this post was submitted on 16 Nov 2025
404 points (97.4% liked)

Technology

77084 readers
1909 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related news or articles.
  3. Be excellent to each other!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
  10. Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.

Approved Bots


founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] 0ndead@infosec.pub 229 points 2 weeks ago (5 children)

“Scammers find new scam”

[–] OwlPaste@lemmy.world 23 points 2 weeks ago (7 children)

How would they make money from ai? be like chatgpt and release their own ai plans or something? or something else?

[–] BlueKey@fedia.io 38 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

Maybe host open source models and offer paid access for customers who need big generating capacities.

[–] Afaithfulnihilist@lemmy.dbzer0.com 21 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

Paid : give money for

Payed: nautical term meaning to let out some slack on the rope or to cover the deck in tar/pitch for sealing it

[–] boatswain@infosec.pub 23 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

As long as we're being pedantic, when you pay out pitch, you're not covering the deck with it. You're making lines of it that go in between the deck planks. It's basically caulking. You actually have to be careful to not get it everywhere (not least because pitch is really hot when you're paying it out), so just like when you're paying out a line, there's a sense of careful control and easing out the pitch.

[–] uninvitedguest@piefed.ca 12 points 2 weeks ago

This is the level of pedantry I can get behind.

[–] MelodiousFunk@slrpnk.net 8 points 2 weeks ago

Username checks out.

[–] Afaithfulnihilist@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Also, If I understand it correctly it's also called this because caulking requires jamming pitch soaked rope into the joints so it's still about rope!

[–] boatswain@infosec.pub 9 points 2 weeks ago

Pretty close! It's tar-soaked hemp fibers (rope traditionally being hemp), called oakum. Sometimes cotton under that for filling if needed. To me it still feels more about carefully easing out, particularly since paying out also has other uses that aren't rope related, like falling off to leeward after a tack.

[–] HakFoo@lemmy.sdf.org 11 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Aren't most miners running ASICs that are pretty much only useful for mining specific coins? I was hoping we were past the last "people are buying off-the-shelves GPUs for crypto" bubble.

[–] jimerson@lemmy.world 11 points 2 weeks ago

Depending on which crypto, but yes. And the ASICs have a usable shelf life of just a few years, so I assume they are migrating to machines for AI processing as their ASICs need routine replacement.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] ZoteTheMighty@lemmy.zip 30 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Make no mistake; the people selling server time will be making money. They are selling a real product to a real customer, it's just the customer is a tech company that will never make money back in turn.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] Robin@lemmy.world 10 points 2 weeks ago

OpenRouter is a marketplace for AI inference

[–] Ludicrous0251@piefed.zip 9 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

In theory you could lease your server capacity to the big AI players, but then they would have to trust you -a noted crypto grifter - with their data.

[–] RobotToaster@mander.xyz 9 points 2 weeks ago

Investors keep trusting noted crypto grifters with money.

[–] kibiz0r@midwest.social 3 points 2 weeks ago

Like AI companies care about business ethics

[–] jj4211@lemmy.world 5 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Same way a lot of the "ai" companies make money, investors that have no idea but want to get in on the ground floor of the next nVidia or openai.

[–] Zos_Kia@lemmynsfw.com 3 points 2 weeks ago

No they play a different game and leverage hardware. Most probably they'll buy H100s instead of ASIC and run AI inference on that. It turns out that inference can be pretty profitable if you have good utilization and don't need to train your own models.

load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments (4 replies)
[–] Zier@fedia.io 115 points 2 weeks ago

Abandon the bitcoin scam, full steam ahead for the AI scam!!!

[–] markz@suppo.fi 53 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Yeah, I'd expect there to be some real overlap between crypto and ai bros.

[–] flamingo_pinyata@sopuli.xyz 38 points 2 weeks ago

Some overlap? It's like 90%

[–] etherphon@lemmy.world 46 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Can we switch back to the need based economy instead of the greed based economy?

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 31 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Which economy was that? We've had greed for hundreds of years, if not many thousands.

[–] etherphon@lemmy.world 9 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Sure, but it will have to change eventually, we can't keep pumping out more and more throwaway shit year after year, there will be a critical mass, or maybe we just die buried in our own garbage.

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 5 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

It seems the nature of things are changing from physical things to digital things, and that has infinite potential. I expect at some point we'll start mining the landfills because it's easier than extracting stuff from the rock. Once that happens, there's no physical limit on the greed.

