Dane Carlson

In all seriousness, this is a startling achievement for GPT-6 Astra. kenforthewin.github.io/blog/… (This is GPT-6 Astra beating Nethack on its 3rd try. Nethack is the original roguelike and one of the most famously hard games of all time. I have played a lot, and I've never ascended)

ok, hear me out: we should build a ton of AI data center capacity in northern Alaska I think about this a weird amount, because I’ve actually spent time there for work (I believe I hold the record for northern-most deployment in Palantir history?) Prudhoe Bay sits on the very northern coast of Alaska, and was once the largest oil field in America. It still pumps 180k barrels of crude oil per day from over 800 wells, with 2k people working up there. It also produces 8 billion cubic ft of natural gas/day. While in most oil fields it’d be exported and sold, in Alaska natural gas is re-injected back into the reservoir because it can’t be transported – pipeline is crude-only, and ships can't get up there with the ice. The “Alaska LNG” project to build an 800mi pipeline to south has been talked about for years, but would cost like $50b and wouldn’t be economically competitive with the Permian. So, there’s 40 trillion cubic ft of proven natural gas reserves – enough to create 25GW of power, continuously, for 30 years! And it’s just sitting there, trapped, fully accessible in a pre-drilled reservoir, with wells, pumps, separation facilities, gas storage, ice roads, an airport, lodging, etc. There’s already expertise on how to build and operate infrastructure, and a built-in workforce. Just drop some turbines in and you have as much on-demand electricity as you’d ever need – completely separated from L48 grid. I'm not an expert in data center cooling, but I would also assume that it would be a pretty efficient place to put these things - it certainly never gets too hot! Of course a natural reaction to this might be that building data centers would somehow despoil the pristine landscape, but the footprint and impact would be extremely slight compared to the massive amount of oil and gas infrastructure already up there (much less what would be required for LNG export). Also, having been there, I can tell you that it basically looks like the moon - it's just flat, white tundra for miles and miles around. You'd be disrupting much less wildlife there than you would almost anywhere else in the U.S. that you would build this stuff. And, unlike basically everywhere else they’re trying to build data centers, you’re not in anyone’s “backyard” – most of the people up there are oil workers anyway, and the full-time Slope population lives away from the oil fields. There's some random smattering of projects being talked about (like 1-3GW theoretical, total) but I don't think we're talking about this nearly enough? Is there some reason this isn't like, the backbone of our national AI strategy, assuming we have to build these somewhere? @elonmusk get in on this man

People look at the SR-71 and B-2 and assume the government must have technology today that would melt our brains. I suspect the opposite. Those aircraft came from an era willing to spend obscene money, accept failure and give small teams the authority to solve impossible problems. Since then, 51 major defense contractors became five. Procurement became a moat. Regulation became an incumbent advantage. The companies meant to be challenged learned how to out lobby, out wait and out comply the challengers.

President Donald Trump has entered the Texas data center debate. In the same week that Gov. Greg Abbott called for state regulators to conduct a sweeping audit of data centers wanting to connect to Texas’ power grid — effectively putting those projects on hold — Trump called Texas' opposition to data centers a mistake. bit.ly/3SlrynJ

The Texas Triangle needs canals, not high-speed rail