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Regardless of who he puts on the board, directors have legal obligations to the SEC and all shareholders. If he wants that level of control he would need to take the company private, and various investor agreements probably prevent this.

> If he wants that level of control he would need to take the company private, and various investor agreements probably prevent this.

Since when was Automatic a public listed company?


It is not. They did take VC funding however, which is when the board and the investor agreements came into force.

I should have said: establish sole ownership.

Everyone?? No, most definitely OpenAI.

But they have learnt their lesson, next time they won't reach out to who they stole it from, they will publish first.


Seems like OpenAI did a boring normal corporate thing (find out your competitor made a breakthrough, try to replicate it) and then when the other mathematicians found out OpenAI had beat them to Navier-Stokes, they decided to lie about what happened because they were upset they didn't get to make the big breakthrough themselves.

You are entitled to your opinion, but it isn't supported by the information already available.

The available information is essentially that story.

OpenAI's account: they heard a rumor that a Millennium Prize problem had been solved, so they tried to do it themselves and succeeded. Then they contacted the other researchers and were surprised to discover those guys hadn't actually cracked it, but offered the one of them who's not an Anthropic employee a co-authorship anyway. The conversations got testy.

Buckmaster's account: totally unsubstantiated accusations of plagiarizing from chat logs and plainly false accusations of OpenAI trying to get Alpoge removed as coauthor of a thing he was not an author of in the first place, and threats to ruin people's careers.

I think the synthesis is basically that Buckmaster and Alpoge had not quite solved the Navier-Stokes problem yet but thought they were really close, and had told friends as much, which is how the rumors got out. Now they're mad they got scooped. They aren't getting the money and recognition they thought they had locked down, and are engaging in a smear campaign.


I don't think your reading is correct. ML history is related with examples of models using hints from side channels.

If it would be possible to replicate OpenAIs success with a model cut-off earlier than the rumours, and without hinting from informed mathematicians, then we can consider it original. Otherwise it's indefensible.


By Buckmaster's own account, OpenAI (a) wanted him and Alpoge to publish their Euler result first and (b) wanted Buckmaster to author the Navier-Stokes paper, and (c) when he refused both of those, tried to get Alpoge to talk him into it.

Why would OpenAI go burn another $20 million trying to prove they didn't accidentally train on synthetic data derived from Buckmaster's codex sessions? They're desperately trying to give him credit anyway!


OpenAI cribbing from other researchers. We just have to assume OpenAI is actively adversarial in future. Accidental cyber intrusion is also well within model capability.

I think Shakespeare would love TL;DR, but I think the pause in 'tee -- ell -- dee arr' will go in favour of vowels, leaving 'tillder' or 'tellder'.

The Iran war and SoH crisis has been great for EV uptake outside of the US. In combination with the US AI apartheid, it has been a huge boost for Chinese EVs and Chinese AI adoption.

And trade. The last 18 months the US has shown itself to be a unreliable trade partner. Lots of companies are looking at diversifying both markets and supply chains.

The recent trip of the Canadian PM to China is but the most visible part of this shift. That's at govt level, but I've seen it happen all the way down to individual level.

US products are typically more expensive here than Chinese. But at least you were buying from a friendly supplier. That distinction is eroding quickly. In my experience it's forced people to try Chinese, and generally been surprised (in a good way) over quality and features.

And yes, the price of oil has focused people much more at the EV market. (Not least because people with an EV already aren't shy about gloating). Pretty much everyone I talk to, who would buy a car "new" tells me their next one will be electric. The tipping point is coming much faster than most people think.


I recently bought a BambuLab 3D printer.

Designed and made in China.

Right from the unpacking to first print the experience was top Apple-style quality.

Indeed I was agreeably surprised.


Its Apple'esque. The edge are still rough, and I don't trust their sketchy antics. People buy Apple because they earned that trust among their customer base. Is the device better than competitors, in my opinion yes but they are more along the lines of Samsung and not Apple.

