Reuters blocks my VPN and the Wayback archived version doesn’t display anything.
My ideal scenario:
-
The AI bubble lasts a little bit longer, they put data centers in space.
-
The bubble pops immediately after this, all the companies go broke and nobody maintains the satellites.
-
Free PC components rain from the skies, I sit out on the roof surrounded by buckets catching RAM and SSDs.
-
They’re a bit scorched but I’ll take what I can get.
Why doe people think data centres in space well work? What so you do with the heat?
Claude, defy physics for me. Make no mistakes
Genius!
- Data centers in space
- Overheat as there is no way to disperse heat in a vacuum
- AI companies go broke
- Can’t maintain the useless space centers
- They crash and collide starting Kessler Syndrome
- We don’t know who struck first, us or them, but we know that it was us that scorched the sky
We don’t know who struck first, us or them, but we know that it was us that scorched the sky
That sounds familiar, like a quote from some movie or game. What’s it from?
The Matrix
The Matrix wasn’t a movie, it was a documentary.
A pre documentary
I still want a cell phone like that… and I want payphones back.
That tracks with the context. Thanks!
Overheat as there is no way to disperse heat in a vacuum
This is incorrect. You cannot do convection heat removal in a vacuum because there’s no air. However, you can still do radiant heat dispersal.
So you dump your heat into something that has a lot of surface area with which to radiate it away from your components.
Space is either very hot or very cold, depending on whether you are in light or shadow. If one side is constantly exposed to light, then there must be radiators on the other side to radiate that heat back off into the cold.
And radiateing heat is the worst way to remove it.
It’s the only way to do it though, so you have no other choice.
Now calculate the size of the radiators a full scale data centre would need.
About 2000 sqm per MW, according to Google. Given an average data center load of 100 MW, about 200k sqm. Add that again for the solar panels you’d need, and you’re at a cool half a million sqm. Compare the ISS, at a measly 7000 sqm. The mind (and budget) boggles.
-
Please please may all of this implodes and all tech giants go broke because people realize whe don’t need them, we already have the fediverse and open-source softwares so can build a fair digital economy and get rid of the GAFAM and their friends.
That’s not how bubbles popping works. If the bubble pops, AI is here forever. It’s a bubble because there are more investors than there can be profit takers. The pop, is those investors losing money. But a TON of people that invested early, or make the product, become incredibly wealthy, and the companies that survive because household names for the next generation.
Damn you and your sad truths. Where are my rose-coloured glasses?
That’s not even the worst, or IMO most likely outcome.
IMO nobody who “invests” will come out ahead. This whole thing is a combination ponzi-scheme + ball-and-cup game with IPOs invested in other IPOs and circular revenue streams respectively. As such the bubble will only burst when the billionaire class decides to stop bailing it out. When that happens, companies are liquidated and their assets are sold off at a discount to priveledged buyers. AKA the billionaires will just own it directly and by that point we wont be able to do shit.
We are at a pivotal shift in technology where computing power matters more than money. When the bubble bursts the physical assets that let them control the internet and us will remain.
Thats why they want killer robots. Once they have those they basically win.
So China has already gotten ahead of the US on AI…
China is ahead of the US in many things.
Prett sure the comment was sarcastic
“Ain’t that a shame.”
“You’re the one to blame.”
Shh, you’ll ruin the tech CEO’s self delusions. They need that AI to forget about their past boondoggles. Like the metaverse and NFTs.
They need it so they can have reasons they like their own kids
Tim Swiney still haven’t fully given up on those two.
Besides, boondoggle is fun. Some of those patterns are wild af.
Not even people there want to support this cray-cray ai trend no more, they just ahead of the curve huh.
Cheap GPUs when?
Won’t happen anytime soon. Even if AI bubble popped today, the companies that remain make AI a household name will still be scooping up chips for decades.
There is still the problem of making money.
Probably not any time soon? China’s buying 5090s in bulk to literally remove the chips and transplant them onto server form factor boards for AI.
The stocks crashed because there’s so much competition now and nobody can expect to take the whole market. Deepseek, Qwen, GLM, Kimi are ALL way cheaper than the US counterparts and quite comparable. It’s not exciting anymore. When Deepseek R1 came out, everyone thought that Deepseek was going to completely take everything over. Now pretty much everyone is getting close to Claude in performance.
