RSA-896
53 points by madars 2 hours ago | 12 comments
someguydave 2 minutes ago
kinda bearish for the data center rollouts if the spare compute can be used to solve math puzzles instead of training LLMs
replytristanj 2 hours ago
If you've already paid for and reserved a whole cluster of GPUs, any idle capacity is capacity you've already paid for. Using it is effectively free. So might as well use it to solve fun math puzzles.
replyThough, it would make more financial sense to mine crypto.
ehe78qhe 60 minutes ago
Only if you pay a flat rate for electricity and cooling.
replytristanj 49 minutes ago
But Anthropic isn't paying for the electricity and cooling. They don't run their own data centers, they rent compute from providers who cover those costs.
replyThat's entirely why they can blow compute on the fun projects like this. If they had to pay extra for the electricity, they wouldn't do it.
Barbing 32 minutes ago
Is the electricity cost far greater than the marketing value?
replyrightnutwingjob 9 minutes ago
The first is a physical quantity that can be written down.
replyThe second is approximately no better than astrology.
It's actually subexponential: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_number_field_sieve?wpr...