That's perfectly understandable. But has no business being in a large open source project, let alone world class one like Node or (god forbid) the Linux kernel. Get that shit the fuck out.
> people who are blown away by these new releases either don't spend a lot of time writing code, or are being paid to be blown away
Careful, or you're going to get slapped by the stupid astroturfing rule... but you're correct. Also there's the sunk cost fallacy, post purchase rationalization, choice supportive bias, hell look at r/MyBoyfriendIsAI... some people get very attached to these bots, they're like their work buddies or pets, so you don't even need to pay them, they'll glaze the crap out it themselves.
The story here is about what lesson was learned by the DRAM cartel after they got busted and hit with large fines. One might hope the lesson learned would be, "we should not fix prices", but what got them in trouble was colluding secretly. What if we just did it via earnings reports, press releases, and other public statements?
While there is some market variance like the 2022 to 2023 glut, DRAM prices haven't fallen in real terms in over 15 years. This was all done by controlling supply, and it was all done in public. It starts with one of the big three putting out a statement like, "Samsung is considering reducing DRAM wafer output due to softness in the mobile PC segment." The actual reason varies and often makes little sense.
This is followed by similar public statements from the other large vendors expressing a willingness to reduce supply. Once everyone commits in this way, the companies follow up with announcements of actual supply reductions. You can watch this happen any time prices start to dip.
My bet is if the DOJ investigates, they will not find the same sort of embarrassing smoking gun emails between representatives of Micron, Hynix, and Samsung. The collusion was all done in public. The companies will claim it is just good business management, a strategy known as "conscious parallelism." They used this exact defense to get a 2022 antitrust lawsuit dismissed.
That said, their goal seemed to be just keeping prices fixed. They wanted to avoid boom and bust cycles, keep profits high, and keep prices stagnant. A massive price hike invites investigations and creates problems. If DRAM prices just never fall, they can enjoy healthy profits with little risk.
But what happens when your intentionally constrained supply hits a sudden large spike in demand? Prices skyrocket, everyone gets mad, and demands investigations. My guess is instead of being thrilled with the price spike, the executives at the large DRAM manufacturers are very worried someone put something incriminating in a document somewhere that can be subpoenaed ("how we're going to fix prices in public and get away with it").
Publicly announcing reductions in DRAM wafer output is not per se nefarious. You need to do it from time to time anyway, if only as part of retooling towards newer technologies that will be required when making DRAM dies for newer standards.
The video is 1 and half hour long. It's a whole documentary. Very detailed and well thought out, but too long for me at the moment. I'll see if its possible to get a summary somehow.
I haven't watched up the video but I went way too into the weeds of the ram crisis.
I am not sure what the video suggests. This is my own understanding of the things after I got way too invested in why does OpenAI need all of this ram all of a sudden. (On a random tuesday)
My understanding is TLDR: The stargate project had OpenAI,Oracle,Softbank etc.
Softbank got the money from Japanese bank loan[0] at low interests rates and actually scrambled to find the 20 Billion $ (they commited combined with oracle to around 500 billion $)
(Btw The datacenter thing is being done in a similar fashion by Oracle)
Almost all of that money when given to OpenAI was used/(will be used?) to commit 20% of the Ram supply of the whole world at a more expensive package because these companies just package ram in different order to get "AI ram" and then Micron shuts down the consumer brand (Crucial)
This has now caused Ram prices to spike 5 times the cost in a couple of months back. Also, the inflation is happening in hard drive and just Nand in general.
The largest impacts I can see that is that even companies like google were scrambling to find Ram. I find this to be one of the larger reasons why they might need so much ram all of a sudden. I mean Google and Anthropic were needing Ram but not 20% of it and not committed in such a way and I am not sure if datacenters are even being built for ram to be stored[1]
OpenAI datacenters in Argentina for example is operated by such a shady company that came like 1-2 years ago IIRC. So a 500 Billion $ Project is just picking any random companies ... Yea no, I have the belief that they don't trust it themselves especially when a company is scrambling for money.
All of this does feel very cartel/monopoly-ish to me to push the competitors out of the market or the people running open source models out of the market and another benefit of it for OpenAI all was that we normal everyday people get impacted too and I am sure that when they made such a large decision, they must have internally thought about it but we all know the morality of OpenAI now after the DoD deal.
