I got hauled into a data center today because Claude was used to spec it and screwed up badly. At least 2,500 GPUs were in an impossible upside down and backwards plan.
😱
I had to pause the call because I couldn't stop laughing. AI had sabotaged the AI datacenter spec for building more AI.
H: so we have nine B300
Me: you have 89, add the rows.
H: we do? and is there a bottleneck?
Me: 64 GPUs of capacity for your 712 GPU? yeah, more like a bottle without a neck.
H: oh. so what do data centers usually do?
🤣
H: Claude spec's air-cooled endrow
Me: Middle
H: Claude says end
Me:
H: Not end? Claude wrong?
Me: Claude is thinking 100m of Cat6. Did you tell it 800G and just 3m?
H: Oh, middle cabinet. But why, again?
:swearing:
@flyingpenguin
At work, sales has had to roll out a new "we'll review your site for you" service, because apparently so many customers have been buying our iron, taking delivery, racking and stacking it, then realizing they can't actually turn it on because they don't have the electricity infrastructure to run it.
Like literally, 8 and 9-digit dollar values of servers purchased with no way for the customer to run them.
@lackthereof @flyingpenguin unrelated to AI (I assume) but our electronics lab at our brand new office building isn't keeping up with climate control (which is not killing anything or anyone yet but it is mildly uncomfortable after awhile and sweating into the electronics while soldering isn't ideal).
But the reason is that apparently the electricity capacity for the additional cooling isn't there yet and some other essential sounding thing will need to be taken offline which. WHAT. You built a brand new office and didn't fully spec power???
@Lunaphied @lackthereof @flyingpenguin I mean this is very common for folks who dont understand the power demands of IT and T&M gear.
When I air conditioned the garage that turned into my lab the contractor tried to spec like a 5K BTU/hr window unit or equivalent. I very rapidly talked them out of that stupidity showing my calculations for expected thermal loading and we put in a 18K BTU/hr minisplit.
Which has been struggling to keep up some summers.
Oct 22, 2026, 10:23 PM@azonenberg @Lunaphied @lackthereof @flyingpenguin "Inadequately ventilated server closet" has been a problem at least once for every single job I've ever had over the past 30 years.
@azonenberg @Lunaphied @lackthereof @flyingpenguin I feel like the requirements would be clearer if they used kW instead of kBTU/hr
@artemist @azonenberg @Lunaphied @lackthereof @flyingpenguin with those numbers this was no doubt more a home and small business installer, BTUs is what that tends to run on - but when he showed them power consumption in kW they would have understood they misunderstood what was being specced for.
@hatter @artemist @Lunaphied @lackthereof @flyingpenguin yeah showing them multiple kW of 24/7 load is what finally got them to realize lol
@hatter @artemist @Lunaphied @lackthereof @flyingpenguin that minisplit is going to get ripped out hopefully soon though because i really want to put in a commercial VRF system to heat the house with waste lab heat in the winter
@flyingpenguin @azonenberg @lackthereof I do wonder just how much the heat output of my non/server but decently chonky desktop factors into things. Need to start measuring power consumption but considering it's just a fancy heating element I'd be surprised if the number wasn't "fuck you"
@Lunaphied @flyingpenguin @lackthereof Yeah i've been gradually rolling out increasingly thorough power metering around my lab and it's definitely been eye opening where the energy is *actually* going. I've already had some surprises
Oct 22, 2026, 10:50 PM@azonenberg @Lunaphied @lackthereof @flyingpenguin I was part of a startup back in 2008. We were initially running out of one suite in a small office building. Over the summer we installed a rack of servers for QA runs. The QA folks sweat like mad for a week or two in their crowded room. Finally I went to take a look out of curiosity. I stared at the thermostat for a minute, and then I flipped it from "heat" to "cool" which, hilariously, solved the problem.
Wow, good thing your contractor believed you. I had to go through 3 electricians just to get the power output I wanted for our kitchen appliances.
I imagine it's much harder in an area so many people have opinions on, but no real knowledge of. like: yes, I really need that much.
@flyingpenguin at this point I think I’m viewing AI as very much the computer industry’s enthusiastic failson — just like real failsons they’re extremely expensive, unwarrantedly confident in their abilities, and do a lot of stuff that looks like work but isn’t and that requires more work to fix than just having someone competent do the work right in the first place.
Oct 22, 2026, 10:43 PM@ModernMaslow @flyingpenguin the "highly ethical scientists":
@flyingpenguin claude continues to be the insider threat :D
