From the deal the second it becomes a burden to them, leaving both the company and the users holding the bag.

There’s a reason why critical infrastructure is run by boring, careful companies called “utilities” that are guaranteed a modest profit by the state but have legal obligations to follow extra rules that amount to not screwing their customers over, and providing service to anyone within a set geographical area. They hardly ever make the news. They never lose much money, but they don’t make much profit either. Their finances are enforced by law. If the state squeezes them too much, they go bust and the water/electricity/sewer services stop. If the companies demand too much profit, well, too bad, the state gives them access to critical infrastructure and that gives them a veto. The stable equilibrium is a boring stable company. Utilities are one of the few areas where socialism has truly been proven to be superior to capitalism.

Trust me, we do *not* want silicon valley tech-bro venture capitalist types like google poking their fingers into utilities. Its a bad idea. It will end badly.

Since Cambridge Analytica. Back then, the idea that a political outfit would scrape a million identities from the internet was utterly infuriating and outrageous. Nowadays? That sort of abuse happens every 30 seconds. AI has made it even worse. The entire internet is getting constantly scraped. By basically everybody. Im not defending Facebook, but standards have changed.

Ive got no illusions that were gonna have a planetary insurance policy anytime this century. But, I happen to believe that our species could, in time, make it off this planet. But, in order to make any progress, we need to reduce launch costs below a-small-country-GDP-per-kilogram, and starship is by far the best bet for that. It opens the door to a hundred interesting things that we need to start working on before we can become spacefaring. So, its an important stepping stone and I would like to see it succeed. All the rest of Musks stuff has become uninteresting, redundant or downright toxic.

Falcon is well established and could be copied pretty quick. Starship is different. Theyve taken a huge leap forward on reusable super heavy rockets, but its not done yet, and Im just guessing that it would take another company way longer to get where SpaceX got in a few years. Other rocket companies arent lazy by any means, but theyre taking a relaxed hike compared to SpaceX which is sprinting towards the goal.

Totally. Its been pretty obvious to me that Musk is no longer interested in building his companies. Hes switched to harvesting mode, extracting as much wealth as he can. With the exception of starship, I dont really care what he does with his companies. If Tesla fails, there are now tons of car companies that could step in and sell EVs. If the US companies lack the cajones to do it, China will. Falcon rockets are now established tech with a solid business model. If SpaceX fails, some other company will spend a few years developing an alternative and fill the gap. The only truly unique thing associated with Musk is Starship. That piece of tech is important for our species and everyone else is a solid 20 years behind. Best case scenario is that all Musks big ventures get merged into another GE, too big for even the musk family to control, after he gets his big payout.

And yet, somehow, our crappy, failing, decaying, corrupt US-style capitalism is at the top of the pack, and has been there since ww2. So, pushing a century. Meanwhile, Russia is cratering towards becoming a 3rd world country. China, for all its very real accomplishments and strengths, has a system that produces workers that are literally a third as productive as US workers (same size economies but they have triple the workers, and there’s only one way that math works out).

Who else to compare to. South America, the Middle East and Africa aren’t even in the running. Don’t talk about places like Kuwait. They’re a village lucky enough to be floating on an ocean of light crude oil. Anyone can be rich if they’re handed a cheat code. India? They’ve still got a loonngg way to go. The only real contender is Europe. For the most part, they’re capitalist as well.

I would love to see some kinder, gentler economic system displace hard-nosed capitalism. But, so far, nothing else even comes close.

Totally agree that he isnt any sort of technical genius. With regards to buying his companies, I think I have to disagree. Sure maybe he bought some tiny boutique company to start his ventures, but the part where he scaled them by many orders of magnitude, into the worlds largest EV and space launch companies? That was under his leadership. He is, hands down, the worlds greatest industrial businessman. Ever. Better than Ford or anyone who came in between. When it comes to computers and internet, hes pretty mid. Put him in politics or social media, hes toxic as cyanide. Put him at the helm of a company that needs to build out hard heavy physical engineering capabilities? Nobody else even comes close.

