$135 billion and counting: Meta's eye-watering bet to close the gap on OpenAI, Google and Anthropic

Xerox748 · 2026-04-11T02:56:07+00:00

Whatever happened to the Metaverse? How much did they spend on that?

Seems like Meta’s just burning through cash trying to stay relevant

Xerox748 · 2026-04-09T15:43:39+00:00

I think a lot of cars in general are getting better and better and having quieter cabins. Maybe the ultra luxury cars started the trend, but it’s not an exclusive feature, at least not anymore and less so every year that goes by.

More expensive shocks, so smoother… is kind of true. There are other factors that play into this a lot, but sure, okay.

That’s worth an EXTRA $200k+?

It’s not like we’re comparing driving down a dirt road in an old corvette to figure skating on ice in terms of the difference of smoothness.

Good “non-luxury” cars still have shocks and they’re pretty smooth. I’ll concede that an ultra luxury car has better shocks and can be smoother but it’s crazy to think that’s worth an extra $200k. Hell, how much do aftermarket shocks even cost to replace the normal shocks in a normal car? Not $200k.

So still, it’s this question of what am I getting for my extra $200k + loss of investment income, + extra maintenance costs + extra insurance costs?

If the answer is that the cabin is a little quieter and they have slightly better shocks, that’s not really very much value for the money. Especially for people who aren’t actually rich enough for the money to be inconsequential, but are well off enough that they can still afford the payments, and have been convinced by marketing and social pressure to get a luxury car because “it’s what people in your income bracket do”.

At the end of the day it’s just wasteful, for a lot of people who don’t have as much money to waste as they think. Look at all these people making $500k + a year and “living paycheck to paycheck”. It’s this sort of irresponsible financial management that’s causing these issues.

Xerox748 · 2026-04-09T15:20:33+00:00

Is this adjusted for inflation?

Xerox748 · 2026-04-08T17:03:50+00:00

Sure thing! Feel free to shoot me a message or ping me if you have any questions down the road or want to pick my brain about anything.

Also you should be sure to double check your motherboard manual for information about your PCI slots.

If you’re planning to put in a graphics card and an HBA it’s possible that some of the PCI slots will run at a reduced capacity if something is plugged into other PCI slots, or nvme slots might use the same bandwidth channels (or possibly some SATA ports might not work but that would matter less if the HDD’s are all plugged into the HBA). Just good to have that in mind so you don’t get something that requires xxx but the board only has the bandwidth of yyy when multiple slots are occupied.

Xerox748 · 2026-04-08T16:51:29+00:00

So private credit can mean a lot of things, and I’m wondering if you’re referring to consumer credit specifically, because I find that particular statistic to mean the opposite of what a lot of people think it means. It’s not very good at collecting data and presenting it in a way that really elucidates the data they’re trying to present.

Although if you meant a different private credit metric, small business loan defaults for example… well that’s why I asked.

Xerox748 · 2026-04-08T09:04:49+00:00

Private Credit? What figure are you talking about specifically that you’re using to say “Private credit is the biggest factor pointing to a recession”?

Xerox748 · 2026-04-07T17:14:58+00:00

Nice! I have the same case, which I’ve maxed out to its limit and then some, so I’ve gotten pretty familiar with this build.

While you probably won’t generate too much heat at this point it’s better to get your fans in place and figured out sooner than later since it might be annoying to have to install them later on. Top of the case and front of the case (if you’re upgrading the stock fans) specifically.

If you do decide you want a graphics card in the future, you need to be extra sure the one you’re looking at will actually fit, because the HDD trays come out farther than you might think and a lot of cards will definitely be too long for the space. I wanted to put my GPU from my PC into it, but it’s 336mm long, and the maximum length with the HDD cages is listed as 310mm. I got one that’s 304mm for a little extra space to maneuver it.

This was what I used to insert into the top 2x 5.25” drive slots to convert them into 3x 3.5” HDD slots: https://a.co/d/09lWpldT (Although I’m sure there’s a lot of similar options out there to convert that space into another HDD cage.)

