TechTakes

Magic still doesn’t happen

by Amy Castor and David Gerard

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fy9P7CN-atM&list=UU9rJrMVgcXTfa8xuMnbhAEA - video
https://pivottoai.libsyn.com/20261106-tech-stocks-crash-and-so-do-data-center-loans - podcast

time: 6 min 35 sec

(unpaywalled ver)

(reddit post)

by Amy Castor and David Gerard

the chatbot will alter physics

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qf549Gms744&list=UU9rJrMVgcXTfa8xuMnbhAEA - video
https://pivottoai.libsyn.com/20261105-sam-altman-wants-your-ram-there-are-compute-campuses-to-build - podcast

time: 5 min 28 sec

audio with authentic 5 November sound effects recorded live

saying the costs part out loud

by Amy Castor and David Gerard

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJb0JsK3ufM&list=UU9rJrMVgcXTfa8xuMnbhAEA - video
https://pivottoai.libsyn.com/20261104-elon-musk-admits-grok-bot-costs-too-much-to-serve - podcast

time: 6 min 25 sec

Redmond's proposed solution is to use those massive LLMs where most needed, "the right model for the right job," running smaller models locally at the edge on Windows PCs. "My goal, if we're successful in pivoting Windows to the agentic platform, is to have PC spend be part of the AI spend versus just PC refresh budget," he said.

On my looping music machine I clip PC spend be part of the AI spend into a repeating loop, then I add in an electronic insistent "four on the floor" drumbeat. My head starts nodding.

Boots and Cats and Boots and Cats and Boots and Cats PC spend be part of the AI spend

We have a business model baby! We are gonna be richhhhh!

"Our main focus will be on those higher ASP (average sales price) commercial boxes as part of the AI storyboard that's there."

Is this still considered english or is this now some newer form of dialect that is better considered distinct from mainstream english?

Monopoly abuse? No such thing (for us)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8v45znvgsXQ&list=UU9rJrMVgcXTfa8xuMnbhAEA - video
https://pivottoai.libsyn.com/20261103-google-cuts-off-search-if-schools-block-ai - podcast

time: 4 min 13 sec

Signing official extensions is not fast moving enough

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1gNYxxq8U0&list=UU9rJrMVgcXTfa8xuMnbhAEA - video
https://pivottoai.libsyn.com/20261030-proton-mail-goes-full-ai-slop-tuta-starts-going-slop - podcast

time: 5 min 04 sec

No, this can't be it, the kids are miserable just because of social media! All we need to do is ban social media and problem solved!

The old promise of entry-level work, where you find a position, learn the ropes, and make your way up, was already fading. Gen Xers and millennials can tell you that. But AI is quickening the unraveling, disrupting how young people find jobs—if they find jobs—and also what they confront when they get there. Gen Z is squinting into a fog, unsure of what’s coming, yet certain that disembodied decision-makers will have a say in it.

It couldn't be that feeling like you have no future makes you depressed and unhappy!

Turning this sneer into its own post because you need to hate AI companies (and the US) more

The US power sector would emit 2.1 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide by 2030, after factoring in planned AI projects. That’s 618 million tons more than 2025 levels, by the Sierra Club’s calculations, or about a 42% increase.

But how much is a difficult question to answer. There’s so much uncertainty in the projections for power emissions that the lowest and highest estimates differ by more electricity than the combined demand of California and Florida. The Sierra Club’s estimate of the climate impacts of the data center buildout is higher than others released so far. The wide range of projections is due to questions around how many facilities will actually be built, what technologies they will ultimately use and how much renewable energy capacity comes online over the next few years.

And as the satellite passed over Svalbard, Norway, the orbiting AI model responded over the downlink:

Blue marble below,

Data streams in silent grace,

Starlight feeds my core. ✨

Those roughly 20 tokens would cost about $0.000012 if generated through the Google Cloud API, based on Gemma 4 26B's pricing of $0.15 per million input tokens and $0.60 per million output tokens, excluding input costs.

Add in a satellite weighing perhaps 500 kg, based on the mass of SpaceX's Starlink satellites, and a retail launch price of around $7,000 per kg, and you have a very expensive haiku.

This is the most astronomically far from art as you can get.