[–] etherphon@lemmy.world 6 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Inifnite potential? Like NFTs? Subscriptions? I suppose.. I'm beyond not interested in buying digital things I don't even have the rights to, but I seem to be in the minority.

Whether you have the rights is kind of irrelevant to this discussion. Let's say it's GOG games that are all DRM-free, my point is digital consumption has nearly infinite upper limits for consumption.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] kibiz0r@midwest.social 38 points 2 weeks ago

I hate this timeline so much

[–] Prior_Industry@lemmy.world 25 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Lost all your money on Bored Apes, now generate your own!

[–] phutatorius@lemmy.zip 23 points 2 weeks ago

As one grift's hype cycle fades, shift to another one.

[–] hark@lemmy.world 21 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

If only there were a way to combine the two, then we could keep an even larger bubble going.

[–] Pika@rekabu.ru 5 points 2 weeks ago

Mining two cryptos together is already a thing, so...

[–] leftzero@lemmy.dbzer0.com 18 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Wasting electricity that was already being wasted isn't as bad as wasting electricity that was being used for something productive, I guess.

[–] null_dot@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 2 weeks ago

This isbprobably a philosophical question that i dont know the answer to, but its still a waste.

[–] djsp@feddit.org 6 points 2 weeks ago

Surplus electricity would lower bills for both households, which have been particularly affected by rising prices, and different industries which have also had to contend with AI for capital.

[–] phaedrus@piefed.world 17 points 2 weeks ago

Ahh, so this is where the concept of "rollover minutes" went, into bubbles

[–] ook@discuss.tchncs.de 14 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I don't get it. What are they even seling then? Bitcoins I understand, but AI? Just enabling scams?

[–] Alphane_Moon@lemmy.world 27 points 2 weeks ago

Data centre capacity, they seem to be making an emphasis on access to independent power sources.

[–] addie@feddit.uk 14 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (4 children)

especially if you have the infrastructure in place

I thought Bitcoin mining made no sense at all on GPUs any more? Unless you were running ASICs then the power costs just weren't worth it, and application-specific is part of the acronym, there. Why would these things even be able to run an LLM?

In any case, Bitcoin just needs to iterate as fast as possible in order to find a match, doesn't really need a lot of RAM. Whereas LLMs need really large amounts - NVIDIA's latest data centre racks have about a terabyte for a reason. Even if you had cornered the market on GPUs five years ago for Bitcoin, what use are those cards for this?

[–] dhork@lemmy.world 26 points 2 weeks ago

If I read the article property, the real asset is the rackspace and power they are already leasing. They would tear out the existing Bitcoin mining infrastructure and replace it with AI servers.

[–] squaresinger@lemmy.world 10 points 2 weeks ago

Mining hardware is shortlived. These things get outdated real fast and need to be replaced frequently. So what they do is when a mining rig is up for replacement, they just swap it out for an AI rig.

The real asset for mining is the infrastructure: rack space, access to cheap electricity, data centers. All of that is very useful for AI as well.

[–] panda_abyss@lemmy.ca 6 points 2 weeks ago

Some of these bought decommissioned power plants like old coal plants, so they’re getting wholesale prices for energy.

[–] jj4211@lemmy.world 6 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

One this is all speak to convince investors to throw money, so they'll cheer pick their interpretation.

In this case I think they refer to already having the real estate, buildings, power and cooling. So "all" they have to do is rip out their rigs and dump a bunch of nVidia gear in. All they need is just a few hundred million from some lucky investors and they will be off..

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] cupcakezealot@piefed.blahaj.zone 10 points 2 weeks ago

Major Bitcoin mining firm pivoting to AI

one shady grift for another

[–] kubofhromoslav@lemmy.world 9 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Crypto mining is (mostly?) total waste... Proof of Work by doing hard but useless calculations and using it as kind of currency is like travelers on a desert world use water as a currency - but by intentionally spilling it 🤦🏻‍♂️

Great cryptocurrencies does not need power hungry hardware. Eg. Nano (XNO) have a secure network error or using around 17 000 000 times less energy per transaction.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] lechekaflan@lemmy.world 9 points 2 weeks ago

Fucking greedheads.

[–] leastaction@lemmy.ca 7 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Hey, now that we have this obscene energy-wasting capability, let's see what other ways there are to generate equally obscene profits!

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] Avicenna@programming.dev 6 points 2 weeks ago

most grifters like Trump and Elon are in both

load more comments
view more: next ›