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themcgrath.bsky.social
R McGrath
@themcgrath.bsky.social
35 followers 44 following 110 posts
He/Him.
Uncle. Senior millennial. General Purpose Nerd.
Once-owner of @modwiggler.com Now I just work there.

He's just this guy, ya know?
Posts Replies Media Videos
themcgrath.bsky.social
It's only been 6 months, but dang it feels weird to suddenly have no beard
December 6, 2025 at 1:30 AM
Reposted by R McGrath
feelcanadian.com
All chess is 4D chess that's why they have that time clock thingy.
November 28, 2025 at 6:56 PM
Reposted by R McGrath
mrprudence.bsky.social
Writing code is the act of weaving a series CPU instructions. Every row of pixels is a weft of a byte groups retrieved from computer memory.
November 20, 2025 at 6:29 PM
Reposted by R McGrath
refrag.bsky.social
Today is the day to repost this meme about International Men's Day, one of the most unironically wholesome memes that has ever been made.

Shoutout to all my fellow champs, chiefs, and kings. ✊
Nerdy kid at keyboard: Hi guys, I've noticed that it is International Men's Day today, and I'm confused. Why do we need a day to talk about men? We're not a marginalised group like women, queer people, or people of colour. The media is already full of stories about men. Big buff shirtless dude at keyboard: I'm glad you asked, champ. Whatever your view on men's place in society, it's still true that we face a lot of issues - like social isolation, risk of suicide, health problems, and attitudes towards sex and child rearing. Having a day to talk about those doesn't take away from anyone else's problems. In fact, having a day to talk about them helps us be more mindful, and listen better at other times. Second shirtless buff dude on a couch at his laptop: The chief here is really on to something. I want to echo what he said, and also point out that the idea we should remain silent about our problems actually contributes to a lot of our issues. We are human beings, with human needs. Seeking mutual support and understanding isn't the same thing as placing a burden on others. Especially if we're providing it for each other. Third buff dude at his laptop: Right on, my fellow kings. We've inherited a social legacy of competition and division, and a lot of what makes a man in our era is under question. IMD is a chance for us to examine and rethink what we are together, and build the bonds of solidarity and support that will make a better way possible - like in this meme. Because in our hearts, we're all curious kids and buff guys on keyboards.
November 19, 2025 at 6:38 PM
Reposted by R McGrath
mattdpearce.com
I don’t want to seem out of touch but I don’t actually understand the economy anymore.
A LinkedIn ad showing Jensen Huang shaking hands with some vague fashion executive: L'OREAL 6,204,444 followers Promoted We're thrilled to announce a collaboration with NVIDIA to supercharge beauty with next-gen Al. WELCOME TO NVIDIA L'ORÉAL GROUPE
November 18, 2025 at 3:23 AM
themcgrath.bsky.social
In lieu of my usual rewatch of You're The Worst, I have the perfect film response to a recent lack of closure;
The Banshees of Inisherin.

It has everything; Adorable & loyal animals. Homesickness for somewhere you've never been and for people you may never see again. Wailing against the inevitable.
November 13, 2025 at 8:56 AM
Reposted by R McGrath
pwnallthethings.bsky.social
Weird that we have a planet-wide magnetic defense system that self activates when the sun decides to attack but it is very pretty
November 12, 2025 at 2:21 AM
Reposted by R McGrath
foldablehuman.bsky.social
"I'm so, so tired of ads for Ozempic, Viagra, and AI garbage, please give me something else"

A finger on the monkey's paw curls

"Draft Kings is your number one destination for every sport!"
November 10, 2025 at 6:49 AM
Reposted by R McGrath
astrokatie.com
Sometimes when people ask me why I’m wearing a mask I say I’m traveling or have some important thing soon and can’t afford to get sick and miss it and that’s pretty much always true but I think it would be nice if it were more normalized to just say “I don’t want to get sick” and leave it at that
November 8, 2025 at 4:49 PM
themcgrath.bsky.social
Gosh, explaining complex ideas by way of Dialogues? How insufferable and unprecedented.

Huh? Plato? Socrates? Never heard of them.
jackmurphyrgr.bsky.social Jack Murphy @jackmurphyrgr.bsky.social · Nov 2
Jesus this book is tedious. The authors like to explain everything through little made up fables and fictional dialog between anthropomorphized characters. Just skipping page after page of nonsense writing.
November 2, 2025 at 7:04 PM
themcgrath.bsky.social
EV owner lesson learned;
I thought not using my brakes would make the pads & disks last longer, but they decided to just corrode instead. Turns out they need regular exercise to keep clean and healthy.
October 31, 2025 at 9:46 PM
Reposted by R McGrath
edzitron.com
Premium Newsletter tomorrow: Meta, Google, Amazon and Microsoft must add $2 Trillion in AI revenue by 2030 or they wasted their capex.

