Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Circular Financing: Does Nvidia's $110B Bet Echo the Telecom Bubble?

tomtunguz.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 218 posts

Re: Circular Financing: Does Nvidia's $110B Bet Echo the Telecom Bubble?

#151

Post by ooterness »

gruez wrote: post #145
jauntywundrkind wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With Bezos openly stating the goal to build 10 GW+ data-centers in space, it almost feels in question whether this is about ROI, or simply building the Neuromancer future where the ultra-rich can finally be free of their need for the rest of us. Not needing labor at all would be the final return on investment. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45465480 https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/jeff-bezos-claims..…

>With Bezos openly stating the goal to build 10 GW+ data-centers in space, it almost feels in question whether this is about ROI, or simply building the Neuromancer future where the ultra-rich can finally be free of their need for the rest of us. Not needing labor at all would be the final return on investment. Why does "Not needing labor at all" need to be in space?

It's so the billions of disgruntled former workers can't storm the castle.

Re: Circular Financing: Does Nvidia's $110B Bet Echo the Telecom Bubble?

#152

Post by dangus »

BlueTemplar wrote: post #96
dangus wrote: post #4

I think we are at the PS3/Xbox 360 phase of AI. By that I mean, those were the last consoles where performance improvements delivered truly new experiences, where the hardware mattered. Today, any game you make for a modern system is a game you could have made for the PS3/Xbox 360 or perhaps something slightly more powerful. Certainly there have been experiences that use new capabilities that you can’t literally put…

We did get more : the return of VR couldn't have been possible without drastically improved hardware. But the way how it stayed niche shows how it's not just about new gameplay experiences. Compare with the success of the Wii Sports and Wii Fit, which I would guess managed it better, though through a different kind of hardware that you are thinking about ? And I kind of expect the next Nintendo console to have a popu…

That’s exactly what I mean, too. We obviously will get much better AI. It just seems like the value that most people are getting out of it is already captured, just like how technically impressive stuff like VR is very niche.

I could be very wrong, obviously.

Re: Circular Financing: Does Nvidia's $110B Bet Echo the Telecom Bubble?

#153

Post by heisenbit »

pragmatic wrote: post #17

At a "telecom of telecom" we (they) were still lighting up dark fiber 15 years later (2015) when mobile data for cell carriers finally created enough demand. Hard to fathom the amount of overbuild. The only difference is fiber optic lines remained useful the whole time. Will these cards have the same longevity? (I have no idea just sharing anecdata)

> Will these cards have the same longevity?

The article cites anecdotal 1-2 years due to the significant stress.

Re: Circular Financing: Does Nvidia's $110B Bet Echo the Telecom Bubble?

#154

Post by mooreds »

echelon wrote: post #130
bwfan123 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked at a startup during the telecom boom. Then, startups were getting acquired by the likes of Cisco before the startup had a deployed product. And, back then, IPOs were the only form of liquidity event and engineers were locked up for 6 months. The lucky ones had their startups go IPO or get acquired with enough time to spare to get out before the ensuing bust. After the bust, funding dried up and most startups…

Capitalism only works if there is lots of competition. Monopolies gum up the system, reward the institutional capital rather than innovation capital, and prevent new entrants from de-ossifying and being the renewing forest fire. We've been so lax on antitrust. Google, Apple, Meta, Amazon - they all need to be broken up. Our economy and our profession would be better for it. Innovation should be a treadmill. YC and a1…

I don't agree with everything in this book, Goliath,[0] but his main argument was that business monopoly and democracy are in direct opposition. And that since the 1970s we've chosen to enable monopoly again and again.

0: https://www.amazon.com/Goliath-100-Year-Between-Monopoly-Dem...

Re: Circular Financing: Does Nvidia's $110B Bet Echo the Telecom Bubble?

#155

Post by yeasku »

pessimizer wrote: post #126
baq wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Productive or destructive, demand is there, so it isn’t late bubble. It’s still early. (Which is scary, I’ll readily admit.)

But demand isn't there (or rather, proven to be there.) Demand is measured in dollars, and right now VC is paying. This is peak bubble - farthest distance from valuation and income.

Even if its there, will it be in 10 years?

Re: Circular Financing: Does Nvidia's $110B Bet Echo the Telecom Bubble?

#156

Post by Sammi »

Mistletoe wrote: post #72
Workaccount2 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Meanwhile LLM fatigue has started to set in Has it? I think there is this compulsion to think that LLMs are made for senior devs, and if devs are getting wary of LLMs, the experiment is over. I'm not a programmer, my day job isn't tech, and the only people I know who express discontent with LLMs are a few of programmer friends I have. Which I get, but everyone else is using them gleefully for all manner of stuff. An…

You should get on Reddit, people hate AI with a passion there. People I meet in real life hate it also. I think the public actually hates AI more than it should now.

