AI Versus The PC Industry With GamersNexus

In this episode, Ed Zitron is joined by Steve Burke of GamersNexus to talk about NVIDIA’s alleged GPU shipments to China, how AI is choking the PC gaming industry, and how mad Jensen Huang keeps getting on podcasts. Save $10 off a year of my premium newsletter: https://edzitronswheresyouredatghostio.outpost.pub/public/promo-subscription/gzqwkv54e1 - I’d be so grateful! GamersNexus: Yes, This All Seems Very Legitimate - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUbJDrL6ZfM Support GamersNexus’ AI Surveillance Dystopia Series: https://store.gamersnexus.net/ai-dystopia https://www.youtube.com/gamersnexus https://gamersnexus.net/ https://bsky.app/profile/gamersnexus.bsky.social https://x.com/GamersNexus YOU CAN NOW BUY BETTER OFFLINE MERCH! Go to https://cottonbureau.com/people/better-offline and use code FREE99 for free shipping on orders of $99 or more. --- LINKS: https://www.tinyurl.com/betterofflinelinks Newsletter: https://www.wheresyoured.at/ Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/BetterOffline/ Discord: chat.wheresyoured.at https://discord.com/invite/QUUQUP9szv Ed's Socials: https://twitter.com/edzitron https://www.instagram.com/edzitron https://bsky.app/profile/edzitron.com https://www.threads.net/@edzitron Email Me: [email protected] mailto:[email protected] See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.

• 0:04Speaker 01

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• 1:15Ed Zitron?

  Hello and welcome to Bear Offline. We are not a car. This is a podcast, not a car, and I am Ed Zitron.

• 1:34Ed Zitron?

  Today we have returning champion Steve Burke of Gamers Nexus joining us to talk about a little company called Nvidia. How are you doing, Steve?

• 1:41Speaker 04

  I'm also not a car.

• 1:43Ed Zitron?

  Good stuff. I was just making sure, just checking, are you triggered as well? Because based on the Stanford video, there was an interview with Jensen Huang at Stanford. He appears to have been both triggered but also not mad at the same time.

• 1:58Speaker 04

  Yeah, well, I mean, he definitely seemed a little sensitive in that one.

• 2:05Ed Zitron?

  It's interesting. So just to be clear to the audience, there was an interview about a month ago, a month or two ago with Jensen Huang on the Dwakesh Podcast, which is a podcast that's both very fluffy, but also occasionally has sentient thoughts. And there was this bizarre bit where I forget what the question leading in was. It was something about China perhaps. And Jensen Huang just gets pissed off and goes, we are not a car. We are not a car. And it's just.

• 2:31Speaker 04

  He also, I think that was the same podcast, right? Where he was like, I'm not a loser. America's not a loser. We're not losers. Like, he went on this.

• 2:42Ed Zitron?

  This is, I say this as a, I was a very fat child and I was bullied a great deal. Let me tell you something. When someone's saying they're not upset, that they're not a loser, they are like they, they, they are just, that's them saying it. Except I was, I was just large. I wasn't a five trillion dollar company.

• 3:02Ed Zitron?

  It really feels like Jensen is starting to go off the wheels a bit.

• 3:06Speaker 04

  I, yeah, and I don't know if it's because it could, I guess it could be multiple things. It could be he's gotten to a size where he just doesn't care anymore. Maybe he is so important, he's just dropped, like that's just how he is and he's kind of dropped the act or, or, you know, maybe it's a top indicator. I don't know.

• 3:24Ed Zitron?

  I think it's more likely that because here's the thing, if we're talking about this a few episodes back, in 2025, he was signing women's boobs.

• 3:34Speaker 04

  That is right.

• 3:35Ed Zitron?

  He was all swaggy. He'd go out on stage at GTC and just be like, the more you buy, the more you save. We're the best, da, da, da. And everyone was cheering for him and he was like a rock star. Now he seems like Dwakesh Patel is 23 years old. If a 23 year old was rude to me, other than the numerous times they are online, I would, I would just be like, okay. It's not, not that, not that big a deal.

• 3:59Speaker 04

  Especially if your company is worth trillions of dollars.

• 4:02Ed Zitron?

  And the quote is just to quote, "We are not, we're not a car, we are not a car. The fact that I can buy this car brand one day and use another car brand the other day, easy. Computing is not like that. There's a reason why, why the X86 deal exists. There's a reason why ARM is so sticky. These ecosystems are hard to replace. I don't know if that, I mean, like.

• 4:23Speaker 04

  It's not really a clean analogy.

• 4:25Ed Zitron?

  It's also the kind of thing, it's also insane that they've got to this point without having a cleaner one than that.

• 4:32Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, it's, that's easy to poke holes and I get what he's trying to say. I get it. Like the architecture is, yes, it is difficult to move off of, but also on the consumer side, which is what he's talking about with buying a car and then buying a different one.

• 4:50Speaker 04

  You can, in fact, do exactly that with GPUs. So like, I get what he means, more on the, the business side. But, um, it is, uh,

• 5:03Speaker 04

  I, I don't, it's just such a, a sensitive topic for him lately, and I don't understand if that's coming from a place of insecurity or, I don't know. At this point, you, you know who you need to have on? It's not me, it's like a therapist to psychoanalyze Jensen. He's like a therapist to break down his mental state.

• 5:27Ed Zitron?

  A director's commentary style thing like, well, okay, stop there. You see, when he says he has a car, this is a sign that just like, and here he's, he's gonna cry, but they paused it. But I, so my theory is, and we kind of, we've kind of talked about this and now we don't dip into it a ton, but there was a short cell report from Culpa Research that came out that suggested that over 20% of Nvidia's fiscal year 2026 revenue came from China, right through a company called Megaspeed. I think what it might be is that he really does need China. I think it may be as simple as he really needs China. He needs China so bad and Chinese GPUs terrify him in a way that.

