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

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

#211

Post by xnx »

justsid wrote: post #210
xnx wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The optimistic thinking is that with thousands/millions of tireless 24/7 brains at work on these problems we could address more problems in biology, chemistry, physics, materials science, etc. faster. It's a bold, but not unreasonable belief.

But that’s not something actually actionable. This isn’t a plan, it’s pure hope that maybe potentially if we just put enough money and energy into this, it will just magically solve our problems. Call me a luddite but that’s a crazy amount of copium.

Lots of hope for sure. This is the biggest most expensive scientific endeavor in my lifetime. I can think of a lot worse things to spend the money/carbon on.

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

#212

Post by wmeredith »

ooterness wrote: post #151
gruez wrote: post #145

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. 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.

The movie Elysium shows this ruling class in space, proletariat on Earth, scenario in very high fidelity. The movies itself is just OK, but the glimpse of this future is very well executed in the production design and special effects. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elysium_(film)

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

#213

Post by Planktonne »

ivape wrote: post #202
pessimizer wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Your web apps could truly one day be generated frame by frame by a video model. Really. The amount of compute we’ll need will be staggering. We've technically been able to play board games by entering our moves into our telephones, sending them to a CPU to be combined, then printing out a new board on paper to conform to the new board state. We do not do this because it would be stupid. We can not depend on people…

You know that N people can now point a webcam onto their boards and have a multi modal LLM understand everyone’s board state now, right? Literally zero programming involved, you just have to point a camera at the damn thing and maybe write some glue code. If you’re a board game player then you are more than capable of imagining possibilities well beyond this.

The parent comment's point isn't that we can't do these things, or that these things are difficult; it's that we don't want to do them. They aren't beneficial.

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

#214

Post by esafak »

saberience wrote: post #119
Workaccount2 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Getting gold in the math Olympiad is a pretty strong indicator of operating independently on substantive problems. A year ago they need an extensive harness to get silver, and two years ago they could hardly multiply 1000x10000. Terence Tao tweeted yesterday about using GPT5 to help quickly solve a problem he was working on.

Yes but why did ChatGPT work on math Olympiad problems? Because it got a prompt giving it the instruction and context etc. Why did GPT5 help Terence Tao solve a math problem, because he gave it a prompt and the context etc. None of these models are useful without a human prompting them and giving it tasks, goals, context etc, they don't operate independently, they don't get ideas of work to be done, they don't operat…

Why don't you stick them in a robot, give them agency, continuously train them, and see what happens? Be careful what you ask for.

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

#215

Post by nickdothutton »

keeda wrote: post #209
nickdothutton wrote: post #161

I was there in the middle of the dotcom crash and the telecoms crash which was much worse. Fiber does not rust, and while there was vast overcapacity, not all of it was lit, or indeed worth lighting. 10 years after, thanks to DWDM there were 8 strand cables where only 2 strands were lit, albeit with many more wavelengths than envisaged before. Even though demand had grown. How much is a 10 year old GPU worth? Where i…

Just so I understand correctly, you mean that with DWDM 2 strands of cables were equivalent to 8 since DWDM as a multiplexing technology increased the capacity of each fiber, right? > How much is a 10 year old GPU worth? Where is the “dwdm but for GPUs?”. From other sources cited in TFA it seems GPUs won't last 3 years, let alone 10! But I think we know what the "DWDM for GPUs" is -- it's the processing efficiency ga…

I'm not sure where DWDM is currently, but we quickly went from 1 colour to 512 colours per strand. I expect and hope for increases in GPU performance, some via process shrink, some via wafer size/yield, and some...perhaps... by software efficiencies (most interesting to me). Maybe volumes will increase too, further driving down the price for essentially the same parts. However I don't see how these gains (if they happen) can "get us to 512".

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

#216

Post by johnnyprozac »

twoodfin wrote: post #197
bigbadfeline wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Turnover might be due to mergers, takeovers and periods of monopolization of different sectors of the economy, turnover doesn't measure the level of monopolization or duo-polization. Market share and relative capitalization per sector are the valid measures.

OK, which sectors were monopolies (or even duopolies) in the 1970’s that have survived to this day? Maybe oil? A few agricultural sectors? If you actually look at the corporations that are consuming Americans’ income in 2025 vs. the equivalents in 1975, the idea that “monopolies” have controlled the economy for 50 years is self-evidently absurd.

If the number of providers that you yourself have direct access to is singular or limited to two or three? Yes that's a monopolistic environment. Consider that for most people in many more regions of the US than not will only be able to access the internet with ONE provider. They will only be able to get health care from one provider. They will only be able to get farm equipment from one provider and then not be able to fix said farm equipment. They will only be able to get seeds for food from one provider. And where 1 or 2 platforms are the only way for distribution in the digital space ("cough" app stores) or your logistical choices come down to 1 or 2 with prices fixed...again you may have comeptition on some level but at the macro level monopolistic effects are occuring because the distribution channel is what moves a market not necessarily sub vendors.

the fact that the incentives for shareholder interest has led to consolidation and then to again always end up in a market where there is less providers than more. Look the names may change But since derregulation of much of the M/A activity we have ended up in markets that have monopolistic effects.

So...semantically there may be "competition" in markets" but on the ground and in real life where it matters the effects and actual restrictions that monopoly brings is very much a fact. It's absurd to ignore actual in depth analysis that takes context of actual economics (from the regional facets to actual mechanics of trade) into account and not think that monopolization is not occurring and not have an overwhelming impact. It is very evident that you yourself have not looked to deep into this.

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

#217

Post by Rury »

mooreds wrote: post #154
echelon wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

He's right. The very reason free markets don't exist is the same exact reason why communism doesn't work in practice. All markets collapse until there's a few dominant businesses (ie monopolies), just as how society naturally forms governing hierarchies. And this is easy to see how they're opposed. All you have to do is look at how there's only 4 types of governments based on how decision making power is distributed, and that democracy is actually closer to communism on that spectrum rather than dictatorships, and then see how monopolies behave quite like dictatorships.

That said, true dictatorships rarely work in practice but for different reasons as to why communism doesn't work. Which is why, when it comes to organizations, almost all are in fact oligarchies in practice, despite whatever they're called. This is known as the iron law of oligarchy. Notice the term: oligopoly? Go look at every industry and there's near always an oligopoly.

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

#218

Post by GauntletWizard »

GauntletWizard wrote: post #190
KronisLV wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’d like to substantiate that? I’d love to have someone pull the curtain back and learn by whom, if that’s the case.

Many of them are using their subreddits for submarine promotion. Here's a public example: https://www.reddit.com/r/SeattleWA/comments/547wxd/comment/d... There's much worse that's "pure speculation", because a few thousand unemployed losers that nonetheless have six figure incomes aren't suspicious at all. See the kerfuffle when the mod of r/antiwork went on Fox News, where several of the other power mods alluded to…

Found on the front page today, an article about exactly this kind of "marketing" https://larslofgren.com/codesmith-reddit-reputation-attack/
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