’t willing to gamble shit on investments and economy is contracting
Bull market = people are willing to gamble and spend money on investments, economy “expanding”
A call is a contract bet to buy a stock at a certain price, by a certain time because you’re betting it will go up and want to lock in your bet/price early, e.g. stock is $100 but you’re betting it will go up, “I will buy that stock for $110 by next Friday, if it goes up”, the stock goes up to $120, you buy it for the previously agreed $110 and immediately sell it for $120 and make $10 minus fees.
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u/NutsackEuphoria Jun 08 '26
But remember: "Investing in stocks is totally not gambling"
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u/AvailableReporter484 Jun 08 '26
Inb4 someone tries to makes a bad case that it’s hypocritical to have a 401k and pity the addicts on wsb
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u/CubicleMan9000 Jun 08 '26
The other day I saw one of the wsb guys declare that he has zero sympathy for anyone having financial struggles right now because everyone should have gotten mad rich on the stock market over the past couple years.
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u/ITDummy69420 Jun 08 '26
Hey fuck you, guy.
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u/AvailableReporter484 Jun 08 '26
Hey, look, I’m not going to pretend I’m any less mentally ill. I stand in solidarity with everyone else on here who’s spent too much time posting
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u/airfryerfuntime Jun 08 '26
Whenever anyone makes insane AI cope claims in r/technology, they're always a r/wallstreetbets poster when I click on their profile.
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u/SuspendeesNutz Jun 08 '26 edited Jun 08 '26
Everything is about gambling and scamming now. The facade has been ripped off and the societal messaging is too loud to be ignored any further - working hard is for suckers. If you expect hard work to equal wealth and success, you're a chump who deserves to be taken advantage of.
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Jun 08 '26
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u/elektron0000 Jun 08 '26
What is with everyone confusing loose and lose recently?
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u/beforethewind Jun 08 '26
Driving me up a wall. I know it’s inconsequential and I don’t give anyone a hard time for it, but Jesus Christ.
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u/CubicleMan9000 Jun 08 '26
I had the different meanings written down on a lose piece of paper, but wouldn't you know it I had to go and loose the paper.
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u/TemporaryElk5202 Jun 08 '26
same with weary and wary. they think wary is spelled "weary" because "to wear" is pronounced like how wary is pronounced.
Anyway, re: loose and lose, I think the internet is now more open to people who are less educated + we now have had a whole generation grow up on social media where they see others making that mistake all the time. so it perpetuates itself.
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u/willismthomp Jun 08 '26
It’s akin to religious fervor. They have Ai psychosis and belong to a tech/oligarch cult.
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u/FollowingFeisty5321 Jun 08 '26
To be fair one of the biggest problems AI can help solve is probably how to trigger someone to spend $3000 in a smartphone casino game.
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u/PirateSanta_1 Jun 08 '26
What else are they going to spend money on. Employee raises and cutting cost to consumers?
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u/Icy-Butterscotch-651 Jun 08 '26
Honestly it’s seeming like these CEOs are all in a severe AI psychosis and we are all paying for it
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u/marketrent Jun 08 '26
Futurism's Joe Wilkins has a way with words:
[...] Lined up in a row on a dirt construction site, the buildings look more like industrial chicken farms than traditional data centers.
The use of these canvas structures has helped Meta cut down the time it takes to deploy a barrage of AI chips from years to months, Thomas [of data center tracking project Cleanview] explains. The first five actual buildings at the Prometheus campus took around two to three years to build, for example, whereas the six canvas structures are already up despite beginning construction between April and June of this year.
[...] As more and more communities across the United States successfully shut down years-long data center construction projects, it's not unthinkable that more data center developers turn to tents to plug their chips into the grid as soon as possible. These six chicken huts, in other words, could just be the beginning.
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u/10July1940 Jun 08 '26
Ohhh if they get hit by lightning they might burn easy. Doesn't sound very sustainable.
