• helenslunch@feddit.nl
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    3 months ago

    The stock market is not based on income. It’s based entirely on speculation.

    Since then, shares of the maker the high-grade computer chips that AI laboratories use to power the development of their chatbots and other products have come down by more than 22%.

    June 18th: $136 August 4th: $100 August 18th: $130 again now: $103 (still above 8/4)

    It’s almost like hype generates volatility. I don’t think any of this is indicative of a “leaking” bubble. Just tech journalists conjuring up clicks.

    Also bubbles don’t “leak”.

    • iopq@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      The broader market did the same thing

      https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/SPY/

      $560 to $510 to $560 to $540

      So why did $NVDA have larger swings? It has to do with the concept called beta. High beta stocks go up faster when the market is up and go down lower when the market is done. Basically high variance risky investments.

      Why did the market have these swings? Because of uncertainty about future interest rates. Interest rates not only matter vis-a-vis business loans but affect the interest-free rate for investors.

      When investors invest into the stock market, they want to get back the risk free rate (how much they get from treasuries) + the risk premium (how much stocks outperform bonds long term)

      If the risks of the stock market are the same, but the payoff of the treasuries changes, then you need a high return from stocks. To get a higher return you can only accept a lower price,

      This is why stocks are down, NVDA is still making plenty of money in AI

      • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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        3 months ago

        There’s more to it as well, such as:

        • investors coming back from vacation and selling off losses and whatnot
        • investors expecting reduced spending between summer and holidays; we’re past the “back to school” retail bump and into a slower retail economy
        • upcoming election, with polls shifting between Trump and Harris

        September is pretty consistently more volatile than other months, and has net negative returns long-term. So it’s not just the Fed discussing rate cuts (that news was reported over the last couple months, so it should be factored in), but just normal sideways trading in September.

    • SturgiesYrFase@lemmy.ml
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      3 months ago

      Also bubbles don’t “leak”.

      I mean, sometimes they kinda do? They either pop or slowly deflate, I’d say slow deflation could be argued to be caused by a leak.

      • stephen01king@lemmy.zip
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        3 months ago

        We taking about bubbles or are we talking about balloons? Maybe we should change to using the word balloon instead, since these economic ‘bubbles’ can also deflate slowly.

        • SturgiesYrFase@lemmy.ml
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          3 months ago

          Good point, not sure that economists are human enough to take sense into account, but I think we should try and make it a thing.

  • iAvicenna@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    FMO is the best explanation of this psychosis and then of course denial by people who became heavily invested in it. Stuff like LLMs or ConvNets (and the likes) can already be used to do some pretty amazing stuff that we could not do a decade ago. I am also not against exploring and pushing the boundaries, but when you explore a boundary while pretending like you have already crossed it, that is how you get bubbles. And this again all boils down to appeasing some cancerous billionaire shareholders so they funnel down some money to your pockets.

    • utopiah@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      Stuff like LLMs or ConvNets (and the likes) can already be used to do some pretty amazing stuff that we could not do a decade ago, there is really no need to shit rainbows and puke glitter all over it.

      I’m shitting rainbows and puking glitter on a daily basis BUT it’s not against AI as a field, it’s not against AI research, rather it’s against :

      • catastrophism and fear, even eschatology, used as a marketing tactic
      • open systems and research that become close
      • trying to lock a market with legislation
      • people who use a model, especially a model they don’t even have e.g using a proprietary API, and claim they are an AI startup
      • C-levels decision that anything now must include AI
      • claims that this or that skill is soon to be replaced by AI with actually no proof of it
      • meaningless test results with grand claim like “passing the bar exam” used as marketing tactics
      • claims that it scales, it “just needs more data”, not for .1% improvement but for radical change, e.g emergent learning
      • for-profit (different from public research) scrapping datasets without paying back anything to actual creators
      • ignoring or lying about non renewable resource consumption for both training and inference
      • relying on “free” or loss leader strategies to dominate a market
      • promoting to be doing the work for the good of humanity then signing exclusive partnership with a corporation already fined for monopoly practices

      I’m sure I’m forgetting a few but basically none of those criticism are technical. None of those criticism is about the current progress made. Rather, they are about business practices.

    • AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      there is really no need shit rainbows and puke glitter all over it

      I’m now picturing the unicorn from the Squatty Potty commercial, with violent diarrhea and vomiting.

  • PenisDuckCuck9001@lemmynsfw.com
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    3 months ago

    I just want computer parts to stop being so expensive. Remember when gaming was cheap? Pepperidge farm remembers. You used to be able to build a relatively high end pc for less than the average dogshit Walmart laptop.

    • filister@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      To be honest right now is a relatively good time to build a PC, except for the GPU, which is heavily overpriced. I think if you are content with last gen AMD, this can also be turned to somewhat acceptable levels.

  • masterspace@lemmy.ca
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    3 months ago

    Thank fucking god.

    I got sick of the overhyped tech bros pumping AI into everything with no understanding of it…

    But then I got way more sick of everyone else thinking they’re clowning on AI when in reality they’re just demonstrating an equal sized misunderstanding of the technology in a snarky pessimistic format.

  • Teal@lemm.ee
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    3 months ago

    Too much optimism and hype may lead to the premature use of technologies that are not ready for prime time.

    — Daron Acemoglu, MIT

    Preach!

  • TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    It’s like the least popular opinion I have here on Lemmy, but I assure you, this is the begining.

    Yes, we’ll see a dotcom style bust. But it’s not like the world today wasn’t literally invented in that time. Do you remember where image generation was 3 years ago? It was a complete joke compared to a year ago, and today, fuck no one here would know.

    When code generation goes through that same cycle, you can put out an idea in plain language, and get back code that just “does” it.

    I have no idea what that means for the future of my humanity.

    • rottingleaf@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      you can put out an idea in plain language, and get back code that just “does” it

      No you can’t. Simplifying it grossly:

      They can’t do the most low-level, dumbest detail, splitting hairs, “there’s no spoon”, “this is just correct no matter how much you blabber in the opposite direction, this is just wrong no matter how much you blabber to support it” kind of solutions.

      And that happens to be main requirement that makes a task worth software developer’s time.

      We need software developers to write computer programs, because “a general idea” even in a formalized language is not sufficient, you need to address details of actual reality. That is the bottleneck.

      That technology widens the passage in the places which were not the bottleneck in the first place.

      • TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        I think you live in a nonsense world. I literally use it everyday and yes, sometimes it’s shit and it’s bad at anything that even requires a modicum of creativity. But 90% of shit doesn’t require a modicum of creativity. And my point isn’t about where we’re at, it’s about how far the same tech progressed on another domain adjacent task in three years.

        Lemmy has a “dismiss AI” fetish and does so at its own peril.

        • rottingleaf@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          Are you a software developer? Or a hardware engineer? EDIT: Or anyone credible in evaluating my nonsense world against yours?

            • rottingleaf@lemmy.world
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              3 months ago

              So close, but not there.

              OK, you’ll know that I’m right when you somewhat expand your expertise to neighboring areas. Should happen naturally.

            • hark@lemmy.world
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              3 months ago

              That explains your optimism. Code generation is at a stage where it slaps together Stack Overflow answers and code ripped off from GitHub for you. While that is quite effective to get at least a crappy programmer to cobble together something that barely works, it is a far cry from having just anyone put out an idea in plain language and getting back code that just does it. A programmer is still needed in the loop.

              I’m sure I don’t have to explain to you that AI development over the decades has often reached plateaus where the approach needed to be significantly changed in order for progress to be made, but it could certainly be the case where LLMs (at least as they are developed now) aren’t enough to accomplish what you describe.

    • Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.works
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      3 months ago

      I agree with you but not for the reason you think.

      I think the golden age of ML is right around the corner, but it won’t be AGI.

      It would be image recognition and video upscaling, you know, the boring stuff that is not game changing but possibly useful.

      • zbyte64@awful.systems
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        3 months ago

        I feel the same about the code generation stuff. What I really want is a tool that suggests better variable names.

      • ReCursing@lemmings.world
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        2 months ago

        Oh you’re a luddite, you’re also a hater and about as intractable and strupid as a trump supporter. You can be many crappy things at once!