Caveat: (Yes I know geeks here will say apple users are just dumb and want a status symbol....they'll never get it)


So was my Prusa and they don't violate the GPL or lock me into their ecosystem.

To each their own I guess.


My comment was not say Prusa is inferior, but just to mention that "Made in China" today is really not like the "Made in China" of the 1970s.

BTW I know nothing about 3D printers, but the Bambulab was recommended to me by a German friend who lives in Germany and is all about open-source ... He had printers since a long time and knows the ecosystem very well.

He told me the BambuLab printer was better for me because less tinkering, and much cheaper, at similar quality... which is what i was looking for.

We both are embedded systems engineers who work with Linux daily, so I trusted him. The results I get from the printer do not disappoint.

However I totally get the Prusa vibe. Just not for my specific use case.

To each his own indeed !


>Pretty much everyone I talk to, who would buy a car "new" tells me their next one will be electric. The tipping point is coming much faster than most people think.

People say a lot of things. If the infrastructure isn't there, it will end up like the US. I'm not sure Canadian EV infrastructure is up to snuff compared to China or even Europe. In the US a lot of people tried electric and now I am finding again and again, for many of these people, the next car after their EV is a gas car. Because poor implementation of the charging experience has put a bad first experience in many peoples minds. In the US K shaped economy, there are enough people that can stomach higher gas prices, and the lower portion of the K shaped economy has an even worse EV infrastructure or otherwise cannot afford most EVs(used or new) anyway.


For a lot of people the infrastructure is an outlet in our garage. Going to the gas station is a novelty and just for snacks. Road trips are a few times a year and not a dealio at all. A PHEV is a nice sweet spot.

It's 2026 and we are still debating this? There are a range of use cases for the population. We have semis, F350s towing landscape trailers, motorcycles, bikes, evs, NEVs, etc.

Pick what you think will work best for your use case and iterate. Global political posturing doesn't move you anywhere.


>It's 2026 and we are still debating this?

You can debate all you want. If I have learned anything this past decade, its the internet has little bearing on how real life turns out. Just look at the sales numbers. In the US they are now slightly declining after years of steady growth. I watch auto industry shows that talk about how executives who bet their reputations on the EV transition at places like Ford and GM now stand with destroyed careers because the demand was just not there and billions of wasted capital that had to be written down.

A car company has to sell a product that the masses will buy. It turns out for the US (and I suspect Canda as well) that product is currently hybrids. It gets the fuel cost down for people while allowing them to not give up on what they come to expect.


The market in the US may be growing less strongly than elsewhere, but there are somewhat unique circumstances involved in that.

One is political - Energy in the US is highly political, and the oil and coal lobbies are both influential and regressive. This leads to EVs becoming a political statement rather than an active choice.

Second is size. Americans tend to drive further so range does matter. More range means more cost. And even Americans who don't ever go further than 20 miles entertain at least the idea of a cross-country road trip.

So I get where you are coming from. But I'd also say that the US is different to the world in general. In Europe I saw charging infrastructure everywhere. (Streetlight poles contained chargers, all the way down the street.) Electric busses were the norm. Electric cars everywhere.

Like I said earlier, a tipping point is coming. Naturally it'll happen sooner in some places than others. The US will likely be towards the back.

The problem for US automakers is that by the time they see a local market, they'll be well behind the curve in development. I don't think a GM will be able to compete in product (never mind price) to a BYD et al.


We are talking about the US and Canada here, thats why I referenced American car companies and their executives. Im not denying at all that other countries are in different scenarios and this will have different adoption trajectories.

>The problem for US automakers is that by the time they see a local market, they'll be well behind the curve in development. I don't think a GM will be able to compete in product (never mind price) to a BYD et al.

It's possible that GM and Ford are dead companies already. Although at the same time, I'd expected Tesla to decline a lot faster than they really did post MAGA Musk. They've had massive duds and a lot of money spent. Yet in terms of the U.S. they are still ahead of the pack in technology development and sales are not abysmal which is insane given there have not been any new platforms introduced. In fact they have discontinued models.

