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Comment This is how ... (Score 3, Informative) 50

... the markets got into trouble in 2007-2009. CDOs and CDSs became "artificial" and it became possible to go long or short a security that really didn't exist. Add that to the creation of "naked" credit default swaps (CDS) and more money was being bet (in the end, shorted) on things than the face value of the things themselves. Naked CDSs are pretty much gamblers bets. Because you aren't buying them to protect an asset that you have. And gambling commissions are much better placed to keep an eye on such markets. And whether a game gets thrown if too many bets are placed against it.

It's like me (and all your other neighbors) buying fire insurance on your house. When there's more money to be made by your house burning down, the invisible hand of the market moves so as to make that happen.

Comment Re: Maybe (Score 1) 89

No. The fundamentals haven't changed. Same with the Nvidia and SpaceX mentions. The stocks recovered in both cases. Usually the action here is to buy the dip and sell when it gets back to about where it was, but I'm not a finance guy and this is not financial advice.

The legitimate concern here is that this could (and IMO will) result in a long-term write down on assets long before they normally depreciate. And it probably will because these guys have been putting 5 year depreciation schedules on GPUs where it's normally 3 years.

Not a financial person either, but wouldn't writing it down mean that a company no longer considers it to have value? Is there something unique to the hardware they use for search-specific AI that prevents it from being leased out as part of Google Cloud or being used to run other teams' models?

Comment Re:Self described article (Score 1) 194

Free speech has never been free as in beer, or at least not at any meaningful volume level. Talking to a single person was free, but that's not going to spread your ideas very far or very quickly. In the early days, you paid scribes, but that would cost you money. Later, the printing press brought the costs down, but you still needed money. Radio and TV made it possible to reach even more people more quickly, but at a significantly nonzero cost.

The Internet is no different in that regard. In theory, you can always spin up your own server and post anything you want to. But that won't guarantee that anybody is going to actually visit your site. To get eyes, you'll still have to buy ads, etc.

Comment Re:Thermostat (Score 1) 95

Actually, getting the CO2 out of the atmosphere is easy. Just grow stuff faster than you dump it in. The Keeling Curve slope goes negative every year due to uptake by vegitation.

Problem: To grow stuff, you need more than just the CO2. Plant growth will hit a limit when any one of the necessary nutrients is consumed Right now, we need to introduce more fixed nitrogen (NOx) into the cycle.

Comment Re:features a light-up Apple logo (Score 1) 72

No thanks on the light-up Apple logo for me. I think it started with the Powerbook G3 (I had one, it was a great computer) and it was sort of obnoxious even then. I'm not paid to be a light-up billboard everywhere I go.

No thanks on the laptop touchscreen, either. I understand it on something like a Surface tablet -- almost -- but most of the time I used my Surface with a keyboard, like a regular laptop, and never touched the screen. I think ramming touchscreens down everybody's throats was just a gimmick Microsoft came up with, both to A.) convince everybody that Windows 8 worked equally well on laptops and tablets (it sure did); and B.) once again, everybody needed to go out and buy a new laptop, even though their current one worked and served their needs just fine.

Comment Re:Organizations suboptimize to meet new metrics (Score 4, Interesting) 61

My employer announced that AI costs will be billed back to departments. Token use (almost entirely among developers) was cut in half without affecting productivity, and perhaps even enhancing productivity because they had to think a bit about the best use of what they had instead of trying random things.

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