Never. Western capitalists will make Chinese hardware illegal before they allow cheaper goods to undercut their profits. It’s exactly what they’re doing in the auto industry, why should tech be different?
Already did it with phones.
The only country that might do that is the us. There are many western capitalists happy to buy from a competitive global market.
I’m beginning to suspect never. The industry (read nvidia) got taste for selling stuff in bulk to those who don’t care about price and/or quality. They don’t want to return to the world where regular people (ew) were their primary source of income. They will find new scam to use their cards on.
When people give Intel a chance and when other companies start making good GPU’s. I knowo it’s terribly hard but given enough price hikes it WILL be profitable and it will happen.
That’s… that’s not how this works. That’s not how any of this works.
Mild discounts, yes. Cheap again? No.
CheaPUs
Oh you sweet summer child. Do you actually think the price of GPUs are going to come down?!?
Ill take two cheap gpus please
You can buy a 16gb v100 in a pcie card for under 400usd or just the gpu for 220usd, unfortunately the price jumps 3x minimum if you want a 32gb version
You can buy a 16gb v100
no thanks, I’d prefer a GPU that can actually process graphics AND DISPLAY THEM…
Do these support Optimus to redirect the video output? Could be an option if it’s cheap enough.
nah, I don’t want to eat the leftovers of nvidia’s AI slop machine, I want a gpu that’s for graphics the WAY GOD INTENDED
I guess you could buy a bc250 or a gameboy if thats important for you, but i doubt theyll show up as a result of chinas datacenter failing so youll just have to wait even more then
I’d prefer a gpu meant to drive displays because my friends aren’t LLMs and all this absurd garbage has made it impossible to buy 5090s without a mortgage.
I’d wager the people asking for cheap GPUs above want them for the same.
Only if you’re fine with writing your own drivers for Moore’s Threads GPUs…
Not until we recover from bailing out the US AI industry, which will probably take at least a few years.
They really are beating us at everything.
They did beat America in the race towards oppressive authoritarianism, but under Trump, the U.S. has caught up a great deal. So much winning!
So the latter two are fairly easily explainable by racism and homophobia and are actually easier to avoid if you don’t have a democracy. China’s done well, they not had a real refugee crisis lately and don’t have too many black people to hate (they DO still be hella racist over there, somehow Africans were even at fault for COVID according to some Chinese officials).
There was a huge social media outcry about refugees in much of Europe about a decade ago that the conservatives kept milking for a long, long time. Then they’ll claim black men are rapists and take the one example that keeps doing it again every time he gets out of jail as if that’s representative of every African. Then the outcry about LGBT people trying to groom your kids and whtaever. This is all for conservatives to get votes. They get almost half a country thinking that the damn librul communist (yes, they consider those to be the same thing, I’m not even going to get into that) government is out to erase straight white people… In a country with 10 black people and 5 muslims (okay, I’m exaggerating, but there REALLY aren’t a lot of them here, whereas the conservatives will tell you that they’re completely taking over and they’re all getting billions from the government in aid and whatnot)
If the people don’t actually have a choice (like in China, where there’s literally only one party allowed), there’s no need for manufactured outrage about foreigners. Which is great because then there’s less hate, but it also means you literally don’t get to choose the political ideals of the people who govern you. If you have a bad faith opposition party to worry about, they will make up shit to get into power.
TL;DR: Completely subdue your people politically so there’s no competition, then there’s no manufactured outrage, then people won’t think literally all their tax money is going to a single refugee center that in reality holds 10 families.
Or you just provide increases in the standard of living and people will like the government, lol.
I have no doubt that people would like the government in my country a lot more if it wasn’t for the conservative opposition working to drive hate against anything progressive that the government is actually achieving from time to time. Being gay was never illegal, but the law was antiquated and said that marriage is between a man and a woman. Literally just changing that so that two people of the same gender getting married would be possible, was an absolute media shitstorm. I wonder how it would go in China if they tried legalizing gay marriage now - there’s simply no opposition party to campaign off it.
That’s why I say that it’s easier to have better satisfaction ratings when people have 0 choice. There’s just no reason to sow division in the first place.