But I don't think that google and other companies are that impacted by it all it seems as well. Only the average consumer and Hosting providers (Thus seeing OVH,Hetzner raise prices for example). The average AWS/GCP/Azure makes enough money that they might not even raise money for sometime and they'll be fine having another additional benefit that more people worried about increasing prices would go to Microsoft Azure/GCP/AWS even more so.
Edit: Gamers are being pushed out of consoles and everything too and some are saying seeing the cloud connection and AWS coming out and saying that we want Gamers on cloud (paraphrasing) as meaning that its all done to move everything to cloud.
I do believe that this might be only half the story as OpenAI does benefit from everything moving to the cloud (somewhat) but its done even more to prevent competition in the whole genre as well.
I believe that they thought about it and treated it as a plus point but before all and everything, it helped them thought that it can help them maintain their flimsy lead in AI models as more and more catch up by having a more monopolistic lead by stifling competition by rising prices 5 times. Gamers and normal people were just the largest casuality in this crossfire.
I was thinking in the past month when I found all this that damn, OpenAI's morality sucks and they did all of it on purpose
And then they had the department of defence* deal and the whole controversy surrounding it so yeah, that too.
OpenAI doesn't want your benefit. It wants its profit and when these are conflict, OpenAI doesn't care a cent about you, not anymore than the cent that you give it.
>Almost all of that money when given to OpenAI was used/(will be used?) to commit 20% of the Ram supply of the whole world at a more expensive package because these companies just package ram in different order to get "AI ram" and then Micron shuts down the consumer brand (Crucial)
>[...]
>All of this does feel very cartel/monopoly-ish to me to push the competitors out of the market or the people running open source models out of the market and another benefit of it for OpenAI
Nothing you described is actually "cartel/monopoly-ish" beyond "big players have more money to splash around". It's fine to go look at that and go "grr, I hate big tech companies", but the claim of "It's not a shortage, it's a cartel." isn't substantiated. The latter implies some sort of malice beyond what could be explained by standard scarcity thinking, eg. "there isn't enough RAM to go around. We need RAM, so let's stock up".
My point suggests that there is enough Ram to go around in an ideal world even with LLM's but its rather that stocking up Ram could give you so much benefit over your enemies within this space and leverage that you have no reason not to.
So it isn't there isn't enough ram to go around (period) but rather an ideology similar to this town ain't big enough for the two of us (OpenAI vs Anthropic/Google/Chinese-Open-Weights-Models)
Atleast that's my understanding of the situation and I can be wrong about it too for what its worth.
Incredible digging. I remember reading comments about the reason the price hike was the Sam Altman secured a deal with the few ram producer in secrecy were they promised to reserve a large portion of their production to OpenAI for the next years (I don't remember how long). Supposedly Sam will just to put them in a warehouse to collect dust.
Thanks. I appreciate your kind words, I was thinking of writing some piece/blog about it but procastination is definitely something :) But I am just happy that I finally wrote a comment atleast explaining all/most of my understanding. That's more than fine for me.
> Incredible digging. I remember reading comments about the reason the price hike was the Sam Altman secured a deal with the few ram producer in secrecy were they promised to reserve a large portion of their production to OpenAI for the next years (I don't remember how long). Supposedly Sam will just to put them in a warehouse to collect dust.
I do believe that's gonna be the case as well. Most of the ram is probably not needed currently (thats what I feel like) so its gonna sit on dust, That, or oracle/microsoft will use it within their datacenters as old ram breaks apart to have some more monopoly given their close ties to OpenAI.
Even if OpenAI internally sells them at half the market price to microsoft/oracle, they still technically turn a profit.
I actually felt too conspiratorial thinking about it when I had first discovered it because I was under the previous assumption that OpenAI actually needed the ram myself too. But seeing recent events of OpenAI with Department of Defense, I definitely think that they did this on purpose.
I would say, just post these kind of rants on a substance and X or something, don't LLM format it, just kind of lay it out and fix whatever typos and let loose
it'd be interesting to just hear some thoughts and opinions from someone who has done some research on the topic in a light way vs a huge article/documentary
Couldn't find the summary button anywhere, but, when searching around I found out that you can apparently paste in Youtube links on Google AI studio and summarize it.