    • Bilb!@lem.monster
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      3 months ago

      The term “AI bubble” refers to the idea that the excitement, investment, and hype surrounding artificial intelligence (AI) may be growing at an unsustainable rate, much like historical financial or technological bubbles (e.g., the dot-com bubble of the late 1990s). Here are some key aspects of this concept:

      1. Overvaluation and Speculation: Investors and companies are pouring significant amounts of money into AI technologies, sometimes without fully understanding the technology or its realistic potential. This could lead to overvaluation of AI companies and startups.

      2. Hype vs. Reality: There is often a mismatch between what people believe AI can achieve in the short term and what it is currently capable of. Some claims about AI may be exaggerated, leading to inflated expectations that cannot be met.

      3. Risk of Market Crash: Like previous bubbles in history, if AI does not deliver on its overhyped promises, there could be a significant drop in AI investments, stock prices, and general interest. This could result in a burst of the “AI bubble,” causing financial losses and slowing down real progress.

      4. Comparison to Previous Bubbles: The “AI bubble” is compared to the dot-com bubble or the housing bubble, where early optimism led to massive growth and investment, followed by a sudden collapse when the reality didn’t meet expectations.

      Not everyone believes an AI bubble is forming, but the term is often used as a cautionary reference, urging people to balance enthusiasm with realistic expectations about the technology’s development and adoption.

    • Blackmist@feddit.uk
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      3 months ago

      As in as soon as companies realise they won’t be able to lay off everybody except executives and personal masseuses, nVidia will go back to having a normal stock price.

      Rich people will become slightly less grotesquely wealthy, and everything must be done to prevent this.

  • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    Well, they also kept telling investors all they need to simulate a human brain was to simulate the amount of neurons in a human brain…

    The stupidly rich loved that, because they want computer backups for “immortality”. And they’d dump billions of dollars into making that happen

    About two months ago tho, we found out that the brain uses microtubules in the brain to put tryptophan into super position, and it can maintain that for like a crazy amount of time, like longer than we can do in a lab.

    The only argument against a quantum component for human consciousness, was people thought there was no way to have even just get regular quantum entanglement in a human brain.

    We’ll be lucky to be able to simulate that stuff in 50 years, but it’s probably going to be even longer.

    Every billionaire who wanted to “live forever” this way, just got aged out. So they’ll throw their money somewhere else now.

    • half_built_pyramids@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      I used to follow the Penrose stuff and was pretty excited about QM as an explanation of consciousness. If this is the kind of work they’re reaching at though. This is pretty sad. It’s not even anything. Sometimes you need to go with your gut, and my gut is telling me that if this is all the QM people have, consciousness is probably best explained by complexity.

      https://ask.metafilter.com/380238/Is-this-paper-on-quantum-propeties-of-the-brain-bad-science-or-not

      Completely off topic from ai, but got me curious about brain quantum and found this discussion. Either way, AI still sucks shit and is just a shortcut for stealing.

      • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        That’s a social media comment from some Ask Yahoo knockoff…

        Like, this isn’t something no one is talking about, you don’t have to solely learn about that from unpopular social media sites (including my comment).

        I don’t usually like linking videos, but I’m feeling like that might work better here

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xa2Kpkksf3k

        But that PBS video gives a really good background and then talks about the recent discovery.

        • Jordan117@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          some Ask Yahoo knockoff…

          AskMeFi predated Yahoo Answers by several years (and is several orders of magnitude better than it ever was).

          • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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            3 months ago

            And that linked accounts last comment was advocating for Biden to stage a pre-emptive coup before this election…

            https://www.metafilter.com/activity/306302/comments/mefi/

            It doesn’t matter if it was created before Ask Yahoo or if it’s older.

            It’s random people making random social media comments, sometimes stupid people make the rare comment that sounds like they know what they’re talking about. And I already agreed no one had to take my word on it either.

            But that PBS video does a really fucking good job explaining it.

            Cuz if I can’t explain to you why a random social media comment isn’t a good source, I’m sure as shit not going to be able to explain anything like Penrose’s theory on consciousness to you.

