Having family in Cuba, I guess this could work, but it doesn’t scale, because someone will inevitably steal your horses for dinner, when you aren’t looking.
Why? Every name you pick is likely to be weird in one language or another. Mockito does one thing well as a name, and that is hinting strongly at what it is (a mocking library).
>is likely to be weird in one language or another.
But this name is weird in the specific language it’s imitating (both the -ito termination for diminutives and the drink on which I assumed the name is based are Spanish).
I meant the other way. I would switch over to playing something like Destiny on Steam on my PC and just use the Windows Xbox app for joining chat parties with my friends, but if I am playing on PC using a Controller, I’m going to end up matched with a ton of cheaters and be in mixed MnK and controller lobbies. By continuing to play on Xbox I mostly avoid those issues, save for PlayStation players using a Cronus or Xim.
However, in writing this I’ve realized that this is really only a problem for me when playing Destiny and only when I’m playing PvP. As the player population continues to die and I move on to other games or mostly PvE content in Destiny, then I’m not going to care anymore and I can switch entirely over to PC.
On the one hand, that’s going to be pretty convenient. On the other, it’s kind of a sad realization as it marks the end of a very long era of console gaming for me stretching all the way back to the NES.
My son has a Switch, but other than that my kids have only ever known using a PC as a “console”. Their play room has a relatively compact PC (13th Gen. Intel CPU & ARC A770 dGPU) connected to a TV that just runs Steam and Batocera with 4x USB 8BitDo controllers attached.
By all appearances, until about the last year or so, I would look like an ideal customer demographic for Microsoft. I’ve purchased every single gaming platform they’ve ever produced, but I’m thiiiiiiiiis close to having migrated entirely away, and it wasn’t really a conscious decision. It just sort of happened a little bit at a time. :-/
Bus driver in SF or near a tech hub, so I can listen to mindless grifting and endless complaining by tech workers that would re-enforce the life decision I made.
Those people still need to rent. So as long as the rental income covers the mortgage, you’re ahead of the game and someone is paying an asset down for you.
Yes. OpenAI is also investing in AMD. This was discussed yesterday on HN, following some very good explanation by Matt Levine at Bloomberg. This is a way for one party to reduce some risk, by enjoying some upside in the equity of the counterparty.
But this is not circular. Circular would be if I sell you an apple worth $0.25 for $2.00, and then you sell it back to me for $2.00, or other similar amount, and I get to mark all the apples in my inventory at $2.00 and show a huge profit (on paper). One can create variations of this blatant deal. Like I sell you some rubber for 10 times the market price, you make a balloon and then I buy the balloon for 10 times the market price. I may not have other balloons in my inventory, but plenty of rubber, and I show some nice profit. One can imagine other, fancier deals.
But in the case of AMD and NVidia, and OpenAI and Oracle, the direction is clear. OpenAI has a clear need for compute. They can buy it directly from NVidia and AMD, or indirectly from Oracle. They can buy it with hard cash (of which they don't have that much), or with their own equity, or some form of deal that offers the seller an upside in OpenAI's equity.
But there is not back and forth buying of the same item, or of rubber/balloons. All the deals seem legit. Is it possible that all the future compute will not be needed, because the AI craze will fizzle. It is, lots of things are possible. But that's general business risk.
> But this is not circular. Circular would be if I sell you an apple worth $0.25 for $2.00
When you draw a circle on a piece of paper do you put your pencil to the paper, start drawing a curve, stop and write the word FRAUD, and then complete the curve? Or do you just draw a circle?
I’m assuming that people are saying “circular” in that it looks like the money goes in a circle. (For one example) Nvidia invests in Lambda, Lambda buys GPUs from Nvidia, Nvidia leases GPUs back from Lambda, Lambda uses the revenue from leasing the GPUs to Nvidia to raise debt to buy more GPUs from Nvidia…
This is how financing works. When you buy a house, you get a mortgage from a bank. It is unusual to get a mortgage from a seller. It would feel a bit circular, right? But that is exactly what happens most of the time when people buy a car. They get a loan from the same company that sells them the car. Is that circular?
When you replace people with companies, the financing can become much more complex. The example you provided with Nvidia and Lambda seems quite reasonable to me. Here's an example that happens every day in the world of housing: banks lend money to house buyers. Then they package the mortgages and sell the resulting mortgage back securities. Then they take the money from the proceeds, and give more loans, and package them and create more mortgage back securities. Seems circular, right? But that's just how business is done. There is no Ponzi aspect to this, or fraud, or smoke and mirrors. It's just every day business. Nobody labels that as being circular.
When people buy a car they sometimes get a loan from the auto manufacturer’s financial services arm. What they don’t usually get are warrants struck at a penny for 10% of the manufacturer.
You sound like you know what you’re talking about. I only think I know what I’m talking about. Help me understand: What am I missing in the OpenAI / AMD deal that makes it non circular?
OpenAI: We need lots of GPUs, you make GPUs, but your GPUs are not quite equal to Nvidia's GPUs. And we are a growth startup, we don't have a lot of cash, can you give us a hefty discount on those GPUs?
AMD: We need cash too, you know? We'd love to sell you those thousands and thousands of high end GPUs, that would cover some of our R&D, and we could one day match NVidia. But we don't swim in cash either. We can't give you the discount.
OpenAI: What can you give us? You must be able to throw in something there. Otherwise, honestly, we can't make the deal.
