the tech bubble left behind lots of useful infrastructure -- dark fiber, mostly -- which I don't think will be true of an AI crash. GPUs only last a few years, for instance, never mind they're always becoming obsolete.
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TBF, GPUs only last a few years under constant stress. Also, there's been a significant flattening of improvements since ~2018. The average consumer isn't willing to spend nearly $1K on a graphics card every 2-4 years, so as they've gotten more expensive, they're now more iterative than generational
aug 21, 2025, 4:15 pm • 0 0 • view
Yes and no: alecmuffett.com/article/109128
aug 21, 2025, 3:58 pm • 4 0 • view
also: doesn't a lot turn on how customized the data center builds are? That is, data center companies get acquired & get integrated into 3rd party's systems - why wouldn't that be the case here? Less of a standardized/generic asset like dark fiber, but seems a lot can be re-used.
aug 21, 2025, 6:08 pm • 0 0 • view
I am thinking GPUs specifically--when crypto mining moved away from consumer-ish GPUs a bunch of defective used ones clogged up the market. But regardless, dark fiber from the 90s is *still in use*; hard to see a world where that's true in 25 years for data centers apart from the buildings
aug 21, 2025, 6:15 pm • 0 0 • view
yeah, fair distinction, but buildings (and power and cooling etc) don't seem trivial. If "compute" needs generally continue to grow, it will all be productively used. That said (and to your pt) - we may come up with better data centers in future, but prob not faster-than-light data transmission!
aug 21, 2025, 6:20 pm • 0 0 • view
Same thing had happened to Cisco in the dotcom crash (but they managed to make it through eventually)
aug 21, 2025, 7:18 pm • 0 0 • view
BTW any chance of a non dark mode switch on your site? (more than a screen's worth of dark mode and I get ~20 minutes of visual after effects so I tend to have to skim your stuff fast to get out in time)
aug 21, 2025, 7:18 pm • 0 0 • view
I'll look into it but can't promise anything; if you are using a phone I find enabling assistive technology to be useful because then you get the option to read the text in a flat window with your own preferred font. Also it is useful for piercing many paywalls
aug 21, 2025, 7:21 pm • 0 0 • view
if I remember I can turn on the accessible reader in the browser to get rid of dark mode and I really wish that could be set to be stick for a whole domain (wonder if a browser extension could do that?) I just thought I would mention it, because if no one ever mentions things nothing changes
aug 21, 2025, 7:30 pm • 0 0 • view