DDG is using Bing as underlying search engine, as far as I know. So no wonder that DDG isn't doing searches all that well anymore. Here in South-America, Bing always has shown disappointing results. Since their inception, really. Maybe that it was different if one hailed from 'freedom country' and that it has become as useless in the US as it has been everywhere else.
Most of the income OpenAI and Antheropic do generate seems to come from other AI startups, like for example: Perplexity. Seem the income from the frontier labs is divided as 90% coming from other AI startups, about 7% from 'pay-for-use'-customers and the remainder is coming from customers with a subscription.
If you pay for tokens from any cloud-AI provider or pay for power to run your own LLM(s) with this new software...I don't see that much difference to be frank.
In both cases I lose money and in both cases I have to hope that financial loss produced results that makes me more money than I spent.
Local is more Private and I happen to have a large roof...well, more than one, completely filled with solar panels. And I live in a place with a lot of sun-hours, so on sunny days I really don't feel that much of a financial burden running my own LLM cluster. And there is still room left on anther location on my terrain, where I could place quite some more panels. Those cloud-tokens may be faster and perhaps even of better quality, but me spending on those is relentless. And I will always have questions about privacy with them.
Nah, I like LLM solution where I am more in control of. And to be honest, the Qwen 3.8 LLM (27b) I can run locally, generates decent quality tokens. Having a few of those instances managed by a piece of software NVidia is now offering...in a location where I have much more control regarding energy-safety and privacy, sacrificing speed and a little quality, it really doesn't sound all that bad to me.
I recently saw a company's bill for API access to cloud-AI (routed over Claude, Codex, Gemini and Grok) with some 10 very active AI users for a single month that ended up to be almost 18.000 Euro, close to 20.000 USD in freedom money. Who knows how much that company spends in a single year on AI. Even that monthly bill would already give me enough for all the panels I would need. Another similar month would pay for quite some GPU upgrades, even with the excessively inflated hardware prices of today. A 3rd month like that and I would have enough money to pay my yearly energy bill while running my local AI cluster full tilt for 24/7. The rest of the year...gravy/profit?!?
Cloud-AI, especially from OpenAI and Anthropic, is expensive. But with their totally unsustainable token pricing from today and in the past, it is worth it. However, if either OpenAI or Anthropic has to become financially sustainable, let alone profitable, their current pricing is simply far too low. A tenfold in token-price would do it, but at that point a local LLM cluster becomes financially far more interesting and not without too much loss in token quality. Especially if you start with such a cluster now and give it opportunity to apply reinforcement learning on itself for your specific use-cases and workloads.
A far more sustainable AI/LLM future, if you would ask me. And yes, I am aware you didn't.
Your statement is absolutely correct.
But that doesn't mean China is above fueling that particular fire. Or that they aren't doing that out of spite.
All those free and near free models coming out of China, you think they do that to "stimulate openness"? Nothing more than PR-speak for spite. And as a bonus, every investing-fool it putting far too much money into AI, which is money that could have been used to protect countries against the Chinese onslaught. Either against their ideology or against their financial reach or against their ever increasing military might. Probably a combination of all 3 will cement their place in global history for the next 100 to 150 years.
The Chinese never plan ahead for the next 2 quarters, like most of the world is cajoled into doing. They plan years ahead. Which makes strategies like they show in this day and age possible...and way worse, sustainable.
The decline of the US empire already started at the end of Obama's second stint, Trump 1 threw that decline onto a kayak through the Grand Rapid, Biden navigated back to a less wild river, to make it easy for Trump 2 to dump the decay into a barrel and throwing that barrel in Niagra Falls...
To my understanding, Oracle didn't just bet everything on AI, they bet on OpenAI specifically. Every other hyperscaler placed their chips on both OpenAI and Anthropic, Only Oracle didn't.
And yes, when OpenAI falls, it is bound to take Oracle down with it. As a whole, not just their cloud division, perhaps even reduce Ellison to a mere millionaire. Especially as the Paramount-Warner Bros merger deal has hit some snags and Ellison appears to have put up his own wealth as collateral with that deal.
It comes in the form of a chip? then it could be housed in a cartridge-type form and then exchanged just as easy as those were with the Nintendo consoles of yesteryear, the C-64 etc. At least with those 2 types of computers I have personal experience running cartridges and it was already fine back then.
Any line carrying 50.000 Volt or more, those hang in the air on pylon masts all over the globe, including the EU. Those are the lines that do not tend to break that often. And air-cooling is a must. The transmission lines that carry less than 10.000 Volt, those do tend to break for many, many reasons when hanging in the air.
The sections of Belgium, France, Germany and the Netherlands that I frequented, all those "small" lines are all underground. I'm sure you could find sections of the electrical grid hanging in the air when traveling to backwaters of these countries. But in larger villages, cities, industry-parks etc. you'll find that the grid is buried. Because people need energy-security. Most countries in the EU have actual laws that make sure of that.
Say what you want, the western parts of the EU decides to bury most of their electricity grid, making weather far less of a problem than it is for any country that is not inclined to do this.
Investing in home batteries seems like a wise idea. Even more beneficial if you can aid the charging of this home battery with solar panels. Because it becomes clearer that the centralized generation and distribution game is too brittle to maintain, Weather, but also greed, are very powerful foes that can cripple any grid.
Unless you do it properly and bury your electrical grid as much as you are able, to eliminate at least the weather as a foe.
Isn't New York not a state located quite close to the Canadian border? Would that not be a good location for energy-availability and -security? Building is something you do once. Having access to power from US and Canada, will make for a continuous functioning datacenter. Which is a quite important factor in profitable exploitation of such any datacenter.
