Ask Paul: November 14 ⭐

Happy Friday! It’s our last weekend in Mexico for the year, so let’s get it kicked off a bit early with some great reader questions.

? A post apocalyptic wasteland

train_wreck asks:

The forum post about the massive datacenter/power construction in the name of more and more AI made me think about whether all of this buildout will be, at least in the near term, a waste. DeepSeek already showed that models can be trimmed to be more efficient, as is naturally the case in the progression of tech. Is this rush to stand up infrastructure just another part of the AI bubble, and in 5 or 10 years will we end up with a lot of grossly underused computer warehouses? Will it be perhaps like the “dark fiber” initiatives of the 2000’s bubble, where eventually, years later, there will be a newfound use for these sites?

Over the summer, we were discussing AI datacenters on Windows Weekly. Because I live in Pennsylvania, which is a shipping nexus for the northeast U.S. dating back to the days of dirt roads and canals, I’ve seen the impact of (mostly Amazon) warehouses springing up everywhere in our area. Farming has been declining in PA for many years, but for the most part, these spaces were transitioned into homes in the past. Now they’re all becoming warehouses, with giant trucks suddenly clogging what used to be bucolic country lanes, increased traffic everywhere, and declining road quality.

These warehouses probably seemed like easy money to the townships that OKed their construction. There were these big farms taking up a lot of space and paying whatever taxes. And now there are these big warehouses taking up that space but also ruining our roads and quality of life, and the tax payoff or whatever it is these communities thought they would get never materialized. Trucks drive in, trucks drive out. Trucks, trucks, trucks, everywhere.

So what could be worse than an Amazon warehouse? How about an Amazon datacenter?

After that episode, someone from a different part of PA emailed me to say he had heard our discussion, which included another bit described below, and he had decided to fight an effort to bring a datacenter into his community. There were all the usual meetings, with whatever this company was making its case. And he and his son both showed up at each in turn, trying to prevent the datacenter from coming there. In the end, to my surprise, they won: Through pushback from citizens, the township decided that a datacenter wasn’t right for the community. Which is the correct way to view this. Datacenters and communities don’t mix.

The discussion we had had on Windows Weekly was basically that these massive facilities were being built all over the world to meet the supposed needs of AI. And that these needs would be temporary, and thanks to technological improvements, as demonstrated nicely by DeepSeek, this capacity would not be needed in the future. And so these datacenters will go up quickly, drain all the electricity out of the area at great cost, give nothing back to the community, with little to no local jobs created, and then they will just shut down. And they will sit there, empty and decaying, a blight in what could otherwise be a pretty area (as in PA, or perhaps a barren wasteland elsewhere, whatever). And they will only serve one purpose, which is ridiculous: They can be used to film whatever post-apocalyptic movies that Hollywood will make 20 years from now.

Anyway, I was glad that this guy and his community said no the datacenter. And while the proliferation of warehouses in my own area reached a crisis point years ago, there are enough examples now that various PA communities are now saying no to those facilities too, so maybe it will plateau at some point. But as terrible as these warehouses are, at least they serve a real-world problem that isn’t going away. People buy physical things and those things need to get from wherever they’re made to wherever those people live. PA just happens to be a part of the logistics, thanks to accidents of geography and history.

Look, we need datacenters. They should be built away from where people live. They should have independent power. Their construction and use should not impact people. They’re never going to give anything back: These places do not generate meaningful jobs, and can’t replace the jobs lost by whatever farm or other business that might have been there before. They’re a way forward for Big Tech, not for that community.

Anyway, yes. I do see many of these expensive, quickly built datacenters as temporary, things that will be abandoned as the promised or expected utilization never happens. And, yes, DeepSeek points to why: Denied the latest GPUs and technologies, a Chinese company did what people always do, and found a way. That’s what happens when you are prevented, fairly or not, from accessing the latest and the greatest. (This always reminds me of the Jurassic Park “life finds a way” bit.)

Flipping this around, the DeepSeek thing highlights the fundamental flaw in Big Tech’s approach to AI: There are only 4 or 5 companies big enough to build out this kind of infrastructure. If these companies can convince the world that this is literally the only way to power AI advances, then they can continue or extend their dominance into this new era. But among my many points about AI are such things as AI not being a product but rather a thing that goes into many, many features in many, many products, and that AI will just be everywhere. And if it’s everywhere, and there is real competition, then there is no intrinsic benefit to Big Tech having AI.