• 6:09Ed Zitron?

  That he's like, that he's perhaps not willing to, willing to totally

• 6:13Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 6:14Ed Zitron?

  Talk about. And also, he's not scared of AMD. I don't think the MI instincts are gonna, gonna scare Nvidia at all. That would require.

• 6:23Speaker 04

  I don't think so. I, I also, I think AMD is a known quantity at this point for Jensen. Yeah. And their strategies are known, their technology is known. It's really, it's the, the own known technologies and strategy is probably what he needs to worry about. And right now, most of that's coming from Chinese companies.

• 6:46Speaker 04

  There's, there's a lot of them. I, we have some coverage coming up on.

• 6:49Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, talk to me about it.

• 6:50Speaker 04

  Yeah, on Chinese GPUs, the rise of them, uh, kinda like our rise of Chinese memory video and

• 6:58Speaker 04

  they get a, it's interesting. It's interesting to watch companies like Jaoxing, which makes CPUs come to market. And when they do, in the consumer space, they get kind of shit on for being a couple of generations behind. Cause I remember when some of their first CPUs came out and the early media reports that tested it were, oh, they're about the same as a three or four generation old Intel CPU. And like I, I, the perspective was one of mockery, but I think that should really concern some of these companies. Cause like, if you come from nowhere, silicon is not an easy technology. Architecture is hard.

• 7:39Speaker 04

  If you come out of nowhere and you're like four generations back instantaneously, that should be pretty scary. I think for the companies that are in the space, cause it's, it's the getting started. That's the hard part.

• 7:52Ed Zitron?

  Right. Oh, what do you mean by that? What, what is the getting started in this case?

• 7:56Speaker 04

  The getting started in this case, at least in the scope of China, is largely going to be things like figuring out your fab. So who's going to make the product? Do they have the technology to make it? And if they don't, how do you kind of work within the limitations of what you have access to?

• 8:11Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 8:12Speaker 04

  Right. Because technically TSMC is not supposed to make, um, products for like Chinese GPUs. Or I mean, sometimes it kinda happens anyway, but, um, in the past, but there's limitations of the fab. That's a big challenge for them. And then there's also, um, just the, the actual first coming up with an architectural design.

• 8:38Speaker 04

  Uh, once you have that, you can iterate on it and make changes that advance it. But getting anything to work at all, that's, that's the hard part, right? So, once they pass that barrier and they have a fab that can make it, like from there, you just iterate. And as long as they have some customers, they, yeah, they can, like any other company, they just iterate. And if China has a built in pool of customers, because they have restricted access to external hardware, then whether or not they're competitive, they're, they're gonna have buyers because, you know, yeah.

• 9:12Ed Zitron?

  Well, the other thing is as well, and this is, this is one of my own personal things is, I also have to wonder if there's not, this whole thing I've been saying about data centers not getting built. And when I say that, because I always get one comment from someone saying, actually, I just saw one being built near me. And, uh, it's like people just with, I assume no object permanence, which is like, I saw one, even though I'm saying they're not getting finished. If that's the case, I imagine that's quite scary to Jen, maybe this isn't it, but I imagine that's quite scary to Jensen as well, because if these things aren't getting built and China is saying, we don't need these GPUs, then that makes Vera Rubin a much weirder proposition as well.

• 9:53Ed Zitron?

  Cause it's like, okay, if China doesn't need these and we don't have the space for the new ones, why would we buy the new ones? Or what would we do with these old ones? Do we just junk them? He's, the walls are kind of closing in for Mr. Wong.

• 10:05Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think so. I, I will say though, uh, on the premise of data centers are not being built, I'm not sure if you saw, but Oracle has a very nice beam in the ground.

• 10:16Ed Zitron?

  Several of them. I, I love that there's one photo, I forget which data center it is. There's just, they put up the first steel beam, I think in Wisconsin, and there's one bloke with his hand on it and three others walking up.

• 10:29Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 10:29Ed Zitron?

  And it's just, it's so good, because it's like, Yeah, but yeah, I've seen this in London a hundred times, like a bunch of guys with hard hats going, "Oh mate, you know, it's gonna take a minute, what is it stable? You better lean on it another minute, mate." It's so, it is funny watching that happen, but it is also so very weird that going back to the Stanford thing as well, that moment where he was like, "Oh, thank you for triggering me." Again, these are children. These are children. These are children with questions that you should be ready for, but these are children. How do you and your $17,000 leather jacket not just reflect these unless there are like very simple problems here that you-

• 11:09Speaker 04

  Well, and that, that one was interesting too, because that segment, he gets into, I'm not sure who the guy was sitting with him. I assume someone who works for Stanford.

• 11:19Ed Zitron?

  He was an optimist.

• 11:21Speaker 04

  Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, right. The guy fielding the, uh, the questions though, he makes a comment at one point where he says, you know, "We at Stanford have a $40 billion endowment." And he's talking about how they're having trouble getting access to compute and GPUs. And Jensen effectively, I mean paraphrasing it, but not that much, he effectively says, "You just need money." Like you, and he talks about how the first thing he would do is cut a billion dollars and send it off to a cloud data, data center service provider for compute as opposed to, you know, buying and having their own solution in-house.

• 11:59Speaker 04

  Which, that I think also is, i- it's concerning because it's the thing we've been worried about in the consumer space for a while, which is the you'll own nothing and, you know, the companies-

• 12:13Ed Zitron?

  Right, right. They want to get away from providing anything other than dumb clients.