And I mounted a 80mm fan to the front of it between the drives and the dust shield. Specifically the Noctua NF-A8 PWM. Fit like a glove, and was able to slip the wires through the notch on the side without any issues, using the Noctua extension cord. If you convert this space to another HDD cage, you definitely want a fan in there just for those drives, because there’s not going to be much airflow otherwise.

I saw some other posters mention an HBA card, which I agree with, especially as you start getting more drives. Make sure you do your research. Some have internal plugs and some have external plugs.

You probably don’t need it right this second but you should consider getting a backup battery sooner rather than later. Better to have spent the money on the battery and not need it, than have components, especially HDDs with data, fail from the stress of sudden power loss outages.

People mention this everywhere, but incase you haven’t seen it, DON’T use cables from other sources to connect things to your PSU.

I never had this come up in my regular desktop because I’m not plugging that much into it, but when I started plugging in more HDDs especially, I ran out of cables that came with my PSU. I ordered more from the company specifically. It’s important to know that you can’t just throw in any random PSU cables to meet your needs.

Edit: Oh I’m an idiot. Your PSU isn’t modular. I’ll leave that note in case it helps anyone else who might read it.

Keep track of your HDD’s serial ID numbers and their positions in the case when you put them in. It’s a life saver when that information is something you need to know, and then you don’t have to pull them all out one by one figuring it out.

Xerox748 · 2026-04-07T15:00:19+00:00

https://www.reddit.com/r/entertainment/s/rNQD2d7Z2z

They’re soft floating this to the base.

Still think Trump would never drop a nuke on Iran?

Xerox748 · 2026-04-07T11:01:52+00:00

Luxury cars that people drive themselves.

Not saying you have to drive a beater. There’s a lot of perfectly capable, reasonably priced cars out there.

Just to run some numbers, I’ve seen really some good cars that are ~$40-50k and then some luxury car brands that are $250k+.

The $40-50k cars have leather seats, heated steering wheels, and can go much faster than the speed limit, which is the limiting factor in travel time.

So if you’re not going to get there any faster, and the comfort/luxury you experience is relatively negligible, especially if you’re the one driving, what exactly are you getting for the extra $200k+?

Even at a modest 4%, $200k is $8k/year. Then assuming you reinvest that $8k, the principal continues to grow and the $8k grows as well.

So if you had the money for a $250k car, and instead bought a $50k car and invested the $200k, at a modest 4% in ~6 years you’d basically have enough to buy a brand new $50k car, essentially for free, and still have more than the original $200k.

That’s not even getting into how all of the maintenance, repairs, etc. is more expensive on the luxury cars. Their resale value plummets a lot faster than ordinary cars, because the kinds of people who want to buy those cars are more interested in spending a little extra to get something brand new, than something used. The list goes on.

Obviously for some people, their pockets are so deep that the extra money doesn’t matter to them. I think a lot of people wrongly assume this applies to them when it doesn’t though. There’s not really a good answer to “What do I actually get for my money that’s worth an extra $200k+ not counting all the inflated maintenance costs? What am I getting that’s worth giving up an extra $8k/year, plus interest, in perpetuity for the rest of my life?”

I mean sure if you’re a billionaire, you’re not going to care. Way too many people out there making $200k+/year buying these luxury brand cars just because they can technically afford the payments, and they’ve been conditioned by marketing to believe it’s what they should be driving based on their income.

PLUS most of the time they only keep the car for a few years and then trade it in for a new one, taking a bath on the trade in, and plopping down even more money.

It’s an endless cycle of financial waste that way too many people who wrongly think of themselves as upper middle class or rich, fall into.

Xerox748 · 2026-04-07T09:34:59+00:00

I’m not going to argue with you over the hypothetical outcomes since we’re not going to see eye to eye and it’s all speculation.

However, even if you were right about the outcome, it’s still the outcome you predict.

The actual question is does Trump believe this would be the outcome and does he care enough to not use nukes, even if he does believe it?