AMD: What if we give you some equity? And if our deal goes well, and our GPUs start being viable alternatives to Nvidia's, maybe we'll be able to get close to Nvidia's market cap and even surpass them, just like we did with Intel.
OpenAI: Brilliant. We love it.
AMD: Yes, but that equity will be contingent on how the deal goes.
> You sound like you know what you’re talking about.
Honestly, I'm not an expert either, but I've run a company, and I can all but guarantee that credit_guy above really does not know what he is talking about.
I've replied else-thread, in detail, on exactly why his analogy to mortgage and car loans are incorrect.
His main point that "these deals cannot be circular because mortgage and car finance are not circular" is incorrect. The mortgage and car finance deals are not analogous to the Nvidia/OpenAI or AMD/OpenAI deals.
The AI startup valuation largely is. I feel it quickly becomes circular because people make projections purely on other projections since the world is too impatient to wait and find out.
A single hamburger store is never going to be projected to have a billion dollars of revenue because people understand the total addressable market. Doesn’t matter how good the burger is.
The AI stuff is too new that people don’t have a firm grasp on the costs and profit opportunities. They don’t really even know how to define the TAM. Too many unknowns. Entire classes of labor could be replaced by AI —- or perhaps not.
With little grounding, it quickly becomes a circle of hype.
I don’t know what to tell you guy, but when people see money moving in a circle in a deal there is a good chance that “circular deal” might pop into their heads. Because it’s a deal that is shaped like a circle.
> Is that circular?
Doesn’t really seem so because at the end of the day the money goes from me to them. I don’t get my money back, I get a car in exchange for my money.
Also this deal didn’t begin with the manufacturer purchasing shares of me before offering me debt to buy a car from them.
>But that is exactly what happens most of the time when people buy a car.
Your car manufacturer leases your car back from you? And you use that revenue to raise debt to buy more cars from them? What manufacturer are you doing this with? What do you end up driving?
> Your car manufacturer leases your car back from you? And you use that revenue to raise debt to buy more cars from them?
Honestly, if this was possible people would be doing it (not that they are not - fleet services and rental fleet services do some pretty funky accounting sometimes, so I wouldn't be surprised at all if this sort of thing happened).
If this was possible, I'd be doing it.
> What manufacturer are you doing this with?
Good question. The minute an answer gets posted I'm going to have a really good side-hustle.
> What do you end up driving?
I presume, at the point that this is being done, there is no actual car involved, so nobody involved will be driving because there is no car to drive.
> Good question. The minute an answer gets posted I'm going to have a really good side-hustle.
Yeah “everybody buys cars through the infinite car glitch” sounds like the sort of thing that would be part of an enormously long answer to “should I try WoW for the first time in 2025”
"Do not charge your brother interest on money, food, or any other type of loan. You may charge a foreigner interest, but not your brother." - Deuteronomy 23:19-20
> But that is exactly what happens most of the time when people buy a car. They get a loan from the same company that sells them the car.
No, they don't!
Serious "Citation Needed" here. They get a loan from a financial services company, that is a separate company from the automaker and/or dealership.
The certification and requirements for trading as a credit provider will not be met by neither the auto manufacturer nor the dealership.
> Here's an example that happens every day in the world of housing: banks lend money to house buyers. Then they package the mortgages and sell the resulting mortgage back securities. Then they take the money from the proceeds, and give more loans, and package them and create more mortgage back securities. Seems circular, right?
No, it doesn't! They make out new loans, sure, but they aren't loaning you specifically the proceeds from the sale of your specific mortgage-backed security!
If you happen to get a new loan from the sale of the MBS, it is impossible that only you get that loan, from the sale of an MBS that had only your existing loan.
Seriously, there's laws and regulations around this, and from what you say, with all due respect, it seems that you are unaware of these regulations.[1]
The only reason that these actually-circular deals can go on right now is because OpenAI (and other providers doing similar circular deals) are not publicly traded, and thus there are fewer regulations and even fewer enforcement of what little regulations there are for unlisted companies.
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[1] Why is your handle "credit_guy"? You don't appear to be familiar with the fact that credit providers are heavily regulated in all jurisdictions that we are talking about. I mean, you don't even need to know the specific regulations and certifications necessary, you just need to know things like a dealer cannot be a credit provider too.
> But there is not back and forth buying of the same item, or of rubber/balloons. All the deals seem legit.
Some, certainly, but the vendor-financing deals certainly look circular to the casual observer. Microsoft invests $X into OpenAI for a 51% (or whatever) stake, and that investment then goes straight back to Microsoft to pay for compute credits.
Or Nvidia invests[1] $100m into OpenAI, which OpenAI then turns around and pays back to Nvidia for compute.
The majority of the deals making the news are structured like this; maybe technically those aren't actual ducks[2], but they sure look, walk and talk like ducks.
Similarly structured deals are with Oracle. And Coreweave. And everyone.
It may not be a "circular" deal, but what do you expect people to call it when a company makes a deal to receive cash (not credit, but actual cash) from a vendor, and spends that cash with that vendor?
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[1] I use this word loosely here - the investment is a commitment of 10x $10m tranches.
Activision CoD uses EOMM, engagement optimized match making. They’re optimizing for your to stay on, much like a gambler playing slots. You allow one win where the player is matched with lesser opponents, and then the next X games, you’re the lesser opponent.
It’s all tuned to keep you playing and want that dopamine hit of a win that’s always just around the corner.
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