My personal take after reading The Idea Factory (really good book btw) was that it was actually a combo of a monopoly with close government accountability that produced some remarkable results.

Basically, Bell had a monopoly, and in anti-trust hearings ~early 1900's it was argued that it was necessarily a monopoly from a technical perspective in order to have standardization of communication across the country. Congress reluctantly agreed, and granted Bell the ability to maintain the monopoly under the constraint that they must continually show that continuing it served the public interest.

Bell Labs was a big part of that - funneling profit into Bell Labs, and providing research and development that helped create the entire information age absolutely served the public interest (development of the transistor and cellular networks being two of the largest innovations coming out of that institution).

My personal take is that what we really saw was an unusually effective success story of checks and balances. Bell had strict accountability and a burden to prove that their existence served the public interest, and the courts and congress served as a check on business practices that would have really abused that monopoly. At the same time, you didn't have the situation we have with NASA, where congress is actually trying to impose rocket designs on NASA - that's very different, where instead of congress serving as accountability, congress is trying to drive pork into their districts. We should be striving for the Bell Labs model in more places IMO - business is allowed to do what business does best and works to maximize profit, and then government acts as accountability to make sure the profit motive isn't driving abusive behavior and the organization still serves the public interest. Big, powerful institutions in business and government should be set up to provide accountability to each other.

I just switched to Windows 10 LTS, much better. Less crap, less stupid updates, and still get security updates. LTS should be offered to all users with an easy switch..

This was my thought as well.

A friend of mine recently left a senior role, largely b/c of frustration with the firehose of junior AI-slop pull requests.

Prohibition was repealed.

I don't disagree. Personally I think the Federal government got too powerful after the civil war & we really don't even have the same type of government that the founders envisioned.

I'd be somewhat in favor of an Article 5 convention so long as any changes had to be subject to a vote like the President is elected. The Electoral Collage system is absolutely brilliant & gives the individual vote maximum power because a handful of voters can change the outcome of an entire election. If people really want something they need to get out and vote. If you stay home you can't complain if the other side doesn't.

Anyway, good luck to us all.

Well you're not wrong. Most people forget the 9th & 10th amendments and what they actually say.

9. The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
        - Basically saying, "just because we listed a few specific Rights here, that doesn't mean those are the only ones The People have."

10. The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
        - The Federal Government is not permitted to just assume new powers because we didn't specifically restrict it here. If it's not specifically listed in this document the government cannot do it.

How far afield of these rules has the Federal strayed? How much longer will The People tolerate it?

Wait, what?

The Constitution is a restriction on the powers of the Federal Government, not on Anthropic. The Federal Government does have the ability to "regulate commerce" under what is called the Commerce Clause in Article 1, Section 8, Clause 3.

I'm not sure what particular law(s) c/would apply here - if any - however I'm certain various courts might have to render a judgement.

I started lurking in 4K enthusiast groups to see if they were all cracked up to be. The arguments about relative quality of various BD/4K releases isn't even the most interesting part.

It turns out that there are a lot of issues with set top boxes playing particular disks. The disks themselves also seem terribly fussy.

"There is no safety or cost reason to prefer this over normal analog protein vaccines. Only advantage MRNA has is reduced up front capex."

Nice attempt at shaping the discussion to flow down the limited paths you prefer. In reality world the gigantic advantages of having straightforward yearly influenza vaccines be mRNA-based is that (1) after enough experience it would become possible to reformulate the vaccine midseason if the dominant flu strain changes (2) if a 1918 Kansas Flu boils up out of a giant pig farm somewhere it will be possible to create an mRNA vaccine for it and get it into distribution rapidly.

Buick is huge in China.

"In China’s automotive industry, a popular saying goes: “China’s Buick, the world’s Chevrolet.” "
https://thechinaacademy.org/this-time-china-cant-save-buick/

And of course, Ford and GM have multiple brands and models in countries all over the world.

The streaming services have already done multiple rug pulls, rights-stripping acquisitions, and bankruptcies to take away "purchased" streaming rights and force people to pay a second time (and a third, and a fourth...). But yeah, the people who have CD players with analog outputs and who buy CDs are the dumb ones.

again, false statement.

the remote ops do NOT 'drive' the car 100% of the time. what percentage? we dont know but I'd guess its less than 10%, probably even lower.

nothing is level 5 yet. get that in your head. no one claims level 5, either.

what I'd like to know is how often waymo needs 'help' remotely vs tesla vs any other.

I suspect that tesla that is sensor-poor needs 10x as much help as waymo.

(I used to work in car biz, in a self driving car co.)

Finding myself upside down in my pickup truck, thanks to a teenager and her cellphone, getting into some sort of position to kick out a window in time would have been impossible if the truck were on fire.

In fact, my first and main thought was 'pleasedontcatchonfirepleasedontcatchonfirepleasedontcatchonfire'

I was able to crawl out because the drivers side window shattered as it rolled over.

The AI crash is coming for not only the profits but the capital of everyone who thought there was going to be some trees-growing-to-the-sky "AI" miracle, so there's that.

"Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect"

To conservatism I would add billionaireism.

[note that this is not Wilhoit the academic political philospher, but a different Wilhoit]