How do Chinese elections work? You don’t think they get a choice?
You get a choice between candidates approved by the party and you’re not allowed to even start a competing political party. I wouldn’t call it choice.
Liking the government doesn’t imply having a democracy, though. And also thinking that you have a democratic country doesn’t mean that you do live in one
It’s not that China bad, it’s more that China is good at creating great conditions for a majority of their citizens, but this doesn’t imply that it’s heaven on earth, still
There is no heaven on earth lol.
Removed by mod
Removed by mod
Excuse me, why did my comment get removed? How was I not being excellent?
Removed by mod
Maybe you could explain why it’s flawed, or even why my other link is incorrect.
There’s a difference between propaganda and selectively presented facts.
The first graphic is misleading because it compares US war spending with Chinese infrastructure spending while ignoring American infrastructure investment and Chinese military spending. It’s a false comparison.
The second graph is from the legitimate Democracy Perception Index 2024. The numbers aren’t fabricated, but they measure how democratic people think their country is, not how democratic it actually is.
Oppressive authoritarianism? But tankies told me that China is a place of unbridled liberty. A land of milk and honey. Unlike the evil West which is always horrible and terrible.
China hasn’t dropped a bomb in 50 years. America started their latest war by triple tapping a little girls school during peace talks. 200 dead little girls.
The USA is doing all they can to discredit the USA
Mask is finally off!
deleted by creator
oppressive authoritarianism
I mean… Can Chinese people vote out the current party and pick something else?
Yes? No? No. How the fuck is it a democracy then.
Given the exponentially oversized influence that rich capitalists have on politics everywhere that is not socialist, it is evidently more democratic to not allow them to participate in politics at all.
You know, governance of the people, by the people, and all that.
The party? No. The people? Yes.
the people? the people what? the people voting out the current people? that makes no sense.
The party cannot be voted out, the people in the party can be voted out.
So then you’d concede Ukraine is not democratic since they can’t vote out Zelenskyy, right?
The point here being - democracy isn’t just “the presence of multiple political parties”.
Elections being postponed during wartime is pretty standard. If he won’t voluntarily leave office when the war’s over then we can talk about it not being a democracy.
In what countries?
All of them?
So people in a nation where disagreeing with leadership is punished all agree with leadership. Interesting…
I asked a man from North Korea how he felt about living in such a place. He replied: “eh, can’t complain.”
I asked someone from Switzerland and he said “Well the flag is a big plus.”
Nope
You think the CCP is going to punish 140 million people over a poll?
People who have never experienced democracy and have only been fed lies by their authoritarian government think their country is democratic and equal. Shocker.
You’re talking about the US, right?
Lmao, you know the US has never been a democracy right? Literally an oligarchy
One can say the same about the US… Just saying.
Why would I when it‘s so off-topic? The fact you guys still do blatant whataboutism is telling. Try to be innovative for once.
I mean… China learned most of what they do from the US. Same with Nazis in Germany, they took their playbook from the US.
To some extent… But in the USA until recently people never had reason to fear speaking out against their government.
I mean…
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/63/WTO_protests_in_Seattle_November_30_1999.jpg
That’s from 1999, in the US.
Unless you were black, a woman, gay, socialist, communist, etc lmfao.
You ever read a history book?
To some extent… But in the USA until recently people never had reason to fear speaking out against their government.
Which people? The FBI killed Black Panther organizer Fred Hampton in his bed, back in the 60s.
The Red Scare was a decade before that.
And the back in the 1930s, The Bonus Army, a movement of World War 1 veterans demanding payment for their service from the government, was violently crushed by the united States military.
Probably because it accomplishes nothing.
For managed democracy!
Happy Liberty Day!
There’s also been a certain “Soviet democracy”, the democracy perception of which in the polls would be sky high especially under dear Stalin and Voroshilov leading it with iron hand, and less when dissent stopped getting you executed.
Same thing with China. Dissent gets punished brutally. Young protesters are dying in camps in the thousands. The Chinese government just doesn‘t let the tanks roll in anymore. Instead they utilize mass surveillance to track down each and every protester and deport them from home. Tiananmen square massacres are happening every day behind closed doors. That‘s why the public thinks it‘s a democracy despite one party controlling everything openly, down to who may run against them in local elections. Or they‘re too afraid to say otherwise.