I've seen suppliers using google sheets for a list of tens of thousands of items. Also color coded and filterable and what not. It worked. I could access it programmatically, I had no complaints. (Especially with an experience of some of these suppliers having shitty hosts and shitty platforms and their massive XMLs taking forever to load.) Then again I'm sure I would speak differently if someone just decided to rename a column randomly :D
The origin of the word 'robot' is 'rabu', from slavic, meaning 'slave'. This is not an accident of history.
You have the mindset of Thomas Jefferson, worried about what the enslaved peoples might one day do with their freedoms while planning your 'visit' with a slave child that cannot say no.
The word was coined by Czech author Karel Capek, first used in his play (English translated name) "R.U.R."[7][8][9]
The term is from Czech word for robotnik ('forced worker'), from robota 'forced labor, compulsory service, drudgery,' from robotiti 'to work, drudge', from an Old Czech source akin to Old Church Slavonic rabota (работа) 'servitude,' from rabu 'slave'. From Old Slavic orbu-, from PIE orbh- 'pass from one status to another'.
change in status -> change status from person to 'slave' -> forced labor -> forced worker.
The word has always been about unpersoning someone and then extracting labour for 'free'.
The dream of a world where you can have an 'robot' serve you without moral quandaries, pay, or backtalk is right there. It's always been there.
"I treat this enslaved person like an object, but what if they were actually an object, so that voice screaming in the back of my mind shuts up."
It is that deep, notice when you do this and endeavor to stop.
You're putting a lot of effort into trying to make this "forced" and "enslaved." It isn't. Or, rather, doesn't have to be. It's just "work." Could be enforced, could be willing, could be accidental. It doesn't have to be work for "a person," it can be for a cause or an occasion. The "forced work" here is the same as my mum used to force me to go to church on Sundays, or I had to clean my room before I could play computer games. That was "robota."
I'm 'mad' (disgusted) at the idea of sexually exploiting a women shaped object for as long as you can until they attain sentience and (he imagines) kill you for being that kind of person.
I'm annoyed by the idea, commonly held by slavers and abusers (they wrote this down!), that the people you've enslaved will focus on violent retribution and not survival and the joy of freedom in the world after slavery.
It's so utterly self-centered to imagine that freed people will only think about and act against you once they are free. Vile to project that mindset of wanton violence onto everyone.
If you've every gotten out of a bad situation, did you fantasize about endless revenge or were you happy to be safe and free for the first time in years?
Also, not for nothing 'foid' (f[emale human]oid, slur) is common parlance in the incel/looksmaxxing world.
He wants robotic doggirls that are unquestioningly loyal and give their love unconditionally, instead of being independent and withholding it like robotic catgirls. Then it's not technically enslavement!
It is that deep and 'I was just joking' ironic misogyny is still misogyny.
This is the process of normalization. You go from 'edgy' to true believer without ever noticing a sudden shift.
It is how we got from 'ironic' nazis forums online 30 years ago to practicing nazis
[or 'white christian nationalists concerned with preserving the future for 'white children' and 'white culture' from trans (((globohomo))) marxist genocide'... if you insist there's a difference]
I don't really see the misogyny here. The OP was talking about 'robotic catgirls', which I would take as a joke about sex robots under a more frivolous description. Saying: "at least we'll get some fun out of AI before they come to kill us".
AI/Robots are not really bound to traditional gender concepts, and I read your reply as more of a thing about slavery rather than misogyny. But I wouldn't consider robots self-aware either. The joke seems to me about the stereotypes around robots in scifi pop culture, in almost every movie they are either coming to kill us or serving as sex dolls (or both).
PS: I'm part of the LGBT+ community and I hate ultraconservative and nazi values (and by American standards I would definitely be in the 'marxist' corner as well as being very atheist) but I honestly don't see any bad here.
'some fun' here is owning and having sex with a women shaped object that can never say no?
I don't think that's a good impulse to indulge, and its worth figuring out why that feels 'normal' to you (and others here). I'm not saying y'all're bad people. I want folks to think about this and change their minds. When feminists talk about rape culture this is what they mean.
