Right. There's absolutely no room for a middle ground, like that we respect individuals humans' autonomy and believe that individual liberty is a natural right. Or that a small number of experts can't possibly understand everything that motivates every person so there's a limit to how well we can predict what will make people better off. Or that past efforts to collectivize economies lead to disastrous outcomes. Or that people respond to incentives, even if that means some people live materially better lives than others.

No, clearly the only possible valid viewpoints are full collectivism and the Hunger Games.

Ah. I see your point. In the reality we have today, yes, the declaration has not had it's full intended effect. Many government services continue to use Claude. All true. From that perspective, yes, the ban has had little practical effect on the ground.

The law says the government and contractors have 180 days to stop using Claude (which is around September) and there's a stay in place preventing it from being enforced. I don't think it's surprising there has been little actual change in government Claude usage in the last month. It's too short a time period and there's too much legal action.

But all that said, there are real effects now. OpenAI and xAI signed contracts they previously could not get. That gives them an important foot in the door which could (could, mind you) significantly change the market dynamics regardless of how the courts rule. If I were an investor, I'd be more leery of investing in Anthropic right now so that likely drove their price down compared to what it would have been (admittedly an unknowable). At the same time, I think a lot of people rallied to Anthropic's cause so maybe they wind up winning when it's all said and done (also an unknowable). Finally, Anthropic has a bunch of people running around filing briefs, attending hearings, and doing things other than developing great products so there's a deadweight loss.

Given the behavior of the Trump administration, I'm not sure what their real motivation was. Maybe this is all just a really brutal negotiating tactic. Maybe Hegseth or Trump just got a bee up their butts that "Anthropic isn't the boss of me" and just could not accept that contracts come with obligations and restrictions. Maybe both. I don't think we'll ever get a clear picture from either what their real motivation is and what changes they actually hoped to effect. I don't expect actually banning Claude was a real goal, it was more of a "if that's what we have to do to get what we want, we're OK with that."

Quite. If we detonated every nuke we have with the goal of intentionally killing as many people as possible, it wouldn't kill everyone.

Here's some very dark, back of the envelope math. There are roughly 12,000 nuclear warheads now. Assume each one kills everyone in 100 square miles (which I think is a wild over-estimate), that's 12 million square miles. The Earth has roughly 58 million square miles of land so that means about 3/4 of the land would survive.

I did some quick searching. There are roughly 12,000 towns or cities with populations over 10,000 people. That means you can expect a substantial number of towns with populations of fewer than, say, 1000 to survive. That's a lot of villages.

Yes, you'd kill the vast majority of people but there would still be millions left over. Humans would die in a catastrophe. Humanity would survive. Be precise with your words.

My understanding is the DoD formally declared Anthropic a supply chain risk, which legally obligates all US federal government agencies (and recursively their suppliers) to stop using Anthropic code. I have no idea how many contracts actually were terminated. Lawsuits immediately started flying and I though the designation was stayed.

Regardless, this is much, much more serious to Anthropic than a few tweets. It's real money and real loss of business.

I think you may be giving them too much credit. Sure, surveillance would be nice and I doubt they object. But in this case, I suspect they honestly think this is a snap to implement and no big technical hurdle.

And bamboo tubes, piles of sulfur, saltpeter, and charcoal, vines, and flint. Oh, and people in rubber suits awkwardly fighting.

They're in the California legislature. That goes without saying. Although, even by Sacramento standards, this is pretty moronic.

Which is, no doubt, why our congresscritters think it's a pretty good analogy.

...some advocate being given control of important stuff, like health care?

People often see a problem and assume government control or regulation is the only answer. I trust regulation by market competition far more than I trust the Keystone Kops running every state house.

Or to put it another way, if Amazon, Target, and Walmart made money distributing booze, and liquor stores had a free choice which one to buy from, I guarantee this would not have happened. And I guarantee they'd have better prices, service, and availability than a government run warehouse.

I'll take 'Cover storied invented by the CIA" for $500, Ken.

I don't believe this for a second. It's even less plausible than that mining manganese nodules on the ocean floor was the real purpose of the Glomar Explorer.

I have no idea what they're hiding but really doubt anything like a quantum heartbeat detector exists. To make wild guess, we had some human assets in the country who told us where the officer was and we needed a story so we didn't compromise that person. Maybe we'll find out the truth over the next 30 years.

Sovereign wealth fund: Have you seen the current administration? What in the world makes anyone think any giant slush fund will be invested wisely? No, a different administration won't be any better. It's cronies and ideologs all the way down.

Four day work week: Actions speak louder than words. Start a four day work week at OpenAI right now. Nothing is stopping you. Until then, talk is cheap.

I don't understand. Don't charging stations have more opportunity to sell snacks (since even at a fast charger, it takes longer than fill a gas car)? Or do you think charging takes so long, the drivers have enough time to wander down the street to the local McBurgers or strip mall?

I'm also not at all sure how much of an issue this really is. Most of the people I know of who own EVs charge at home or at work. The impression I get from them is charging at a remote station is fairly rare and so convenience is just not that big a deal.

Well, yes. Once people start doing that and finding, all things considered, they like the experience better, I guarantee the vendors will take notice.

Of course, it's rare that all things are equal. Customers will have to consider in distance, charge speed, charger reliability, charger compatibility, and many more things along with convenience of payment methods. It may well be that a good charger close by is preferable to a great charger that's far away.

It's kind of like every other market in existence. Customers vote with their wallets, vendors jump to earn those dollars/pounds/euros.

As I wrote, the observation is people increasingly don't carry physical cards, they use electronic versions (e.g. Google Pay and Apple Pay). If you're Tesla and notice this describes a large number of your customers, it makes sense to just skip the credit card reader. Is that a good idea? Beats me, that's something for the vendors and customers to sort out.

Regarding autonegotiate: this is where some sort of interoperability standard really turns out valuable. The computer industry deals with this all the time. Problem is, there's always one dominant vendor who had a proprietary solution (*cough*Apple*cough*Tesla*cough*) which provides a competitive advantage they don't want to surrender. It's not simple to get out of that situation. This is one area where I can reluctantly admit some sort of government-sponsored standardization or forced licensing can help.

I don't have an EV so I'm quite disconnected from the charger market.

Is that typical? That a charger I might want to actually use would be that far away, and there are no alternatives?

This is where free markets shine. As long as there's competition, you the customer are not captive. The higher the barriers to entry, the less incumbent vendors have to care about your wishes.