Whether BYD overtakes the American market remains to be seen, and maybe even in Europe we might see eventual pushback as things get really dire with the local manufacturers. It's really too early to tell.

China has an oversupply of EVs. They have over 100 car companies right now competing to the very death, and only a small handful will survive. Those companies will be very strong. But due to the oversupply and the 25% youth unemployment rate, China has to find a way to offload these vehicles overseas or else they'll suffer significantly as well. So it's going to be interesting times, and I'm not too sure how things are going to play out long term.


Move and more people are realizing the reliance on fossil fuels is determinant to national security. EV and renewable sources of energy improve national security. I applaud those that have become enlightened.

My next vehicle will be fully EV, not Tesla, once my current one dies.


Whats your locale? Im talking about US & Canada. The sales numbers reversing there tell a different story.

> I'm not sure Canadian EV infrastructure is up to snuff

Canada needs a whole lot less EV infrastructure than the US since so much of the population lives along a narrow band. Once you cover the trans-Canada highway, you've covered ~90% of long distance trips.


Perhaps, and I am open to being wrong about this. What about range anxiety in extremly low temperatures? We have all heard the stories of so many Teslas operating above the artic circle and other Tesla propaganda but day to day, do EVs stack up to Canadian environmental demands? Model 3 owenrs (including one of Telsa's largest former cheerleaders) had numerous problems withs its California based design in cold winters (ex. frozen door handles).

Maybe the eventual chinese sodium batteries will solve some of these issues.


Canadian environmental demands are strict but not that much of a problem. ~90% of the population is withing ~100 miles of the border and has pretty similar climate to the northern US/most of europe, and anyone much further north than that already plugs their car in at night in the winter to keep the engine from freezing. Recessed door handles could be a problem, but that's not a mandatory part of an EV.

I doubt the Canadians want their economy flooded with Chinese goods ("dumping" - selling goods at less than cost) - which destroys local industry.

This was predicted in The Economist awhile back, that if the US blocked Chinese imports a tsunami of Chinese goods would flood other countries and now it's happening. Those countries will also, in turn, erect trade barriers, or suffer the devastation that massive Chinese dumping causes.

So it's a nice protest gesture, but it's a cutting off your nose to spite your face gesture.


Accusations of Chinese dumping are cheap and easy to make, but the evidence is pretty mixed.

Most actual cases have been of raw materials (eg steel, yarn) and industrial chemicals.

I think this is a long way from the alleged "tsunami of Chinese goods".

It's also worth noting that many Chinese manufactured goods would mostly substitute for US manufactured goods (eg cars). That's actually the whole point.


The thing people tend to handwave about China's manufacturing prowess is that they have spent the last 25-ish years getting really good at 'making things to a spec' at a cost in-line with their labor market, being bolstered by their government's approach at Economy planning (i.e. subsidizing certain industries, required partnership agreements when foreign companies want to use that labor market to build things).

The quality of the product you get, like always, is about what people are willing to pay. The big difference is that the current cost of labor/material inputs there, is low enough that you can get the same or often better quality for less.

I wouldn't call that dumping. And to be clear, yeah they've done dumping in some cases.

But when we look at what's happened in the last 8 months or so around various AI SaaS-ish offerings, one could argue that plenty of US companies have done 'dumping with extra steps'. (And that's not even the first time necessarily, e.x. the DoorDash Pizza Arbitrage thought experiment...)

> It's also worth noting that many Chinese manufactured goods would mostly substitute for US manufactured goods (eg cars).

Heck, GM was (although they are moving it due to the Tariffs AFAIR) building the Buick Envision (Compact CUV) in China and shipping it to the US for sale. GM Announced in January that they'd move production to the US by 2028.