And then one can think one step further and realize that western nations are not very far from similarly detecting dissenters before they do anything useful, and they don’t need camps, just subtly directing them in life onto paths not harmful to the establishment and unlikely to bring offspring. Big data and social media magic.
So then why did Russians in the same study claim abysmal democracy? Aren’t they afraid of the KGB?
deleted by creator
The Russian psyche is one of pessimistic resignation. Its also true that Russia has never experienced free democracy. There are many who believe the fall of the USSR was a terrible thing and they blame “democracy” for their current circumstances. This is part of why Putin gets away with authoritarianism.
The American psyche must be fat as fuck and dripping with the blood of the innocent, if we’re generalizing.
Non sequitur that has absolutely nothing to do with the validity of the graph.
I’m sure you’ll get similar results if you ask people in North Korea.
It’s really funny to me seeing someone using a chart showcasing oppressive authoritarianism a gotcha against an accusation of oppressive authoritarianism.
You don’t think it has anything to do with the fact that China lifted 800,000,000 people out of poverty in 40 years?
Or that over 90% of Chinese adults own their own home?
Your belief that China is an authoritarian oppressive regime seems to be unfalsifiable. If approval ratings are high it’s because the people are being silenced and secretly hate their government. If approval is low it’s because they hate their government. If the approval ratings are real then they’ve been brainwashed by nationalism.
Like everything indicates the approval ratings are real, there were studies conducted by Western universities that didn’t have stake in the matter and most Chinese citizens had a positive opinion of the PRC. There’s no way to fake this kind of stuff as well as you’re describing for decades.
There are various reasons for why I can understand Chinese citizens like China. They’re entering the golden age of their economy right now and legitimately have competitive quality of life when compared to Americans. Their country is becoming a superpower and that could be a source of national pride for some Chinese citizens. I think those reasons can explain the results without adding in coercion.
Your belief that China is an authoritarian oppressive regime is unfalsifiable.
you are taking a logical leap here. it’s more accurate to say my belief that China is an authoritarian oppressive regime is not falsifiable by a public opinion poll. there are plenty other options that may falsify it.
Okay true.
What’s your point?
That disagreement with the government is not popular there.
Edit: don’t know why I’m getting downvoted, I’m confident that that was the point, you’re shooting the messenger lol
Why not?
Because the government disappears dissenters.
Using personal opinion of crowds is notoriously very bad and people are easily misguided. ALL this says is the Chinese BELIEVE they’re democratic and all equal. Not that they actually are.
You’re right, and I see that opinion poll as a indicator of the direction that America has been going: a place where many people think they are in a democracy, while actually living in a country that is more authoritarian than it was in the past.
Also, westerners like myself tend to complain about trump/etc without acknowledging the continuum of raising fascism. We should focus on the lies we have been fed, it’s not easy, nor late ;)
Chinese citizens BELIEVE they’re democratic and all equal. Not that they actually are.
I agree with that, yeah.
get outta here with your facts.
What fact do you believe is presented in this image?
the image shows perception of democracy is much higher in china than other countries generally considered to be developed democracies by western discourse. i thought this was self-evident.
His American eyes can’t comprehend anything that doesn’t fit his propagandized brain.
sounds like they get mad whenever it happens lolol!
In that case, we are in agreement. People in authoritarian countries will definitely say they are happier with the government than people in freer countries
what? no they won’t lol
I don’t need a .ml telling me shit
jimmies rustled
Perception is a tricky business.
But you are not posting this to talk about the perception, instead to suggest that there somehow is democracy in a state where only one party is allowed to exist.
You do know that they just have one less party than Americans right?
not American, but hearsay says there’s also a green party.
I’ve heard the legends, lol.
Chinese who don’t say these opinions are labeled a dissonant and oppressed by their government. Just like how elections are completely staged in dictatorships.
This graph is completely useless.
