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Comment Well, that answers my question... (Score 1) 5

by fuzzyfuzzyfungus (#65824835) Attached to: New Hyperloop Projects Continue in Europe
So the 'hyperloop' people have a cool website; while the 'train' people are just plain getting on with building stuff; whether conventional or the now-quarter-century-ish old maglev option.

Looks like someone signed up for another round of 'faff with apps vs. offshoring our entire high tech supply chain' and hoped it would work better this time.

And some dumbass 'managing director' is telling us that a gigantic safety-critical vacuum system is 'not effected by strikes'; more or less because he has no idea what the maintenance and operations would involve? Truly a joke telling itself.

Comment It could be worth it (Score 4, Interesting) 45

by phantomfive (#65824503) Attached to: OpenAI Partners Amass $100 Billion Debt Pile To Fund Its Ambitions
If they end up somehow building strong AI, then the investment will pay off in huge multiples and will absolutely be worth it.

If they don't manage to create strong AI, but manage to create a better search engine that somehow replaces Google, then it will be worth the investment (for comparison, Google profit is on the order of $100 billion per year).

There are a lot of other potential products that could bring heavy revenue, even without strong AI. AirBnB has $2billion a year in net profit, which isn't great but it's conceivable that even with the current crappy AI product, OpenAI could make a reasonable amount of revenue. With billions of potential customers, they don't need to make a lot of money off each person.

Comment Re:Blaming a single cause (Score 2) 55

Here is how the researchers themselves say it:

We contend that reduced water availability, accompanied by substantially drier conditions, may have led to population dispersal from major Harappan centers, while acknowledging that societal transformation was shaped by a complex interplay of climatic, social, and economic pressures.

Don't conflate the arrogant headline with knowledgeable researchers.

Comment Re:Well, if you own it. (Score 3, Insightful) 34

by phantomfive (#65823911) Attached to: China-Netherlands Chip Fight Turns Into Corporate Civil War

“serious administrative shortcomings [that] threaten the continuity and safeguarding of crucial technological knowledge and capacity on Dutch and European soil,” the government said, with "fears of tech leakage, meaning property and know-how are transferred to China.'

https://www.politico.eu/articl...

I don't know enough about Dutch law to say much more than that, but I'm sure they had lawyers work it out.

Comment Re:Those who cannot remember history (Score 1) 199

by phantomfive (#65823841) Attached to: Europe Fears It Can't Catch Up in Great Power Competition

the two things--greater domestic wealth for the working class, and a strong foreign policy--historically have been demonstrably causally correlated. Again, as I have alluded to in my previous post, the postwar American economy was extremely prosperous

Someone might counterargue that building bombs that do nothing but explode (or worse, destroy assets) is not a benefit to the economy, and that the 90s had an economic boom as the world returned to peace, and anyway government spending doesn't matter (economically) if it's on bombs or on anything else.

It would be interesting if you looked up how much benefit was from war spending and how much was from other effects. I think you will find there is not actually a correlation.

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