This is an arms race in which the few companies that can spend to this level are trying to corner the market while they still can. But this is a losing effort. They will fail. And those datacenters will be pointless. This is AI bubble, the difference between what Big Tech is selling us (meaning all of us, Wall Street, whatever else) and what’s really happening. It’s a big difference. And it will end badly.

? Laptop upgrade

louiem3 asks:

Hi Paul, I’m looking at getting my wife a new laptop she’s had an HP for close to 10 years and it’s still on Windows 10. She currently has a 10th i5 with 16GB RAM/512GB SSD and that works well for her. Anyway, the one requirement she has is that it be a 10-key/Numeric keyboard. I started going down the path of looking at ARM based systems but couldn’t find any with that type of keyboard. I may look at getting an AMD based laptop since those seem to be easier to find. Do you have any recommendations on what AMD chips would be good to look at?

The only laptops that have numeric keypads these days are the larger 15- and 16-inch models, which nicely limits the scope of your search.

I’m writing this on an HP EliteBook 6 that I’ll soon review, it’s based on the Qualcomm Snapdragon X/X Plus processors and has a 14-inch screen. But HP makes other EliteBook 6 models in 13.3- and 16-inch sizes, and those are available in Intel and AMD variants, but not Snapdragon. And that, for better or worse, is typical.

You are right to look at AMD for this laptop if there isn’t a Snapdragon X option (and I’m not aware of any 15/16-inch Snapdragon laptops with numeric keypads, though perhaps I’m missing something). Anything in the latest generation “Zen 5” family of processors will be good, so Ryzen AI 300 series chips, which now include the more powerful PRO variants announced at CES 2025 as well.

Picking a specific model is a bit difficult, but assuming you want a consumer/prosumer product (as opposed to a business-oriented product), I would look at HP OmniBook X, 7, or 5, and on the Lenovo side perhaps IdeaPad Pro or even a mid-level ThinkPad/other Lenovo laptops. But there’s so much to look at, and if you are shopping locally (Best Buy, Costco, whatever), it’s nice to be able to see and touch these things. Just limiting it to recent AMD processors will help narrow it down nicely.

? They think they’re people

louiem3 asks:

Wondering if you’ve watched Satya’s interview that has been floating around X recently. It’s an interesting watch.

Thanks for this. I hadn’t seen this, and while I feel like I’ve harped on this before, there is something odd about Nadella’s speaking voice that bothers (and almost hurts) my ears, so this will be painful. 🙂 But I will try to get through this.

I did take the time to listen to a few bits already, including the segment on Copilot, given how important this thing is to Microsoft right now. And this just highlights the other issue I have with this guy, in that he just talks and never really says much. I need to figure out how to get a transcript of this. It’s tough going.

If you want to punish or maybe reward yourself for similar reasons, there is a Bg2 interview with Sam Altman and Satya Nadella from about two weeks ago that I watched on Twitter/X, but I see now is on YouTube as well (so there is a transcript). The first 5 or 7 minutes are amazing for two reasons. First, watching these two robots trying to be people and pretend they have actual affection for each other, which is hilarious. And then for Altman’s off the rails criticism of anyone who would dare to question OpenAI’s financial story.

“I don’t want to be a public company,” he says, apparently confusing himself with the company he runs. “But one of the rare times it’s appealing is when those people are writing these ridiculous ‘OpenAI is about to go out of business’ [stories] and, you know, whatever. I would love to tell them they could just short the stock and I would love to see them get burned on that.”

Just in case you thought this guy was a) human, and b) decent. As a reminder, OpenAI has committed to somehow spending $1.4 trillion on AI infrastructure at a time when it projects a loss every quarter and year going forward with that loss hitting at least $12 billion in the previous quarter and its own projections calling for a $74 billion loss in 2028. Questioning that isn’t a cause for retribution real or imagined. It’s just common sense. But not to this piece of supposedly human garbage.

Anyway. I will try to get through this Nadella interview, thanks.