• 12:18Speaker 04

  Right, except this is, we're not talking about a guy who's saying he can't get a GPU for video games. We're talking about like a university that's considering whatever, hundreds of millions or a billion dollars of spend. And Jensen's telling them to fuck off and use laptops to connect to a cloud provider.

• 12:41Speaker 04

  And to me, it just, it kind of seems like- They're being a lot more open with the concept that owning the devices is dead. Uh, and it's all going to cloud. And that is, he was talking about, well, you know, you see people today, they all have a laptop and they connect. And the compute's not local anymore. And that's what he's talking about. And that should scare a lot of people.

• 13:07Ed Zitron?

  How likely do you think that actually is though?

• 13:09Speaker 04

  Because. Don't know.

• 13:12Ed Zitron?

  It just, it with the speed of internet connections, I just don't know what. Like, I don't know how like practical it would be, but these people don't really give a fuck. Like, I think that Jensen Wong doesn't give a fuck about other countries outside of how many GPUs they buy. But it's like, I was on an airplane, yes, I was on an airplane, it's 100 years old. And like, I could barely connect to the internet, if at all. That alone makes me feel like this might not be, or is the suggestion that this would be like a very classist thing? This would be like, if you, the only laptop you could afford is one that is effectively just a device that connects to the cloud.

• 13:52Speaker 04

  I do think you start to see it cause segregation by class in terms of access to hardware. Um, although that's maybe not unique to this industry, but the, the likelihood, just to pull a number. GeForce Now, which is the low end online gaming service, game streaming to basically any device.

• 14:15Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 14:15Speaker 04

  They claim to have 30 million users for that.

• 14:18Ed Zitron?

  Huh.

• 14:19Speaker 04

  Which seems like a lot.

• 14:21Ed Zitron?

  That also, really?

• 14:24Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 14:26Ed Zitron?

  They, yeah, this is GeForce Now?

• 14:28Speaker 04

  Yeah, GeForce Now, there's a public document that they talk about 30 million users, yeah.

• 14:33Ed Zitron?

  30 million users? I don't know, that, that just feels very un, like, I'm just thinking of the PC gaming industry.

• 14:42Ed Zitron?

  Like I, for something of that scale, you would, I just, maybe I'm just terribly ignorant. That just feels very high to me. Cause like every other game streaming service.

• 14:54Speaker 04

  I mean, they might be pumping their numbers because they do have an ad-supported free tier.

• 15:01Ed Zitron?

  Well, here's the thing, I just looked this up while on air. There are 35 million subscribers to Xbox Game Pass.

• 15:07Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 15:08Ed Zitron?

  I find it very unlikely that Nvidia, which has failed to like, they failed every single other like software, like the Omniverse, you know, you're, you are my favorite subject. The Omniverse, like a terrible fail. Have they ever succeeded with any kind of external thing other than hardware?

• 15:28Speaker 04

  Uh.

• 15:30Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, exactly. I just, I don't believe that they have nearly as many, even with an ad-supported thing.

• 15:36Speaker 04

  So they have a PDF called Nvidia-story.pdf, our story 2025. And in here uh, is where they, I'll have to send it to you. And here's where they, yeah, over 30 million members in more than 110 countries now have access to more than 1900.

• 15:59Ed Zitron?

  Ah, there you go. There's your thing. 30 million members over a nonspecific period now have access, could theoretically use. So that's 30 million people have signed up and given an email address. Ah, beautiful.

• 16:16Speaker 04

  Yeah. And so like, how, how likely that is? I'm not sure, but that, that's an interesting story. Cause I just learned, thanks to the recent GeForce Now, uh, partner breach.

• 16:27Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 16:28Speaker 04

  Yeah, that Nvidia has partners to propagate this service. Kind of like some kind of, like a wifi range extender.

• 16:36Ed Zitron?

  Makes sense. That makes some sense.

• 16:39Speaker 04

  Yeah. And um, I, I guess that's to try and solve what you're talking about, which is the latency issue. Uh, I mean, the, the US is pretty woefully far behind, right? And a lot of places for internet where it's just non-viable.

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• 20:07Ed Zitron?

  It's all just a very strange time. Actually, before I go any further, though, what is this G-Force breach you mentioned to me just before we came on the call? I realized we should give it some airtime.

• 20:18Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's so the hacking group Shiny Hunters or someone at least posing as them. It's kind of the funny thing with the hacking groups. It's it's difficult to verify. Sometimes they impersonate each other, and there's no real good way to verify it. But a user representing Shiny Hunters posted on a breach forum, basically dark web stuff, with an offer to sell, I think it was for $100,000, a data packet where they claimed that they had breached and harvested data, including two-factor authentication information.

• 20:58Ed Zitron?

  Jesus.

• 20:59Speaker 04

  Um, access flags, usernames, dates of birth, things like that. And they're offering it for sale for, I think it was a hundred grand, I'd have to check, but, and that was on a forum. They said, they wrote it as if they had compromised all of Nvidia GeForce Now. Nvidia responded within a couple of days and said, we've looked into this. Nope. What they've compromised is one of our partners representing the Armenia region. And Nvidia kind of pointed the finger to just Armenia for the breach. Now that partner actually does service other countries as well and regions. So like, I think it's, I want to take Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.

• 21:40Speaker 04

  They didn't talk about if any of them were breached, so it could actually be wider than Nvidia is representing. But anyway.

• 21:47Ed Zitron?

  I find it hard to believe Nvidia would misrepresent something. They're usually very straightforward.

• 21:54Speaker 04

  Yeah, never any slippery wording with them.

• 21:57Ed Zitron?

