Equating AI with Pac-Man isn't really the intellectual flex you probably think it is.

Anthropic's entire pitch has always been safety. Innovation like this tends to favor a very few companies, and it leaves behind a whole pile of losers that also had to spend ridiculous amounts of capital in the hopes of catching the next wave. If you bet on the winning company you make a pile of money, if you pick one of the losers then the capital you invested evaporates. Anthropic has positioned itself as OpenAI, except with safeguards, and that could very well be the formula that wins the jackpot. Historically, litigation and government sponsorship have been instrumental in picking winners.

However, as things currently stand, Anthropic is unlikely to win on technical merits over its competition. So Dario's entire job as a CEO is basically to get the government involved. If he can create enough doubt about the people that are currently making decisions in AI circles that the government gets involved, either directly through government investment, or indirectly through legislation, then his firm has a chance at grabbing the brass ring. That's not to say that he is wrong, he might even be sincere. It is just that it isn't surprising that his pitch is that AI has the potential to be wildly dangerous and we need to think about safety. That's essentially the only path that makes his firm a viable long term player.

If nothing else they should not be allowed to call themselves a bank, including not a "trust" bank. Stick with crypto exchange or hascode pawnshop or whatever but not bank.

Telescreen monitoring would have required a crazy amount of manpower.

Probably the closest real-world analog was the East German Stasi, which may have accounted for nearly 1 in 6:

The ratio for the Stasi was one secret policeman per 166 East Germans. When the regular informers are added, these ratios become much higher: In the Stasi's case, there would have been at least one spy watching every 66 citizens! When one adds in the estimated numbers of part-time snoops, the result is nothing short of monstrous: one informer per 6.5 citizens. It would not have been unreasonable to assume that at least one Stasi informer was present in any party of ten or twelve dinner guests. Like a giant octopus, the Stasi's tentacles probed every aspect of life.

— John O. Koehler, German-born American journalist, quoted from Wikipedia

The entire EU is a protectionist bloc Canada is protectionist coffee. Tariffs are wonderful, useful tools when other countries use them. But when Trump does them they're bad. As are so many other policies like deporting illegal aliens. Obama and Biden did more and entire states and cities did not rebelv and nullify federal authority like it was fort Sumter 1865. Pure TDS.

That's insane! Sign me up and ship me out.

Except for that one time it was Lupus!

Really? You think at this point SpaceX is just going to throw up its hands and say "never mind" on Starship? I'm trying to imagine why they would do that.

I think you're right. If he thought he knew anything - in either direction - he'd be all in. Instead he's just throwing his hands up.

He used to win these market timing games because no one was paying attention to huge short positions. You could quietly bet against a company, or, better yet, you could quietly amass a short position and then release stunning negative news that you had uncovered and watch the stock price tank.

These days it is more likely that online investors will notice a large short, and drive the price of the stock up until the person holding the short gets margin called and loses all of their money. The shorters then provide the liquidity you need to get out of the position. There used to be good money in shorting terrible companies, but in an age where hordes of armchair investors can drive the price of GameStop to the moon that strategy is just too risky.

My only guess is drugs.

In the USA is it common to have self service tills at supermarkets that accept coins?

If it accepts cash, it should accept both coins and bills. Any change I manage to accumulate usually gets fed into the coin slot at a self-checkout before I swipe a card to provide the rest of the payment. It's better than handing it off to a Coinstar machine, as those skim off a percentage of what you feed them.

"I like things simple. I really don't deal with milage, or all the other things I consider minutiae. I deal with simple numbers. What this means is not filling out milage reports and the other stuff that clutters up to work. Perhaps I'm eccentric. But I like simple because my actual work is quite complex."

As is my work -- however, my mileage report isn't "minutiae". It' averages $300-$500 every two weeks (I do a lot of driving --- particularly for projects). And the process isn't complicated. Basically a date, destination and total miles per line. In a text file. No clutter -- just a review of my travel calendar for 5 mins every two weeks and another 2-5 mins to transfer that to my expense report. Automagically appears in my pay check 8 days later.

If you want to know these things have you looked for the answer?

It's Toyota. They are known. They employ over 63,000 Americans already. They are good jobs. This announcement marks the start of producing batteries - not some hazy "agreement" about the future if this and if that and if the other. It's a done deal and it's a good thing.

Sounds easy, but Musk has been there, Jobs has been there, Gates has been there...