Similar for The Lincoln Nautilus (Midsize CUV), The current Gen is built in China and they only in the last month announced that they would move production back to the US... by 2030.


It showed up in Africa along some of the Belt and road initiative items. Lined with Chinese sellers, Raising chickens and selling Chinese goods.


Selling at a loss to capture market share, isn't that part of every SV startup? What makes it so bad in this case?

It's not "so bad in this case". The domestic version is called "predatory pricing" and is illegal. In practice, it's easier to raise anti-dumping complaints than predatory pricing cases, both because the producers don't vote in your country and because the complaint doesn't have to be proven in a court of law.

Heavy subsidies by the state.

Surely if this is a problem, then heavy subsidies from private capital is also a problem?

If there's a difference, I haven't heard a good explanation of it.


TBH I agree with you, even mentioned it in my other reply.

Modern China is not like the Soviet Union; it is much closer to a capitalistic society, but instead of private equity there is a (heavier than even the most 'socialist' of EU nations) government planning push.

In some ways, one could argue they're just taking lessons learned from all of the current systems and applying them aggressively in their centralized planning.

As someone who has lived in/around the heart of the 'Arsenal of Democracy' for my whole life, gotta say they are taking better lessons learned than the US has.


If they have happy customers buying them is the dumping just a shibboleth for just "they're taking our national companies market share"

That is a very short term perspective. National companies often employ locally and pay taxes and have a stake in your long term interest.

A hostile power - and China to the US is a hostile power - has no such stake. Quite the opposite.


> National companies often employ locally and pay taxes and have a stake in your long term interest

> A hostile power [...] has no such stake.

As someone that grew up in Detroit, reading this is basically equivalent to science-fiction for me.

If you think domestic companies have some sort of special stake in your country, you're misinformed.


I'm sorry our educational system has not made the differences between bad faith companies and dictatorship clearer.

Let me put it this way: American companies sell you a bad car and lay you off to give a CEO a bonus.

Chinese dictatorships put you into reeducation camps if you're a Muslim dissident or unapproved member of a religion. China tells the Catholic Church who to appoint as bishops and the Pope spends his time criticizing...anyone but China.

China pumps metrics tons of drug precursors onto the black market which accidentally find their way into Mexican drug labs and...are imported into Detroit.

China backs our national enemies because they are friends to anyone who opposes us. China funds Russia. China buys Iranian oil.

Chinese hackers steal US trade secrets.

And on and on.


You just described it yourself. American companies will build a Cybertruck, blame their customers, cancel a $25,000 EV, and then lay off employees for Elon's ketamine/AIPAC shill fund.

China has their own Abu Ghraib moments swept under the carpet, but their workers accept it for the same reason America ignored Seymour Hersh. Their middle class is growing, the Chinese economy has vast surpluses and market leverage that only America has ever enjoyed. Their asymmetric warfare stealing IP, from Texas Instruments to ARM to Lockheed Martin went unpunished. The Chinese intelligence agency, through Salt Typhoon, probably has more blackmail on American politicians than the Mossad does. From a Chinese perspective, the war is won. They're supporting the winning side in Ukraine since both US administrations rebuffed full NATO intervention. They're supporting the winning side in Iran after the IRGC proved they can disable planes, drones and ships with Chinese hardware.

When the United States calls Canada a "51st state" or renames border territories to manufacture leverage, it's not helping China lose. They're undermining the trade agreements that all of North America relies on, and strengthening China's case as a reliable alternative to America's fickle export restrictions. In that sense, humanitarian outrage is almost an advantage; why would Pakistan, Iran or Russia worry about ethical reprisal from China if they're equally amoral?


There are differences in labour and environmental laws that I do actually want a tariff to equalize.

If we have standards and laws it’s unfair to allow outsourced competition to skirt them and collect the savings. That’s a recipe for disaster.


Politicians accuse China of many things.

I'd note the lack of evidence presented there, at least in the part I could read.