? My precious

staganyi asks:

What you are using to store any type of useful information or if you’re just using the filesystem. For example, important receipts, tax related stuff, scanned paper documents and any other type of information really. I’ve been using OneNote for years organized into sections & pages to store any type of info, scanned images and even embedded files as opposed to a whole bunch of files in the file system. I’m curious what you’re using. I know you use Notion for work stuff but do you use it for that as well? Despite not hating OneNote, I can’t help but wonder if there isn’t something better, like maybe even MS Loop.

This is evolving, but I have used OneDrive Personal Vault for some of this information for many years, and I do keep adding to it. Looking at it now, there are all kinds of account recovery keys, product keys, identity information (like my CURP number, which is a sort of Mexican social security number equivalent), and the like. Google Drive doesn’t really have an equivalent feature, but it does have a Safe Folder feature you can secure with a PIN. It may be tied to a device, though.

More recently, I’ve started putting more and more of this kind of thing in Proton Pass. As with other password/identity managers, it has long supported arbitrary note fields with each entry. But back in June, Proton updated this solution with explicit support for storing sensitive information like passport numbers, bank accounts, etc. Proton added a related emergency access feature to its online accounts that also ensures continuity in the event of death or disablement, which is a key element to this as well. I’ll be writing about this generally for an article called Succession in my Online Accounts series, it’s overdue.

I would look at whatever password/identity manager you’re using and see whether it has similar functionality. I assume many do.

? Not so insta, also not paper

staganyi asks:

I would like to know about your experience with Instapaper when it comes to articles that are locked behind a login. I’ve admittedly not spent a lot of time with the app but I couldn’t get premium articles on the site to load there correctly even when using the login feature of the app. Any thoughts?

The only thing I’ve noticed like this is that I can’t share an article from Apple News (which I read on an iPad) and then access that in Instapaper on a PC. I’ve done that several times and have had to go find the original since the Apple News link doesn’t work. And then sometimes it will be behind a paywall.

Looking at this now, I saved articles from Bloomberg, The New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal to Instapaper. All are behind paywalls, and I do pay for each. They all appeared as expected in Instapaper, so I must have signed in through there at some point for each.

Trying this with a Thurrott Premium article, I get the free bit, which is a lot longer than used to be the case but not the full article. I can’t say that I’ve ever done this with my own articles, so I guess I just never considered that. But I signed in using the link at the bottom and it just went to the site’s home page. And reloading Instapaper or that specific article doesn’t work. So I’m not sure on this one.

I will ask Robert about this today, but this is either a technical limitation, a purposeful block, or just something we’d not considered. Vaguely, I’m wondering if it isn’t tied to issues associated with providing a RSS feed for Premium members that would have the full articles instead of just the blurbs. But whatever it is, perhaps there is a way to make this work or at least make it a bit more elegant.

There are definitely articles in Instapaper that don’t display correctly, and in those cases, you can click the website link under the article title to just view the article normally. And that does work with Premium articles, so you can at least use Instapaper as a “read it later” thing in this case, though you have to be online. (And we do have a way to Favorite articles on the site, too.)

? Lenovo portable display

epsjrno asks:

Assuming I am remembering correctly, awhile back said that you were using what believe is a Lenovo portable monitor similar to this. How’s it working out for you? I’ve read some reviews where there may be an issue when the PC/laptop wakes up and the monitor stays black.

I have at least two USB-C-based Lenovo portable displays, one here in Mexico and one in PA, and a variety of other USB-C portable displays, including a HP that I am also using here in Mexico. The Lenovo I have here is a ThinkVision M14t Gen2, which has multitouch that I don’t care about, a higher resolution (2240 x 1400) than is typical in this space, and a 16:10 aspect ratio, which is what I was looking for: I use it in portrait mode for Notion-based podcast show notes, and it works really well for that. You can see it here, on the right.

But I’ve never had any issues with USB-C displays not coming on when the PC powers up, regardless of the make or model. So I’m not sure what to say there. It’s definitely something I would notice.

? Is that an iPhone in your pocket, or …

anderb asks:

Which iPhone Pocket is “you”?

I may be curiously interested in the iPhone Air, but this kind of thing is of zero interest to me. We were joking around about this on Weekly Weekly this past week, and when Richard started on his “back of the book” stuff, I fired up Affinity Photo and came up with this, which I shared with the Discord live chat at the time.

My attempt to then add Richard and I to the image was sadly less successful.