Is it really too much to ask that major companies be good at two things at once? Dual competence is essential for any long-term business survival. A company needs to master both its core discipline and financial operations. For example:

• Boeing should be skilled in both engineering and business. Strip away the engineering, and you get dangerous products, death(!) and broken trust.
• Warner-Discovery should be competent at entertainment and business. Put a dude-David Zazlov-and C-suite people in charge who only know how to churn out cheap reality slop and who shelves fantastic finished films such as Coyote Versus Acme just for tax write-offs, and you erode the delicate balance that built an industry giant.
• PlayStation and Xbox need to excel at game development and business. Instead, we see industry titans that swing between snapping up all the studios they can and abruptly shutting them down, funding auteur projects like Physint and pulling funding the moment a balance sheet looks the least bit precarious.

Somewhere along the way, corporate governance bought into the myth that financial management is the only skill that matters, while the actual substance of the business -- such as the engineering, the art, or the entertainment -- is just a minor variable hardly worth considering. If a company isn't good at the what they actually make, they aren't actually good at business.

What if both are real risks? Without proper alignment and whatnot, we risk getting something straight out of Philip K Dickâs "Autofac" short story or even worse. The more I see, the more I use AI, the more think that the common trope in media of the disastrous consequences of robots and AI misunderstanding things just slightly or doing exactly what they were programmed to do without further context or understanding are real risks.

Good point. I saw that post's headline but I must have glossed over it. Perhaps too much doom scrolling and not paying enough attention to the good news lately. That's concrete progress and good to hear about our current status in the USA.

I agree that they seem to be giving the USA a run for our money in the AI race -- if not winning it.

However, is it fair and/or an apples-to-apples comparison to say that they are doing so with "less of the economic, cultural and political problems", when each of those things is under pretty tight control of the CCCP? You won't have much of those types of problems when they aren't allowed in the first place, right?

At the same time, the economic problem--the "dirty" energy cost--the US has is in large part due to our political "problems" - the Trump administration. For example, pushing coal and other fossil fuels when it has cost less for awhile now to build a renewable energy facility plant than a fossil fuel plant is just plain self-sabotage IMHO. It makes us lose in in many areas -- including AI, just as you said.

I agree entirely with what you're saying - China is doing amazing things by embracing renewables, and I too am fucking embarrassed by the bass ackwards Trump admin energy policies. But, it's also interesting to me that China is still using a shit ton of coal. In 2025, "China brought 78 gigawatts of new coal power capacity online, a sharp uptick from previous years" (https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/26/02/08/0233236/why-is-china-building-so-many-coal-plants-despite-its-solar-and-wind-boom).

TBF, I learned that is not too scandalous because "China consumed twice as much as electricity as the USA in 2025". (https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/26/01/19/063227/china-consumed-104-trillion-kilowatt-hours-of-electricity-in-2025---double-the-us).

To summarize and hopefully be perfectly clear: 1) any nation foregoing renewable energy--such as the USA--is digging themselves a fucking ditch and 2) China is leading the way in renewables, however they are also using a ton of coal 3) which--TBF--makes sense because they use twice the electricity as the US, 4) which actually helps illustrate that we're in a fucking race, and we--the USA--are fucking losing, which brings us back to point number (1).

I say that's BS and it's just a matter of will, greed, and control. Number one, models can be quantized, made in lower FP precision, and can even work in integer form instead of FP. Number two, models with many more parameters often don't produce results that are commensurate with the difference in the number of parameters between them and models with fewer parameters. But more importantly, I'm tired of the hegemony, gatekeeping and control of tech companies keeping AI service locked up in the cloud. After playing around with visual gen ai systems in ComfyUI both locally and in the cloud and getting similar results and performance in both, I've come to the conclusion that we're being treated like serfs and the industry-especially Nvidia and RAM manufacturers-are pushing a cloud-only system despite running locally being totally viable. I'm tired of Apple and others treating RAM and storage like it's water or gasoline in a Mad Max post-apocalyptic world, giving us the bare minimum and charging and arm and a leg for more. I feel like we're experiencing the PC revolution-especially the desktop publishing and desktop graphics/art/illustration revolution-in reverse. Instead of democratizing the power and giving it everyone, it's being withheld and concentrated in just a handful of big tech companies. I'd rather make it more like the PC revolution that we had and perhaps even better, make really, in line with the principles of people like Richard Stallman and the principles of movements and organizations such as the FSF.

