Check the 3 year PMI at Trading Economics. Not obvious that manufacturing activity in the US has done anything but increase over the last 12+ months.

You have different statistics? Of course, we know what statistics are, don't we? Even that site has conflicting data, because there is no single measure that tells us much. Bitterness is not an acceptable economic policy.

The trouble with black and white is sometimes you miss the magnitude of difference.

Little outfit called Piepeople Consulting.

Normally the agency that is most appropriate for carrying out regulation of AI commerce, the FTC, would not be under any obligation to follow an executive order. But Andrew Ferguson will almost certainly go along with whatever Trump wants.

The federal government is nearing the point of being a failed state.

I was offered FTE from Cisco and when I refused they terminated my contract. The full-time offer was a paycut with worse healthcare than I got through the contracting agency.

Put it up on Steam, just break it up into 72 500GB DLCs.

I remember arguing with someone that the "States Rights" mantra was just a mask for racism and the ability to shit on minorities by southern states. He made vast arguments about the power of a federation and states abilities to try different things and learn from each other. Statements that even at the time were bullshit and we both knew it (sitting in Austin, working for tech companies that were only there to escape taxes).

Well, now that racism is federally mandated, they're still doing away with states rights. So I guess I win that 25 year old argument. I don't particularly disagree with the stated purpose of this law, but the irony of it being delivered by a racist at the expense of state's rights is hilarious.

If Duke's is "the official mayo of the tailgate", then really anyone can make any sort of nonsense statements in marketing. The FTC's truth-in-advertising laws aren't really meaningful anymore, and I don't think they are applied equally to every industry (or at all).

So while the government could limit commercial speech, it also can't impose arbitrary restrictions without cause. There has to be a rationale that walks down the narrow definition that previous courts have defined. e.g. is it illegal, misleading (this is where we assume the case is), or does the government has good cause (public good, etc).

Being forced to disclose information is considered a more extreme restriction than being prohibited from stating something false. Lies aren't as easily protected as free speech as the truth, but in practice it's allowed as an opinion or if the receiver wouldn't take it literally (best in the world, top quality, etc). But compulsory speech has to have good cause and I think we'll see challenges when companies get annoyed by these new restrictions. And we do have mandatory disclosures for things like pharmaceutical ads (which shouldn't even exist). But I doubt that our courts will see AI as a threat to public good on the same scale as drugs, tobacco, and alcohol are (big mistake, IMO). And perhaps I'm cynical, but under the current regime I would bet that we'd see the courts blocking birth control ads before letting NY keep their AI disclosure laws.

The civil lawsuits will be flying though. Every time someone's shitty LLM uses the likeness of an actor's appearance or voice for some stupid ad, we can expect some lawyers to get involved. And that's regardless of whatever state laws might be around. If I were Robert De Niro or Taylor Swift, I wouldn't care if an ad says "this is AI" on it, I'd freaking sue if an ad looked like me or sounded like me.

I agree discussing solutions would be preferable. But there can be catharsis in complaining.

That's so 80s. Browsers got a lot more functionality in the 90s. You were there, right?

My mentor worked as a contractor and Microsoft didn't have a lot of cash on hand to pay him and offered to pay him half in cash and half in stock, this was back in the mid-1980's. He took the cash of course.

... yet you'd easily take a coworker that screwed up 38% less often.

I'm not sure what the point of comparing to a parachute is, when you don't have a reason to control a parachute with a computer in the first place.

You're just trying to be provocative. You have to spend money to make money, but OpenAI is already spending other people's money, so Google would be buying that debt. Then it still would not secure the market for LLMs, because anyone can do it, others are doing it well enough. If you consolidate to raise prices sooner, they'll look better and better. If your plan is to loose money but outlast everyone, why would you buy their debt piles, can't wait?

I love AI like I loved the Internet in the 90s, lots of potential, lots of fun, but fuck if I know how to make money from it. Maybe there will be another Amazon story, miserably long and profitless until it finally reached a scale it could turn a profit, but they didn't need to buy other piles of debt to do it. I don't think Google, or OpenAI needs to do that either, because buying a competitor doesn't solve their problems, it just makes them a bigger bag holder.

There is too much money at stake, and it seems like a lazy free speech argument would go over well if it made its way to SCOTUS.