Garlic dumping. Those little socks of 4 or 5 bulbs sold for a dollar-something are from China (notice the tops are chopped off so they cant sprout.) I buy domestic garlic because it's fucking stupid to import something that's so easy to grow.

I'm Canadian, the auto industry here died the moment trump started all of this tarrif talk in February, it just hasn't gotten cold yet.

Because of the tarrif and trade war our local industries will struggle and collapse, there's nothing we can do about that - they were dependent on US trade partners and markets, the Canadian market is much smaller. We have massive productivity issues, there's little chance we'll successfully build our own auto industry.

In the interim buying more from China doesn't really hurt us, and sends a strong signal to the remaining people who care about foreign policy in Washington that there are penalties to treating allies like enemies.

I used to really strongly oppose Chinese expansion and the rise of cheap products getting dumped everywhere - I still do, but I oppose the US admin more; and at least they're stable and clear about what they want


Seems pretty straightforward to me: Hey, China - start local plants and we’ll be happy to have as many EVs as we can build. After all, we’ll have plenty of idle auto workers.

If Chinese industry is willing to operate at a loss in order to poke the US in the eye, sure - markets too small and labor too expensive otherwise imo.

It would be cool to have a native Canadian car company to defend and the only argument you can make for Chinese car dumping is that you dont want the only car companies remaining in the world to be Chinese. Thats a possibility yes since China has 100+ car companies, the population is overall declining in most western countries and there are already too many car companies for a shrinking pie of customers. But from Canada's point of view: they have already been threatened enough that im sure those remaining ford,gm and stellantis jobs might be gone eventually...so whats left? Maybe Canada can demand BYD open a car factory in Canada.

I'll be rude/bold enough to say that Canada's ability to argue around 'in-country' made goods has been eroded for decades;

I will admit I'm going to point to a specific example; Canadian Bike makers have been able for at least a decade to get an unpainted frame from Taiwan/China/Etc, components from wherever, but so long as they painted the frame in canada and did final assembly in Canada... 'Made in Canada' alongside all of the tariff exemptions that came with that.

> But from Canada's point of view: they have already been threatened enough that im sure those remaining ford,gm and stellantis jobs might be gone eventually...

Guess you didn't hear about Brampton in the news, the Stellantis plant there might be on the chopping block...


Yeah Canada has natural limitations bigger countries like the US does not have but still, I wonder if good negoiation and maybe a changing situation in regards to the US's declining prospects might allow Canada to swing a bit higher in the future and demand something like this. There is a skilled workforce in place as well so maybe that changes the calculus.

Hence the concept of trade partnerships. No country makes everything, and yes, there's lots of competition.

Tarifs have existed since forever. Countries use them to protect local industries. But they've always been stable, and industry focused.

Food production for example is worth protecting and Canada has tarifs on imported Dairy. Partnerships exist to protect local industries, promote exports, and give citizens access to cheap goods. It's a complex balance set up over time with lots of nuance and negotiating.

Yes, sometimes tarifs kill a local industry as well. Lack of international competition let's local industry stagnate until it is dead. US ship building is a good example of this, and US Auto makers are trending in this direction. (Banning Chinese EVs is not bolstering the US EV production, it is causing the US manufacturers to ignore that market, and I don't think that ends well.)

Tarifs are a powerful tool when wielded well. Alas right now the US in unstable. Local industries can't rely on tarifs existing next week, never mind 5 years from now. I'm not investing in a local hockey stick factory because the tarif could disappear at any time.

In my country we get cheap solar panels from China. Frankly, let them sell below-cost if they like. (Hint, they're not below cost). We don't make them here, so cheap energy is good for all.

The US negativity to Chinese goods seems to be around dumping (which happens, but not much), around quality (frankly much of it is very good) or around human rights. (Cause, you know, we bombed Iran to promote human rights...)

I don't think Americans will suddenly love China. But the rest of the world is getting very cosy very quickly.


