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Comment by evanelias

4 months ago

So on the one side, we have a famous widely-respected 70-year-old software engineer with a lengthy wikipedia bio and history of industry-impactful accomplishments. His statements on depreciation here are aligned with things that have been discussed on HN numerous times from my recollection; here are a couple discussions that I found quickly: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45310858

On the other side, we have the sole comment ever by a pseudonymous HN user with single-digit karma.

Personally I'll trust the former over the latter.

How do his accomplishments (numerous as they may be) matter if they are only tangentially related to the topic he's discussing? The fact that his take aligns with many others' does not help if they are all outsiders ruminating on hearsay and innuendo about tightly guarded, non-public numbers. He may well simply be echoing the talking points he has heard.

I mean, per the top comment in this thread, he cites an article -- the only source with official, concrete numbers -- that seems to contradict his thesis about depreciation: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46208221

I'm no expert on hardware depreciation, but the more I've dug into this, the more I'm convinced people are just echoing a narrative that they don't really understand. Somewhat like stochastic parrots, you could say ;-)

My only goal here is to get a real sense of the depreciation story. Partially out of financial interest, but more because I'm really curious about how this will impact the adoption of AI.

  • From what I've seen, folks at that level have massive amounts of insider knowledge, a huge network of well-informed connections at every big tech company, and a stock portfolio in the 8 to 9 figure range. Personally I would strongly doubt he's simply aligning with "outsiders ruminating on hearsay and innuendo", but I guess believe what you'd like!

  • > My only goal here is to get a real sense of the depreciation story

    It doesn't look like your goal is to get a real sense or at least your strategy is really poor as you have an opinion already and wants to confirm it

    • It won't be great for my financial interests, even though partial, if my decisions were based on presupposed notions rather than evidence ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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