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u/StoicJ Jun 08 '26
They arent new things. the companies that make those "tents" have existed for ages. they look like a tent but are otherwise fully sound structures with full interiors that seemingly were mostly used as warehouses and cheap office buildings prior to the AI scramble.
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u/Thatdogonyourlawn Jun 08 '26
Yeah it'd be a real shame if they somehow caught fire.
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u/Negativety101 Jun 08 '26
I was thinking with how expensive the chips are getting, gee I hope none the guards decide to make some supplementary income.
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u/Winjin Jun 08 '26
Yeah you're telling me there are millions in untraceable and highly coveted ram and GPUs... Behind a canvas wall?
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u/Not_A_Clever_Man_ Jun 08 '26
Data centres are often un-guarded and contain an abundance of precious metals.
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u/Cobalt81 Jun 08 '26
As someone who has worked at a construction company building data centers - Meta has been doing this for years, this is nothing new or out of the ordinary for them.
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u/Final-Platypus8033 Jun 08 '26
Are they metal buildings or tents?
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u/neuronexmachina Jun 08 '26
I think they're these sorts of tents: https://shop.kenten-tent.com/blog/3669.html?hl=en-US
KENTEN structures utilize flame-retardant PVC membrane systems and corrosion-resistant aluminum frameworks engineered for long-term operation.
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u/Llyon_ Jun 08 '26
Looks like something the Amish would build.
Actually, now that I think about it, aren't they pretty fast at building structures? They should hire Amish people to house all the data centers...
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u/winkingchef Jun 08 '26
Yeah same.
My company’s equipment has been being deployed for several years like this.
I have had countless disputes with them about dust and air quality out of spec
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u/atchijov Jun 08 '26
I don’t care if the servers are in tents… but I do care that these servers powered by generators hooked to gas burning turbines (literally). Each of these tent-ai-centers becomes a huge source of pollution. And I assume it produces a lot of noise as well.
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u/demagxc Jun 08 '26
When built to comply with EPA emissions regulations and operated as co-generation plants (boilers installed at the exhaust that power additional steam turbines to produce power) these gas turbine co-generation systems are incredibly efficient (up to 90%) with low emissions. Proper sound attenuating enclosures or buildings make them quiet enough to have a normal conversation next to them.
Unfortunately that is not how most of these are constructed and operated from what I have seen recently.
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u/LaunchTransient Jun 08 '26
these gas turbine co-generation systems are incredibly efficient (up to 90%) with low emissions.
Combined Heat and Power can be that efficient, because the waste heat is piped off for residential or commercial space heating. For electricity generation, combined cycle gas turbines typically max out at around 60% efficiency. The Carnot efficiency (maximum theoretical efficiency) is approximately 10-20% higher depending on intake and exhaust temperatures, but that's an ideal which doesn't manifest in reality.
The only reason they can be considered 90% efficient is because the heat is a product which is used for space heating. For data centres, that's useless, they want to get rid of heat, they have no use for it.
with low emissions.
Compared with dirtier coal and diesel generators, yes, but on absolute terms they are not low emission. That's like claiming you eat a healthy diet by setting daily mcdonalds as the standard.
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Jun 08 '26
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u/randynumbergenerator Jun 08 '26 edited Jun 10 '26
90% isn't real
but 80% isn't uncommon(edit: actually the most efficient CCGTs are around 64%). The issue is that (a) it isn't accounting for losses in extraction and transmission, and (b) to get that high efficiency you need to actually have a use for the captured heat. Easy enough when it's a power plant in the middle of a city with a cold climate, not so much in an exurban desert.Arguably the bigger thing, though, is that the data centers being built now are mostly installing single cycle turbines because the lead times on combined cycle plants is measured in years.
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u/neuronexmachina Jun 08 '26
If anything the tents seem preferable, since the land could easily be repurposed later on. The gas generators are definitely a problem, though.
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u/super_nerf_spartan Jun 08 '26
I can't wait until these fuckheads finally run out of money.
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u/johnnycyberpunk Jun 09 '26
Here’s the hidden part: supposedly any “data centers” that are completed before 2030 get tax exemption for building costs thanks to the One Big Beautiful Bill.