5) Very susceptible to Cowboy Nealâ(TM)s charms, ya bastard.

Which version ;-) ? The one with George Clooney or the older Russian one? I havenâ(TM)t seen either. I feel like Iâ(TM)d need to be in the right headspace to watch either one because they look like theyâ(TM)re sad, and I know how hard some sad Sci fi can hit.

Past performance is not an indicator of future performance and all that, but hasnâ(TM)t SoftBank made several investments that turned out really bad such as WeWork? And didnâ(TM)t they fumble their investment in ARM? Honestly, what is their deal?

A peanut farm is peanuts compared to the Trump(R) grift farm.

Such a low effort piece. Barely passable for a general audience, absolutely terrible for anyone with a modicum of understanding. "Fast-evolving artificial intelligence chatbots and other new AI tool"? Give me a break. What did Chloe Samaha actually use for her "vibe coding"? Claude? VS with Copilot? Other? I want to know. I searched, but there is no answer, just that thread bare NPR piece.

Not to mention that during the pandemic, Republicans claimed to hate being advised what to do by what they called an unaccountable central authority, but the tariffs are just that, if not actually much, much worse.

Thereâ(TM)s no way to onshore manufacturing and production without our legislators â" who are actually accountable to us, an important distinction. Trump has said that itâ(TM)ll take two years to onshore. Thereâ(TM)s no way! Itâ(TM)d take five to ten years to make it happen. Plus action by congress. And positive incentives, not just punitive measures.

Not even a dictatorial president like Trump could get it done in the remainder of his term.

it just goes to show you that either the tariffs are a terrible idea; theyâ(TM)re a mechanism for grift, pay for play, and a weapon for corruption; or both.

To protect your rights with regards to Nintendo, I strongly urge everyone to opt out of Nintendo's mandatory, binding, forced arbitration terms. See instructions further below for how to do so.

Mandatory binding arbitration for consumers is a scourge upon us (IMO).

The history of companies such as-but not limited to-Wells Fargo, AT&T, and Direct TV bludgeoning consumers with arbitration terms and running roughshod over what should be our unconditional rights to be made whole for damage caused by their malfeasance, malice, and/or negligence is extensive, well documented, and must be stopped.

Therefore, we should do everything in our power to protect ourselves from mandatory binding arbitration for consumers - until the day that we finally convince our legislators to outlaw it.

Until then, companies like Wells Fargo, AT&T, and now, Nintendo, can and will continue to be free to screw us over when we they like with nearly complete immunity.

Opt out instructions

Within 30 days of the date on which you have first (automatically!) agreed to be bound by Nintendo's service agreement, you have the right to opt out of the arbitration requirement in Section 16 of Nintendo's TOS by sending written notice of your decision to opt out to the following address:

Nintendo of America Inc.
Attn: CS Admin
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Such notice must include the name of each person opting out, contact information for each such person, and the email address registered to your Nintendo Account.

Source: https://accounts.nintendo.com/...

What matters when talking about taxes that families pay is the amount of tax paid as a percentage of family income. Not how much in total dollars. To make things better for the greatest number of people, the American progressive tax system would need higher marginal rates on the highest brackets and lower marginal rates on lowest brackets.

Even before the pandemic, used Nissan Leafs were popular. Oh, and cheaper back then. Usually about $8,000 but as low as about $6,000 in my area and as high as $10,000. Anyway, the point is that they are affordable, or at least they were before the pandemic. I havenâ(TM)t checked prices on them lately.