Comment by dcchambers

> The rush to fill brand new high energy intensive data centers with hardware that has commercially useful lifetimes measured in months (instead of decades for machine tools) seems quite short sighted to me.

The only way "number goes up" capitalism continues to work is with planned obsolescence and things that need to be replaced regularly. This is a feature of the system, not a flaw. Nvidia (and all of their investors) love the fact that the stuff they make now will be outdated or broken in a few years.

If things last forever and never need to be replaced the only way to continue to increase profits is to have more people buying them. And global population appears to be peaking, at least in western countries, so that's not going to happen.

Is it sustainable? Probably not. But everyone seems to have their heads buried in the sand at the obvious dangers of what we're running into.