As I understand it:
The Chinese AI labs employ only (very) smart Chinese people, so 100%. In all of the AI labs from the US, 35% of employees are Chinese as well.
So, if the West still wants a part in the future of the next generation and beyond, the West should look exactly how the Chinese teach their children and follow that example. As a matter of fact, we (the West) were already doing that, but let the teaching standards slip dramatically and introduce computers/tablets in their classes and now also AI on those devices...to add insult to injury, so to say.
In my opinion, an AI ban on digital devices in schools that teach to kids between 4 and 13 would be be the best thing to happen to those kids. Dropping of the "new math" and/or computers/tablets in such schools also great. Even learning how to write in cursive on paper with an utensil should be encouraged, as this makes students understand their (native) language so much netter and as a bonus improve their reading skills leaps and bounds. All skills that form the best base to tackle computers/tablets and AI. At 13 kid's minds are still sponges anyway, so they will pick that up fast.
For those that can, do work with computers/AI etc. For those that can't (or simply don't care), there are still many jobs in society that will be great for them to build productive lives.
What should be made easier, is learning later in life. Not everyone reaches their peak thinking/reasoning performance early in school. There shouldn't be a stigma on those persons that want (and possibly could) get "up to speed" later in life. And AI could actually be a great help/tutor with that goal. But first, schools should train young minds to accomplish as much as possible, under their own power...just as education used to be once in the West and still is in China.
With this ban Norway seems to be heading towards a path that keeps that nation still relevant on the global scale 50 years from now, with the people that live there and then.
This has been my browser of choice for a while. Also a Chromium-based one. But let's see if they follow Google/Chrome with this. I don't expect the creators of Vivaldi to do this though.
So if ad-blocking remains part of your (personal) core, you should want to replace your Chrome browser for Vivaldi.
People have read about what happened to other towns that did a datacenter. And then are none too happy about doing the same misery to their own town. I don't expect China to be involved with this, Just seeing the destructive power of datacenters is already enough. Groundwater problems, massive increase in electricity costs, significant increases in costs of living...that are not related to the other increases in costs of living that already plague everyone in the country.
Foreclosures appear to be up too in towns with datacenters as well, keeping pace with the decline of 'quality of life' in those towns. Truth or exaggeration? Who knows. But this kind of sentiment gets to be communicated quickly by people amongst themselves, their families (living anywhere and everywhere in the US), coworkers, encountering people that were forced out of their homes/communities.
Why would China put in efforts on that front, if this "grapevine"-thing is doing that job for them? And doing it very well?
In my opinion, Microsoft didn't sh.t the bed as much as you stated in your post with regards to their Server-lineup of software. But a Windows-backend is usually put in place for a Windows-based environment, which includes the front-end as well.
Windows 11 I consider frontend and that is where the "minions" do have to deal with the crap MS shuffles day in and out with their AI-coded slop, slop in general and their borderline assault of pushing everything to their subscription-based software services and AI offerings.
It has become appalling for a very large group of customers now. Even in the group that makes decisions regarding software roll-outs for companies as well as government on practically every level.
Sure, Microsoft is turning that proverbial ship lately, but if that is enough, I have my doubts.
Directory Opus is keeping me on Windows. As that is the god-king of file managers for me and have been using it extensively since the 1990's on the Commodore Amiga and for 20 years on PC as well. It allows me to create my own layout of tools and buttons, helping me to have the practically same interface to manage my Windows computer since Windows XP (and I have used every version of Windows in between).
I barely noticed or cared what version of Windows I was using, as it would barely affect how I used Directory Opus. But with Windows 10 Microsoft started their disrespecting of the software choices users make and push their own applications first. This became much nastier with Windows 11.
The maintainer of Directory Opus states that he won't make a native version of DO for Linux on their forum. Even in this bastardized workflow that MS is pushing onto me with Windows 11, I still like DO too much. But I ran for a year my daily driver laptop on Linux (Pop!_OS) and DO was the only software I missed (I tried it with gusto, but DO via Wine in Linux s.cks b.lls).
Practically all the software I use for work and play, has Linux-native versions, so that Linux desktop experience was not difficult and didn't alter my general workflows all that much. It was even enjoyable, just not great, because of no DO. Until VPN software at the company I work for was changed and I was forced to use Windows 11.
Since then my disdain for Microsoft product only grew. The older versions of Windows left a decent enough impression, because no telemetry or crap pushing while including user-control. Pop!_OS left a decent impression, because of the return to that "piece and quiet of yore" while including (even more) user control. To a forced return to Windows 11 with slop, push, single vendor AI while stripping more and more user control.
Back to my point: now that MS did do their bed sh.tt.ng, they have shown to many more (ordinary?) computer users that Linux and MacOS are viable alternatives for the work and play they do on their computers. As I don't think that I'm the only one who had a good experience with the Linux desktop experience. Sure, that (ordinary?) group moves slow and it takes momentum to change those minds.
MS managed to do so. And if it weren't for Directory Opus, I wouldn't miss Microsoft/Windows either.
Neither do you?
With strategically locating a large enough shield in space you can block excessive solar rays. There is a similar suggestion made, not by me, but officially recognized organizations to help out life on Earth with significant issues resulting from the global warming.
So why not do something similar to keep a Mars terraforming project viable?
Ok, links:
NASA
World Economic Forum
National Space Society
BBC article
Wikipedia entry
"Life sucks, but death doesn't put out at all...." -- Thomas J. Kopp