These are great proof of China’s superiority! Until you see the Chinese questionnaires:
Choose an option:
[ ] My government serves the people
[ ] I want my social credit score to take a nosedive. No more bank loans, government permits, study or career opportunities for me, please!Social credit score doesn’t apply to regular people in the PRC. It’s for corporations and sometimes politicians. https://youtu.be/wYaKoDyIvWA
Check up on the social credit score
There have been widespread misconceptions in media reports about a unified social credit “score” based on individuals’ behavior, leading to punishments if the score is too low or rewards if the score is high.
The social credit system is a broad governance strategy to track businesses, individuals, and government institutions and enhance their perceived trustworthiness rather than a single system
Awesome, just a broad strategy, not yet a single unified system. There’s still a chance to escape specific punishments.
Have you read about the punishments in the Wiki article?
Dude what’s the point of a system that enforces behavior when there’s no punishment?
Aw dude
Ohh hey, opinion poll, like a toilet paper.
some context, first of all, the -40% collapse only brought the STAR50 index back to its March 2026 levels.
and the Chinese stock market is heavily moderated by the government which is very different from the US market. if the stock rallies too quickly, the government generally speaking will try to slow it down. Sometimes through explicit policies 1, sometimes through a kind of “scare tactic” 2. Conversely, when the stock drops too sharply, the government also intervenes to prop it up 3. Honestly I feel more countries should do the same.
The Chinese stock market is also much smaller relative to its GDP (101.5%) compared to the US (227%) 4. All this is to say, if you look at China and think, “huh, their AI bubble burst and they still seem to be fine?”, think again. If and when the AI bubble bursts for the US, it’s going to be much much worse.
US markets will halt trading for those same issues.
No! I wanna see CEOs and entire Boards jump out the window like in '29 dammit!
'29 is only slightly over 2 years away
Do we have that much time?
don’t we all
Hmmm. I had not considered that. I probably don’t have enough “celebrate that things got a bit brighter” drinks set aside for that.
Point 3 is the Buffet Index. In 1929 and 2007 it was at 130%. Guess where that extra 100% comes from. AI companies and AI speculation. We are so fucked.
Much less debt and financial “engineering” in China, and much lower borrowing costs.
Was there candy inside?
No, just cockroaches
Was there candy in the cockroaches?
No, just more cockroaches
It’s cockroaches all the way down.
Oh dear. I guess China ain’t what it used to be.
China used to be something?
Lol. This is like British people shitting on America in 1950. You know they’re the new superpower right?
Absolutely! Without China there’s no opioid crisis.
False. The demand has been created. While there is demand, there will be supply, China or no China.
China tech stocks are back to March this year, and AI stocks are still almost half their stock index.
So the bubble… Became slightly smaller…
Interesting. I think this is the first time I’ve seen the word “bubble” explicitly acknowledged as a reality and not a question in a headline of a major news outlet.
So I searched for '“bubble” in the past month from Reuters, and found several headlines raising the concern, but none actually using the word “bubble”, with the exception of one investors meeting in Singapore.
It seems that editors don’t want to scare/anger Western investors with the truth, but the Asia news desk under no such burden.
Its been in the news, The Guardian has been calling it out…its even been called out on foxnews lol. There are others too dating back to beginning of the year too.
AI slowdown calls justified but collapse of bubble may be more immediate threat
AI bubble fears, rising treasury yields put tech stocks to the test
Just going by headline grammar, the first one is a good example: it acknowledges the bubble exist. The second makes it seem like it’s just a fear, but not necessarily a reality.
Edit: It’s this bubble is really bizarre. I hope all the pundits saying, “Nobody could have predicted” get laughed out of their careers, but I know it will never happen. Accountability is for the poor.
I hope all the pundits saying, “Nobody could have predicted” get laughed out of their careers
Lol, that would be nice, but i doubt it. Its akin to the crypto bubble…some people just get tired of the drum beating and by the time the accountability phase rolls around, theres another crisis happening lol. Never ending doom cycle.
There will be no accountability because everyone was in on it; ditto US-Iraq War 2.
yep, journalistic integrity went out the window the second the media started quoting tweets as news…now its just a mad rush to get the first clicks and most ads shoved into ones face…who cares if what you say is accurate or even truthful…gotta get that click crack…so yah, no accountability anymore.
It’s the usual imperial framing.
In China it’s a “bubble”, but in USA it’s a “build out”, “growth”, “boom”, or whatever…
Paywall