The cost of data centers GPUs may make it impossible to make a profit from AI. Here's $10 off annual.

edzitronswheresyouredatghostio.outpost.pub/public/promo...
So, big tech has spent hundreds of billions of dollars of capital expenditures, and much of those expenditures are on GPUs. These GPUs, once installed, immediately begin decaying in value, and the more you use them, the more likely they are to crap out, and even when sitting idle, these GPUs have some power consumption — somewhere between 7% and 14% of their power in the case of the H100 — making them a consistent burden on the infrastructure of any purchaser whether they have customers or not. This becomes an even bigger problem for more expensive GPUs like the B200, which has an idle power draw of 140W per GPU. Extrapolate that out to thousands, tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of them, or to the 50,000-per-building of them inside Stargate Abilene’s NVIDIA’s , and you’ve got yourself a problem. Even without customers, even without IT load, these servers sit burning power, and while a company could turn them off and boot them on for a period of time, these racks are often run in clusters — servers of GPUs that are synced together using high-speed networking — and while I can’t find anything firm as far as how long it takes to set up a cluster, this presentation on cluster design from the CEO of Lambda details a cluster’s sheer complexity, involving discrete networking, software layer and storage methods just to get the bloody thing working. In simple terms, it may be expensive to leave them on, but it’s going to take a bunch of time and energy to restart these things, meaning that they are more than likely left on, slowly burning energy. Imagine how bad that is at a scale of hundreds of thousands of GPUs? Yet things might be a little wonkier, as the reality may be that while hyperscalers have customers, those customers might not be using all their GPUs at all times. Although there may be some customers that agree to a minimum spend or throughput, it’s hard to imagine that these contracts are enough to surmount the destructive margins. And when … And when I say “destructive margins,” I mean so much more than just the power to run and cool them. There’s the construction of the data centers to house them, the necessary maintenance, and, of course, any and all debt used to buy them. While I can (and will!) say that for every $50,000 GPU bought, big tech needs to make another $100,000, I believe that the hole created by the GPU’s existence is likely larger than just $100,000, with every construction delay, power outage, or moment of idle compute adding dollars to the hole for each and every GPU. Need a very real example? The Information reported recently that Oracle lost $100 million between June and August 2025 on rentals of NVIDIA’s Blackwell chips: In the three months that ended in August, Oracle lost nearly $100 million from rentals of Nvidia’s Blackwell chips, which arrived this year. That’s partly because there is a period between when Oracle gets its data centers ready for customers and when customers start using and paying for them, the documents show. It’s not clear what causes the gap or how Oracle plans to shorten it. So, while we can’t say for sure, there’s a chance a large chunk of these losses were caused by the spread-out deprecation of those Blackwell GPUs — after all, its most recent quarterly earnings included $1.35 billion of depreciation, right? Sidenote: For context, Oracle reported depreciation of $804m in the same period last year, and depreciation of $3.867bn for the whole of FY2025. This should give you a sense of how rapidly these GPUs are becoming a millstone on its earnings. …is there any way to actually recover that $100 million through the margins on these chips? Oracle only has 4.5 years of depreciation on these Blackwell Chips, and The Information reports that those GB200 server racks have a negative 100% gross margin according to internal Oracle documents. If that’s the case, we have a much, much bigger problem, but even if the margins aren’t literally negative…will ther…
October 30, 2025 at 10:01 PM
themcgrath.bsky.social
I'm starting to think The Great Beard experiment has run its course. Might keep it until my birthday, but a more youthful face would support the energy I'm trying to bring into the new year.
October 29, 2025 at 2:30 PM
themcgrath.bsky.social
"we're going to throw even more money at a project that already failed on the first iteration, without addressing any of its flaws."
en.ottawa.ca City of Ottawa @en.ottawa.ca · Oct 28
The final Lansdowne 2.0 report is heading to Committee and Council.

The report contains the final recommendation to begin the project, based on Council's approved directions.

We've updated Engage Ottawa with facts, FAQs, and timelines: https://bit.ly/3lwWtgC
Collage of renderings of the future look and feel of Lansdowne 2.0.
October 28, 2025 at 8:48 PM
themcgrath.bsky.social
A lot of very talented and great to work with people I know will not have a job by the end of the day.
If you're hiring, particularly software devs and DevOps, be it remote, in Ottawa, Toronto, or Nice - please reach out and I can put you in touch.
October 20, 2025 at 1:05 PM
Reposted by R McGrath
malwaretech.com
You know how billionaires end up with severe cognitive deficits as a result of becoming surrounded by yes men who constantly tell them their every idea is genius? What if we made a bot that just does that to everyone. I think that would be a good idea.
October 17, 2025 at 5:00 AM
themcgrath.bsky.social
Anyone who tells you that burger patties made of beats and beans will stick together is a filthy liar.

Tasty though.
October 17, 2025 at 3:06 AM
Reposted by R McGrath
justinling.ca
Friendly reminder that Tidal ($10.99) is now cheaper than Spotify ($11.99), delivers better audio quality, pays its artists 2x as much, and generally doesn't allow AI slop.

You can move your entire music library over in a matter of minutes.
October 15, 2025 at 5:46 PM
themcgrath.bsky.social
Another good time to get a friend a house warming gift is after a breakup. Because this place suddenly feels insurmountably cold and empty.
October 11, 2025 at 9:28 AM
themcgrath.bsky.social
I don't know what I did you deserve this past week, but it can fuck all the way off. I'm at my wits end in a way I haven't been in I don't know how long.
October 10, 2025 at 3:57 PM
Reposted by R McGrath
doth.bsky.social
Having a victorian era woman autumn (becoming isolated and weird)
September 13, 2025 at 11:37 AM
themcgrath.bsky.social
Pre-crime and thought crimes to now be actively targeted by law federal forces in the USA.
September 28, 2025 at 6:02 AM
Reposted by R McGrath
samthielman.com
CHOTINER: So your son is 14, is that right?

IKARI: It's complex, Isaac. If—

CHOTINER: And the “robot” he pilots, that’s actually the child of an alien you keep crucified in the basement, which is possessed by the spirit of his dead mother?

IKARI: Look, let me answer the question.

CHOTINER: Sure.
September 23, 2025 at 8:22 PM
Reposted by R McGrath
timkrief.com
September 16, 2025 at 2:40 PM