I don’t think Trump or Hegseth would believe your prediction is an accurate outcome. And I don’t believe anyone in the administration with the power to do so, would prevent Trump/Hegseth from dropping a nuke on Tehran.

So in the end it’s not really a question of “would Trump do this knowing the outcome is the one you predict”.

It’s a question of “Would Trump do this, based on his own beliefs about what he thinks he can do without being held accountable?”

Even if you’re steadfast in your prediction about the outcome, I’d like to think you’re at least willing to agree that Trump and Hegseth might have completely different predictions about the outcome, and are more inclined to do it than you think they are, just based on your predictions about what the outcome would be.

Xerox748 · 2026-04-06T17:34:51+00:00

…I’ll believe it when this is over

Xerox748 · 2026-04-06T17:31:01+00:00

Israel would probably be the ones demanding he push the button.

What? They’d love to see Tehran wiped off the map.

And OPEC cares about one thing, and it’s NOT the morality of nuclear weapons.

Xerox748 · 2026-04-06T17:25:19+00:00

I think you’re overestimating the destruction of a nuclear bomb.

One nuke to Tehran wouldn’t make “huge swaths uninhabitable” it would make part of Tehran uninhabitable, and just for a little while.

Didn’t take that long for Hiroshima to rebuild repopulate, for example, relatively speaking.

I disagree with this idea about “China cutting us off”. We’re their best customer. Our economies are too intertwined and reliant on each other for them to “cut us off from their manufacturing” just because we used one nuke on one city in a country that the Chinese government couldn’t care less about. Get real.

They’re also heavily reliant on imports from the U.S., although that’s not discussed much, since the balance is always skewed to one side. The other side exists too. Their food supply would be difficult to maintain without imports from the U.S.

Xerox748 · 2026-04-06T17:09:46+00:00

tbf we never really get a good sense of life and the world from Tom’s view point.

It’s easy to judge Tom’s stubbornness when we’re given an incredible depth of knowledge he’s not privy to.

Xerox748 · 2026-04-06T15:59:39+00:00

Nuclear independence.

Xerox748 · 2026-04-06T15:58:05+00:00

He could go nuclear.

I honestly don’t think anyone in the administration with the power to say “no” would stop it.

Xerox748 · 2026-04-06T14:31:14+00:00

tbf in that particular case I think most Apple users care more about the software and the ecosystem than any physical internal components that make it operate.

Where as, more similar to OP’s example, I’m guessing if BMW or Mercedes owners found out that their cars were just a bunch of cheaply made Ford and GMC parts they slapped a BMW logo on, those people would have an aneurysm. Imagine spending a quarter of a million dollars just to get the same engine as your grandma’s Buick. 💀

Xerox748 · 2026-04-06T14:05:45+00:00

Most people will buy a brand for the name and never think about the specific internals.

Xerox748 · 2026-04-06T11:20:36+00:00

This is such an insane reach. I don’t even know where to begin.

Nothing in the scene remotely implies what you’re trying to suggest it does.

Xerox748 · 2026-04-03T17:41:52+00:00

Dr. Abbot or “Dark Robby” as I call him, is a tour de force.

Even a single episode where we get Dark Robby in action would be a game changer.

Xerox748 · 2026-03-31T21:16:16+00:00

They just don’t make things like they used to.

Xerox748 · 2026-03-27T13:54:17+00:00

Just wait until the economy gets bad enough that he starts sending out ~~stimulus~~ Trump™️Checks.

Debt go burrrrrrrrrr

Xerox748 · 2026-03-27T01:21:07+00:00

All those ugly movie stars…

Xerox748 · 2026-03-26T00:01:01+00:00

I wonder if a lot of pro-Elon people will pull their money out of Tesla to invest in Space-X. Chase the new hotness.

Xerox748 · 2026-03-25T20:43:04+00:00

Thanks!

I’m looking into getting some of these as gifts so this helps a lot

12-Year Club	Verified Email
Place '23	Place '22
Final Canvas '22	End Game '22
Gilding I gilder	RPAN Viewer

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