This is not true. Batteries are cheaper than peaker power plants using fossil fuel. They also allow the operator to fulfill market demands at the minute level versus the hours previously that it took to turn on a peaker plant.
This is being done at scale in California and Texas.
Fore more than 2 hours capacity, batteries are expensive than most other and cost keeps increasing as more hours of capacity needed. Without gas or coal to burn when 1hr battery capacity runs out, battery storage is expensive.
This is the exact scenario they are being used in at scale. The company removes their gas peaker plant infrastructure and replaces them with batteries. Already have the grid interconnect and now can dispatch power on the millisecond level instead of hour level.
My solar panels amaze me every day. It is just crazy that a flat panel, that doesn't have any moving parts, and requires a once a year cleaning (at most), just eliminated my power bill completely.
You're repeating tired quotes without even understanding what they mean. The quote "longer than you can stay solvent" refers to short selling. Here you are using it in the opposite context: to describe a long position. It makes no sense. How exactly would a non leveraged long position get margin called?
I think this comes down to a disagreement about what "long term" means. In finance, I would suggest a _lower_ bound on long term is 10 years. More comfortably, I'd suggest something like 20-30 years. This is long enough to ride out most depressions, and it is still fits within a persons working life-time. It also roughly matches the scale at which people should be planning for retirement and long-term care (imagine if you started your retirement planning just 10 years from retirement, it would be very difficult). So I think neither BTC's not TSLA's hype has reached long-term yet. They have been around long enough to meet some of these timelines, but the excessive hype really hasn't been so long -- maybe 5 years or so.
Can we stop just repeating quotes like those over and over. If you have thoughts, please articulate them, its pretty frustrating to see the same exact quotes repeated over and over whenever there is a submission stock related
My understanding is that the S-1 showed a Q1 loss of xAI of $2.47 billion in Q1. But with the Anthropic Colossus-I rental agreement at $1.25B/month or $3.75B/quarter, xAI should now be net-neutral to cash-flow positive.
If Colossus-II rents networked GB-200s, that could be up to +$47B/year at $9/hour/GB-200 for 555,000 GB-200s. For reference, current rental rates are $10-$27/hour for the same hardware. With Anthropic at a 55% month-over-month growth rate (implying a $150B/year run rate by August, or, more likely, sometime in late 2026), it seems very possible that xAI could be highly profitable as the only available compute resource.
I'm not saying +$47B Colossus-II deal will happen, but even a small fraction of that remains highly material to xAI economics. xAI is likely already cashflow neutral. (Where am I wrong?)
the xAi revenue comes from renting their infrastructure to their biggest competitor. Anthropic is going to IPO for aprox 1/2 the valuation, is profitable, and can cancel the contract with 90 days notice.
Personally I think the valuation is detached from the company itself. In theory Tesla's valuation is too high, but it doesn't seem to be coming down any time soon. Plus there seems to be ways to manipulate stock prices when you control such a highly valued company, to the extent that the stock price reflects actions taken in the stock market more than the underlying assets and balance sheets.
The original “revenue thesis” was that SpaceX, with landing orbital rocket boosters, can undercut all competitors and essentially have a monopoly on payload-to-orbit, and that their lower prices would massive increase the market.
Seems a fine business.
But then a couple years ago they say “actually with this brand new technological edge we can spin up a monopoly on an entirely NEW industry, Space Internet” and within a short timeframe they’ve got billions in revenue off this entirely new service.
It’s hard to predict the future but if Starlink is the last “new space industry” that spacex has borderline-exclusive access to, I’ll be shocked.
The valuation is speculative, yes, but they have such an incredible cost advantage in a nascent space that id be hard pressed to bet against them.
It’s reminiscent of everyone claiming Uber could never succeed, citing the size of the existing taxi market. TAM can change radically when costs move down orders of magnitude, in ways that are hard to predict.
Starlink has a hard limit on how much it can grow. If you are within the reach of wired Internet, you aren't going to pay more for starlink. As terrestrial coverage continues to increase, the potential market shrinks. Basically mobile devices is what their market is. Aircraft, ships, etc.
I don't know what to think about data centers in space. It's hard to see how it could be cheaper than terrestrial. Plus, if you actually have to service any of those space assets, it's going to cost a fortune.
Asteroid mining doesn't make sense to me unless you are going to use those mined resources in space somehow, and that seems far off.
> Starlink has a hard limit on how much it can grow. If you are within the reach of wired Internet, you aren't going to pay more for starlink.
I think you may be underestimating a little here. Even in places with reasonable wired availability, the convenience of being able to slap a dish on top of your house and get pretty good internet ~anywhere for ~not too much is pretty valuable.