  Let's change tag to China, China, China, China. And this, so you've got, you, we just, what managed to hook us up for this episode was that GPU smuggling thing. And we can talk about the super micro stuff, which I think rocks. I think that I've, this whole time, all of these scumbags have been scummy, but in a very boring way. There's not been any goofy science fiction shit or hair dryers. And the fact that this, that Wally Liao was going, or one of the blokes was going into the warehouses and just kind of hair drying off the serial number. I know we might have talked about this last time, but it was funny enough to go over again. I love it. I think it's hilarious.

• 22:40Speaker 04

  And there, there were a lot of interesting things in the timeline where a lot of the stuff happened in August and, and some of the investigation in August. And that was the same time we ran our report and we were digging into some of that stuff too. And a lot of it matched what we found where, you know, during our black market GPU report, we did talk to a Taiwanese company and a company that operates also in Singapore. And one of the things we learned was that they'll act as intermediaries where this one company, I couldn't show them or anything on camera back then, but we talked about it. Yeah. They.

• 23:22Speaker 04

  Work to bring in Nvidia, I want to say it was GB 200, maybe 300, but GB 200 systems. So like actual racks of hardware.

• 23:32Ed Zitron?

  Oh, like an NVL 72?

• 23:34Speaker 04

  Yeah, like actual, you know, full racks and they'll bring them into Taiwan and run testing. So it's a testing house. They do pre-testing before it gets deployed. They do configuration, stuff like that on behalf of other companies, not for themselves. And their clients were in China. I remember talking to them about it because they're showing us these GPU racks and explaining that, oh, we test it. And, you know, it's for a company in China that we work with. And they seemed somewhat oblivious to the fact that this is not supposed to happen as they were giving us all this information.

• 24:13Ed Zitron?

  Wasn't it? Yeah, go on. Sorry.

• 24:15Speaker 04

  Yeah. So I mean, they basically test it, forward it. And that was what we reported. And that's also exactly what back last year Jensen was regularly talking about, oh, these things, they weigh thousands of pounds. It's not like some small potato chip you can put in your pocket.

• 24:33Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 24:33Speaker 04

  Right. And it's total misrepresentation to your earlier point. And as far as we could tell, like this, this is not, it's not like they're just smuggling in GPUs in crates of lobster and shrimp, which has also happened, by the way, but actually completed server products.

• 24:53Ed Zitron?

  But the thing is, I didn't realize, I guess you couldn't have said back then, I didn't realize it was an NVL 72.

• 24:59Speaker 04

  I'm not sure if it was an NVL 72. It was a GB 200 rack. I don't know how many were in there.

• 25:03Ed Zitron?

  But if it was like a full rack, that's still, God, that was last year as well. If they had GB 200s, yeah, I mean, I should have really asked at the time, but like, well, I don't know if you could have actually disclosed, but that's the thing, like, because these various reports, the Super Micro One, the Culpa report, they all come back to a thing, which is Nvidia frames it as, oh, nothing has got through, or if anything did, it's just a few things. You couldn't get the big stuff through. But every report seems to be like, yeah, entire racks are making it over. Yeah, we've got, and they have dummy servers, which is the craziest shit. They have just like fake ones.

• 25:39Speaker 04

  That was fascinating to me.

• 25:41Ed Zitron?

  I wonder what's in them.

• 25:43Speaker 04

  It's, yeah, it is.

• 25:46Speaker 04

  I guess brilliant and like it's a very dumb solution. I don't mean that in a mean way, right? Like it's just, how do we, how do we trick the inspectors? Cause basically inspectors will come through to ensure compliance, make sure that people who handle large amounts of these restricted GPUs, just like I guess handling large amounts of, I don't know, if you're in the pharmaceuticals industry, there's probably some level of inspection also. And they inspect it, make sure it's compliant and sign off on it. And so you work with third parties for this process. And to pass inspection, they had, like you said, used hair dryers to remove serial

• 26:25Speaker 04

  numbers and labels. And then they had staged dummy servers that were compliant to kind of disguise the real operation that the DOJ is investigating for.

• 26:36Ed Zitron?

  So I guess it's only a physical inspection?

• 26:40Speaker 04

  Yeah, I'm not sure. I was wondering that too, because I did read the entire report and unfortunately, the DOJ had screenshots of the warehouse, but they didn't, it was like screenshots of surveillance camera footage, but no actual surveillance camera footage I could find. So from everything we know, it looks like a physical inspection. I don't know that there's ever a power on. If there is though, you could still do dummy servers for that. But I'm not sure, you know, what it is they would do.

• 27:11Ed Zitron?

  It's going to turn out that you do more thorough testing than the DOJ. Because think about, like, I mean, you do this, you know, obviously hundreds of times more than this, about this than I do, but surely you could run a simple like load test on it or something that would like, be like, okay, this could do this.

• 27:28Speaker 04

  Yeah. I mean, you could, it's, it's easier to make something underperform, obviously, than overperform. So if they need to bring something down to look like it's a lower end part, they could, but the problem you really run into, one, physical inspection, if someone knows what they're looking at, you'll be able to identify it anyway, depending on what that entails. But two is, on the software side, you can look at firmware and you can look at the diagnostics and that stuff's pretty hard to trick normally, can spoof things, but anyone who knows what they're looking for, yeah, it's just.

