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Back of Mind
backofmind.substack.com · Personal blog · on HN since 2023
A Substack newsletter on business, economics, and finance, with essays on Boeing, infrastructure costs, books, and AI.
What HN saysCommenters link it to correct a claimed story, saying it never happened, and to supply context on AI compute measured in gigawatts.
15HN people shared it
4linked it in comments
11stories submitted
136story points
3 months agolast shared
2023people per year2026
Most-shared posts
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- 12Tokenalysis and john henry1 people · first shared 2026
- 13New new rules for the new new economy1 people · first shared 2026
What HN people wrote when they linked it
ZeroGravitas · 2026-08-12
This didn't actually happen:
https://backofmind.substack.com/p/chortle-on-a-chortle/
mrlonglong · 2026-08-11
Truth. There was never any attempt to route it over that grave.
https://backofmind.substack.com/p/chortle-on-a-chortle
skybrian · 2026-04-07
I guess gigawatts is how we roughly measure computing capacity at the datacenter scale? Also saw something similar here:
> Costs and pricing are expressed per “token”, but the published data immediately seems to admit that this is a bad choice of unit because it costs a lot more to output a token than input one. It seems to me that the actual marginal quantity being produced and consumed is “processing power”, which is apparently measured in gigawatt hours these days. In any case, I think more than anything this vindicates my original decision not to get too precise. [...]
https://backofmind.substack.com/p/new-new-rules-for-the-new-new-econom…
Is it priced that way, though? I assume next-gen TPU's will be more efficient?
1vuio0pswjnm7 · 2026-06-23
Here are all the links for this blog…