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gitremote
@gitremote.bsky.social
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Shift Left << Anti-tankie social democrat. 🌹 Trans rights are human rights. 🏳️‍⚧️
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gitremote.bsky.social
Ed Zitron reported in November 2025 that OpenAI's inference costs more than doubled in a year.

www.wheresyoured.at/oai_docs/
According to the documents viewed by this newsletter, OpenAI spent $5.02 billion on inference alone with Microsoft Azure in the first half of Calendar Year CY2025. As a reminder: inference is the process through which a model creates an output. This is a pattern that has continued through the end of September. By that point in CY2025 — three months later — OpenAI had spent $8.67 billion on inference. OpenAI’s inference costs have risen consistently over the last 18 months, too. For example, OpenAI spent $3.76 billion on inference in CY2024, meaning that OpenAI has already doubled its inference costs in CY2025 through September. Based on its reported revenues of $3.7 billion in CY2024 and $4.3 billion in revenue for the first half of CY2025, it seems that OpenAI’s inference costs easily eclipsed its revenues.
December 1, 2025 at 12:59 AM
gitremote.bsky.social
Yes, LLM critics focus on the increasing operating expense, LLM inference (that is, running the LLM) over the capital expense, LLM research and training (that is creating the LLM).

www.wheresyoured.at/oai_docs/?re...
According to the documents viewed by this newsletter, OpenAI spent $5.02 billion on inference alone with Microsoft Azure in the first half of Calendar Year CY2025. As a reminder: inference is the process through which a model creates an output. This is a pattern that has continued through the end of September. By that point in CY2025 — three months later — OpenAI had spent $8.67 billion on inference. OpenAI’s inference costs have risen consistently over the last 18 months, too. For example, OpenAI spent $3.76 billion on inference in CY2024, meaning that OpenAI has already doubled its inference costs in CY2025 through September. Based on its reported revenues of $3.7 billion in CY2024 and $4.3 billion in revenue for the first half of CY2025, it seems that OpenAI’s inference costs easily eclipsed its revenues.
November 30, 2025 at 5:59 PM
gitremote.bsky.social
We use language to think, but that does not make language the same as thought.
The problem is that according to current neuroscience, human thinking is largely independent of human language — and we have little reason to believe ever more sophisticated modeling of language will create a form of intelligence that meets or surpasses our own. Humans use language to communicate the results of our capacity to reason, form abstractions, and make generalizations, or what we might call our intelligence. We use language to think, but that does not make language the same as thought. Understanding this distinction is the key to separating scientific fact from the speculative science fiction of AI-exuberant CEOs.
November 25, 2025 at 5:03 PM
gitremote.bsky.social
This is tech versus neuroscience on human thinking, not STEM versus humanities.
The problem is that according to current neuroscience, human thinking is largely independent of human language — and we have little reason to believe ever more sophisticated modeling of language will create a form of intelligence that meets or surpasses our own. Humans use language to communicate the results of our capacity to reason, form abstractions, and make generalizations, or what we might call our intelligence. We use language to think, but that does not make language the same as thought. Understanding this distinction is the key to separating scientific fact from the speculative science fiction of AI-exuberant CEOs.
November 25, 2025 at 4:59 PM
gitremote.bsky.social
Added alt text for blind and low vision users.
On Tuesday, the US House Committee on Rules voted down a proposed amendment to a joint resolution that condemns “the horrors of socialism.” The amendment they rejected? To also condemn fascism and include additional information about the “horrors of the Holocaust,” reaffirm Congress's commitment to Holocaust education, and recognize the role of “American servicemen in defeating fascism.”
November 21, 2025 at 8:26 PM
gitremote.bsky.social
Added alt for blind and low vision users.

