It probably makes more sense given their scale for them to have their own power generation -- solar, wind, and battery storage, maybe gas turbines for extended periods of low renewable availability.

In fact, you could take it further. You could designate town-sized areas for multiple companies' data centers, served by an electricity source (possibly nuclear) and water reclamation and recycling centers providing zero carbon emissions and minimal environmental impact. It would be served by a compact, robust, and completely sepate electrical grid of its own, reducing costs for the data centers and isolating residential customers from the impact of their elecrical use. It would also economically concentrate data centers for businesses providing services they need,reducing costs and increasing profits all around.

The "cold war" phrase has been hitting the think tank and media circuits. here is another example

I'm ok with it as long as I don't have to bail it out if it fails.

It's like the hover tank in Sargent Bilko. Not about being practical, just about if you can get the contract. Human nature is the same everywhere.

Maybe the AI powered think tanks can come up with something more original the yet another freaking cold war.

Can't you figure out how to cooperate? Too challenging?

It's certainly possible that some people do, sincerely, 'fear' that the onrushing machine god will speak chinese and that it would be just the worst if all humans were rendered obsolete by the wrong side's robot when that's supposed to be our job; but, especially with how tepid the results are for the money poured in, it seems much more the case that we are seeing a lot of nakedly cynical playing of the 'give us what we want, lest the chinese win' by people who are otherwise on deeply shaky ground in terms of things like massive copyright infringement, voracious data mining, and an endless hunger for capital without any signs of returns.

It's like a vastly hypertrophied case of the 'race to 5G' stuff; where, if we didn't give Verizon whatever they asked for, China would have a faster rollout of 5G and we would lose the 4th industrial revolution or something? It was never entirely clearly what losing the race was going to involve.

The existential tone of the claims seem especially curious given how meagre the leads people are pouring billions into seem to be; and how readily 'AI' models can be poked at via distillation attacks or good, old-fashioned, electronic intrusion. If The Singularity kicks off that presumably changes everything beyond the powers of meaningful prediction(though that holds for whoever develops it as well as everyone else; given the odds that it will slip the leash); but as long as you are in the realm of incrementally more or less flakey chatbots it seems a bit weird to even talk like there is some sort of victory condition that will trigger and cause one side to lose.

It's a very apt 1st world analogy of 3rd world problems. It's not a 1:1 analogy.

Rural places wait decades for the 'modern world' to reach them...just like suburbia waits hours for the Cable guy.

Moving mass won't induce spin - it might cause it to readjust orientation to the earth. I'm guessing the amount you'd need to move would rival all the earth ever moved on earth if not more.

The amount of energy it would take to start the entire moon spinning is quite literally, astronomical.

Millions of people would disagree with it being dead.

There are lots of insiders - both in russia itself, and especially in the occupied territory which russia considers its own.

While the US can afford to run nuclear tests, russia really can't. Their economy is already under massive strain due to the war and associated sanctions, trying to simultaneously engage in an arms race with america could result in economic collapse similar to what happened to the soviet union.

$230

My jaw drops, but then I split. Half of me remains smugly looking down on fuckwits, but the other half hears that Samuel Adams' Utopia, which costs about the same, is supposedly showing up in CostCos, and while I can't justify getting a bottle .. maybe I don't have to justify things.

No.

No, it would still be stupid to do.

Free up the human capital to do what exactly? I like the Star Trek vision as much as anyone, but it's not like we can go explore the galaxy on star ships because we're freed from working in factories.

I think even Star Trek illustrates that work and even existential struggle is an essential part of our development as humans. Kirk had more than one soliloquy to that effect.

Perhaps we might get farther as a society and an economy if we value work and employees as assets rather than mere costs and liabilities. Would change the focus of what we are making and why we are making them.

Awesome! Let me know when you're ready to work union free on the assembly lines in the widget factories. Or to pick produce. Or do you think you're somehow in the management class?

Tariffs are a bad thing from a pure economic perspective. They introduce inefficiencies, and make things more expensive. This is a basic concept of macroeconomics.

However, some things are more important than making the most money. Among them, national defense. In America, both parties have decided they don't want to work with China anymore, for varying reasons of ideology, ethics, and self defense. And they have decided that is more important to them than economic efficiencies.