But China wants to make everything, that is the problem. It might also be the case that we misunderstand the state of the Chinese economy quite a bit. I heard an argument by an economist that the situation is mainly explained by the real estate crash. That was a ginormous event but the government basically just denied any big consequences. That did kill the credit market for a long time. Now Chinese consumer have little money to spend and China is forced to export their products, no matter the price to keep things going.

> But China wants to make everything

As long as a typical Chinese person is happy with a standard of living that is far below what an American expects, China will be way cheaper on labor.

For most products, labor is a significant cost.

For a lot of consumers, price is more important then where it's made. Maybe not what they say they think is important but when they actually decide. As a result, China will make almost everything, along with the rest of south east Asia.

Basically, the lower price for products comes at the cost of exporting your own jobs. One is easy to reason about when making a purchase decision, the other is indirect and abstract. Which is why the former wins


But in what goods/currency/assets are other nations paying China for those goods if China does not want/need to import anything?

Explain how this is supposed to work on any medium time frame.


Well so far I believe they've been buying us government bonds for example?

Also, haven't they been buying all kinds of stuff in Africa etcetera? Money doesn't have to flow from A to B and back to A. It might very well pass many more hops to complete the circle


Use joint ventures just as China does.

In which you have a non-optional deal with a state owned venture?

Doesn't have to be state-owned but it probably helps if the state forces such a venture with their domestic companies. It's already occuring in many countries now that China is the dominant producer, such as Ford with Geely and Volkswagen with XPeng.

Selling below price to capture a market is now somehow BAD? Isn’t this the bread & butter of cutthroat capitalism? Isn’t it something we do endlessly? But when the Chinese do it its “dumping”?

For more complicated products, the fear is that this subsidy destroys all competition, and then you're dependent upon that country / company.

Right isn’t that the explicit goal of US companies? Why wouldn’t the same goal be ok for other nations to pursue?

Hypocrisy is never a good look.


Oh no! Cheap goods and services! Maybe some other governments will be smart enough to not let a massive influx of nearly free stuff make everyone materially worse off. In fact it seems like only a completely idiotic system would make people worse off for having more free stuff.

oh no, lost jobs and and dying economy!

protectionism is what kills your economy because it cannot raise aggregate output. You can't "save jobs" in total, only a minority at the expense of the majority. When you raise tariffs on Chinese imports every consumer takes an economic hit, which otherwise would have gone to.. job creation and consumption. You'll have on net fewer jobs because you've made your country poorer.

Not to mention, Canada being largely a service and resource extraction economy doesn't even really compete much with China.


> oh no, lost jobs and and dying economy!

It worked for Australia (which has a fairly similar economy to Canada).

It has led to a "Dutch disease" reliance on the resources sector in Australia, but that isn't radically different to the Australian economy before (mostly proportionally more coal & iron ore exports, less wool and grain)


That is a policy choice. Why do we need jobs if we're getting unlimited free stuff? The laws of physics aren't requiring us to - we are requiring us to.

> Why do we need jobs if we're getting unlimited free stuff?

Are you seriously arguing that the policy of putting oneself in a position of total economic dependence on China is in any way reasonable?


The point is total economic dependence on _no one_, because we had basically had total economic dependence on the US and they fucked us into learning our lesson.

I'm saying the policy that receiving a gift is bad for you is our fault.

I was unaware that goods self-assembled without human intervention.

Please, elaborate.


We're working on that. Be patient.

Other humans. If other humans were giving you everything you need for free, why do you need a job?

To afford things I merely want? To afford to support friends and partners?

But other people are giving you everything you want for free. Why do you need to afford it? What does it even mean to question whether you can afford something you already get unlimited amounts of for free?

You said "everything you need". I need shelter, I need food and water, but I want powerful computing, fast internet, a phone with cell service, treats and snacks and etc. I want games to play with my friends, I want gifts to buy for my friends. I don't need those things, but they greatly contribute to my quality of life.