Blue origin has done a total of around 40 launches in it's entire lifetime. SpaceX does that many every 90 days.

I wish them success. I really do. It would be great to see someone give SpaceX a run for it's money. But, it's very clear that Blue Origin isn't really a serious company. It's a playtoy for a multibillionaire. Bezos is worth almost half a trillion dollars. If Blue Origin is scrounging for an occasional few hundred million, that means Bezos isn't serious. 330 million is pocket change to that guy.

SpaceX got where it was in large part because Musk put a major chunk of his fortune on the line in order to build it. He's pivoted his attention to politics, AI and social media, which is a tragic waste of his talents. But, people tend to forget that he built the worlds first viable EV company, and also the worlds first 21st century spaceflight company, and he took huge risks with his own money.

I'm not convinced that the hinged screen will stand the test of time. I've only seen a few foldable-screen phones in person, but every single one of them had visible waves in the screen in the hinge area. Maybe the tech has made a jump forward?

I'm not the target market for one of these things. Maybe the people who shell out 2k+ for a phone will trade it in after a year or two anyways in order to keep up with the most recent model. Maybe this product simply isn't designed for the "buy-and-keep" crowd

20 years? The infrastructure won't last that long. The building is basically a sheet metal box. It's the stuff inside that's pricey, and all that computer, HVAC and power related gear is unlikely to last much longer than 20 years. The computer gear probably gets swapped out twice a decade.

Yes a lot of infrastructure has a long payoff period after the initial cost. Datacenters might be different than sewers and electrical lines.

I'm not surprised that "data sovreignty" in Europe would cost an arm and a leg.

Europeans: hey US companies, you gotta keep all the data inside EU borders and only Europeans can control it".

US companies: "sure, we can build a bunch of data centers in the EU to serve you exclusively, and populate them with expensive EU employess, but we're gonna pass those costs on to the customer. Prepare for the heart attack when you see the bill in 3, 2, 1..."

The actual cost? Who knows. I'm not sure that I would trust the estimate from a working group that's sponsored and populated by the US data companies. They clearly don't want to do this, so they're gonna make it look painful. That being said, 130 billion over 10 years to run an EU-exclusive cloud computing infrastructure on EU soil? That, actually, seems reasonable to me. Heck, the actual cost might even be *higher*. Big government-mandated projects have a nasty habit of exponentially growing total cost.

Hahaha. It’s so nice to see that there’s still a tiny bit of wide-eyed innocence in this world. Never change, little buddy.

Yes, let’s trust a critically important part of our national infrastructure to “open source” software. When you hire microsoft, what you get is a massive, globe-spanning team of people you can call on 24-7 if something goes wrong, and they get working on the problem instantly, because they’re being paidmto do it. When you go open-source, who’s responsible if something wipes an entire country’s data? Micheal McDoesntExist. That’s who.

I totally respect a country’s sovereignity. If this is what they want, who am I to judge. But these things *never* go well. In any case most of them are histrionic announcements which are quietly abandoned after the 24 hours of feel-good social media fades away.

I’m not commenting on the link to the current US attitudes. Yes, parts of our government are spectacularly chaotic at the moment. I get it.

They should be worried about the actual humans.

The real reason for this is that they use the user-generated sessions for further training, and they're probably finding that abusive interactions produces toxicity in their model. That's legit. But, they absolutely can't admit this because it directly conflicts with the claim that "everyone's AI sessions are totally private". Which we all know is pure grade A horse manure, but everyone has to pretend that privacy is still a thing.

Had better be sure that the contracts are as bulletproof as the domes over their reactors. The silicon valley, tech-bro mindset is absolutely 180 degrees from the way that nuclear needs to be done. Google has a reputation for ruthlessly abandoning projects, pretty much “whenever they feel like it”. If the AI bubble bursts and Google doesnt need the billion-trillion-gaajjillion-gigawats of power they were expecting, they will dump the agreement as fast as it takes to slam out a code update, if they can.

Those nuclear companies had better watch their asses. The tech companies do not give a rats ass about the wreckage they leave behind. That attitude is antithetical to nuclear stuff.