4 ms·

We have plenty of computation. A decent laptop today is a supercomputer. Terabytes of storage can be had for under $200. Locked hardware isn’t much of an issue

by api 3y ago

We have plenty of computation. A decent laptop today is a supercomputer. Terabytes of storage can be had for under $200. Locked hardware isn’t much of an issue either. Most of that either can be unlocked or there are equivalently powerful unlocked alternatives to be had. What people must seize is the network, and the network effect. Most of today’s tech empires are built on owning the hub around which everyone communicates. The fact that they own a lot of hardware is just about irrelevant to their market power or dominance. The only area where compute power determines relevance at all today is AI base model training and large scale AI deployment and that is likely not going to last that long. In the next few years the market for accelerators for AI is going to heat up a lot and prices will come down. There is no way the nVidia monopoly will last more than another two years tops.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
nologic01 3y ago
The sad part is that nobody really prevents us from seizing the network. It is intrinsically decentralized by design. It takes hard work to subvert this. Yet we don't do it. A sort of digital rigor mortis has descended upon the land. A comatose capitulation, complete lack of vital signs, let alone the lust for life that characterized the early period of the Web when everything seemed possible. The "network effect" is really a psychological and economic mind game. Once a sufficient number of people were conditioned (tricked by novelty and lack of education and regulation) to consider it a "reality" it became a runaway self-financing monopoly. A collective digital hallucination that is actually against the self-interest of the vast majorities, based on rather dodgy foundations and atypical of how societies are generally organized. It was never a perfect world but it never flirted so closely with a surveillance dystopia. This state of affairs becomes very puzzling when it is now almost a point-and-click exercise to setup the equivalent of the early facebook or twitter or skype etc (#fediverse, #matrix, you name it). Either this is the darkest hour before dawn or it is the darkest hour, period.
- iteria 3y ago
  We can't do it until literally everyone is willing to maintain multiple platforms. There's always people who don't and you end up on a situation where either that person is Isolated or what usually happens, people bend to them because it's just easier. Facebook won the moment elders got there because grandma uses Facebook and it's just easier to interact with her there instead of trying to convince her to do something different. As long as these kind of anchors exist centralization is basically predestined
- api 3y ago
  I don’t really agree about the causes. The big problem is economic. It’s a business problem not a technology problem. The problem is that good software that ordinary people can easily use is extremely labor intensive to produce. Software is very expensive. This means you have to have an economic model and there has to be a toll booth somewhere or an indirect way of generating revenue like ads. Centralized services make those parts easy. Everything else can be built in a decentralized manner. Many times it’s even easier to build that way. But how do you build it if there’s no funding available and nobody pays for anything? It can’t all be volunteer. People need to be paid. There’s nowhere near enough volunteer open source labor available to build really polished usable systems for everyone. It’s similar to the dynamic in other areas of media. Media is usually a deflationary race to the bottom. The best media has no funding.
  - nologic01 3y ago
    > nobody pays for anything? We pay for almost everything in tech. Part of the digital hallucination that oppresses us is to have this self-flagellating view. Nobody gets any free hardware of any kind. Nobody gets any free network infrastructure and bandwidth of any kind. Its all paid, by purchases, monthly subscriptions etc. With real, hard earned money by people from all walks of life and economic means. Not to mention that historically people happily paid for newspapers, TV licenses and they still do for streaming. The deceit of big tech is propagating the idea that after you have shelled for the all the above, you really don't have to pay for certain very specific pieces of software and services - oh just pay with your reduced privacy and agency (which you don't even know is important). What is happening is that the masses can't tell they are being ripped off (and the potential risks to individuals and society) and nobody in authority does warn them either. In such a situation it is indeed impossible to have a normal economic model to compete. Bad business models repelled good business models. But there is just the slightest glimmer of light at the end of this dark tunnel. While you are right, the volunteer open source enthusiasts can't substitute for the absence of healthy funding they achieved something very important: they showed that alternatives are possible, they don't require trillions, they just require a society with basic decency.
Willish42 3y ago
Largely agree with this analysis, however your claim about nvidia: > There is no way the nVidia monopoly will last more than another two years tops. I feel as if I've heard paraphrases of this sentiment for at least the last ~6 years. Is there a reason you think nvidia's monopoly is decreasing or will decrease? They have quite the lead in terms of market share for discrete GPUs AFAICT (https://www.tomshardware.com/news/gpu-market-healthy-and-vibrant-in-q2-2023-report https://www.tomshardware.com/news/gpu-market-healthy-and-vib...). Even if costs go down etc., there are market dynamics at play here that I'm not convinced this industry will get disrupted anytime soon. The only major competitors in innovation for this space are Apple, Intel, and AMD, with Apple being the only one with manufacturing improvements, and that's a walled garden with very low market share for desktop computing.
- api 3y ago
  It's different now because AI is hot, which is going to motivate other companies quite a bit more to try to get in on the hardware side. Prior to this year AI was much more of a niche thing. It wasn't seen as the unambiguous next generation of computing the way it is now.
  - p4ul 3y ago
    I'm generally in agreement with all your points, but I would propose that it's not _only_ the hardware that is serving as NVIDIA's moat. They have poured an enormous amount of time and effort into CUDA and its related libraries. All of that work—in addition to the hardware—is what makes their moat deep and wide. If AMD and/or others invest similarly in ROCm, that will be very telling. Oh, and the work that the Mojo folks are doing is also very interesting; I could also see that as a looming threat for NVIDIA!
AnimalMuppet 3y ago
Don't "seize". Build. That is, there is a network out there. You're not going to seize the existing one. You're not going to take over Facebook, either by government mandate or by force of arms. You're just not. And that's OK, because "seize" was always a morally bankrupt idea anyway. You want a network that's the peoples' network? Great. Go build it. Go convince people to use it. That's not as hopeless as it sounds. As the existing stuff becomes more and more horrible to use, the existing players are doing your marketing for you.