            • Jordan117@lemmy.world
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              3 months ago

              It doesn’t matter if it was created before Ask Yahoo or if it’s older.

              It does if you’re calling it a “knockoff” of a lower-quality site that was created years later, which was what I was responding to.

              • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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                3 months ago

                Great.

                So the social media site is older than I thought, and the person who made the comment on that site is a lot stupider than it seemed.

                Like, Facebooks been around for about 20 years. Would you take a link to a Facebook comment over PBS?

                • Jordan117@lemmy.world
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                  3 months ago

                  My man, I said nothing about the science or the validity of that comment, just that it’s wrong to call Ask MetaFilter “some Ask Yahoo knockoff”. If you want to get het up about an argument I never made, you do you.

  • Grofit@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    A lot of the AI boom is like the DotCom boom of the Web era. The bubble burst and a lot of companies lost money but the technology is still very much important and relevant to us all.

    AI feels a lot like that, it’s here to stay, maybe not in th ways investors are touting, but for voice, image, video synthesis/processing it’s an amazing tool. It also has lots of applications in biotech, targetting systems, logistics etc.

    So I can see the bubble bursting and a lot of money being lost, but that is the point when actually useful applications of the technology will start becoming mainstream.

    • ipkpjersi@lemmy.ml
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      3 months ago

      I’m glad someone else is acknowledging that AI can be an amazing tool. Every time I see AI mentioned on lemmy, people say that it’s entirely useless and they don’t understand why it exists or why anyone talks about it at all. I mention I use ChatGPT daily for my programming job, it’s helpful like having an intern do work for me, etc, and I just get people disagreeing with me all day long lol

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      The bubble burst and a lot of companies lost money but the technology is still very much important and relevant to us all.

      The DotCom bubble was built around the idea of online retail outpacing traditional retail far faster than it did, in fact. But it was, at its essence, a system of digital book keeping. Book your orders, manage your inventory, and direct your shipping via a more advanced and interconnected set of digital tools.

      The fundamentals of the business - production, shipping, warehousing, distribution, the mathematical process of accounting - didn’t change meaningfully from the days of the Sears-Roebuck Catalog. Online was simply a new means of marketing. It worked well, but not nearly as well as was predicted. What Amazon did to achieve hegemony was to run losses for ten years, while making up the balance as a government sponsored series of data centers (re: AWS) and capitalize on discount bulk shipping through the USPS before accruing enough physical capital to supplant even the big box retailers. The digital front-end was always a loss-leader. Nobody is actually turning a profit on Amazon Prime. It’s just a hook to get you into the greater Amazon ecosystem.

      Pivot to AI, and you’ve got to ask… what are we actually improving on? It’s not a front-end. It’s not a data-service that anyone benefits from. It is hemorrhaging billions of dollars just at OpenAI alone (one reason why it was incorporated as a Non-Profit to begin with - THERE WAS NO PROFIT). Maybe you can leverage this clunky behemoth into… low-cost mass media production? But its also extremely low-rent production, in an industry where - once again - marketing and advertisement are what command the revenue you can generate on a finished product. Maybe you can use it to optimize some industrial process? But it seems that every AI needs a bunch of human babysitters to clean up all the shit is leaves. Maybe you can get those robo-taxis at long last? I wouldn’t hold my breath, but hey, maybe?!

      Maybe you can argue that AI provides some kind of hook to drive retail traffic into a more traditional economic model. But I’m still waiting to see what that is. After that, I’m looking at AI in the same way I’m looking at Crypto or VR. Just a gimmick that’s scaring more people off than it drags in.

      • Grofit@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        I don’t mean it’s like the dotcom bubble in terms of context, I mean in terms of feel. Dotcom had loads of investors scrambling to “get in on it” many not really understanding why or what it was worth but just wanted quick wins.

        This has same feel, a bit like crypto as you say but I would say crypto is very niche in real world applications at the moment whereas AI does have real world usages.