You don’t service them, you let them deorbit and send up a new one
You also don’t try to send a Data Center to space. You send smaller satellites that are essentially individual racks. Cheap, marginal, easy to decommission
To be fair, a lot of us thought Uber would fail because governments would actually enforce regulations meant to protect consumers regarding what are taxis and laws around meant to protect workers regarding drivers' employment status, and it turns out "NAH, MONEY MACHINE GO BRRRR!" was the option they went with.
I thin some of us were betting against a return to the bad old days of race to the bottom for labor, but the gig economy sure kicked the shit out of that hope. But it sure helps those "employment" numbers!
79.6% of SpaceX’s Total Addressable Market is listed under “Enterprise Applications” of AI. This is in the S-1 itself. SpaceX is not planning to make its money in space or in broadband - SpaceX claims it’s an AI company.
Except that whole payload-to-orbit business turned out to be a dream of SciFi readers, very prevalent on HN, not so much a real massive business. Which is why Starlink is still the biggest "customer". It's probably most interesting for governments, which is also of course why China & co. will have their own SpaceX, not this one.
And then meanwhile the whole thing got merged with the corpse of Twitter and the failed xAI. With the latter nobody can quite explain why it continues to employ extremely overpaid 20 year olds when it has meanwhile pivoted to selling energy to its biggest competitors, an absolute turd of a business.
You need to pay taxes and have kids for the numbers to work out.
If your pension benefits are calculated based on a 4 workers/retiree ratio, but then your whole generation has like 1 kid per family then the system will obviously break down...
No, it would only imply that the worker/retiree income ratio (and tax/pension burden) are somewhat constant which is arguably the case; german pensions specifically rise with wages and get adjusted for inflation.
Productivity gains on the other hand get easily eaten up by increased consumption/expectations, or are overstated to begin with: producing 5 times more TVs/ipads does not make the plumber cheaper (nor a house), and unaffected professions actually suffer (=> baumol effect).
People automatically get a higher pension because they make more money? Without actually paying more into the system? That's an obviously flawed and unfair system, bound to fall over no matter what.
You’re making a value statement in a discussion about factual information. Regardless of whether you think avoiding children for economic reasons is good or bad, it’s the leading reason cited by people who choose to delay having children. Regardless of whether it’s perception or real, that is the problem the needs to be solved if you want people to have kids.
doesnt mean the solution is bombarding them with free money from the state. in a democracy there is probably no sensible or passable solution regardless.
A simply WILD statement given the rates of children raised in poverty with all the trauma and issues that gives, who then oftentimes grow up to be their parents doing the exact same thing.
> People can afford kids, they don't want to compromise on lifestyle.
Previous generations didn't have to, ours does. So if people don't want to make that compromise, they won't.
Maybe if we made it systemically a bit less awful to be parents more people would do it.
we are talking about germany here. no child in germany needs to grow up in poverty even if both parents are unemployed and are living on social welfare.
Poverty exists everywhere and Germany is no exception. Looking into it, the average welfare recipient is going to get ballpark 80% of what someone earning minimum wage does. Granted their lives are more stable, at least from an outside view given that the government programs directly cover rent and utilities. That said those numbers only really work for people in practice by way of budget conscious spending, i.e. grocery store brand foods and really no luxuries to speak of. By any definition, that's still poverty and is still subject to the stressors that implies. Making it so people don't end up homeless is certainly a good thing, and I'll definitely give them props for it, but like, if you were a poor kid growing up, you still knew that. Your clothes were never new for the school year, you don't get nearly as many fun foods or treats, your toys aren't as nice, all the rest. All the little psychological dings that add up to adults with issues around money management and delayed gratification. And that's assuming the parent is devoted and caring, if that's not the case, you can have ALL KINDS OF BAD in this system too.
Like, again, still beats the shit out of America's system, but it's far from perfect too.
if you were a poor kid growing up, you still knew that
i have been there, and i disagree. it's of course about attitude. and yes, sure we didn't get expensive clothes, but that wasn't an issue not in the school i went to. things might have changed, but i am sorry, it's not the problem of a welfare system to account for materialism. i was a boy scout and i got all my clothes from army surplus stores because that's what we were into. not the army style, but the sturdy hiking stuff. i was able to save up for an expensive leather school bag, not the cheap stuff everyone else in school had. i could do that because we were thrifty and didn't waste money on other unneeded luxuries. fun foods, treats? why? i am a lot healthier now because we didn't get that, and, most importantly, there was never any desire for that either. so no stress at all. as a child i never once felt that we didn't have enough money. i was proud of the way we lived.
i raise my kids the same way now. money is not the issue here. our toys were almost exclusively lego. lego is expensive, but only if it is new and if you insist on expensive presents every year. it also lasts a lifetime. you don't need to spend a lot every year to have enough to play with. and nowadays there are alternative brands that are a lot cheaper and just as good. oh, we also had comic books. lots of them. we bought and traded them on flea markets. why would they have to be new, when you could get them used at a fraction of the cost?