by api 3y ago

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

nologic01 3y ago

The sad part is that nobody really prevents us from seizing the network. It is intrinsically decentralized by design. It takes hard work to subvert this. Yet we don't do it. A sort of digital rigor mortis has descended upon the land. A comatose capitulation, complete lack of vital signs, let alone the lust for life that characterized the early period of the Web when everything seemed possible. The "network effect" is really a psychological and economic mind game. Once a sufficient number of people were conditioned (tricked by novelty and lack of education and regulation) to consider it a "reality" it became a runaway self-financing monopoly. A collective digital hallucination that is actually against the self-interest of the vast majorities, based on rather dodgy foundations and atypical of how societies are generally organized. It was never a perfect world but it never flirted so closely with a surveillance dystopia. This state of affairs becomes very puzzling when it is now almost a point-and-click exercise to setup the equivalent of the early facebook or twitter or skype etc (#fediverse, #matrix, you name it). Either this is the darkest hour before dawn or it is the darkest hour, period.

iteria 3y ago
We can't do it until literally everyone is willing to maintain multiple platforms. There's always people who don't and you end up on a situation where either that person is Isolated or what usually happens, people bend to them because it's just easier. Facebook won the moment elders got there because grandma uses Facebook and it's just easier to interact with her there instead of trying to convince her to do something different. As long as these kind of anchors exist centralization is basically predestined
api 3y ago
I don’t really agree about the causes. The big problem is economic. It’s a business problem not a technology problem. The problem is that good software that ordinary people can easily use is extremely labor intensive to produce. Software is very expensive. This means you have to have an economic model and there has to be a toll booth somewhere or an indirect way of generating revenue like ads. Centralized services make those parts easy. Everything else can be built in a decentralized manner. Many times it’s even easier to build that way. But how do you build it if there’s no funding available and nobody pays for anything? It can’t all be volunteer. People need to be paid. There’s nowhere near enough volunteer open source labor available to build really polished usable systems for everyone. It’s similar to the dynamic in other areas of media. Media is usually a deflationary race to the bottom. The best media has no funding.
- nologic01 3y ago
  > nobody pays for anything? We pay for almost everything in tech. Part of the digital hallucination that oppresses us is to have this self-flagellating view. Nobody gets any free hardware of any kind. Nobody gets any free network infrastructure and bandwidth of any kind. Its all paid, by purchases, monthly subscriptions etc. With real, hard earned money by people from all walks of life and economic means. Not to mention that historically people happily paid for newspapers, TV licenses and they still do for streaming. The deceit of big tech is propagating the idea that after you have shelled for the all the above, you really don't have to pay for certain very specific pieces of software and services - oh just pay with your reduced privacy and agency (which you don't even know is important). What is happening is that the masses can't tell they are being ripped off (and the potential risks to individuals and society) and nobody in authority does warn them either. In such a situation it is indeed impossible to have a normal economic model to compete. Bad business models repelled good business models. But there is just the slightest glimmer of light at the end of this dark tunnel. While you are right, the volunteer open source enthusiasts can't substitute for the absence of healthy funding they achieved something very important: they showed that alternatives are possible, they don't require trillions, they just require a society with basic decency.

Willish42 3y ago

Largely agree with this analysis, however your claim about nvidia: > There is no way the nVidia monopoly will last more than another two years tops. I feel as if I've heard paraphrases of this sentiment for at least the last ~6 years. Is there a reason you think nvidia's monopoly is decreasing or will decrease? They have quite the lead in terms of market share for discrete GPUs AFAICT (https://www.tomshardware.com/news/gpu-market-healthy-and-vibrant-in-q2-2023-report https://www.tomshardware.com/news/gpu-market-healthy-and-vib...). Even if costs go down etc., there are market dynamics at play here that I'm not convinced this industry will get disrupted anytime soon. The only major competitors in innovation for this space are Apple, Intel, and AMD, with Apple being the only one with manufacturing improvements, and that's a walled garden with very low market share for desktop computing.

api 3y ago
It's different now because AI is hot, which is going to motivate other companies quite a bit more to try to get in on the hardware side. Prior to this year AI was much more of a niche thing. It wasn't seen as the unambiguous next generation of computing the way it is now.
- p4ul 3y ago
  I'm generally in agreement with all your points, but I would propose that it's not _only_ the hardware that is serving as NVIDIA's moat. They have poured an enormous amount of time and effort into CUDA and its related libraries. All of that work—in addition to the hardware—is what makes their moat deep and wide. If AMD and/or others invest similarly in ROCm, that will be very telling. Oh, and the work that the Mojo folks are doing is also very interesting; I could also see that as a looming threat for NVIDIA!

AnimalMuppet 3y ago

Don't "seize". Build. That is, there is a network out there. You're not going to seize the existing one. You're not going to take over Facebook, either by government mandate or by force of arms. You're just not. And that's OK, because "seize" was always a morally bankrupt idea anyway. You want a network that's the peoples' network? Great. Go build it. Go convince people to use it. That's not as hopeless as it sounds. As the existing stuff becomes more and more horrible to use, the existing players are doing your marketing for you.