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1. Embed this notice
   Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Wednesday, 17-Apr-2024 01:00:27 JST Paul Cantrell

   Half-formed thought: partially unseated from centralized, highly visible, near-monopoly market dominance of end user computing, made successful transition to less visible but equally pervasive tentacles-everywhere dominance of computational plumbing + services, making a killing on rent-seeking from biz client
   ⇒ Microsoft is the new IBM
   https://www.wired.com/story/the-us-government-has-a-microsoft-problem/

   • Embed this notice
     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Wednesday, 17-Apr-2024 01:07:35 JST Paul Cantrell

     • datarama

     @datarama
     Nothing new under the sun.

   • Embed this notice
     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Wednesday, 17-Apr-2024 01:17:19 JST Paul Cantrell

     in reply to

     Really good point, and I wish I remembered who made it:

     Microsoft’s OpenAI gambit looks like a “head I win, tails I win” play: If OpenAI is renting computing power from MS — and LLMs sure do need gob tons of it — then it’s •already• profitable for MS. This whole AI bubble is pumping money from a sea of revved-up VCs and FOMO-addled CEOs straight into Microsoft’s pockets.

     Even if there’s nothing but wreckage when the AI bubble bursts, even if none of the hype pans out, MS still makes bank.

   • Embed this notice
     Pär Björklund (paxxi@hachyderm.io)'s status on Wednesday, 17-Apr-2024 01:21:52 JST Pär Björklund

     in reply to

     @inthehands how is it profitable? Openai is using Microsoft money to pay for it afaik

   • Embed this notice
     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Wednesday, 17-Apr-2024 01:23:27 JST Paul Cantrell

     in reply to

     There’s so much hype, it’s easy to miss:

     Most AI ventures are money losers right now, and most always will be.

     Who’s pocketing cash right now from the AI bubble? Not end users. Not the companies who are buying AI services (except for the sugar rush of premature cost-cutting that will quickly go sour). And not even the AI vendors! No, the cash is ending up in the pockets of the cloud computing vendors who sell to the AI companies: https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/news/stability-ai-reportedly-ran-out-of-cash-to-pay-its-bills-for-rented-cloudy-gpus/ar-BB1kYeBD

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     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Wednesday, 17-Apr-2024 01:24:08 JST Paul Cantrell

     in reply to

     • Pär Björklund

     @Paxxi
     This is precisely the question the post and its follow-up answer.

   • Embed this notice
     Camilo (cam@hachyderm.io)'s status on Wednesday, 17-Apr-2024 01:25:29 JST Camilo

     in reply to

     @inthehands Ed Zitron made a pretty good case on tech won’t save us that some companies, like Microsoft, appear to be sort of just creating money right now by throwing money at open AI as cloud computing credits, then receiving it and could be reporting it as revenue sort of? Honestly don’t seem legal but I’ll leave that for Lina Khan.
     https://overcast.fm/+ZpQDXOsjk

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     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Wednesday, 17-Apr-2024 01:27:50 JST Paul Cantrell

     in reply to

     • Camilo

     @cam
     The financial side of stuff like this is utterly bollixing to me; I don’t even begin to understand the accounting involved. But the strategic side makes sense to me: if the money flows downhill to you in the end, all you need to do is get people with deep pockets whipped up.

   • Embed this notice
     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Wednesday, 17-Apr-2024 01:35:27 JST Paul Cantrell

     in reply to

     There’s a marine isopod parasite that with crawl inside a fish’s mouth, eat the fish’s tongue, and then sit down where the tongue should be and •let the fish use it as its tongue•, taking a cut of everything the fish eats. The fish is not thrilled about this, of course, but if it kicks out the parasite, it will die.

     Just a random fun nature fact. Any relation to the items upthread is left as an exercise for the reader.

   • Embed this notice
     jonathanpeterson (jonathanpeterson@hachyderm.io)'s status on Wednesday, 17-Apr-2024 02:36:15 JST jonathanpeterson

     in reply to

     @inthehands Oh, that's a good one. But you can't mention it without the real nightmare fuel of a photo.

     Might be worse than Cordycepts (google BBC cordecepts video and decide for yourself)

   • Embed this notice
     Landwomble (landwomble@mastodon.cloud)'s status on Wednesday, 17-Apr-2024 23:57:19 JST Landwomble

     in reply to

     @inthehands Agree with your thoughts about platforms being winners, but not sure you can class the providers of all that expensive hardware as parasites

   • Embed this notice
     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Wednesday, 17-Apr-2024 23:57:19 JST Paul Cantrell

     in reply to

     • Landwomble

     @Landwomble
     Yes, if you try to classify •all• hardware / cloud service vendors as parasites, it doesn’t hold up.