        They are not the ones we are being fed in the mainstream like it replacing coders or artists, it can help in those areas but it’s just them trying to keep the hype going. Realistically it can be used very well for some medical research and diagnosis scenarios, as it can correlate patterns very easily showing likelyhood of genetic issues.

        The game and media industry are very much trialling for voice and image synthesis for improving environmental design (texture synthesis) and providing dynamic voice synthesis based off actors likenesses. We have had peoples likenesses in movies for decades via cgi but it’s only really now we can do the same but for voices and this isn’t getting into logistics and/or financial where it is also seeing a lot of application.

        Its not going to do much for the end consumer outside of the guff you currently use siri or alexa for etc, but inside the industries AI is very useful.

        • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          crypto is very niche in real world applications at the moment whereas AI does have real world usages.

          Crypto has a very real niche use for money laundering that it does exceptionally well.

          AI does not appear to do anything significantly more effectively than a Google search circa 2018.

          But neither can justify a multi billion dollar market cap on these terms.

          The game and media industry are very much trialling for voice and image synthesis for improving environmental design (texture synthesis) and providing dynamic voice synthesis based off actors likenesses. We have had peoples likenesses in movies for decades via cgi but it’s only really now we can do the same but for voices and this isn’t getting into logistics and/or financial where it is also seeing a lot of application.

          Voice actors simply don’t cost that much money. Procedural world building has existed for decades, but it’s generally recognized as lackluster beside bespoke design and development.

          These tools let you build bad digital experiences quickly.

          For logistics and finance, a lot of what you’re exploring is solved with the technology that underpins AI (modern graph theory). But LLMs don’t get you that. They’re an extraneous layer that takes enormous resources to compile and offers very little new value.

            • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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              2 months ago

              there are loads of white papers detailing applications of AI in various industries

              And loads more of its ineffectual nature and wastefulness.

              • Grofit@lemmy.world
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                2 months ago

                Are you talking specifically about LLMs or Neural Network style AI in general? Super computers have been doing this sort of stuff for decades without much problem, and tbh the main issue is on training for LLMs inference is pretty computationally cheap

                • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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                  2 months ago

                  Super computers have been doing this sort of stuff for decades without much problem

                  Idk if I’d point at a supercomputer system and suggest it was constructed “without much problem”. Cray has significantly lagged the computer market as a whole.

                  the main issue is on training for LLMs inference is pretty computationally cheap

                  Again, I would not consider anything in the LLM marketplace particularly cheap. Seems like they’re losing money rapidly.

      • PaulBlartFartTart@lemmy.zip
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        3 months ago

        The funny thing about Amazon, is we are phasing it out of our home now. Because it has become an online 7Eleven. You don’t pay for shipping and it comes fast, but you are often paying 50-100% more for everything. If you use AliExpress, 300-400% more… just to get it a week or two faster. I would rather go to local retailers that are increasing Chinese goods for a 150% profit, than Amazon and pay 300%. It just means I have to leave the house for 30 minutes.

        • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          would rather go to local retailers that are increasing Chinese goods for a 150% profit, than Amazon and pay 300%

          A lot of the local retailors are going out of business in my area. And those that exist are impossible to get into and out of, due to the fixation on car culture. The Galleria is just a traffic jam that spans multiple city blocks.

          The thing that keeps me at Amazon, rather than Target, is purely the time visit of shopping versus shipping.

    • criticalthreshold@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      Google Search is such an important facet for Alphabet that they must invest as many billions as they can to lead the new generative-AI search. IMO for Google it’s more than just a growth opportunity, it’s a necessity.

      • hamsterkill@lemmy.sdf.org
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        3 months ago

        I guess I don’t really see why generative AI is a necessity for a search engine? It doesn’t really help me find information any faster than a Wikipedia summary, and is less reliable.

        • RinseDrizzle@midwest.social
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          3 months ago

          So far…

          Obviously still has fair share of dumb stuff happening with these systems today, but there have been some big steps in just the last few years. Wouldn’t be surprised if it was much spookier a decade from now.

          In general, good to use as a tool to be taken with grain of salt and further review.

  • DogPeePoo@lemm.ee
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    3 months ago

    Wall Street has already milked “the pump” now they short it and put out articles like this