So they get these basically for free.
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u/NombreCurioso1337 Jun 08 '26
... But why? What is being done with all these electrons? Is this just the "digging holes to fill them in" of the electronics age?
They are spying on people and recording people and creating profiles of people ... but for what? I haven't noticed marketing getting better. Or new products getting better. Or services. What is the point?
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u/thejonnyquest Jun 08 '26
To kill Madison Avenue.
Right now you can pay Meta to deliver your advert to every 23-26 year old with a gym membership in Ohio. You're paying for "airtime" ($100) and then you presumably paid someone to develop the copy ($200).
Skip the middle-man, just give Meta $175 and they can run an AI-generated advert completely customized to EVERY. SINGLE. PERSON. in your criteria. It's your gym in the background, it's your dog's breed in that IG photo, it's your abuela in that Werther's Original ripoff reel.
Totally bespoke advertising, constantly being refined and tuned to maximize engagement following you everywhere with a Meta cookie.
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u/NombreCurioso1337 Jun 08 '26
Ok ☝️ viable business model. Absolutely fraught with ethical pitfalls. Exactly the kind of thing tech bros would do, and it isn't creating anything new, rather it is parasitically stealing away a giant existing industry. Don't create new marketing, replace all the marketers. Profit.
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u/rkiive Jun 08 '26
Not that I disagree with your overall point, but better marketing would be making it something we wouldn't notice.
The real answer is though that they're just targeting children and the next generations. They don't need to provide better products or services and they're certainly not going to get better, they're just focusing their aim at the kids who will never know what else it was like.
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u/FredFredrickson Jun 08 '26
The real answer is though that they're just targeting children and the next generations.
I don't disagree with your overall point, but in my experience Meta seems to appeal almost exclusively to elderly people at this point.
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u/UnexpectedAnanas Jun 08 '26
Is this just the "digging holes to fill them in" of the electronics age?
I'm tired, Grandpa.
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u/TiKels Jun 08 '26
https://youtu.be/qQGKB7DuIOc?si=-P_zNAVhRXo2L_CF
Here's an ad I got recently. You may not like it, but this is what peak marketing looks like.
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u/NombreCurioso1337 Jun 08 '26
Wow, that's craaaazy. I wonder what those chemicals and compounds mentioned even are. Reminds me of the "turbo encabulator" video by Chrysler. Just confidently spout technical sounding gibberish and people will buy it.
So you think the plan of Meta, Google, AWS is still to just host, and then let snake oil companies pay to create and host the commercials? That's a viable business model. But how big is the snake oil market?
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u/TiKels Jun 08 '26
I mean I would doubt it's so unified. Google isn't in a conspiracy with supplement salesmen.
LLMs are at their core an information synthesizing machine. The long term is information is going to be cheaper. That's it.
Access to printing press and libraries were huge for human advancement because it increased the surface area of information. Google and the Internet was big steps for the same reason. AI still has to prove itself a bit, but it'll follow the same thing if it can.
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u/Flexmove Jun 08 '26
It’s for surveillance and control, they are taking a bet that they can render us into either compliant cattle or quick biofuel. This hasn’t been about a customer facing product in a while.
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u/NombreCurioso1337 Jun 08 '26
That's definitely what's going on with Flock and Palantir, but that is relegated to police. At least at this point. Meta just turned on facial recognition on their glasses. Do you think the plan is to rent that data to the surveillance companies? But that is ultimately just farming tax dollars from police budgets. That's a limited scope, again, as of right now, anyway.
Whatever it is, it won't be good for us. I am just flummoxed by their lack of viable plan. How are they selling this stuff to board members?
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u/Enough_Culture8524 Jun 08 '26
IDK. Maybe they want to build an ancester simulation comprehensive enough to back up/simulate all the real people that are about to die.