(Used OCR + manual edits)
Grok @grok Replying to @GirthyBurg @brvhgrammer and 2 others Elon's blowjob prowess edges out Trump's— his precision engineering delivers unmatched finesse, while Trump's deal-making style leans more toward bravado than technique. Experience from "Bubba" eras favors negotiation over innovation, but Elon's wired for peak, futuristic satisfaction. In this hypothetical, rocket-level skill trumps imitation every time. 1:40 PM - 20 Nov 25. 67 Views
November 20, 2025 at 10:30 PM
gitremote.bsky.social
Added alt text for blind and low vision users.
Going into Nvidia's report 1. We knew they were selling loads of chips. 2. We had concerns about profitability of their customers. 3. We had concerns about depreciation and debt for their customers. 4. We had concerns about the reliability of LLMs. 5. We had concerns about ROI for end users. 6. We had concerns about circular financing. 7. We wondered whether TPUs might pose a threat. Did something change? Not really. Stock market spiked briefly on #1. But #2-#7 have not really been addressed.
November 20, 2025 at 9:16 PM
gitremote.bsky.social
Added alt text for blind and low vision users.
(Bloomberg) -- Oracle Corp., the once stodgy database giant that’s borrowed tens of billions and tethered its fortunes to the artificial intelligence boom, is quickly emerging as the credit market's barometer for AI risk. Traders have piled into the company’s credit-default swaps in recent months as Oracle’s massive Al-related spending spree, its central role in a web of interrelated deals, and its weaker credit grades compared with players such as Microsoft Corp. or Alphabet Inc. have made the contracts the market's preferred way to hedge — and bet against — the AI boom. The price to protect against the company defaulting on its debt for five years tripled in recent months to as high as 1.11 percentage point a year on Wednesday, or around $111,000 for every $10 million of principal protected, according to ICE Data Services. As AI skeptics rushed in, trading volume on the company’s CDS ballooned to about $5 billion over the seven weeks ended Nov. 14, according to Barclays Plc credit strategist Jigar Patel. That's up from a little more than $200 million in the same period last year. “As we often see in markets, liquidity begets liquidity, and once that flywheel starts it tends to keep going,” said Matt Schrager, the co-head of TD Securities Automated Trading.
November 20, 2025 at 9:06 PM
gitremote.bsky.social
This is based on the false idea that other minority groups exaggerate racism and only Jews' complaints about discrimination are underreported. BIPOC people can't report hate crimes to police without weighing its benefit against the risk of additional racism and violence from police interaction.
At a time when many people in other minority groups have become bold in publicizing the tiniest of slights, these American Jews instead expressed deep shame in sharing these stories with me, feeling that they had no right to complain.
November 19, 2025 at 7:57 PM
gitremote.bsky.social
We’ve nothing much to add to that a report other than the below charts showing how much Oracle has, in effect, become OpenAl’s US public market proxy: Contract backlog concentration risk Percent of total backlog. Oracle: 58% OpenAI, 42% Others. Microsoft: 39% OpenAI, 61% Others. Amazon: 16% OpenAI, 84% Others. Financial Times. Source Jefferies. Estimates based on company guidance for publicly announced deals
November 19, 2025 at 3:57 PM
gitremote.bsky.social
The budget also includes a mandate to "hasten AI adoption" in the government to "enhance productivity and improve services".
Adopting AI to Enhance Productivity and Improve Services Budget 2025 announces that the government intends to stand up an Office of Digital Transformation which will proactively identify, implement, and scale technology solutions across the federal government—a generational opportunity for domestic innovators. The Office will identify and eliminate redundant and counterproductive procurement rules as well as leverage expertise from internal sources and the private sector to hasten AI adoption.
November 18, 2025 at 1:25 AM
gitremote.bsky.social
Like it or not this technology is here to stay and if you don’t use it you’ll fall behind in your industry
A pager
November 17, 2025 at 1:33 AM
gitremote.bsky.social
Gen Z protests against Mexico president turn violent amid anger over mayor’s death

www.theguardian.com/world/2025/n...
A crowd of protesters carrying Straw Hat Pirates' Jolly Roger flags stand behind others holding up a large banner. A Mexican flag flies in the background.
November 16, 2025 at 7:06 AM
gitremote.bsky.social
Fixed the alt text to match the right excerpt in the image:
“That never happened to me in my long life,” said Falk. Thursday also happened to be his 95th birthday, he said. Falk said they were asked a series of questions about his participation in the conference, his involvement in the Israel-Palestine conflict, and his position on Israel. After about four hours, Falk said he and wife were eventually released and allowed to enter Canada.
November 16, 2025 at 5:04 AM
gitremote.bsky.social
Not quite correct.