Also:

> What does it even mean to question whether you can afford something you already get unlimited amounts of for free?

If I had unlimited money, my limiting resources would quickly become time and energy instead. So affording something would mean fitting it into my day/week/month/etc, and finding the energy for it. I have severe ADHD and executive dysfunction, so I don't always have the capacity for things I should be able to do.


It is genuinely impossible to compete in a market where alternatives are cheaper enough, just look at how Amazon Basics squeezes competitors out of business.

This is why free trade is important. We had a decent setup where countries were specializing in their own manufacturing/services specialties, and then we all paid each other for what we needed.

Then some greedy fools decided they needed more, and started trying to charge more on the way out or on the way in. Now the ones that specialized in the 'must haves' of today have insane leverage over everyone else. Then the 'easy' answer is to prevent those goods from coming into your country.

It's all so incredibly shortsighted, it deflates me.


The reality of the world is that when the US sets e.g. environmental or labor standards, we basically end up offshoring the affected industries to other places. Because those standards increase the cost of production which makes it more economical to produce stuff in a country that doesn't have such standards. With completely free trade, everything would be made in whichever country has the lowest standards, which is rather contrary to the implied values when passing environmental and labor standards in the first place.

You could then try to make laws that countries we import from must abide certain standards, but just gets gamed endlessly. For instance cacao/chocolate makes extensive use of child slavery [1]. There have been numerous lawsuits over this until the Supreme Court ruled in 2021 that you could no longer sue Nestle/Cargill/Hershey/etc over child slavery in their supply lines. They were being sued because their oversight came down to asking, 'Hey you're not using child labor right?' 'Nah.' 'Cheers then, carry on.'

When a company's goal is to not see something, they do a very good job of becoming blind.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_labour_in_cocoa_producti...


Labor costs are orders of magnitude more than costs added by environmental or labor standards.

The average hourly rate in the US is $42.50. In Vietnam is is $6.30, in the Philippines it is $5.40[1]

These aren't people living in poverty - they live well.

OTOH environmental legislation costs are harder to come by, but [2] estimates around 10% in a number of case studies. To be specific, that would mean US cost would be $4 less - that's still around 6 times the cost of Vietnam

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/average-hourly-earnings

[2] https://www.oecd.org/content/dam/oecd/en/publications/report...


That paper discusses only the effect of increasing energy costs, and seems highly dubious as well. Their conclusion is that increases in energy prices would have a small effect that could even be positive. We got to see what happens after increasing energy prices since 2022. The effects have been neither modest nor positive. They studied only modest changes from the past, but they were speaking of energy costs shifts on a scale aiming to shift Earth's climate, which is not modest. The cost is going to be much more than 10%.

Also the US economy is increasingly polarized so averages mislead. The median hourly is a bit under $21. [1] You also need to account for what happened to the economy after we start shipping these affected jobs overseas. That's an entire segment of the economy which is going to influence wages, consumption, and other distributions. I agree wages are always going to be a major factor, but we can also afford a premium because shipping stuff half way around the world isn't free, the broader economic impact of having less control over your supply line is itself also a significant cost, and so on.

[1] - https://data.bls.gov/PDQWeb/le


I was coming to comment just on that average, but I'm glad you caught it.

> These aren't people living in poverty - they live well.

We're discussing forced child labor, and you conclude "they live well".


No, I'm discussing people living on the average hourly wage.

What are you saying? If people all choose a shitty version from China, there will be no market for a good local version and businesses will stop trying. The investment required to match China's manufacturing capability in any area is simply impossible unless you say it is an AI data center.

Real life isn't just "the shitty version from China", especially in 2026. Some of their products are better, some are worse. Nearly _all_ of our clothing comes from Asia, from low to high-end brands.

I'm saying there's value in specializing, not every country needs to be able to make everything. The real issue is people weaponizing their specializations, in this case specifically the USA with its stupid trade moves.


on what basis do you claim the local product is "good" if people are not choosing it?

