yes yes "i'm old and cranky"

Depends on how solvent NVIDIA thinks those companies will be. Also I think creditors frequently get paid earlier in a bankruptcy process (before investors at least). Maybe they have it structured like a mechanics lien where they get 100% of the loan back on bankruptcy (I don’t know if that is actually possible), or if they just huger that in a bankruptcy they will get about 80% of the loan back, so they want to make the loan as far ahead of bankruptcy as they can so they get a bunch of payments followed by bankruptcy and then they get a chunk of money awarded by the bankruptcy court (and/or maybe return of the assets?)

Ah! I think that is the one! I bet they are structured as a secured loan, so on bankruptcy the bankrupt company can either surrender the assets (the hardware Nvidia loaded you money for), and Nvidia keeps all prior payments. OR they sign a new agreement both the company and lender agree to which is then omitted from the bankruptcy discharge (i.e. the new agreement can’t be washed away by bankruptcy, so if you still owe say $3m Nvidia can stand firm on that price, or even knock a little off, but whatever is agreed to the bankruptcy court leaves it to stand -- normally, sometimes they will decide there is some sort of bankruptcy fraud going on and you are sheltering money with something like that, normally only if family or close friends are involved though), or the company going into bankruptcy can pay Fair Market Value for the property.

Nvidia might get screwed if companies going bankrupt decide it isn’t worth salvaging the AI hardware either because they pivot to a non-AI busness, or at least a busness where they don’t need Nvidia hardware (like they rent “AI compute” from Google or something, or only needed the Nvidia hardware to refine models and they decide to just run the models they already have and not refine anything).

Nvidia also might get screwed if lots of companies decide AI is BS and the fair market value for AI hardware declines.

Nvidia is also screwed if the whole AI market implodes for a similar reason.

Still it is pretty easy to see how Nvidia is taking a risk, but could “earn” way more money this way. Plus Nvidia gets the interest payments, not a bank (then again Nvidia is taking the risk, not a bank). I don’t know if it is a good idea or not, because it hinges on something I’m awful at predicting: timing. If the house of cards comes down soon Nvidia takes a big bath. If the house of cards stays up for a while Nvidia breaks even, if it stays up long enough Nvidia makes the even bigger bucks.

Actually it is debatable. Anthropic is not making money, they are burning through VC cash. OpenAI is not making money, they are burning through OPM (“Other People’s Money”) as well. NVIDIA _is_ making money selling the AI hardware to the various companies pouring money into finding an AI model+business model that lets them make money. SpaceX’s xAI isn’t usefully broken out into it’s own P&L, but if you want to bet there IK’ll bet they are losing money at the moment as well, if you take the bet and lose you owe me one fancy Starbucks coffee and pastry, if I lose I’ll buy you 5 shares of SpaceX (that is around $1000 vs your $10). Did I forget anyone? Palentier? Also OPM (VC at the moment).

I doubt Apple or Google are making money on AI either, although it is more debatable because they have a bunch of products they can bolster sales with it (people buying a new iPhone because they want something they saw “Apple intelligence” will bring, totally forgetting that Apple hasn’t delivered on their AI promises from 2 years ago yet!), or Google may sell more smart speakers “powered by Gemini” then they sold of their prior assistant powered speakers, or get more Google searches because of Gemini answers. Although I expect the searches will merely manage to better hold onto market share by offering Gemini, which is important, but defending a multibillion dollar a year Business isn’t at all the same a “making money with AI”. Google has definitly said they are cutting headcount by using AI, but I’m not sure if they actually have a productivity increase or merely an increase in code per unit time even if the volume says nothing (or is of lower quality so it produced more bugs per unit code, and more critical outages per unit codebut more volume of code fixes!)

I’m not saying that NVidia are the only ones that can ever make money at this, or that only the hardware makers will ever make money, but that is how it is right now for sure.

Or more like "cloud infrastructure running within physical and legal jurisdiction of the EU is running locally to the EU" if you prefer .. if it's software they've written, running on hardware within the EU's physical and legal reach, voila, "sovereignty".

"The only way to ensure sovereignty and control is with software running locally with NO cloud dependency."

They're not talking about personal sovereignty. Cloud infrastructure an organization owns is "running locally" to that organization.

that particular amendment was voted down, bozo - the system works, no hand wringing required

doesn't mean hate speech doesn't exist

I'm pretty sure corporations are worse for the environment than people.

You're confident in suggesting that corporations don't cater to the demand of the market, the customers of whom seems to be waiting for the heads of those corporations to take the bus before they can be bothered to stop pissing in their own pools?

Tragedy of the commons to a tee.

I don't disagree with your first point.

I don't admire billionaires at all. I don't think they should exist. Wealth disparity is unchecked.

But that doesn't prevent me from operating within my own set of principles rather than in a sort of "you first" manner, which strikes me as quite child-like.

If every wealthy person on earth did the right thing, our environment would still be fucked, because they're vastly outnumbered by non-wealthy people.

So you're stuck on a sinking boat with a rich person, and you refuse to plug a hole until he or she plugs a hole.

The funny thing, by the time you smugly drown, they've already left the boat on a helicopter. The wealthy *be definition* will not feel the effects of worsening climate. You (and your kids) will.

I think it'd be far more intellectually honest to admit you just don't care. Nothing wrong with that, per se. It's a hell of a lot more logically defendable than your stated position.

The word "capitalism" wasn't coined until much later. That means two things: One, it doesn't uphold capitalism and Two, it doesn't disparage it. What is in the Constitution is fundamental rights. Capitalism is a consequence of individuals exercising those rights, up to the point where it infringes on the rights of others. Recognizing that is one of the things that made Theodore Roosevelt a great president. There is nothing un-American about wanting to reign in capitalism, but there is something decidedly un-American about wanting to destroy it wholesale, since as mentioned previously it arises from the exercise of natural rights. This is the much-hated nuance, particularly despised by the left, who seek to abolish capitalism; but also some on the right who have an agenda to give free reign to robber-barons and undo the works of T.R. and others.

The rare AI enthusiast

Hey, I know this is the site for devs who are so old that they're out of the game or enthusiasts who wish they could call themselves developers, but AI assisted coding is just plain normal today. It's not even controversial.

In all the projects you love, hate, or don't care about. If you're developing today and not using AI at all, you're the rare developer.

No. That only encrypts while in transit so others cannot listen in. Whoever owns the DNS server still can log all information about the requests once it gets to their server.

Fudge, obviously I meant to reply to the OP. Your post clearly has some basis in being informed on the subject.

I am obviously not an expert but... we know what happens when you remove a species from the food chain.

In other words: "I don't know what happens, but we (I) know what happens ... "

Like, honestly, dude.

Chances that you do this: zero