• 28:08Speaker 04

  I I'm not I the government, what I can say is when I spoke to people in DC last year, uh, I they had their tech guy in the room. These are staffers of Congress and um, he seemed pretty okay, actually. But there was a moment when I was talking about memory capacity, 96 gigabyte, 128, 48, things like that. And someone interrupted me and asked me to clarify if that number was the uh, bandwidth, uh, you know, and we're not talking in per second or anything. It was just gigabytes. It's like, no, that's capacity. And I needed to briefly explain kind

• 28:51Speaker 04

  of the, you know, the difference. And I'm sure they have people who understand this stuff. Maybe it just wasn't in the room. But um, but I did learn that they don't really have any sophisticated testing because the point I made was like, look, restrict them or not. I don't really, I don't know. I don't know if I care. But if you're going to restrict it, like, at least do it in a way where it makes sense, where you can enforce it. And that would require some level of benchmarking, because right now, the restrictions are done entirely based on the claimed performance metrics from the manufacturer. And the manufacturer knows a lot more about these GPUs, obviously, than the government. They can tweak the knobs to comply just barely,

• 29:34Speaker 04

  right? And so the point being, yes, I think any bedroom benchmarker who's just started their YouTube channel probably is more sophisticated. Um, and and so that's why Nvidia, you know, they're in just such a domineering position because they're they're up against people who don't understand their technology. So

• 29:55Ed Zitron?

  Oh, and I'm reading off the Culpa report here. So numerous experts told us that Nvidia has long possessed the means to detect diversion, including pre-sale signposts and stand would K standard, Stan would, Jesus, standard KYC Jax, EG recently incorporated customers suddenly placing large orders, sales without warranties, as well as post-sale technical indicators, server IP data mismatch, server latency times and servers going dark without explanation. Because that's the thing. I assume that Nvidia must have some connection to every GPU, right? Maybe not completely phone home, but I

• 30:27Speaker 04

  Yeah, they should know. I mean, it's

• 30:29Ed Zitron?

  They do know. So I mean, I'm not saying they know for sure, because that would obviously be be impossible to verify. But I I don't see how they don't know.

• 30:38Speaker 04

  I mean, it's the professor we spoke with last year for our documentary. I asked him the question, you know, do you think Nvidia knows? And his response was, how could they not? These things are very valuable. You'd think they'd keep very good track of every single one of them.

• 30:54Ed Zitron?

  I just, I'm wondering. So let's back to the wider AI bubble with Nvidia GPUs, especially like the, the next generation. And then the generation after that. So Vera Rubin one and then Vera Rubin two, which is the one megawatt scale racks. It's, I feel like I'm taking crazy pills when I talk about this stuff because when you actually think about it, if they indeed, I think it's moving to Kyber racks, they call them the one megawatt ones.

• 31:24Speaker 04

  Okay, Kyber, I'm not familiar with as a name.

• 31:26Ed Zitron?

  It's the next one. That will mean that the majority of, I mean, all data centers are useless. As in, you can't just install a one megawatt rack in a data center that's full of that much more distributed, even a hundred megawatts. Because it's just the power requirements. And it's just, it feels like at some point Nvidia is going to escalate too far. That they just won't understand that they will just think our customers have unlimited money and we'll do whatever we want.

• 31:55Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, in some way, it seems like, I feel like they're starting to address some of that by having now the government as more of a potential customer as well. Where I don't know if it's like you run out of money from private equity and you turn to government or, or what is going on. But they definitely have gotten a lot more interested in military.

• 32:21Ed Zitron?

  But even then, if the data centers aren't getting built because Oracle is giving them a bunch of GPUs. We know that.

• 32:26Speaker 04

  Right.

• 32:28Ed Zitron?

  And it's just. I I don't know. I mean, I don't know how this ends, but I'm also just, I don't know how this continues.

• 32:37Speaker 04

  I I think to me, the real top indicator, and I don't know. I mean, like the the markets probably after I say that the market's gonna fucking rip for like the next three years or whatever. You know, but I I'm not a market guy, but like the point is to me, the thing that jumped out as like, oh, this this reminds me of like crypto when it was getting too crazy. Is this company Span? Did you hear about them? I'd never heard of them.

• 33:04Ed Zitron?

  Oh, you mean the distributed thing?

• 33:06Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 33:07Ed Zitron?

  Oh, my Christ.

• 33:08Speaker 04

  They want to do distributed like mini component of a data center right there in your yard. Yeah, right where you want it with RTX Pro 6000s, which is like, I hope they change the power connector from 12 high power. So it doesn't catch on fire. But the plan, I don't really get it like it's it seems like so the idea of the concept is we're going to put this nice box in your yard that kind of resembles like an air conditioning, you know, unit on the ground and it's going to have hardware in it to distribute the compute capacity across a wider area where there's maybe easier access. You don't need to go through all these pesky zoning laws.

• 33:47Speaker 04

  And maybe you partner with an HOA with 300 houses in the neighborhood, or you partner with individual homeowners or whatever. And they say they'll give you discounts on your energy, which is silly because it's like the energy costs are going up because of data centers.

• 34:01Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 34:01Speaker 04

  So that was a small one in your yard and discounted after we've increased it, which is like at best you're back to where you were. And yeah, and the whole thing, I just dislike the latency. It's not going to work for massive, important projects. It works for smaller stuff, I guess, but I. I don't understand how this idea comes to fruition. And I also wonder, how do you stop the tweakers from opening the boxes and stealing all the copper? Cause like,

• 34:34Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, there's that. And there's also, I don't know, I was unfortunate enough to live in an HOA community several years ago.

• 34:44Speaker 04

  I'm sorry.

• 34:44Ed Zitron?

  It was truly awful. Um, and I'll tell you, even in a nice place, the electric is bullshit. Like the, I had to replace the circuit breaker or whatever you could like, you're gonna have to do that in every single house in the development and probably a bunch of the transmission lines just to make sure that, I don't know if they're generating Marmaduke with a seven, crashing a seven four seven, like that is going to like, cause a blackout in the neighborhood? How do you prioritize power in the neighborhood?