You can manipulate the meaning of "good" to suit your purpose, but it generally refers to quality.

Cost is a different aspect entirely. A one-dollar scoop of ice cream and a $100 scoop are both good.


What is "quality"? What is the objective test of it? I have made my definition clear: if people are choosing a product consistently, it must be of some value to them. What is your definition?

Well yes... the current US admin gets blame for not seemingly understanding the market right now(or bungled elsewhere giving the Chinese a lucky break) but i'm sure the massive oversupply in Chinese EVs didn't hurt either. China has 100+ car comapnies that are all in the jungle right now trying desperately to survive. Most won't make it and when the victors emerge, other car companies may not be ready for these warriors that survived. One of the ways to get rid of excess inventory: dump it elsewhere.

> The Iran war and SoH crisis has been great for EV uptake

Trump has been the best promoter of electrical vehicle here in Europe.

He 'helped' his Arabian allies twice, first he brought war to their countries and then he made sure that people wouldn't need their oil anymore (at least much less).

With allies like that you don't need enemy lol.


Hell, it's been decent (relatively) for pushing EV adoption within the US, too, in addition to renewable energy. This is not the first time that I've wondered if Donald Trump isn't secretly still a democrat at heart.

No wonder in China they call Trump "the nation builder".

And now I think we're going to see a surge of vegetarianism in the U.S.

Good show!


I think its nothing like the Enterprise version, which is why they hate having to maintain it, same with Atlassian and Azure/Entra AD. Once service to rule them all, and in the cloud bind them.

For security reasons, I would love a low feature, carefully engineered, offline github-like system. Something tuned for agentic behaviours, with an understanding of hierarchical agent identities.


It is quite possible for github load balancers to route paying customers to different queues/infrastructure. I think much of the bot activity is paying customers, they just don't have per-client QoS because that would be hard. And they don't have separate auth for bots so they can't queue them separately.

We are. But we are also experienced at dealing with temperature extremes. The problem is that the 45C temperatures we regularly experience, and Europe just had for the first time, are going to be 50C and on top of prolonged drought and flood.

The farm sector is at least 50% climate denialists, pretending drought and flood are events are unchanging and anyway, nothing can be done. At the same time they actively block HV transmission, wind, solar and battery projects. They are against fracking on their land/aquifer but pro fracking and coal.

For a long time Government has shielded farmers from consequences, but we have a lot of marginal land that has been over-grazed, over-irrigated and over-fertilised, and we need to change vast areas back to wilderness and long term repair.

The biggest consequences will be for export destinations. Without the huge quantities of wheat and protein we export it will be very hard for poor and densely populated countries. We are already seeing the impacts of the fertiliser shortage. Oscillations in supply from war, politics, hoarding and climate panic will see costs rise sharply. We could make fertiliser from renewables, but it is hard to compete with Qatari gas when the SoH is open.


> The farm sector is at least 50% climate denialists, pretending drought and flood are events are unchanging and anyway, nothing can be done.

The QLD outback is, um, interesting. Imagine the stereotypical US gun-toting religious-nut redneck and give them an Australian accent and short stumpy legs. And just like in the US they isolate their (plentiful) children and bring them up in weird bubbles with little to no contact with the outside world, and little to no job prospects apart from falling back into the same cycle their parents are in. It's really odd interacting with them, it can take weeks of effort before they'll even make eye contact with someone from outside their bubble.

Updated on re-reading: Not trying to say everyone there is like that, just that you run into a lot of them there.


It's the garden variety violence in the States that gets you.

Unfortunately it is not so simple. Once you provide a source of intelligence that is accessible over the network you are supercharging any software that can access it.

Web interfaces (chat) designed for humans can very easily be used by programs, you don't actually need API keys. Any program which can submit queries can then be subverted by its input. Malware can definitely find corporate chat interfaces like Teams Copilot. "Business intelligence" systems can also be leveraged, they rarely have good ACLs.


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