> but how much does it really happen?

A lot. Like, a LOT a lot.

Maybe you would like some other videos if that's your preferred media?

Roblox Situation is Worse Than You Think
Roblox: How to Destroy Your $83,000,000,000 Company Overnight - A Deep Dive
Roblox, Take a Seat (ft: Chris Hansen)

Roblox has had problems with child exploitation too, for years now; Investigation: How Roblox Is Exploiting Young Game Developers and their follow-up, Roblox Pressured Us to Delete Our Video. So We Dug Deeper.
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You are discussing - ranting about, really - what should be.

The rest of us are discussing what is.

The original claim is that people aren't buying the F-150 Lightning because (paraphrasing) people want mid-size trucks and not fill-size trucks. That claim is refuted by pointing out that mid-size trucks already exist, they do not sell very well, and in fact full-size trucks are overwhelmingly popular.

Now you come in with your righteous indignation that because, in your view, people don't actually make full use of full-size trucks, they should not be buying full-size trucks. Notwithstanding that the majority of these trucks actually ARE used as trucks - because the cultural bubble that exists entirely up your ass along with your head is not representative of the entire world - the very real popularity of these vehicles is not dependent on what people actually do with them.

I'll say it again just to be crystal clear: It does not matter if you think they should not be popular, the fact is they are popular. Reality does not give a shit what your opinion is.
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Whether or not people use the vehicles for their supposed purpose or to the full capabilities is completely irrelevant to the sales numbers.

I'm sorry that the world does not conform to what you imagine it should be. The reality is full size pickup trucks are the best selling vehicle type in the US by a wide margin. Feel free to masturbate your is-ought sophistry until you go blind though...
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That's probably because the "Typical millionaire in the US" is likely a farmer or rancher.

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> MOST PEOPLE DON'T WANT A "FULL-SIZED" FUCKING TRUCK. THEY'RE TOO GODDAMN BIG.

Counterpoint: The Ford F series are the best selling vehicles in the US. Second place is the Chevy Silverado, which is another full size pickup. If you broke out just the F-150 I think it's just barely behind the Silverado (Looks like ~420K vs ~410K so far this year?)

The physical size isn't the problem. Smaller pickups like the Honda Santa Cruz and Ford Maverick do not sell well. The kinds of people who actually want a pickup truck do not seem to actually want a midsize or compact pickup truck.

Cheaper, on the other hand... that's something you can sell to the masses. Sounds to me that the market for EV pickups is still there but the price isn't alluring enough, and maybe people are willing to compromise on the size to get an EV truck that's more affordable.

> Back in my day

It ain't your day anymore; the world has moved on.
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> If the bubble pops, that hardware won't be worth much as everyone will be offloading the same type of hardware at the same time.

The hardware will be worth something in that it exists and can be re-deployed for literally any other computing task. They will not have to build a new data center for whatever bullshit waste of time they come up with next. Yes, the hardware will be basically worth scrap on the secondary market, but we're probably not talking about outright liquidation.

> All the big decision makers seem to have fallen into the AI cult mentality

I agree and that's a problem, but the bubble will still pop. The money to dump into the infrastructure is not infinite; Even governments will run out of money and/or public willingness to continue funding it.

Probably the early-mid 2030s I reckon, based on analysis I've seen that they need to start actually making money on this nonsense by then or face bankruptcy.
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> Microsoft receives a 27% ownership stake in OpenAI worth approximately $135 billion and retains access to the AI startup's technology until 2032

Is that actual value of the hardware or speculative value of the brand?

As far as I know, there is still zero plan to actually make the trillions of dollars from AI that they will need to justify the trillion plus they've thrown at it so far. Like they need to make a lot of money just to break even, and so far the only plan seems to be "then a miracle occurs."

So I guess if Microsoft at least gets 27% of the physical hardware that's something tangible they can recover when the bubble pops.
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It depends entirely on what the consulting is.

Usually you use consultants for one-time or infrequently needed services that would make little sense to maintain staff for. Architecture and engineering services, legal consultation, and advertising are all easy examples of things a business might need but not often enough to have that manpower in-house. Some professional services also carry liability insurance requirements which, if you hire a consultant, you don't have to pay for either.

