I used to work for a supplier for Aldi Aus. They used to treat suppliers really well while they were in the growing stage. Once growth slowed they relied on the manufacturer to take up more of the pricing slack.
It is all about price and nothing else, never once where they really concerned about quality of the product. If they could have products cheaper than Coles/Woolworths they would do it regardless of how many short cuts where taken to get there. Thus you could have something like yogurt that was $1 cheaper but tasted like glue.
No price shock but you would definitely notice the quality issue once you got home.
Funnily enough Aldi aus did a study a few years back and noted that people will cut food costs before they cut entertainment. It was aimed at Coles and Woolworths to highlight that when things get rough they would flock to Aldi. Looking at their shelves recently, provided the supply chain is still running ok, it might have been true.
The daily routine until you get sick and die - that is true but there is something special in that in that it is just the way we are. Why should we expect anything more?
Another way to see it is that while we are so small and irrelevant - enjoy the fact that we are irrelevant and yet we get all this.
Add to this the scale of time - just remember that in 500 million years after all evidence of us is long, long, LONG gone that the clouds will still form and the waves will still crash on the shore.
That we are here and potentially meaningless isn't something to fear, it is something to cherish.
I like that people are seeing this as 8 years from now when the original bet was from 2003. That there is still a reasonable chance that this could happen by 2030 and by that point was predicted 27 years in advanced. It will just add to the Carmack myth if it goes well.
Personally I'm not sure we will see it but there is nothing that jumps out and says that it is impossible at the same time. 8 years ago I would have said it was a no brainer that we would be there, nowadays not so much. It feels like with a lot of things, the last 10% takes 90% of the time.
I have no candle in the game and am an arm chair speculator at best, but it is fun to wonder.
Let just agree to reconvene on this in 8 years time. It isn't that far away.
There are four stages of identifying and use of a resource.
Theoretical quantity - That would be the 20ppm as you said. Based on knowledge and estimates.
Identified reserves - How much of this stuff do we actually know about and is in a suffciently enough pooled location. This would be less than the 20ppm - how much less is a different question.
Technically available - How much of the known resource could we actually extract? It is ok if we know about it but if it is 10KM below a lake, could we get to it?
The most important stage after those three - Economic availability. Can we actually afford it and have people pay for it?
The argument from absurdity I use on this one is that there is effectively near infinite clean energy in the form of hydrogen in the sun. No one owns it - now go get it! The technical and economic scale ruins the argument a fair bit.
I'm not even arguing against lithium here, it seems to be more output restricted than resource limited. The two elements in batteries I worry about is Cobalt and Nickle - they could become the weakness. That said it does look like some folks are working on some neat alternatives in that space.
Although it is still an issue. While the resource is everywhere, the technology for extraction is still in a specific vulnerable position.
Once we have the extraction capabilities elsewhere - then is is a non-issue. The turn around time on that? I have no idea. It could be days, months or years.
The Nvidia thing is funny to me. I have never had any issues with them on Linux - NOW that said - my hardware is typically about 5 years behind so all the kinks have been ironed out.
Being the computer scrap man I am and using nothing but hand-me-downs and things I find people throwing out. It has worked out well for me from a compatibility point of view. ;)
In that sense, Steam is not tied to a single hardware platform. They are a bit more platform agnostic and that means they can keep moving with the times. Steam doesn't require a custom steam PC using proprietary hardware.
A good example of these online store going down would be the Wii and Wii U/3DS stores. The Wii store is already gone - it lasted 13 years.
The Wii U/3DS stores will no longer accept any payments starting 18th January 2022 as a first step towards shutting the services down. Wii U is 9 years old, 3DS is 10 years old.
Only yesterday a friend of mine fired up his Xbox 360. While the online system is still running it is a question of how long until MS will simply drop the entire thing even if it is a very minor thing to run.
There is the book on this called 'Subprime Attention Crisis' by Tim Hwang that tries to argue this point.
It is only partially successful in its goals of saying the sky is falling.
The overall message I came away with was that online advertising has some serious issues that need addressing - but they aren't anything that cannot be solved.
If there is a bubble then I suspect it isn't anywhere near as big as it is made out to be and that any "crash" will be more of a slow correction than the bottom suddenly dropping out.
Years back when I lived in South Morang, they would go house to house digging through the rubbish bins. Even if you put bricks on the lids, they would team up to topple them off and get the lid open.
Nowadays I live a little further south, we have clouds of screaming Cockies every morning. I wouldn't dare feed them for fear they would bring the entire hoard.
They are cool birds bu very... independent if you will.
Normally I would be against a proposal like this. However looking at the history and state of the Salton sea - we cannot make it any worse. This looks like a win-win situation.