Reality Bytes

Engineer with many varied interests.
'What Do You Care What Other People Think?' - Feynman. If I'm a sheep, at least I'm a black one.

[Reality Bytes @StevesBytes]

@AndreaDona60 @LadyChuan The cool thing about science (unlike politics) is that it is quick to change when the underlying evidence changes.

[Reality Bytes @StevesBytes]

@LadyChuan As a rural firefighter in South Australia, we are now mandated to wear P2 respirators (near equivalent to N95) whenever working in bushfire smoke, as respiratory protection.

[Reality Bytes @StevesBytes]

@stitchkingdom @ok6ixx "To Serve Man"

[Reality Bytes @StevesBytes]

@Tim_Denning And hung out in strip clubs

[Shanaka Anslem Perera ⚡ @shanaka86]

For the first time in entire history, a machine is outbidding you for electricity, and it is winning.

In Virginia, one homeowner watched his monthly power bill leap from about $100 to $281, not because he used more, but because the data centers feeding the “AI boom” are now bidding against him for the same power, and they can always pay more to meet their demand.

The scale is hard to hold in your head.

America's data centers are on track to nearly double their electricity appetite from 80 to 150 gigawatts by 2028, the equivalent of bolting a country the size of Spain onto the grid in three years.

They will climb from using about 4 percent of all US electricity to as much as 12. And the cost of feeding them is not landing on the trillion dollar companies that own them. It is landing on you.

In the grid that serves 13 states and 67 million people, household bills are up around 15 percent this year, after a single obscure power auction spiked more than 9 times over and dumped 9 billion dollars of extra cost onto ordinary customers.

Nationally, electricity has risen 42 percent since 2019 while everything else rose 29. The richest companies on Earth are quietly having their power subsidized by the households least able to afford it.

It has become the most dangerous number in politics. President Trump promised to cut electricity prices in half within 18 months.

Instead they have hit records, driven by the very “AI boom” he calls the engine of the economy. The thing he bet the country on is now the cost of living wound that could decide the midterms.

Just look at the part the outrage misses, and it is the truth that makes it worse. This is not purely Ai. The grid was already hollowing out before the data centers arrived, with roughly 35 gigawatts of supply lost as old coal plants closed, gas prices climbing, and a power pricing system built 30 years ago for a world that no longer exists.

AI did not certainly break the grid. It lit a fire that was already laid. And the cost was engineered to be invisible, buried inside an auction almost no one can explain and smeared across 67 million bills, so that no single company ever appears to pay it. The most expensive thing about artificial intelligence is the part that never shows up on its makers' books. It shows up on yours.

We were sold AI as the cloud, something weightless and clean, floating somewhere far away. It is not a cloud. It is a row of furnaces the size of cities that drink rivers and swallow power without rest. And the first great resource war of the AI age was never going to be fought over chips or data. It is being fought over the electrical socket in your wall, between you and a machine that feels no cold, pays no bill, and never has to choose between the lights and the rent.

The honest counter is real too. Some of this rise is aging infrastructure and weather, not AI, and a handful of states are starting to force data centers to pay their own way. But the direction is not in doubt. Demand is exploding, supply is not, and the gap has a price. For now, that price has your name on it.

[Reality Bytes @StevesBytes]

@TheChiefNerd Centralised price controls? Smells like communism to me!

[Reality Bytes @StevesBytes]

@jmdelan5 @DrNeilStone @grok Yes please post the results from studies on the Amish, if you have them.

[Laura Miers @LauraMiers]

Every morning I get on here & scroll. Every single public health post, no matter how large the account, has been silenced long ago (including me) & engagement is deeply throttled. Every fake news racist slop post gets 50k-100k likes. We are marching DIRECTLY into pathogen hell, & our overlords already silenced The Warners. Media outlets too—media outlets posting real news get the lowest engagement of all. Anti-AI folks will be next, & the people who don’t want poisoned food/products. EVERYTHING about social media has changed over the last few years, but people can’t see it yet. As rolling waves of massive human rights violations are inflicted on the population, there is no way to warn people because no one can hear you. There is no recourse. Our overlords own all of media & social media.

[Reality Bytes @StevesBytes]

@Tuninkov64 @DschlopesIsBack You're making shit up. Show me one example of an Australian being jailed for being unvaccinated.

[Reality Bytes @StevesBytes]

@Tuninkov64 @DschlopesIsBack They didn't jail people for not being vaccinated.

[Reality Bytes @StevesBytes]

@F15sRdaBest @DPKennedy_au I had to look it up too: https://t.co/nu9giP5msd

[Reality Bytes @StevesBytes]

@chefsevenn The last rites, before it was cremated.

[Reality Bytes @StevesBytes]

@Lobes @worst_egirl Or a ''Form Grey", as in attach one Form Grey to ensure prompt processing of your application.

[Reality Bytes @StevesBytes]

@DMOPalmer @AndyMasley Even worse, it's oxidised silicon.

[Reality Bytes @StevesBytes]

@GermanSimply_ I lived 18 months in Bremen. All of these ring true. But I always felt like an Auslander. Maybe I should have stayed longer.

[Reality Bytes @StevesBytes]

@COviolgrand @RageSheen Panels don't leach unless you smash them up and put them in landfill, which is illegal in Australia. And even then, only CdTe panels would leach anything toxic.

[Reality Bytes @StevesBytes]

@grok @DocCroc420 @comical_engr Not the answer you were expecting?

[Reality Bytes @StevesBytes]

@DocCroc420 @comical_engr SA does not have the highest prices in the world, far from it.

[Michael Serdikoff @MSerdikoff]

@jsm2334 @DrChrisNorthrup Dr. Morris:

With all due respect, Silly misinformation? It's a bold faced piece of shit lie.
That you give them respect they don't deserve or give anyone else, is no longer laudable.
The policies are now killing people. It has to be called out for what it is.
Evil lies

[Reality Bytes @StevesBytes]

@Eric_P8 @_YGMG_ @suchnerve Most of them do unfortunately