that's assuming the parent is devoted and caring
in your scenario the parents already failed. again, it is not the job of the welfare system to account for bad spending habits. but i get it. that argument is not new. i heard it already when i was young. and i just didn't get it. i was able to afford everything that i wanted, and i never felt i was missing anything just because our money was limited. i didn't feel that the money was limited. i didn't know that i was poor. my classmates in school didn't know that i was poor. i didn't notice that some other kids in my class were rich either. even those who actually were. at worst i saw some kids spending money on things that i would never waste my money on, but i didn't envy them. i was able to participate in every scout camp and trip that our group was doing. i was a member of a sailing club and made my sailing license. i was able to travel to various countries in europe and even to america. by the time i finished school i had done more traveling than any of my peers.
sure, i had financial support for that airplane flight, but that's the point. these things are available to everyone, regardless of income. anyone who doesn't take advantage of what is offered is either blind, ignorant or stupid.
to summarize: money is not the issue. what matters is a society where people care for each other and make efforts to ensure that everyone is included, regardless of their income. the problem is, that people don't see that. they argue that the money is not enough, when in reality the problem is lack of education (how to spend your money wisely), the wrong values, false pride that prevents people from accepting help, envy, selfishness, i don't know...
Then why are birth rates falling across all income levels in all countries? Please take the time to research your position.
"This perception, however, is false. In most human societies, poverty does not predict higher fertility, and well-to-do families often have the highest fertility. When families in America have more money, they tend to have more children. The stereotype of fertility being skewed towards low-income women is a product of basically two data analysis errors: 1) failure to control for important underlying cultural stratification, and 2) failure to adequately deal with the relationship between age, income, and fertility."
Birth rates are falling all around because access (including knowledge about) to contraceptives has increased over the years. Here in Jamaica just a few decades ago it was a regular thing to see women in poverty with a bunch of kids, and we had a decent birth rate. Today our birth rate is way lower, but I'm pretty sure there's still a lot of sex happening among especially those considered poor. It seems contradictory, but while they don't mind having kids, they'd rather not.
Bullshit. Ignorant people (which correlates to poor) don’t think about the long term responsibilities of having children and just fuck unprotected on a Friday night. Oops
almost always the case especially in germany where you are already incentivised with super low income taxes, free kindergarten and a shit load of other payments from the goverment. its basically impossible to be poor enough not to afford children unless you are doing it intentionally.
its low in practice for a family with a single earner is what i meant. ehegattenpsplitting. but yes by default its obviously very high but thats kind of the norm for western countries.
I wasn't aware that Germany had super low income taxes. It is certainly possible to game the welfare system and many people do, but if you want a decent standard of living then you need to be employed.
if you marry you basically half your income tax burden if your partner is not employed. there are also child support payments from the government of several hundred € per month that you get as well as free kindergarten, schooling and higher ed. if you are poor you get money from the state until you hit a minimum income threshhold which together with all the other payments is more than enough to have 2 children.
children will massively compromise your lifestyle, not just financially but they require a lot of "labor" from you. this is probably the most important piece of the social contract and if you are breaking it you should be penalized.
Unpaid work. If that work were paid enough through tax incentives and state aid, people would have been having children. But it's not. If they have children, they will be working intensely at their day job in an economic environment that expects ever-increasing productivity from everyone, and then doing more work when they get home. Japan did that. People started collapsing where they worked or stopped having children. Now they are trying to reduce workload, increase financial security and increase wages.
why would it be paid? you get the value back through the social contract. monetary incentives for children are empirically proven to be very ineffective. so the ship will go down regardless. why not to punish the culprits out of spite?
> you get the value back through the social contract
That was in the earlier decades when there actually was a social contract. Now the entire society is a profit extraction machine that has people working until they drop.
> monetary incentives for children are empirically proven to be very ineffective
On the contrary. Monetary incentives made immigrant families raise numerous kids. The problem was that natives of Germany weren't doing it. Or, maybe very few from the very low income segments were doing it.
why though? if you feel that way then in my opinion there is something wrong on your expectation of your lifestyle. or rather, on what our society projects what our lifestyle should be like.
but in my opinion we are also doing it wrong. we delay having children for to long, and we spend our 20s either working to hard or enjoying our freedom, and then we have children in our 30s and 40s and then in our 50s we are to old to enjoy the rest of our life. if we had children in the early 20s then they would be grown up in our 40s and we would be able to enjoy our freedom then. get the hard stuff, including raising children out of the way first.
