The sales manager could have taken this in a positive way, let the top sales lead smash a pie into the sales manager's face as a morale booster. The "humiliation" is born by the leader on their own orders, so it's all in good fun. Pushing that humiliation down onto one of your other employees is just bullying.

I'm sure poor Mr. Durov will be so distraught by this development that he will drink polonium before shooting himself in the head three times as his plane drops out of the sky and crashes.

But how else will faculty and staff generate those sweet, sweet administrative positions that let them climb the academic ladder? Create yourself a new deanship, milk it for the resume, then bail to a new university role before the program collapses. A win!

This is not a binary choice of Elon or Gwen. The power of SpaceX is from the synergy between the two. Elon brought a vision that challenged a stagnant orthodoxy in the space industry. He took a concept that other companies had sat on and drove it, bringing it to life and fundamentally changing the space industry. Gwen brought the discipline you need to execute that vision: the day-to-day running of the business, managing customers, etc. She is one of the few people that Elon trusts to actually challenge his ideas. She's the reason that SpaceX has been so smooth of an operation compared to the turbulence you see in other businesses like X and Tesla. SpaceX would not exist without Elon, but SpaceX would not have been a success without Gwen.

A few things for people who aren't familiar with government contracting. The awarded contract is what's called an indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity (IDIQ) contract. What this means is that Oracle hasn't actually been awarded any money - rather, they have effectively pre-negotiated prices and terms and conditions for services with the government up to a certain dollar amount. This allows the government to in the future, go and quickly order services from Oracle on an as-need basis. The government is under no obligation to spend the entire award amount, and in fact, most large IDIQ's like this rarely get close to their ceiling. The IDIQ doesn't even guarantee that a budget has been set aside for this spend. That's why contractors sometime refer to IDIQ's as hunting licenses: you have the opportunity to get money, but there's no guarantee you'll get anything. It's a milestone for Oracle, but they haven't actually got any money yet - they're still going to have to fight for task order by task order.

I'll also add that they only set the ceiling at $3.3B. The government in theory has the option to increase the ceiling up to $7B, but again, that's at their discretion not Oracle's.

Just a nitpick, but you have it flipped. Militaries are not fascist. Their top down, hierarchical and disciplined organization has long existed before anyone came up with fascism. Fascism rather admires the kind of control militaries have of their ranks and tries to apply it to civil society and the economy. I agree with you that it's a lousy as an economic model for similar reasons that a socialist economy, where governments or large collective bodies directly controls the means of production, is slow or inefficient in responding to market demands.

The BIG difference between GM and Apple, is that unlike Apple, GM has a lot of competitors who aren't going down this route, giving customers alternatives. GM does make some good cars, but they're not differentiated enough like an iPhone that people are going to put up with it just to stay in the driver's seat.

This has been something that Orbital Sciences (a.k.a. Orbital ATK then eventually acquired by Northrop Grumman) has been working on for over a decade. There was always a question about the economics, but given the rapid improvements in technology leading to lower costs like launch and payloads, this kind of mission finally makes more sense.

So, content produced and broadcasted freely to the public funded by advertisements that are weaved into the show. Haven't we seen this model before?

Agreed, I think the hypothesis is that our connected devices is somehow meeting some of that innate desire for social interaction. Is the device provide the same or greater level of quality and benefit or is it just junk food for the soul? I dunno. However, it's clearly scratching the itch or is at least sufficiently addictive to numb the desire.

So first, the airspace controls aren't that unique. In the United States for example, you cannot fly a drone without FAA authorization within 15 miles of Reagan National Airport which covers the White House, Capitol Hill, the Pentagon, and most other Federal Buildings in the region. This is reasonable given its the nation's capital with obvious national security implications.

The ban also fits into China's airspace philosophy: China is unique in that airspace is by default owned by the military with corridors carved out for civilian and commercial use, a legacy of their Soviet heritage. This is different from most of the world where airspace is by default for civilian use with areas carved out for military purposes. Therefore, it's not surprising the government would quickly wrestle control in the name of national defense. The banning of sales, repair, and usage is a bit heavy handed however.

Given that China has straight up banned Starlink and views it as a national security threat, I wouldn't put it beyond them to "accidentally" bump a few of Elon's satellites, or at very minimum, have reckless disregard to the position of any Starlink assets in space. What is Elon going to do, especially given that China is the number one threat to his business empire's global expansion: supporting competitors in Tesla's global EV market, actively funding alternatives to Starlink in space, blocking sales of solar panel manufacturing equipment, etc.

The problem was escalation. If the West just floods the Ukrainians with weapons, nations like China may use it as justification to do the same for the Russians. Or if the Russians feel like the West is too quickly tipping the scales, they could open a second front, say "little green men" in Estonia, or selling nuclear submarine technology to the North Koreans.

I think the real challenge is accountability. When soldiers disobey orders or act recklessly and kill the wrong people, you have a military justice process that can hold people accountable. Who is accountable for an algorithm that kills the wrong people especially when we still struggle today to audit how an AI makes a decision? Is it on the programmers? A soldier who unknowingly gave a flawed prompt? Bad training data by the services? How do you apportion blame?

What Could Possibly Go Wrong? I hope Anthropic has VERY high confidence that their AI will execute financial instructions flawlessly. Otherwise, they will drown in lawsuits.