Satya is not an idiot. He's just doing the things that make the investor class idiots ecstatic.
Ed Zitron is mad as hell
41–50 of 64 posts
Re: Ed Zitron is mad as hell
#42Most HN criticism of Zitron appears to fall into one of two categories: 1) He uses expletives and is “too angry” 2) He runs a PR firm and has no experience working with LLMs Which I think says a lot more about his detractors than it does about him. Time will tell all, and I think he will be remembered as a prescient individual. It’s undeniable that these financial games that OpenAI, Oracle, and now Nvidia are playing…
Yeah, his financial arguments are good. But I did listened a but to his podcast ... and good bulk of it is pure ranting. There are episodes with no economic analysis as far aw I can tell, but a stream of complains about Sammy Clammy being idiot and people whose names I dont remember being idiots.
He has literally hours and hours of that.
Re: Ed Zitron is mad as hell
#43I can’t read the linked FT article but I wanted to mention that Ed Zitron’s podcast Better Offline is interesting for me because he has a contrarian view of tech that is often different from my own. Some of his recent podcasts on the funky economics of excessive AI investments and data center investments vs. any real payoffs for society. I feel my own views slightly shifting when I listen to him. I value material tha…
> funky economics of excessive AI investments and data center investments vs. any real payoffs for society.
This is why I'm convinced Sam makes his money from when OpenAI spends rather than when OpenAI earns.
Re: Ed Zitron is mad as hell
#44Most HN criticism of Zitron appears to fall into one of two categories: 1) He uses expletives and is “too angry” 2) He runs a PR firm and has no experience working with LLMs Which I think says a lot more about his detractors than it does about him. Time will tell all, and I think he will be remembered as a prescient individual. It’s undeniable that these financial games that OpenAI, Oracle, and now Nvidia are playing…
Yeah, his financial arguments are good. But I did listened a but to his podcast ... and good bulk of it is pure ranting. There are episodes with no economic analysis as far aw I can tell, but a stream of complains about Sammy Clammy being idiot and people whose names I dont remember being idiots. He has literally hours and hours of that.
When he's making arguments and offering analysis, I think they're very often sound. That's why I (at least sporadically) continue to listen to episodes of his podcast, or read his pieces.
I'd love to read/listen to one that he worked on with a talented editor. I don't mind the swearing or the tone, and I enjoy a good rant here and there, but for me the amount of rambling and ranting obfuscates the good points he's making, just by sheer volume.
Re: Ed Zitron is mad as hell
#45I started reading and listening to Ed after "The Man Who Killed Google Search" but grew tired of him ranting on and on about a technology that "brings no value to the world" while I use it to great effect many times every single day (LLMs).
Yeah, he's a lunatic and/or grifter for that and many other reasons
Re: Ed Zitron is mad as hell
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've said this many times but I'll say it again. The FT is not some single opinion org. It has many writers and many editors of various opinions. The FT itself does not take any angle, only it's writers and editors, who can have contradictory views and still publish articles in the same media org.
> FT is not one single opinion This holds for most newspapers and makes that whole fake news argument so infuriating. As if journalists had even 15 minutes in a day to coordinate how to present an issue.
Newspapers employ journalists that write only within certain range of opinions. I am not saying it is evil or something, but there is absolutely selection of which opinions can be show and which cant.
Re: Ed Zitron is mad as hell
#47I started reading and listening to Ed after "The Man Who Killed Google Search" but grew tired of him ranting on and on about a technology that "brings no value to the world" while I use it to great effect many times every single day (LLMs).
Yeah, he's a lunatic and/or grifter for that and many other reasons
Serious question – what’s the grift?
Re: Ed Zitron is mad as hell
#48Most HN criticism of Zitron appears to fall into one of two categories: 1) He uses expletives and is “too angry” 2) He runs a PR firm and has no experience working with LLMs Which I think says a lot more about his detractors than it does about him. Time will tell all, and I think he will be remembered as a prescient individual. It’s undeniable that these financial games that OpenAI, Oracle, and now Nvidia are playing…
Yeah, his financial arguments are good. But I did listened a but to his podcast ... and good bulk of it is pure ranting. There are episodes with no economic analysis as far aw I can tell, but a stream of complains about Sammy Clammy being idiot and people whose names I dont remember being idiots. He has literally hours and hours of that.
Even his financial arguments are often weak. Of late he’s been constantly ranting about the use of ARR, like that hasn’t been a norm in SaaS businesses for almost two decades now. And that they’re using it to fool… who exactly? Wholesale investors on their current investor roadshow who deal with these things literally every day?
The episode with Shingy also really rubbed me the wrong way too. Just constantly “yeah, but it still hasn’t done anything useful” followed by Shingy relaying numerous examples over and over of how AI has transformed our he things he does, followed by “yeah, but when is it going to do something actually useful?” over and over.
He’s become some one note on the AI stuff it’s tiresome. Moreso given he’s unwilling to actually listen to any other perspective. I wish he’d go back to talking about literally anything else.
Re: Ed Zitron is mad as hell
#49I can’t read the linked FT article but I wanted to mention that Ed Zitron’s podcast Better Offline is interesting for me because he has a contrarian view of tech that is often different from my own. Some of his recent podcasts on the funky economics of excessive AI investments and data center investments vs. any real payoffs for society. I feel my own views slightly shifting when I listen to him. I value material tha…
> funky economics of excessive AI investments and data center investments vs. any real payoffs for society. This is why I'm convinced Sam makes his money from when OpenAI spends rather than when OpenAI earns.
What a co-incidence. In the USA the GDP goes up mainly from consumers spending, and business spending to a lesser extent. Otherwise not in relation to any wealth being created or value added by those people and enterprises.
If any.
Heavily weighted toward consumers, OTOH businesses have to spend a fortune before they can make a dent in GDP.
Over any one reporting period, don't worry those periods don't last forever.
Re: Ed Zitron is mad as hell
#50Most HN criticism of Zitron appears to fall into one of two categories: 1) He uses expletives and is “too angry” 2) He runs a PR firm and has no experience working with LLMs Which I think says a lot more about his detractors than it does about him. Time will tell all, and I think he will be remembered as a prescient individual. It’s undeniable that these financial games that OpenAI, Oracle, and now Nvidia are playing…
The key problem is that his economic analysis is absolute trash. I used to think he was just totally incompetent at it, but given the bias in the errors, it is pretty clearly intentional deception. But it's often pretty hard to address that, because every article he writes is a 10k word gish gallop. I've tried debunking key points a few times in HN comments for just one of the intentional mistakes he makes, and people complain about the reply being too long.