Re: LLM usage in Debian -- ballot options comparison

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On Mon, 3 Aug 2026 at 06:25, Simon Richter <[email protected]> wrote:

> > Everyone points at the dark fiber post Internet-bubble which took ten
> > years to eventually light up as the analog to the AI bubble.  But what
> > most people forget was that after the dot.COM bubble, there were
> > $100k+ USD Sunfire servers that were selling for pennies on the
> > dollar, and Sun servers ten years later don't hold value the same way
> > dark fiber did.  So that might be the closer analog for the portion of
> > the AI bubble which comes from people buying Nvidia GPU's.
>
> Exactly my point: there is very little being built that will last, the
> GPUs that were used in a datacenter are losing value even faster than a
> ten years old Sun server, and most of the other hardware is
> special-purpose.


Part of the assumption of the AI bubble bursting is that the foundation of
AI development sticks around and more of it becomes free as eitehr open
weighs or trully free AI models. Say 80% of AI companies go bust or get
consolidated and scale back. There are now thousands of very depricated
big-AI-capable server racks on the secondary market or on the
rent-by-the-hour market, along with free models available for download that
are similar in capability to current fronteir models and are large enought
that running them at home is not really possible. That opens up the
possiblity of all the small and medium companies (and also a good chunk of
enthusiasts) picking up that hardware on pennies on a dollar and running
their own models for their own uses in a completely independent way. We get
wide-AI instead of the early tall-AI situation. Similarly how everyone had
to use Geocities or Blogger.com to host things early on, but after a while
could self-host with their own hardware or choose one of thousands of
smaller hosting providers locally.

And this is assuming there is *absolutely* nothing that can use that
hardware. There are big chunks of science where we can use big floating
point compute, if it is cheap enough. There is a ton of data coming out of
all kinds of ground and space-based observatoreis that can be analysed in
millions of different way to gather new science, for example. Protein
folding research can eat up all the compute in the world and still come up
wanting more.

Sure, it is annoying that DDR5 prices are insane right now. But worrying
about resources being wasted in the AI bubble bursting? I don't worry about
that at all.
-- 
Best regards,
    Aigars Mahinovs

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<div dir=3D"ltr"><div class=3D"gmail_quote gmail_quote_container"><div dir=
=3D"ltr" class=3D"gmail_attr">On Mon, 3 Aug 2026 at 06:25, Simon Richter &l=
t;<a href=3D"mailto:[email protected]">[email protected]</a>&gt; wrote:<br></div>=
<blockquote class=3D"gmail_quote" style=3D"margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-=
left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">
&gt; Everyone points at the dark fiber post Internet-bubble which took ten<=
br>
&gt; years to eventually light up as the analog to the AI bubble.=C2=A0 But=
 what<br>
&gt; most people forget was that after the dot.COM bubble, there were<br>
&gt; $100k+ USD Sunfire servers that were selling for pennies on the<br>
&gt; dollar, and Sun servers ten years later don&#39;t hold value the same =
way<br>
&gt; dark fiber did.=C2=A0 So that might be the closer analog for the porti=
on of<br>
&gt; the AI bubble which comes from people buying Nvidia GPU&#39;s.<br>
<br>
Exactly my point: there is very little being built that will last, the <br>
GPUs that were used in a datacenter are losing value even faster than a <br=
>
ten years old Sun server, and most of the other hardware is special-purpose=
.</blockquote><div><br></div><div>Part of the assumption of the AI bubble b=
ursting is that the foundation of AI development sticks around and more of =
it becomes free as eitehr open weighs or trully free AI models. Say 80% of =
AI companies go bust or get consolidated and scale back. There are now thou=
sands of very depricated big-AI-capable server racks on the secondary marke=
t or on the rent-by-the-hour market, along with free models available for d=
ownload that are similar in capability to current fronteir models and are l=
arge enought that running them at home is not really possible. That opens u=
p the possiblity of all the small and medium companies (and also a good chu=
nk of enthusiasts) picking up that hardware on pennies on a dollar and runn=
ing their own models for their own uses in a completely independent way. We=
 get wide-AI instead of the early tall-AI situation. Similarly how everyone=
 had to use Geocities or Blogger.com to host things early on, but after a w=
hile could self-host with their own hardware or choose one of thousands of =
smaller hosting providers locally.</div><div><br></div><div>And this is ass=
uming there is *absolutely* nothing that can use that hardware. There are b=
ig chunks of science where we can use big floating point compute, if it is =
cheap enough. There is a ton of data coming out of all kinds of ground and =
space-based observatoreis that can be analysed in millions of different way=
 to gather new science, for example. Protein folding research can eat up al=
l the compute in the world and still come up wanting more.</div></div><div>=
<br></div><div>Sure, it is annoying that DDR5 prices are insane right now. =
But worrying about resources being wasted in the AI bubble bursting? I don&=
#39;t worry about that at all.=C2=A0</div><span class=3D"gmail_signature_pr=
efix">-- </span><br><div dir=3D"ltr" class=3D"gmail_signature"><div dir=3D"=
ltr">Best regards,<br>=C2=A0 =C2=A0 Aigars Mahinovs</div></div></div>

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