• 35:16Speaker 04

  That was my question too. Like in a winter storm, who gets priority? Right? And, and

• 35:21Ed Zitron?

  No, just run the GPUs. It'll be warm.

• 35:24Speaker 04

  That's true.

• 35:24Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, that's true.

• 35:25Speaker 04

  You've solved it.

• 35:27Ed Zitron?

  There we are.

• 35:29Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, it's, but that reminds me of the crypto stuff where I remember during one of the crypto peaks mining, there were these space heaters where it's like, buy our space heater and it's actually just a miner and it makes you money, but also it's a space heater. And there was some other one I remember where it was, you know, the mined money goes to them. Like they get that, but you get free space heating and it, it just sounds an awful lot like the distributed data center thing. I, I just, I don't know, it seems too, we've like lost the plot on this, you know?

• 36:16Ed Zitron?

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• 39:22Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, it feels like one of those theoretical things that comes with the end of any era. Like towards the end of the metaverse era, there was the whole thing about people buying millions of dollars of real estate. That was one of the last ones, but the real,

• 39:37Ed Zitron?

  the real final one for me was the Other Side. Do you remember Other Side from the Board Apes? The Board Apes, the Board Apes, the Other Side.

• 39:44Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 39:45Ed Zitron?

  And it was just, they were like, look, we've finally done it. We've got the Other Side demo and it was just a giant open world. We're just like, and you didn't get to go in as the ape you owned.

• 39:56Speaker 04

  Oh, great. Okay.

• 39:57Ed Zitron?

  You went as just a regular, not a regular ape. They were like these kind of gorillas ripoffs.

• 40:04Speaker 04

  So they've realized, yeah, this is like, yeah, Metaverse, I had the same feeling where it's just, you look at it and you kind of go, do you, you guys know that video games have already existed?

• 40:15Ed Zitron?

  Exactly. Like I was playing EverQuest like back in 1999. Like I, I know how this goes and I didn't have to pay a hundred thousand dollars for my character. I just had to give up most of my life.

• 40:29Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 40:30Ed Zitron?

  I just had to play for 11 hours a day to make level 50. Those of us pre-Kunark people, K-U-N-A-R-K, this is the second expansion. It was much harder, very unfair to those of us who played.

• 40:43Speaker 04

  I started at Planes of Power, so.

• 40:44Ed Zitron?

  Damn dude, Pop was good. Planes of Power was like the end of, the end of how good that was. I like. Though the whole planes of time thing, I don't know if you followed that?

• 40:54Speaker 04

  I did a little bit, yeah.

• 40:56Ed Zitron?

  The collapse of EverQuest with the fires of heaven. Anyway, we shouldn't talk about that. That's all I'll talk about. But with the other side metaverse, that was what I think was the top, was when everyone went in this big session. But what's crazy is they are still doing this. They're still doing the metaverse, but they're still going to limp along, which I think is what's going to happen with the AI bubble. I think it bursts, but there's going to be like a cloister of perverts who still try and keep this going, and it's just insanely expensive.

• 41:25Speaker 04

  That's a brilliant strain of words you've just come up with that.

• 41:31Ed Zitron?

  Yes. That's just right off the dough. Just think it's inspired by these people. Because it's like, have you been, I realize someone off the topic of GPUs, have you been following this GitHub co-pilot thing as well?

• 41:45Speaker 04

  I only just saw the headlines. The only GitHub thing I've been following lately has been the Bamboo Lab situation, but I have not seen the one you're talking about.

• 41:53Ed Zitron?

  No, it's just that they're switching them to token-based billing on June 1st, and the subreddit is just people being like, "Hey, so I'm able to burn $1,000 worth of tokens for $10. Does anyone know if there's an alternative to do this?" And just people being like, "Yeah, um, anthropic, I guess."

• 42:10Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 42:10Ed Zitron?

  And it's just people realizing in real time how much this costs. I think the, I think you're going to see a rush of people to try and do this on hardware, and a rush of people to try and like buy up old GPUs and try and do the post.com bubble thing, but it's not going to work because there is no, there is absolutely, like, there's no way to make this economically viable. And I think the last, it's going to be like, I was about to say the Alamo star, but like, just like a final stand of just guys burning out the remaining capital until it all falls apart.

• 42:45Speaker 04

  I really do wonder, I mean, it's, it's...

• 42:49Speaker 04

  The PC industry and DIY industry

• 42:54Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 42:54Speaker 04

  seems to be the first casualty of AI and it's it's like AI is born and then it immediately kills the thing it was born from, you know?

• 43:04Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 43:04Speaker 04

  Uh, and so I'm not sure, like, even if the bubble bursts, there's gonna be a lot of damage first there.

• 43:12Ed Zitron?

  That was I was gonna, I was gonna ask, like, what, let's assume the bubble bursts and the AI rolls back and Nvidia is no longer only selling those GPUs. Isn't there like a significant amount of damage to the supply chain of PCs?

• 43:25Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah, I mean, people can't do business with this climate because this, it's interesting where RAM prices are a lot to do with where we're at now with the PC industry, but a lot of, I guess, people who aren't in PC building may or may not realize, but there's a lot of other component manufacturers who have absolutely no control over any of this. So even though the RAM is expensive and the GPUs are hard to get or expensive and whatever, the company that makes cool RT computer cases, they don't have any control here. And so they're just along for the ride and uh, historically, those types of companies, liquid coolers that, you know,

• 44:06Speaker 04

  enthusiast air coolers, cases, whatever, they live and die by GPU and CPU launch cycles to where they need to have their best product lined up for the new architecture launch. So if something comes out now, then 18 to 24 months from now, they need to have their next big thing ready. And uh, now the cycles are lengthening for those.

