They absolutely are.

Yep, time to reformat and send it to India to be dismantled and harvested for metals orange dye and blubber

Yeah, at least a major recession but I think a depression is probable. Were you around for the dot-com crash? I was, and the job loss was everywhere, not just in tech. It was a scary and shitty time. Lots of people lost everything.

You’re talking about Google. I’m talking about OpenAI, Anthropic, and to a certain extent Meta. Sure, Google has plenty of money and even they managed to lose some on this deal. The AI economy collapse will ding Google but it will be existential to many of the largest companies in the US market. Several trillion dollars in value will be wiped out of existence. You seem very nonchalant about this; what do you think will happen to OpenAI and Anthropic when the truth of their grift is fully exposed and they go tits-up? What of Oracle who has spent all their money speculatively building data centers? What about Nvidia who sells the shovels in this gold rush? What about Meta who is still paying for their idiotic “Metaverse” and has now gone whole-hog into the AI race, dropping gobs of money in an attempt to “catch up”? What about SpaceXAi or whatever the fuck they’re called now, who went public in order to prop up the loser companies they had to gobble up while they were failing?

edit I’m not even getting into the circular deals and outright grift that’s happening in broad daylight.

Google may be the last man standing, but it will be atop a pile of rubble.

Its not like in dot com where companies without revenue got to borrow tons of money they could never pay back.

It’s exactly that, but much worse. These companies do not make money. They lose tons of money every quarter. They have revenue but it doesn’t even cover their operations cost. But that’s not even the expensive part; training new models is hideously pricey and that will not change. And they must keep training new models lest they “fall behind” in this race to the bottom. OpenAI owes a Trillion and a half dollars to their investors. They have at least a trillion in obligations to compute providers. They keep taking more investor money, most recently with SoftBank who sold junk bonds to raise it.

Not to worry, OpenAI may lose money on every sale, but they make up for it in volume!

The problem is not that it’s a useful tool for some applications. The problem is the insane amount of money thrown at this which is not possible to repay unless their product achieves runaway AGI and can actually cause these doomsday scenarios. They have no path to profitability. Like, none.

Huckster’s Billions

Pinterest is leaking

Also a poor socialist who likes wine

Florida Man has rib stolen, claims it turned into another person

What are you clowns fighting about. Trains take people places and cities have suburbs. Now just kiss and get it over with.

Agree. But I think my point is still legit.

I mean, we all pay the minimum possible. My point is you have no real choice in funding this which should enrage everyone.

You pay taxes, right?

Totally understand and to be honest I wish we had that here (Dystopian States of America). People deserve the dignity of spending time relaxing and with their families. It was just a culture shock for me the first time, and now I know to plan better when I’m in Europe. But. yeah the idea that things should be closed or prohibited so that “you’ll go to church more” is obviously idiotic. Where I live, Alcohol sales were banned on Sunday even though everything else was open. They changed the rule recently, but only if a bar/restaurant/retailer specifically gets a “Sunday sales” license (apart from the other one for the rest of the week) and they can’t sell until after noon; ostensibly because of course everybody should be in church before then. Stupid-ass Bible Belt eyeroll

I can’t believe I’m about to defend Elon Musk.

Prior to Tesla, the very few EVs that existed were dopey-looking and had no range. Tesla’s founders (not Elon) realized that lithium battery technology made an actually-good EV possible. They made the Roadster, which was expensive and impressively fast but barebones. Elon horned his way in and took the company on this strategy path: sell that expensive car to create and sell a more mass-market, slightly less expensive car. Then use the money from that car to make an even cheaper mass-market car. That was the Model S/X, and then the Model 3/Y, respectively. It wasn’t that this fancy shit was some sham to trick people, it was what a small barely-funded company had to do. It worked out pretty well until they lost the plot a few years ago.

Making a software-defined car does have its benefits too: adding functionality, detecting issues before you get stranded by a breakdown, an improved infotainment experience. You can argue about the merits of those, but realize that the whole industry does this now - for better or worse. But to say that Tesla tricked people into wasting their money on gee-whiz tech is a dishonest representation of EV history.

By 2022, battery prices plunged 90% and Teslas were the highest profit margin vehicles in the industry.

This plunge in battery prices happened specifically because of Tesla making EVs mass-market.

Legacy auto fumbling the EV transition is due entirely to their hubris and incompetence.

That being said, Elon Musk is a Nazi just like Henry Ford before him.

Which is hilarious, because I’ve been to Cologne many times and know it’s the gay capital of the country :)

If you want to see what it’s like to live without modern conveniences, go to a really poor country and observe the lower-class civilians. Having been to Honduras where poor people live in the mountains (with amazing vistas) with dirt floor huts and no clean drinking water, I can tell you that it is a terrible existence. Half their children die before they make it to 10, because of parasites from the dirt which get in their feet, and contaminated water that they have to hike down and up the mountain for every day. I feel like everyone should see this at some point to reset their perspective.

That always drove me crazy when I went to Germany. “Oops, forgot toothpaste”… wtf, nothing’s open. Guess my teeth will just rot.

Germany’s not even religious, what’s with the Blue Laws?

Lemmy’s basic premise is the same as Reddit’s - a link aggregator. I don’t go to Reddit anymore, so it’s new to me. I like external content that’s selectively taken from there. Now, those bots that just flood subs with Reddit threads can fuck right off.