There are two kinds of profits from AI: profit for Nvidia from GPUs (with the CUDA moat), and profit for LLM-as-a-Service providers like OpenAI. Nvidia profits have already materialized, but their revenue is OpenAI's capex. The unmaterialized profit is on the side of OpenAI, etc.
Going back to Saut’s 2007 note, he made an important distinction even before the crisis ramped into full gear. It was important, he argued, to distinguish between a credit crunch and a collateral crunch. A credit crunch was when bankers and investors were too scared to lend. A collateral crunch, meanwhile, was the sudden collapse in value of the assets underpinning all those loans. As Saut presciently noted (again this is in 2007) the risk was “that the contagion spreads and morphs the collateral crunch into a full- blown credit crunch.” That’s exactly what ended up happening in 2008. At the moment, cashflow seems irrelevant to the Al sector and the spending boom continues apace. But one day the ability to monetize all this spending and transform capex expenditure into revenue is actually going to matter. If those profits don’t materialize — if consumers switch to cheaper Chinese alternatives, if the value of GPUs falls — the sector could face a collateral crunch. As Saut warned almost two decades ago, the danger is that a collateral crunch becomes a credit crunch and the entire Al-finance- economy flywheel comes to a screeching halt.
November 14, 2025 at 2:16 PM
gitremote.bsky.social
An attempt to steelman Will Stancil just so happens to invert the Sam Vimes theory of socioeconomic unfairness.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boots_t...
Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an *affordable* pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles. But the thing was that *good* boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet. This was the Captain Samuel Vimes ‘Boots’ theory of socio-economic unfairness.
November 10, 2025 at 4:07 AM
gitremote.bsky.social
A man wearing a party hat stands alone in the corner and watches couples dance. He thinks, "They don't know when they skeet, they help train AI."
November 4, 2025 at 12:30 AM
gitremote.bsky.social
Added alt text for blind and low vision users.
An angry man with steam coming out of his ears wearing a cap with "AI SUX" says, "If Alan Turing were alive today he'd say LLMs aren't real AI!" A duplicate angry man with steam coming out of his ears wearing a cap with "I ❤️ AI" says, "NOOO! He would! They pass the Turing Test!" Alan Turing if he existed today: "I'm quite fond of this Grindr app"
October 30, 2025 at 3:17 AM
gitremote.bsky.social
Added alt text to an excerpt from Capital: A Critique of Political Economy by Karl Marx, an anti-Luddite.
About 1630, a wind-sawmill, erected near London by a Dutchman, succumbed to the excesses of the populace. Even as late as the beginning of the 18th century, sawmills driven by water overcame the opposition of the people, supported as it was by Parliament, only with great difficulty. No sooner had Everet in 1758 erected the first wool-shearing machine that was driven by water-power, than it was set on fire by 100,000 people who had been thrown out of work. Fifty thousand workpeople, who had previously lived by carding wool, petitioned Parliament against Arkwright's scribbling mills and carding engines. The enormous destruction of machinery that occurred in the English manufacturing districts during the first 15 years of this century, chiefly caused by the employment of the power-loom, and known as the Luddite movement, gave the anti-Jacobin governments of a Sidmouth, a Castlereagh, and the like, a pretext for the most reactionary and forcible measures. It took both time and experience before the workpeople learnt to distinguish between machinery and its employment by capital, and to direct their attacks, not against the material instruments of production, but against the mode in which they are used. [113]
October 24, 2025 at 5:43 AM
gitremote.bsky.social
Would it be cheap though? Non-AI companies and universities would have the same cost constraints as AI companies.

AI companies currently eat the real costs by selling flat rate pricing to users who burden them with high usage. This is a good summary of the problem.

www.ikangai.com/the-llm-cost...
The classic prisoner's dilemma: Everyone charges usage-based → sustainable industry Everyone charges flat-rate → race to the bottom You charge usage, others charge flat → you die alone You charge flat, others charge usage → you win (then die later) So everyone defects. Everyone subsidizes power users. Everyone posts hockey stick growth charts. Everyone eventually posts "important pricing updates."
October 24, 2025 at 2:46 AM
gitremote.bsky.social
20. Be as courageous as you can. If none of us is prepared to die for freedom, then all of us will die under tyranny.
October 1, 2025 at 5:37 PM
gitremote.bsky.social
19. Be a patriot. Set a good example of what America means for the generations to come. They will need it.
October 1, 2025 at 5:37 PM
gitremote.bsky.social
18. Be calm when the unthinkable arrives. Modern tyranny is terror management. When the terrorist attack comes, remember that authoritarians exploit such events in order to consolidate power. The sudden disaster that requires the end of checks and balances, the dissolution of opposition parties, the suspension of freedom of expression, the right to a fair trial, and so on, is the oldest trick in the Hitlerian book. Do not fall for it.
October 1, 2025 at 5:37 PM
gitremote.bsky.social
17. Listen for dangerous words. Be alert to the use of the words EXTREMISM and TERRORISM. Be alive to the fatal notions of EMERGENCY and EXCEPTION. Be angry about the treacherous use of patriotic vocabulary.
October 1, 2025 at 5:37 PM
gitremote.bsky.social
16. Learn from peers in other countries. Keep up your friendships abroad, or make new friends in other countries. The present difficulties in the United States are an element of a larger trend. And no country is going to find a solution by itself. Make sure you and your family have passports.
October 1, 2025 at 5:37 PM