• 44:29Ed Zitron?

  And what do you mean by that? As in there is they're skipping a year of

• 44:33Speaker 04

  Yeah, the architectural cadence for Nvidia has slowed for a while. They were like roughly 18 months for a little bit. They tended to average 24 months between major architectural launches. Uh, and now they're moving closer to 30 months. And for a company that relies on that GPU to be there to spur sales for enthusiast PC builds, for example, that's a long time to wait, you know, for your next big wave of customers. And if you sell cases and coolers, even motherboards, you can't really self generate that much momentum. Like you can, if you launch the best case ever killer product.

• 45:13Speaker 04

  In the middle of a cycle, uh, yeah, you'll do okay, but there's just far fewer people building a computer at that time versus waiting for the next big launch because normally it's a GPU that triggers it.

• 45:25Ed Zitron?

  So I understand. So a new GPU comes out every two years, you're saying, and that launch is what spurs people to buy a bunch of new cases. I know this sounds obvious. I just want to spell it out.

• 45:36Speaker 04

  Right.

• 45:37Ed Zitron?

  So, and that cycle is now broken.

• 45:39Speaker 04

  Yeah, because it's, it's that launch that people use that as a trigger for when they want to build their new system, Nvidia or AMD, same for CPUs. But, you know, the thing that really dictates your performance broadly speaking for most people is the CPU or the GPU. And once you've built, there's not a lot of reason to change it until the next big thing comes out. So, so there's that where everyone's along the ride, along for the ride, uh, for the silicon launches. And then there's also the memory prices where even companies like G-Skill, which is a memory stick maker. So they don't make the actual memory, the silicon, but they put it on a stick and put a heat sink on it and sell it.

• 46:22Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 46:24Speaker 04

  Even companies like them, we did an interview with them and they're down just as much as the case companies for revenue, even though their stuff is going up in price. And it's because they're not getting priority. And that's the data centers. And they also, obviously, if they increase their retail cost, fewer people can buy it. And so you just run into this volume trap where they just can't move enough stuff because no one's buying anything. So a lot of the companies we spoke with are down on the year 40 to 60% and then year on year about 70%.

• 47:01Ed Zitron?

  God, it's, it's very fucking grim. Like what's left at the end of this? Like genuinely, what's left?

• 47:07Speaker 04

  Yeah, a lot of really talented people have lost their jobs or will be losing their jobs after Computex, which is in two weeks. Um, like some of the, the best designers I know in the industry and the companies, you know, they can't keep them employed because they're not selling anything. So.

• 47:25Ed Zitron?

  That's fucking grim. Like, I mean, can any of this recover afterwards? Because I get the sense that Nvidia, let's say they walk away from GPUs at the industrial scale. I guess they could return to gamers, but reallocating.

• 47:41Ed Zitron?

  All of that, I don't know, CapEx, I guess it would be.

• 47:44Speaker 04

  Yeah, I just can't get that much money out of it. So if Nvidia wants to be anything like it is now. Yeah, maybe they whatever ship a couple billion dollars more stuff to gamers, but it's just the.

• 47:56Ed Zitron?

  Does that revenue exist? Is there that much revenue in gamers?

• 48:00Speaker 04

  Yeah, and there is billions of dollars, but there's not tens of billions of dollars.

• 48:05Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, there's not fifty billion dollars a quarter.

• 48:08Speaker 04

  Right, yeah, and and so I don't know, even if they kind of come back.

• 48:16Speaker 04

  It's also going to leave the market in shambles where whoever survives at the end of this. It's not clear if those are the companies that are going to be the pro consumer companies because there are actually a lot of companies that do the right thing for consumers in the DIY space, but they're smaller. And I don't know that they can survive this type of thing.

• 48:36Speaker 04

  But, you know, if there's a situation where I currently, to me, it feels like a new player as a new GPU maker would have to bail out the DIY industry with something. Or like a government would have to come in and do some kind of, you know, antitrust or whatever bust, which isn't going to happen. So I'm not really sure. And the memory prices aren't solved with either of those two things. So it's unless it seems like the AI bubble has to pop. I don't know who's holding the needle though.

• 49:11Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, I mean, when this comes out, it will be the day of Nvidia earnings. So there's no point of ever. They'll probably beat and raise again. And it's interesting because I, without saying anything definitive, it is taking the piss a bit. Like, just like, it's like, beat and raise every single time. Like, without fail, more than analysts could ever say. All while nowhere near as many data centers get built as the chips that have been shipped. It feels like something is gonna pop here. It feels like something is weird is happening. This, I think that's actually the best word. It's just things feel very goddamn weird.

• 49:51Speaker 04

  It doesn't seem.

• 49:54Speaker 04

  I know markets aren't rational. This seems like beyond irrational. It seems artificial to me.

• 50:00Ed Zitron?

  Yes, I mean, apropos, I guess for the name, but it's like, but it's it's also all in pursuit of what exactly? Because all of these, because at least with gaming, people have fun. I think AI feels like the least joyful thing ever. Like, it's just, it's just when you would like the, we talked about this before as well, but this year's GTC, when he's like, it's a gent, it's Nemo claw. Hey, remember, you remember open claw? Remember that shit? It's like, when, when that, like, remember this, if today Nvidia beats and raises, which they very well made, and if they don't, we, but let's say, remember, their big announcement last GTC was, um, we made open claw.

• 50:45Ed Zitron?

  Like, this is what, this is why people are buying all the GPUs. This is the reason. I don't know, something's up, something's up, man.

• 50:52Speaker 04

  I will say there was, if, if anybody needs something to feel positive and find some joy.

