In a way, China has been like Amazon or, previously, Walmart. The allure of hypergrowth brought participation and consensus of many, who labored tirelessly for a big payout and, at first, got it. Then hypergrowth began to slow, and early participants began cashing out, which changed the 'total commitment' culture and soured the milk, first with Walmart and then with Amazon, which usurped Walmart. The advantage of an oligarchy is oligarchs change more frequently, and there are so many that they could never reach a collective agreement on anything - even what to have for lunch, much less how to run a country. China has all control in one basket and no private forces to balance it out. Its only option out is a revolution, and they are far too big and dangerous for that to happen.

Murray might approve of the Internet and Cryptocurrency, but certainly not China, eh?

If you can get it done over Zoom, you have a business case for automation.

Perhaps, AI is stupid, too. Consider the source.

That is the amazing and frustrating thing about science. It humbly concedes that every observation and conclusion is subject to review and revision while trying, at the same time, to invoke faith that the current perspective is the best alternative. "Trust in precisely calculated ambiguity!" Belief in science is a giant social experiment in cognitive dissonance.

The next story might be, "When will Microsoft sell off LinkedIn?" There are no synergies.

As I recall, LiDAR was extremely expensive and huge. Google got it down in size and cost. I think they made the units solid state instead of mechanical. Elon Musk initially thought LiDAR was a bad idea but softened his position as costs dropped. I suspect any patents are related to the improvements.

Wow! I did not know what happened to Santa Cruz Operations. I remember working with them in the 1980s, when they were tucked into the back of an office park at the south end of Highway 9. They reminded me of Digital Research in Pacific Grove, another OS company that did not make it.

Russia is like Simone Biles, so incredibly good at something that it seems like second nature. The difference is that Ms. Biles has only been doing gymnastics for a couple of decades, while Russia has been mastering propaganda for centuries. It is in their blood, and we would not recognize them if they started behaving otherwise. They know this intuitively and would refute it instinctively.

Not long before IBM Boca Raton announced its IBM/PC, IBM Corporate announce an IBM Personal Computer, based upon a small 370 model mainframe with a 3270 terminal. It took up a large room and cost about $1,000,000.

WTF? Maybe I am just old, but has money changed so much that it just spontaneously reproduces? I know the shift over a century ago from gold-based 'hard' currency to paper money was a seachange that led to the Great Depression, which was only ended by WWII. Are we in a new seachange from paper-based money to cryptocurrencies that are 'printed' by server farms and only constrained by computing power? The old assumption was that if everyone were a millionaire, everything would cost a million. How has that changed?

I went to the Theranos lab in Walgreens on University Avenue. She had to draw three tubes; not all my tests were standard. I normally have weird blood chemistry, and their assays caught all of them correctly. Of course, they were probably using the same assays as everyone else. The phlebotomist was excellent, one of the best I ever experienced. My Insurance covered everything.

Doesn't GF own AMD's old foundries? Since AMD got out of the fab business, have they not done pretty well? What is next for Intel, buying TI?