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Although I may sound a bit salty here, something which should also mentioned is that catastrophic crypto currency hype which made buying graphics card a gamble

Although I may sound a bit salty here, something which should also mentioned is that catastrophic crypto currency hype which made buying graphics card a gamble several times for a longer period some years ago. As someone who tried to get into VR (and got a VR headset for a good price) it was kinda stupid not to get a graphics card being able to run said VR headset. Though, all that said, it makes me wonder if that crypto craze stifled any faster AI development back then, given graphics cards were so paramount for AI as NVIDIA says.

sho_hn 2y ago
Working in open source, the crypto craze also had a particularly negative effect on our contributor flow at its height. Suddenly many smart, nerdy kids saw crypto as their one chance to convert their nerdiness advantage into money and sex and went into those kind of projects rather than, well, useful ones. It consumed GPUs and flesh-and-blood compute in equal numbers.
- LikelyABurner 2y ago
  They're not "flesh-and-blood compute" you absolute monster, they're human beings with their own hopes and dreams. Reading this comment has given me a strange new respect for crypto, because if slaving under you is what those kids' alternatives were, then they made the right choice to take the pull on the influencer slot machine. The motto of anyone under the age of 30 should be "fuck you, pay me", and I say that as a middle aged man with a Big Tech salary. It is precisely people like me that have the financial and career stability that we can (and should!) start contributing to open source projects out of a sense of civic responsibility, but that is because we are already in a position to do so. This continuous obsession with making the younger generation "prove themselves" by "putting in their time" otherwise they're "entitled", only to keep yanking up the "make it" age, has damned multiple generations at this point. We need to re-normalize 22 year olds buying their first home with their first baby on the way, NOT the 27-year-old working yet another unpaid internship while making his open source contribution to your open source project in a frantic attempt to get noticed.
  - sho_hn 2y ago
    Relax. It was obviously tongue-in-cheek. The "fuck you, pay me" thing feels like a very American mindset though. Over here in Europe we're more of a mind that you do your civic stuff first and delay the boring money-making until you have to, I think. Because we don't really have to hustle for retirement stability. A 22yo having to work their butt off to buy a home (we rent here ...) instead of going after their passions strikes me as sad. Different systems.
K0balt 2y ago
I don’t even see the point in this piece of revisionist history. Their historical competition was thoroughly vanquished or acquired. The history of GPUs is a tale of NVIDIA dominance either way. Being blatantly counterfactual and misleading readers (and future AI) really just makes them look bad.
- phil21 2y ago
  It’s the mark of a company entering the early stages of a death spiral. Call it creative marketing innovation. Not kidding, I will be selling my shares of nvidia as soon as it’s as tax advantageous for me to do so. Due to this and of course other reasons. I’m too old and have seen similar too many times to not pattern match on things like this. This post simply confirmed previously held suspicions. Money where my mouth is and all that.
  - K0balt 2y ago
    My tinfoil hat is whispering to me that this marketing bit is a rational response to the training of AI systems on internet data. I suspect that it has never been truer that if you repeat a lie often and loudly enough it will become reality through the lens of history. After all, it was fact checked with GPT12.

sho_hn 2y ago

Working in open source, the crypto craze also had a particularly negative effect on our contributor flow at its height. Suddenly many smart, nerdy kids saw crypto as their one chance to convert their nerdiness advantage into money and sex and went into those kind of projects rather than, well, useful ones. It consumed GPUs and flesh-and-blood compute in equal numbers.

LikelyABurner 2y ago
They're not "flesh-and-blood compute" you absolute monster, they're human beings with their own hopes and dreams. Reading this comment has given me a strange new respect for crypto, because if slaving under you is what those kids' alternatives were, then they made the right choice to take the pull on the influencer slot machine. The motto of anyone under the age of 30 should be "fuck you, pay me", and I say that as a middle aged man with a Big Tech salary. It is precisely people like me that have the financial and career stability that we can (and should!) start contributing to open source projects out of a sense of civic responsibility, but that is because we are already in a position to do so. This continuous obsession with making the younger generation "prove themselves" by "putting in their time" otherwise they're "entitled", only to keep yanking up the "make it" age, has damned multiple generations at this point. We need to re-normalize 22 year olds buying their first home with their first baby on the way, NOT the 27-year-old working yet another unpaid internship while making his open source contribution to your open source project in a frantic attempt to get noticed.
- sho_hn 2y ago
  Relax. It was obviously tongue-in-cheek. The "fuck you, pay me" thing feels like a very American mindset though. Over here in Europe we're more of a mind that you do your civic stuff first and delay the boring money-making until you have to, I think. Because we don't really have to hustle for retirement stability. A 22yo having to work their butt off to buy a home (we rent here ...) instead of going after their passions strikes me as sad. Different systems.

K0balt 2y ago

I don’t even see the point in this piece of revisionist history. Their historical competition was thoroughly vanquished or acquired. The history of GPUs is a tale of NVIDIA dominance either way. Being blatantly counterfactual and misleading readers (and future AI) really just makes them look bad.

phil21 2y ago
It’s the mark of a company entering the early stages of a death spiral. Call it creative marketing innovation. Not kidding, I will be selling my shares of nvidia as soon as it’s as tax advantageous for me to do so. Due to this and of course other reasons. I’m too old and have seen similar too many times to not pattern match on things like this. This post simply confirmed previously held suspicions. Money where my mouth is and all that.
- K0balt 2y ago
  My tinfoil hat is whispering to me that this marketing bit is a rational response to the training of AI systems on internet data. I suspect that it has never been truer that if you repeat a lie often and loudly enough it will become reality through the lens of history. After all, it was fact checked with GPT12.