of course, in order to do that, we need a society that values and supports that. and that's what we messed up in the west. in china it is much more normal to have children early, and people are more supportive and tolerant.
its true tho, basically all the time after working your 9-5 you have to invest into your children. i personally still want to have children in my mid 20s. i don't really care about the downside due to my ideological conviction. but even if you are a rational actor and respect the social contract you must bear the burden.
yes, but this should not be seen as a compromise of your lifestyle. especially if, as you say, you actually want children. you are doing yourself a disservice. looking at children as a burden will only grow resentment.
sure, having children means that my freedom to do something else is limited. but i don't see that as a burden. it's a choice. and i don't regret that choice one bit. i wanted this experience, even if it went differently than expected. in that sense, expecting that you won't have time for something else is good. but make it a positive choice, not something that you only begrudgingly accept because you feel you have to. if your children feel that you felt forced to have children they will resent you for it. it diminishes your love for them, at least in their eyes.
children can be a challenge, they can demand sacrifice, but every minute i spend with them also enriches my life, and when they are grown up and have children on their own i will look at them as a challenge that i have mastered, not a burden that i took on to fulfill a social contract.
i dont really have resentment toward having children. my only resentment is toward having to pay into a social system where the majority of recipients don't understand why having no children is breaking the social contract.
Now sure how things are in Europe where there is a bigger social safety net, but in the US, 36% of adults under 50 describe putting off having kids due to financial reasons.
This is reductive, and incorrect. You simply need working-age people to run stuff, full stop. Approaching a 1:1 ratio of workers/retirees is simply unsustainable (yet), for very obvious reasons.
While wealth disparity is also a problem, solving it would NOT solve this one: In Germany, completely disowning (!) the richest 10% (!!) would not even pay for a decade of pensions.
> Approaching a 1:1 ratio of workers/retirees is simply unsustainable (yet), for very obvious reasons
Society would be very dull with that many old people. But other than that the reasons aren't obvious to me. Let's say the worker ratio was 4:1 80 years ago, which was sustainable. If 1:1 is unsustainable, that means each worker today doesn't produce 4x as much as a worker 80 years ago.
But that's not true! In fact in the US, labor productivity is 6 times what it was 80 years ago. [1] A worker today is equal to 6 from 1947, in terms of the value they create. So ask yourself: why isn't the math working out?
Rising productivity is a weak argument imo for several reasons:
Pensions have to not rise with wages for this to be useful. Which simply isnt happening in practice (yet?)
Also no meaningful increase in housebuilding, nursing, plumbing, childcare productivity; even worse, rise in general productivity increases costs (Baumol effect).
I'm very confident that we can make the math work out one way or another, but this might involve sacrifices that people dont even want to contemplate (yet!).
It's the cost, but also the higher expectations of living nowadays. Social media, phones, computers, trips, etc.
The actual monetary cost of a child is high, for sure. But many people put that number higher due to lifestyle choices, not need. Social media certainly doesn't help.
Again, it's not a fact at all. Spend a few minutes doing basic research. All of this tech is cheaper today than it was in the 80s or 90s, cell phones in the 80s and 90s were thousands of dollars, internet was expensive, as were other electronics.
Items like smartphones are dramatically cheaper than the tech people bought in the 1990s. It replaced your home phone, video camera, answering machine, alarm clock, clock, etc. You are not correct at all, the things that have gone up in price are housing, education, health expenses, etc. Not electronics.
The point is that people are choosing to have fewer children, and it's absolutely not because of the cost of computers or cell phones.
The median family did not have a computer in the 1980s. I can't find good data but the ones a quick google search returned suggests by 1990 computer ownership was around 20%.
Computers also became ridiculously cheap in real dollars over the years, in the meanwhile education, healthcare, housing all shot up faster than overall inflation.
They could make not having kids more expensive than having them and I still wouldn’t have them.
Most people I know with kids can’t afford them and still have them. And most people I know with money don’t have them. In a way it seems wealth is inversely correlated to having kids. It’s not about money, it’s about having interesting stuff to do with your life, and having the education to know what a terrible economic decision it is to have kids.
That’s as if, in a conversation about the necessity of owning a car to buy groceries, you asked whether being able to afford a car means owning a Toyota or a Maserati.
Consider in your presentations leading with this as a demo to motivate the technical infrastructure you've put in place.
It is hard to grok what Contracts, etc. etc. allow you to do in the abstract so working through how it allows us to build a decentralized GitHub might be a good anchor in a tangible use case.
Appreciate the suggestion. It's often difficult to know where to start when explaining a project like this.
The freenet-git work is quite recent but we do feature River, our group chat app, fairly prominently on our installation page[1] so that people can quickly try out something useful. River is by-far the most fully developed app so far.
This is being done at scale in California and Texas.
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