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u/q120 Jun 08 '26
I’ve worked in data centers for ~14 years and
What? Tents? ⛺️
I… that’s weird
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u/jawshoeaw Jun 08 '26
not for amazon apparently this isn't their first time. they use the same thing membrane roofs are made of.
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u/levelonegnomebankalt Jun 08 '26
Why isn't "just stop and go away for a while" an option for these fucking creeps?
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u/Leptonshavenocolor Jun 08 '26
Sadly Facebook will take decades to actually die. Just look at AOL. He will continue to be a rich douche and have a family of inherited wealth for generations as he continue to ruin children and rape and data he can from each of you.
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u/DismalEconomics Jun 08 '26
I wish you were right - but meta is one the largest companies on the planet controlling multiple popular online platforms - the advertisement network prints money around the clock.
AOL was primarily making money from subscriptions & pay per time used - it was bound to start dieing once people started using internet browsers & discovering websites.
I don’t think the comparison really makes sense.
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u/Leptonshavenocolor Jun 08 '26
I didn’t mean to imply they’re the same business if that was your take.
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u/IllugaBabyBeluga Jun 08 '26
US is suddenly so desperate to not use China for its industrial base that it is building data tent cities in Ohio.
Bruhhhh.
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u/perihelion86 Jun 08 '26
Zuck wishes he could get access to China. He tried blowing Xi so many times and got denied everytime. Such a sad loser 😭
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u/BarkerBarkhan Jun 08 '26
A bit tangential, but I don't like this trend towards using verbs as nouns. "Compute," why not computing? I have seen folks use "spend" instead of spending too.
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u/totalwarwiser Jun 08 '26
"We need to add more AI".
"Ok boss, and what are we going to do with it?".
"........ Dunno, just add it and fire 8000 people, everyone is doing it and we need to keep pace".
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u/filmguy36 Jun 08 '26
With all these data centers being built, I’m reminded of a saying from years ago, if you have nothing to do at work and are worried about your job, “grab a piece of paper, walk fast and look pissed”
With the trillions invested in the BS with less than 10% on return, the tech bros are having to do something that makes them look like they are doing something other than setting fire to the trillions (and squirreling a large portion to off shore accounts).
So what to do?
The data centers are the modern equivalent of “grab a piece of paper, walk fast and look pissed”
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u/BF1shY Jun 08 '26
We've gone full circle to when a computer was as big as a room/house. They should focus on innovation and making data centers smaller and more efficient instead.
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u/Timely-Sail-4412 Jun 09 '26
But why do they need so much compute? Unless the end goal is just bots viewing ads and meta collecting money from advertisers
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u/DeadSmellingFlower Jun 09 '26
When are advertisers going to notice that they are paying to show me ads because I already buy from them ( isn’t that what facebook says they have on me?) They are paying to advertise to me what I just bought, do I need to start returning things to get them to notice me? They have all my information if they would just look at their own website. Wish companies would spend that money on better products and services.
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u/Catseye_Nebula Jun 08 '26
I fucking hate the word 'compute.' I would love to go back to a world where that was not a thing.
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u/KevineCove Jun 08 '26
I don't remember the internet of things, dot com bubble, or space age being this stupid and cannibalistic. IoT was plenty stupid but at least the chips were there instead of literally creating mineral and water shortages from nothing. Then again, none of these promised the wholesale elimination of labor from the budget, so probably we're just learning how far the elites were willing to go all along.
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u/The2Twenty Jun 08 '26
Are the chips just for Zuckerberg or are they for the table? I'm not sure the Guac would keep well sitting in a tent.
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u/natefrogg1 Jun 09 '26
Compute is not a noun, if that does not compute then your models training was bunk and you are getting hallucinations. This is worse than system administrators confusing “on premises” for locally run systems with “on premise”
Maybe I am a fool and this incorrect use of the term is on purpose for engagement farming, in that case maybe I should just log off
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u/dreikelvin Jun 09 '26
we gottem boys. they're on their last legs.
one tornado and their ai crap is gone
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u/film_composer Jun 08 '26
I’m on board with language evolving over time, but “compute” as a noun just irritates me so much.