Just one day after 404’s piece on Proton CEO Andy Yen’s AI psychosis, and much public sneering of the matter… those pending ‘re-interviews’ on staff’s submission to slop apparently won’t be happening. But Yen is still an all-in slopbro, so.

The report admitted, however, that it could only document “the tip of the iceberg” and warned that complicity around the genocide would not end “without holding the private sector accountable, including its executives."

This is precisely what lies behind the US State Department’s recent declaration of sanctions against the International Criminal Court (ICC). This extraordinary measure was not just another Trump administration swipe against multilateralism but was a specific attempt to protect US citizens and corporations from possible future prosecution.

...

Microsoft, Google and Amazon provided cloud services to the Israeli government and its main arms producers that enabled Israel to draw up the genocide’s kill lists. This included collecting 200 million hours of audio files that these companies helped Israel browse and analyse.

How many of these recordings document the last horrific screams of 20,000 children killed when daddy finally did come home? Thousands, certainly.

Google and Amazon even had a secret “winking” mechanism to tip Israel off when foreign courts asked them for information on their servers.

...

All of this speaks to how the genocide was hardly the act of a Zionist cabal that penetrated Western government and corporations. Instead, it was a set of interests, relations, and inclinations that saturated the heart and nervous system of Western capitalism, particularly its big tech, financial services, and military-industrial wings.

This isn't just a bubble, it is a bubble full of blood.

Boom Supersonic CEO Blake Scholl recently declared “it’s time for a renaissance in energy and in supersonic flight” as the supersonic airliner company unveiled a Colorado factory dedicated to making gas turbines for AI data centers.

We are the future of supersonic flight! As soon as we do the AI thing!

Your meal is 99% not sewage!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vP8Q-jlN4eU&list=UU9rJrMVgcXTfa8xuMnbhAEA - video
https://pivottoai.libsyn.com/20261030-proton-mail-goes-full-ai-slop-tuta-starts-going-slop - podcast

time: 11 min 50 sec

I worry that after this bubble blows up this kind of stuff, especially the super confident marketing, will start to disappear.

We owe it to future generations wanting to make fun of techbros to make sure the stupidity is properly archived I think.

Really disappointing for a formerly promising FOSS program.

The wording follows a Sept. 29 executive order that directs the executive branch, to the extent the law allows, to use “Super Intelligence” and “SI” in place of “Artificial Intelligence” and “AI.” The order does not create a new category of technology. It defines super intelligence as the same systems already covered by the statutory definition of artificial intelligence in federal law, so when Caine says SI, he is describing the AI tools the military uses and develops today.

Trump first announced the change in his Sept. 22 speech to the United Nations General Assembly, saying all U.S. government documents would switch to the “much more accurate term.” The State Department has since ordered its staff to rename AI-related programs and systems, and military offices have started adopting the language as well; the U.S. Marine Corps aviation acquisition office this month described new maintenance tools it is pursuing as predictive super intelligence technologies.

Is this what Vogon poetry sounds like?

AI search may be worse, but it also makes less money

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLtko3ouLqI&list=UU9rJrMVgcXTfa8xuMnbhAEA - video
https://pivottoai.libsyn.com/20261029-ai-overview-damages-google-ad-revenue-stock-crashes-12 - podcast

time: 5 min 40 sec

I mean fuck russia but om...... everyone do we not see a potential problem with this whole putting our entire future into the hands of a couple supermassive companies conducting ~~surveillance capitalism on a mass scale~~ sorry I mean AI companies providing people with a service in exchange for proof of their legal identity......??

Oracle is funding a datacenter spending spree with negative cashflow and borrowing. OCI is set to host large language model builders, notably OpenAI, alongside its own customers' workloads. Oracle spent $55.7 billion on datacenters and cloud infrastructure in fiscal year 2026, which ended in May, and plans to spend between $90 billion and $95 billion in fiscal 2027.

That will require more debt. In 2027, Oracle hopes to raise around $40 billion in debt and equity, on top of the $18 billion in debt it raised in September 2025.

We are ALMOST to the pot of gold I swear! I just need 5 more pots of gold to get us there!!

Is "That will require more debt" the "You must construct additional pylons" of the AI/datacenter industry or does it rather accurately describe the entire AI/datacenter industry in a meme?

"Being able to quickly define problems and find elegant solutions was a weak but useful predictor for how successful you’d be on my teams,"

Surely this is just a minor problem!