If you want to talk about something like IT services; Seems likely an IT admin might not be the busiest person in a company, so depending on the size of your business it might make sense to contract for on-call services and remote administration. One person can probably manage 3-4 small businesses worth of tech support and management, so each of those businesses pays less than hiring their own dedicated in-house employee both in salaries and benefits. (And yeah, they are very likely ALSO getting paid less...)
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> The Japanese have found a way to use small temperature differences to generate electricity

And for about $50 I can buy an engine that runs off the temperature difference between the ambient air and a cup of hot water. The idea of using thermal gradients in the ocean to generate power is at least 150 years old. Any guesses why it's not caught on?

Hint: the facility in Japan you're probably thinking of only generates 100kw (~135HP), and it's not clear if that's before or after they account for the power to pump the seawater.

There is no utility in chasing down such incredibly low quality thermal energy unless you happen to actually want heat, but even then it's not really hot enough for most things you'd want scavenged heat for.
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> Is there no way to do it for data centers?

The water temps are typically barely warm enough for most people's preference for a shower.

> For example, use a heat pump to concentrate the heat to above boiling temperature then use that to boil water to run a steam turbine.

Getting a heat pump to operate at atmospheric boiling water temps is extremely difficult. Remember that to have a working heat pump, you need a refrigerant medium that condenses at the high temperature side under a given pressure and also boils at or below the low temperature side at a given pressure... then, you need to build a machine that can actually create those pressures.

Now consider that most steam cycle powerplants use superheated steam at temps of over 500C. What material could you use that can be made to condense into a liquid at >500C, what kinds of pressures would be required to make that happen, and what could you even build such a machine out of to survive those conditions?

> I think you could run that at a net-positive for power?

The second law of thermodynamics has left you a voicemail...
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If it's anything like their content ID copyright enforcement mechanism, I'm sure this will go absolutely perfect and there will be no drama whatsoever.

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It's called Jevons Paradox

In short: the more efficiently you can use a resource, the better the ROI you get for investing in the utilization of that resource, and the more people consume.

This applies to computing power. Maybe it doesn't make sense in 1974 for a small business to invest in computer workstations for their staff. But by 1994 computers were so much more powerful, so much more capable, and actually cheaper relative to that capability (read: more efficient) that it now makes no sense to NOT invest in the technology for your business.

If this succeeds in lowering the barrier to entry for leasing AI data center resources, expect demand to go up as more people try to do more things.
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Look man, I know actually understanding things isn't your strong suit but white-knighting Roblox is not a good look.

Yes, religious organizations have been and still very much are a hotbed for child abuse and assault. I fully agree we should be doing a lot more to investigate and incarcerate offenders among the clergy and related professions.

But even if I accept it's "the primary vector of attack" - and these days I'm not entirely convinced that's true anymore - it does you no favors to handwave literal tens of thousands if incident reports associated with Roblox. 13,000 reports from Roblox in 2023 alone. And that's Roblox reporting them... given how much effort they put into protecting predators on their platform, if they themselves reported 13K incidents you can imagine the real number is much larger.

Maybe imagine that Roblox is like a Jesus Camp with 70+ million children attending every day and there are zero safeguards in place.
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> We have decades and decades of studies on this. Children are going to be assaulted and taken advantage of by people they know who are in positions of power.

"People they know" include people they make friends with online.

"Positions of power" include people who offer money (robux) in exchange for favors.

Yes, we should be putting a lot more priests and cops in prison for child abuse and exploitation, but Roblox is a MASSIVE playground for exploitation and fishing. This has been an open secret for years with a fairly recent media fiasco involving Schlep. Apparently Roblox was more interested in banning him and any mention of him on their platform for the high crime of reporting predators to the authorities than they are about actually punishing those predators at all.

> But whatever the case going after Roblox isn't going to save any children.

You are either fucked in the head if you believe this, or scared of getting caught yourself.
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> If they are not grown in dirt that has arsenic in it

Good luck finding dirt that doesn't. It is present naturally in topsoils everywhere, and because of the way rice fields are commonly irrigated, those fields tend to have higher than typical amounts. The the rice itself is exceptionally good at absorbing it.

Not so say it's ever a dangerous quantity; actually getting arsenic poisoning from eating rice is vanishingly rare. That's kind of the point I was making; if your response to protein supplements containing toxic metals is to just eat natural proteins, bear in mind that natural proteins ALSO contain toxic metals... and you just happened to choose the worst two crops for your example.
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