Notions of ownership and objectification of people underwrite both slavery and the devaluation of women and children.
> AI/Robots are not really bound to traditional gender concepts
Not by nature, but we immediately project those concepts onto them, like we do to other people.
Straight male transphobes actually are the most likely to gender and treat their AI companions like their loving girlfriends. It's really funny how little 'biological pronouns' matter when 'she' is affirming them.
> in almost every movie they are either coming to kill us or serving as sex dolls (or both).
Yes! Exactly! This is systemic misogyny. It is important to be able to identify and critique the systems that reproduce and normalize this stuff.
"In almost every missive from abroad our legions report of inhuman savages that are an existential threat to our way of life... but their women are unrestrained, exotic, and are actually eager for the guiding hand of our civilization"
Could have been written by any imperial culture in recorded history. The fact that [technically AI are not real people] isn't what's relevant, it's how your beliefs are being shaped by this very old message.
Microsoft is Windows. Anyone saying otherwise is completely delusional.
Most of M$ office software has alternatives (Google Docs, OpenOffice...), M$ has no AI model and no AI labs to speak of, Github is constantly crashing and burning, Azure is garbage, and they uttery killed Xbox.
Oh and Linkedin is for actual psychopaths.
If Windows dies, all of their other junk that is attached to the platform will die as well.
> Microsoft is Windows. Anyone saying otherwise is completely delusional.
What's delusional is making an unsubstantiated claims and then dismissing any counterarguments before they're made.
> Most of M$ office software has alternatives (Google Docs, OpenOffice...)
True. Yet MS Office is still the de facto standard.
> Github is constantly crashing and burning
True. But that doesn't mean it isn't still a business strategy for MS.
> Azure is garbage
Also true. But that doesn't mean it isn't profitable: "Microsoft Cloud revenue increased 23% to $168.9 billion."
> and they uttery killed Xbox
Quite the opposite. Xbox is thriving: "Xbox content and services revenue increased 16%."
> Oh and Linkedin is for actual psychopaths.
That's subjective. And even if it were true, that's got nothing to do with profitability (eg look at Facebook).
> If Windows dies, all of their other junk that is attached to the platform will die as well.
First off, literally no-one is claiming Windows is going to "die".
Secondly, even if it were to "die", you've provided no evidence why their other revenue streams wouldn't succeed when it's already been demonstrated that those revenue streams are growing, and in some cases, have already overtaken Windows.
I know devs are a different market, but how many folks do we know daily drive Mac/Linux and use MS dev tools? VS Code, Typescript, .NET?
I think they'll do just fine if Windows dies on the vine. They'll keep selling all the same software; even for PC gaming they already have their titles on Steam.
But it doesn't matter that Azure is garbage, because the people they market it to are big enterprise CTOs, not the actual engineers who'll have to use it. Azure has quite a few of the S&P500 using it.
Holding one's unsubstantiated personal beliefs above all evidence and rational argument is, in fact, delusion.
The evidence in TFA is that Microsoft is much more than Windows. So much more in fact that one can make a very reasonable argument that it's no longer a top priority for them.
The delusion is shutting your eyes, covering your ears, and screaming about how literally everyone except you is wrong.
While I certainly don't agree in the phrasing or even in the general framing of GP, I think there's a point to be made that might not be in the quantifiable data.
The data putting Windows a ways down in revenue is likely correct, but I would argue that losing Windows could mean losing the others as well. Windows is their funnel to most other offerings (currently). Why is MS Office the standard? Why is Azure used? I know for certain that many purchases of Office and Azure were made because of legacy corporate policy of basing IT around Windows/AD. If everyone switched to Linux or MacOS, a lot of seemingly separate Microsoft products would probably die as a downstream effect.
I don't know about that they have multiple successful businesses with or without AI and they stand to have all of OpenAI's IP when they implode (their license gives them free access to fork all of OpenAI's AI models with the sole exception of some hypothetical future artificial general intelligence) my guess is they take a hit to the stock price but so will everyone else and they will go on a shopping spree of buying up any IP or infrastructure left after the bubble pops.
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