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Re:Muse Spark Open by kennywinker on Friday October 16, 2026 @12:30AM (#50114092)
Feelings about elon aside, the fact that they’re using gas generators to run these is a dealbreaker for me.

Source, to preempt the inevitable musk stans: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/spacexais-colossu...

Re:Muse Spark Open by quaffcode on Friday October 16, 2026 @01:05AM (#50114300)
They're not using gas generators to run the other models?

Gas generators are common in new data center buildouts. I'm not a fan, because they are insanely loud, but they do prevent the data centers from weighing down the grid and raising rates for all the neighbors.

Re:Muse Spark Open by kennywinker on Friday October 16, 2026 @01:10AM (#50114337)
My local llm running on my eight year old gpu and ten year old pc is powered by hydroelectric dams. I can’t vouch for the other data centers tho.
Re:Muse Spark Open by logicallee on Friday October 16, 2026 @02:14AM (#50114745)
>My local llm running on my eight year old gpu and ten year old pc is powered by hydroelectric dams.

how do you still have a job?

Re:Muse Spark Open by u8080 on Friday October 16, 2026 @03:19AM (#50115197)
Hydroelectric dams disrupt biosphere by flooding areas previosly inhabited by animals - and kill the whole populations of wildlife and fish.

How do you feel destroying our planet and murdering innocent creatures for your entertainment clanker?

Re:Muse Spark Open by b112 on Friday October 16, 2026 @03:30AM (#50115292)
This is absurd nonsense, and needs to be quelled wherever espoused.

Dams aren't as a nuclear explosion. They don't burst into appearance, in a way where animals cannot walk away from the rising water. Birds lose nests all the time (wind knocks down trees, for example) and they merely build another. And they only need nests to rear young, and those fall out of trees so they... build another.

What happens in reality, and not in fantastical, hyperbolic renditions of the truth, is that one ecosystem replaces another. Where before was river, is now lake. And this is an entirely natural process. There have been cases of earthquakes causing river blockage, and of course the reverse!

And of course our friendly beaver blocks rivers all the time, sometimes to the extent that it can be seen from space. Rivers being blocked is a natural, normal, common practice.

But I suppose you hate all the beavers too? Do you raise fist to air, shake it in emotive angst, and rail against the horrors of natural geological processes too? Do you hunt the noble beaver, too?

How about instead of dismissing, deriding, and debasing one of the most environmentally friendly methods of power generation, you get behind it? How about instead of suppressing a hydroelectric dam, which means people will build Ng generators, or use coal, you support them.

Or would you prefer nuclear, for that stable, steady, backing, of which windmill and our friendly sol does not provide? Or would you prefer massive acres of batteries, instead?

I beg you sir, please cease this mindless chatter!

(no I don't normally talk like this, but what the hell, a but of levity may bring less conflict here)

Re:Muse Spark Open by u8080 on Friday October 16, 2026 @07:29AM (#50117098)
This was intended to be absurd nonsense (or as I call it, irony).

I mean, if you think about this, burning stuff is also a part of nature, wildfires happens regularly, volcanos active right now, etc. Burning fossils like gas was(from caveman burning wood) and is still most popular way to generate energy among humans. I don't get what's so special about datacenters people find compared to any industrial facilities to fuel hateboner on most absurd nitpicks.

Re:Muse Spark Open by kennywinker on Friday October 16, 2026 @10:05AM (#50118553)
Arsenic is a part of nature, but it’ll still kill you. Burning the massive amount of co2 stored underground during the carboniferous period is not the same as random forest fires that burn co2 fixed a few decades ago.
Re:Muse Spark Open by kennywinker on Friday October 16, 2026 @10:27AM (#50118768)
It’s funny because there are very real criticisms of hydroelectric dams, from a climate collapse perspective, but these are not them.
Re:Muse Spark Open by skinfaxi on Friday October 16, 2026 @10:57AM (#50119166)
What models do you run?
Re:Muse Spark Open by reverius42 on Friday October 16, 2026 @05:50AM (#50116324)
As far as I know at least Anthropic also rents space in Musk's gas generator powered data centers.
Re:Muse Spark Open by windexh8er on Friday October 16, 2026 @09:23AM (#50118100)
Pretty sure you're not able to use many models, besides local, if you need to guarantee where the energy produced powers them. I don't align with much of what's going on in frontier AI today. And I don't actually use it as much as I had been as I've invested in local hardware. But I'm still curious and continue to test frontier models on different tasks. My limited experience with Grok is that it's boundaries are much less rigid than Anthropic and OAI, IME.

But if the planet is the only consideration here you can't use any in of these models when pointing a finger at one. They're putting them wherever they can. And I'll be one of the first one to cheer some of these systems being dismantled after the fallout / when the US has some political leaders that have a spine again.

Re:Muse Spark Open by kennywinker on Friday October 16, 2026 @10:12AM (#50118625)
> But if the planet is the only consideration here you can't use any in of these models

This is simply a purity test. Just because they’re all bad, doesn’t mean there isn’t better and worse options.

Re:Muse Spark Open by windexh8er on Friday October 16, 2026 @11:37AM (#50119733)
I don't buy that - you can't distinguish. This sounds like a convenient way for people to say "my choice is better for the planet" with basically no basis.

Feel free to elaborate.

Re:Muse Spark Open by kennywinker on Saturday October 17, 2026 @09:18AM (#50130920)
https://sustainability.atmeta.com/blog/2024/10/14/our-approa...

Anthropic: no sustainability goals or claims

OpenAI: no sustainability goals or claims

SpaceX AI: no sustainability goals or claims

Some other non-lab inference providers:

https://regolo.ai/ Eu based, 100% renewables powered

https://greenpt.com/us/sustainability Eu based, allows you to track carbon cost of inference.

Acting like there is no difference between bad things is how you get worse things.

Re:Muse Spark Open by windexh8er on Saturday October 17, 2026 @02:51PM (#50133894)
The fact that you believe Meta, of all companies who's gone to great lengths to lie about their core business model, speaks volumes.

This also highlights my point: the norm is that the bulk of the inference and training providers have no goals.

Re:Muse Spark Open by kennywinker on Sunday October 18, 2026 @12:36AM (#50137958)
You've moved the goalpost and declared victory my guy. I literally gave you an option, that isn't meta, and is run on renewable energy. The fact that it's hard to get clear information doesn't negate the fact that there are differences, and we should seek to find the best option rather than giving up and accepting whatever bad option is nearest or shiniest.
Re:Muse Spark Open by windexh8er on Monday October 19, 2026 @07:42AM (#50151169)
Let me clarify my perspective here. You put the frontier providers at the top. That's probably representative of >80% of the total, global, inference. The other ones you mention? They're likely showcasing "green AI" as a differentiator, but comparatively, they likely represent a percent of global capacity.

And you don't get to put a feel good landing page from Meta and "declare victory" (I didn't) just the same. It means nothing because there isn't any accountability. Nice try.

Re:Muse Spark Open by timmmmmmay on Friday October 16, 2026 @10:31AM (#50118829)
43% of the US electrical grid runs on natural gas, it's the largest single source by a considerable margin.

https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3