Want to wade into the sandy surf of the abyss? Have a sneer percolating in your system but not enough time/energy to make a whole post about it? Go forth and be mid: Welcome to the Stubsack, your first port of call for learning fresh Awful you’ll near-instantly regret.
Any awful.systems sub may be subsneered in this subthread, techtakes or no.
If your sneer seems higher quality than you thought, feel free to cut’n’paste it into its own post — there’s no quota for posting and the bar really isn’t that high.
The post Xitter web has spawned soo many “esoteric” right wing freaks, but there’s no appropriate sneer-space for them. I’m talking redscare-ish, reality challenged “culture critics” who write about everything but understand nothing. I’m talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. They’re inescapable at this point, yet I don’t see them mocked (as much as they should be)
Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldn’t be surgeons because they didn’t believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I can’t escape them, I would love to sneer at them.
(Credit and/or blame to David Gerard for starting this.)
SoftBank Cashes Out Nvidia Stock (Archive)
I'm too jaded to get my hopes up, but wouldn't it be so nice if this were the beginning of the end for the AI bubble?
Either they're right, and the bubble pops soon, or they're too early and it's another hilarious Softbank L
my read of the situation is that it's another phenomenal softbank L even if they timed this sale at the top of the nvdia valuation. if they thought it's a bubble popping soon, they would try to get out of openai deals, but they're doing the opposite. most immediately, they need money to dump 20B-ish into openai by end of the year, triggered by that no-profit transition, and it's money that they apparently don't have. that their stock dumped like 15% in a week probably didn't help either
This. Masayoshi son is selling furniture to YOLO more money into OpenAI.
ok, cool. when does he start selling off all the super limited-edition anime waifu merch? asking for a friend
this has increased the comedy
if you think it's stupid, it's not as stupid as it sounds, it's worse. they also sold some tmobile stock and took debt backed by ownership of arm. it's like they instinctively get rid of pieces of ai bubble that retains some money and hold to pieces that are black holes
It's a losing proposition either way, right? Without investor money OpenAI (and friends) can't keep buying chips from Nvidia, but SoftBank doesn't have money to keep giving OpenAI without selling off their stake in Nvidia. Yes, it's incredibly dumb to ditch their share of the only parts of this that are actually making money, but if they don't keep the cash flowing them nobody is going to be making money. Like, greatly oversimplifying here, obviously, but it seems like SoftBank loses either way.
It's almost like this whole bubble is really bad actually.
i don't know, maybe softbank counted on openai not being able to go for-profit (which is not IPO, so it's not like they got more transparent or anything). that deal was signed long time ago in bubble terms, and it went like this (or so i heard): first tranche was 10B from softbank + up ro 10B from other investors, they couldn't get all that money from other investors and that's why it was 18.5B and not 20B. that was some half year ago? even back then softbank didn't had the money and had to sell part of arm (iirc). now they had to supply the remaining 22.5B, idk if it's all softbank, or whether they would get out of that deal if they could, or whether they will continue pouring money there (we can assume all these dcs are vaporware) can openai find other suckers? possibly, but scaring away a reliable one would be bad for business
Business strategy: become the Red Lobster of venture capital