• 50:59Ed Zitron?

  This is a good way to it. Please, please.

• 51:02Speaker 04

  There was a great clip that was circulated yesterday, today of one of the former Google, I think CEO, right? Who did a commencement speech.

• 51:11Ed Zitron?

  Oh, yeah.

• 51:14Speaker 04

  And he mentions AI and immediately gets booed.

• 51:19Ed Zitron?

  It's, it's, and that happened as well to some McKinsey I person at another school who I don't know, some woman went up and had the same thing. And she just looked, in both cases, they looked so surprised.

• 51:31Speaker 04

  Yeah, they looked like, and that's how you know they're out of touch. I did see some one comment where a guy was like, oh, these billionaires don't care about getting booed, you know, they get so much money, whatever. I actually, I do think they care. I think if you're at that level, you're a megalomaniac and like, that probably deeply bothers them. Which is great, because like, you can't take anything else from them. So at least make sure they hear the boos echo when they try to sleep at night.

• 51:56Ed Zitron?

  Well, that's the thing as well. Like, I don't think anyone is immune to a group of people booing them.

• 52:03Speaker 04

  No.

• 52:03Ed Zitron?

  I think actually that is the best thing we could do. But I think it's funny as well because I was watching as we wrap up here. I was watching that and I was thinking, yeah, it used to be that these fuck nuts would get on stage and it'd be like, it's all about hard work. And I remember when I sat like by Sergey Brin and Larry Page and we're all doing business together. And we were just like, wow, I love doing hard work so much. And everyone claps. It's like, wow, if I work hard, I could be one of these guys, even though that's not how that works.

• 52:30Speaker 04

  Right.

• 52:31Ed Zitron?

  Now it's just like, ah, pay for AI. You don't do this, you're dead. Everything you know and love.

• 52:39Speaker 04

  She has her commencement speech, um, like 10 days from now.

• 52:42Ed Zitron?

  Lisa boo.

• 52:46Ed Zitron?

  But it, but that's the thing. Lisa's that's, I will be honest, Lisa Sue's the biggest disappointment of them. Cause in my history of gaming and PC gaming, AMD always seemed more normal.

• 52:58Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 52:59Ed Zitron?

  Like they, like they gave a fuck.

• 53:01Speaker 04

  Turncoat, I think for a lot of people.

• 53:03Ed Zitron?

  But she turned them around and now she's just like, nah, uh, uh, right into the void with you.

• 53:08Speaker 04

  Thanks for getting me where I needed to be.

• 53:10Ed Zitron?

  Now I can make a 300. Do you hear about that deal with Crusoe? Crusoe is buying a bunch of GPUs and then AMD is going to rent them back.

• 53:19Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 53:20Ed Zitron?

  He's so cool. That needs to end. But no, I think that the booing thing is good. I think we need more of that. I think, I think it's necessary because they clearly are not reading anything that people are actually saying or talking to people or having any experiences outside of the perimeter of security guards that surround them at all times.

• 53:41Speaker 04

  It may also change like how the schools work on their own programs. I mean, you don't know, like that kind of response. You know, people might look at it and it can have a ripple effect where maybe people watching this commencement speaker get booed. Realize like, uh, there's a little more nuance to this AI thing beyond just make money and, you know, replace humans.

• 54:04Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, I've, I mean, I've done a few things with a few universities and it's interesting because it's like a 50 50 split of the people who clearly don't do any work at the university. So people at the top are like, are like, okay, well, here we go. Yeah, this is the best thing ever. I love AI so much. And then everyone else who actually does the work is like, yeah, you've never used that you've never used this. You talk to it and it tells you things you like to hear. And you're like, this is amazing. And I think that you're right, that the booing is the only thing that will get to these people. But I also think that there are some of them who are like, well, they just don't get it yet. And I think if an executive says that,

• 54:45Ed Zitron?

  look, the Saw movies, I feel like Jigsaw goes a little too far, but I think the idea of just keeping someone in one place and explaining something vigorously could work on them. I'm not saying we totally copy Jigsaw. I'm just saying that the focused thing of no, you need to listen, might work. Or alternatively, we just change the law so that CEOs have personal liability.

• 55:13Speaker 04

  Right. But just, just for, just for, speaking of liability, not, not fully endorsing Jigsaw's methods.

• 55:20Ed Zitron?

  No, no, no, no. We, we, we are very.

• 55:23Speaker 04

  Because they just, they don't get them. The people don't get them.

• 55:26Ed Zitron?

  Exactly. I think that Jigsaw, Jigsaw went too far, but the focus that Jigsaw got from people is something could be like, I think that that's a good place to wrap it as well there. What this anti Saw, anti Jigsaw, but considering all managerial effects. Steve, where can people find you?

• 55:43Speaker 04

  Uh, youtube.com slash gamers nexus. And I hope, I hope when the FBI visits both of us to ask about our comments on Jigsaw, you'll have me back on.

• 55:54Ed Zitron?

  Yes. And just to be clear to the, to everyone, that was a bit, we are joking and we're not talking with any specificity. Anyway, thank you so much. You've been listening to Better Offline. We're back, back with a monologue in a few days. Cheers.

• 56:15Ed Zitron?

  Thank you for listening to Better Offline. The editor and composer of the Better Offline theme song is Matt Osowski. You can check out more of his music and audio projects at mattosowski.com. M A T T O S O W S K I dot com. You can email me at [email protected] or visit betteroffline.com to find more podcast links and of course my newsletter. I also really recommend you go to chat dot where's your ed dot at to visit the discord and go to r slash better offline to check out our Reddit.

• 56:45Speaker 07

  Thank you so much for listening. Better Offline is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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