The AI bubble produced many useful products already, many of which will remain useful even after the bubble popped.

The term bubble is mostly about how investment money flows around. Right now you can get near infinite moneys if you include the term AI in your business plan. Many of the current startups will never produce a useful product, and after the bubble has truly popped, those who haven’t will go under.

Amazon, ebay, booking and cisco survived the dotcom bubble, as they attracted paying users before the bubble ended. Things like github copilot, dalee, chat bots etc are genuinely useful products which have already attracted paying cusomers. Some of these products may end up being provided by competitors of the current providers, but someone will make long term money from these products.

I’m not confident it is a Russian op, but Russia has always fueled both sides of the political spectrum. They don’t necessarily want one side to prevail, they just want their opponents to be divided.

While the plastic gadgets are wasteful, they don’t hold a candle to all the unnecessary food packaging that’s used. Just tear apart one of your garbage bags, and see how much is food-related packaging and how much is gadgets.

I visited the US (WV) recently, and I was appalled by how much waste goes unrecycled. At home (Europe) our family produces one bag of unrecycled waste every 2 weeks, in WV we produced 6 bags in 2 weeks, and that’s while living in European style (refillable water bottles, declining plastic bags for groceries, buying unpackaged produce, etc.).