I had to quit Reddit after a decade of heavy use because of the doomerism. It's a place you go if you want to kill your spirit. It's just not healthy.

Re: Circular Financing: Does Nvidia's $110B Bet Echo the Telecom Bubble?

#157

Post by baq »

pessimizer wrote: post #126
baq wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Productive or destructive, demand is there, so it isn’t late bubble. It’s still early. (Which is scary, I’ll readily admit.)

But demand isn't there (or rather, proven to be there.) Demand is measured in dollars, and right now VC is paying. This is peak bubble - farthest distance from valuation and income.

Microsoft and meta are not VCs and they’re spending money on data centers like there’s no tomorrow, doesn’t seem very low demand.

Re: Circular Financing: Does Nvidia's $110B Bet Echo the Telecom Bubble?

#158

Post by mooreds »

Good analysis.

But the answer is, "kinda"? There are similarities, but the AI buildout is worse in some ways (more concentration, GPU backed debt) and better in others (capacity is being used, vendors actually have cash flow).

The conclusion:

> Unlike the telecom bubble, where demand was speculative & customers burned cash , this merry-go-round has paying riders.

Seems a little short sighted to me. IMO, there is a definite echo, but we are in the mid-late stage, not the end stage.

It's simply not fair to compare Lucent at the end of a bubble with Nvidia in the middle, and that is what the author did.

If you haven't listened to the referenced interview between Thompson and Kedrosky, I'd do so: https://www.theringer.com/podcasts/plain-english-with-derek-...

Re: Circular Financing: Does Nvidia's $110B Bet Echo the Telecom Bubble?

#159

Post by narmiouh »

chuckadams wrote: post #71
Zigurd wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AGI is not near. At best, the domains where we send people to years of grad school so that they can do unnatural reasoning tasks in unmanageable knowledge bases, like law and medicine, will become solid application areas for LLMs. Coding, most of all, will become significantly more productive. Thing is, once the backlog of shite code gets re-engineered, the computing demand for a new code creation will not support bu…

> AGI is not near There's also plenty of argument to be made that it's already here. AI can hold forth on pretty much any topic, and it's occasionally even correct. Of course to many (not saying you), the only acceptable bar is perfect factual accuracy, a deep understanding of meanings, and probably even a soul. Which keeps breathing life into the old joke "AI is whatever computers still can't do".

I will give you an example from just two days ago, I asked chatgpt pro to take some rough address data and parse it into street number, street name, street type, city, state, zip fields.

The first iteration produced decent code, but there was an issue some street numbers had alpha characters in it that it didn't treat as street numbers, so I asked it to adjust the logic of code so that even if the first word is alpha or numeric consider it a valid street number. It updated the code, and gave me both the sample code and sample output.

Sample output was correct, but the code wasn't producing correct output.

It spent more than 5 mins on each of the iterations (significantly less than what a normal developer would, but the normal developer would not come back with broken code).

I can't rely on this kind of behavior and this was a completely green field straight forward input and straight forward output. This is not AGI in my book.

Re: Circular Financing: Does Nvidia's $110B Bet Echo the Telecom Bubble?

#160

Post by N70Phone »

jauntywundrkind wrote: post #99
stephc_int13 wrote: post #27

Knowing history of past bubbles is only mildly informative. The dotcom bubble was different than the railroads bubble etc. The only thing to keep in mind is that all of this is about business and ROI. Given the colossal investments, even if the companies finances are healthy and not fraudulent, the economic returns have to be unprecedented or there will be a crash. They are all chasing a golden goose.

With Bezos openly stating the goal to build 10 GW+ data-centers in space, it almost feels in question whether this is about ROI, or simply building the Neuromancer future where the ultra-rich can finally be free of their need for the rest of us. Not needing labor at all would be the final return on investment. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45465480 https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/jeff-bezos-claims..…

It is folly to take these statements at their words.

Bezos is just saying shit to generate hype. All these executives are just saying shit. There is no plan. You must treat these people as morons who understand nothing.

Anyone who knows even the slightest details about datacenter design knows what moving heat is the biggest problem. This is the exact thing that being in space makes infinitely harder. "Datacenters in space" is an idea you come up with only if you are a moron who knows nothing about either datacenters or space.

If nothing else this is the singular reason you should treat AI as a bubble. All of the people at the helm of it have not a single fucking clue what they're talking about. They all keep running their mouth with utter nonsense like this.

Post reply on HN