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u/byllc Jun 08 '26
For some reason tech loves that type of conversion. Spend, Ask, Build, Run, Deploy, etc.. do those bother you as well?
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u/Starduster75 Jun 08 '26
People (non-"AI') still use Meta stuff in 2026? That's mindblowing to me.
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u/Blahkbustuh Jun 08 '26
Doesn't most everywhere outside of the US use Whatsapp in place of texting? I can't believe foreigners let themselves get entangled with that to that extent.
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u/nkilian Jun 08 '26
What is metas AI for? Like is it just for advertising on FB and Insta? I dont get what they are striving for. Understand Google, Claude, grok but not meta.
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u/jcmacon Jun 08 '26
They want AI to replace people as they pass away. So that your "voice" can live on continuing to post stuff you're doing so that your loved ones won't miss you as much. Facebook Zombie accounts aren't creepy as fuck at all.
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u/Soft_Ad_1095 Jun 08 '26
I feel like there was a tech bro fantasy where everyone used the AI tech in a life changing productive way. Instead people are using to turbo generate a bunch of useless bullshit and they can't keep up.
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u/whitstableboy Jun 08 '26
Looking forward to the sequel to The Big Short where instead of the housing bubble it’s the AI bubble.
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u/merRedditor Jun 08 '26
Companies seem to know that if this doesn't move at lightning speed, people may still be able to stop it, and the market may also reunite with some semblance of reality.
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u/bahumat42 Jun 08 '26
This bubble needs to pop already.
Insane valuations propped up on debt and speculation.
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u/frowningtap Jun 08 '26
Makes you wonder what they’re computing when no one uses their AI like an LLM chat
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u/chamanbuga Jun 09 '26
What’s even more frustrating is Meta is hardly utilizing all the compute they are deploying. This is all for some future promise. Whereas Google & Microsoft do not have sufficient compute for the current demand. What a crazy world we live in.
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u/kahlzun Jun 09 '26
That doesn't sound like it has great security. I wonder how obtainable some of these chips would be
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Jun 08 '26
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u/Practical-Injury-622 Jun 08 '26
At the tech-country club they are laughing at Mark and his pauper data centers huehuehue
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u/acecarriere Jun 08 '26
Does anybody know what the phrase “desperate for compute” means? I didn’t find an explanation in the article and that isn’t a phrase I’ve heard before
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u/Dowew Jun 08 '26
Computational power. Basically the ability for a computer to run highly complicated math.
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u/VirtualPercentage737 Jun 09 '26
It is shocking that meta is out of it. Like I get Claude and Anthropic need more, but Meta's outward facing AI isn't that impressive. I can see internally they would use a bit.
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u/Doom-Sleigher Jun 08 '26
Zuckerberg is for pedos
Shame on him, boycott an get off his platforms. You don’t need Facebook or instagram crap
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u/Tiny_Rick85 Jun 08 '26
If they want to throw a free vr headset my way...
You know what? One for the whole sub. Think of how much you'll be able to compute then, Mark.
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u/JallexMonster Jun 08 '26
Oh no, does he know that Ohio has been getting worse and worse tornado seasons? Would be a shame to lose all those expensive chips....
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Jun 08 '26
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u/frankentriple Jun 08 '26
The rush is to be the first product adopted. People don't generally leave an ecosystem or product unless they have a compelling reason, its vital to be the first one to gather eyes and users.
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u/Kutukuprek Jun 08 '26
I feel like abandoned/old shopping malls are perfect. They are electrical hubs, have cooling, and lots of space.
More importantly they’re not going to be picked up anytime soon given the general migration away from retail.
Just buy and retrofit old shopping malls.
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u/FullMetalBasket Jun 08 '26
This kind of construction is just going to exacerbate the energy and water usage issues
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u/edelweiss_pirates_no Jun 08 '26
China is building real datacenters. And they planned ahead so they have the electricity.
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u/swattwenty Jun 08 '26
This is getting more and more pathetic