No argument on your main point about China. China pulled a billion+ people out of abject poverty into the middle income category. No other single country has achieved anything even close. It's a historic achievement. So, I admit that I used the word "impoverished" inappropriately. Sorry about that.

China sets goals, and achieves them? Hm. I think there's more nuance there than you're willing to admit. Sometimes having government in complete control works out really well on some things. But not always. The CCP's extreme ability to set and push towards goals worked really well for solar and EV manufacturing. The one-child policy and the great leap forward? Those didn't work out quite as well. Their overall track record isn't as good as you think it is.

My overall statement about state capitalism still stands. It didn't work for the Soviet Union, it's getting popular in the US and we will *definitely* regret it, and the strategy has probably reached it's limits in China. Your defense of overcapacity is misguided. I really like waffles. Boy, oh boy do I looove me some waffles. So it's clearly a good thing if I stuff my house with waffles, from floor-to-ceiling. Right?

The US is still the number 2 manufacturer on the planet. And we do it with far less distorting state control.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Regarding your other topic - WW3 is likely to play out quite differently than WW2. Things have changed a lot since 1940s. As just one example, the Ukraine conflict has shown that raw manufacturing power doesn't necessarily determine the outcome of a war. Plus, there's the whole nuclear aspect. There's a pretty good chance WW3 will last roughly 90 minutes, followed by several centuries of recovery time.

I think that you misunderstand the role of venture capitalists in this situation. Actually, that whole article largely misses the point. Allow me to try to explain

1) China has taxed its citizens and piled massive amounts of tax dollars into a few favored industries (solar, car manufacturing, etc).

2) Those industries have built up so much overcapacity that everyone is practically selling at a loss. Aka if I buy a Chinese EV, I'm probably paying less that the cost of building it. The difference is made up out of the pocket of a bunch of Chinese taxpayers.

3) As long as this continues, nobody else in these industries are gonna be able to make a single penny of profit.

4) Along come the venture capitalists who look at the industry and say: well, there's no way I could possibly make 200% profit here, so I'm gonna call it *uninvestable*

5) This situation can continue as long as China (or some other large country) is willing to impoverish it's own citizens in pursuit of dominance in a few select industries, or until other countries throw up trade barriers in response. Which means, quite a long time.

Venture capitalists aren't to blame. State capitalism is all the rage nowadays, and anywhere that the state pushes into, the VCs are mostly going to back out.

My response would be this: Most university programs don't cater to a single employer or even a single sector. Yeah, there are a few CS companies are going all-in on AI, and a few CS programs that will try and feed that need. But, without looking at the number, I'm gonna guess that the vast majority of CS jobs are NOT AI-centric, but will use it as a tool (along with dozens of other tools) to accomplish other tasks, but those places don't make the news because they don't generate likes/clicks.

There's always business-bros who "take their shot" at becoming the next billionaire. I respect the ambition. I really do. But only a tiny number of them will succeed.

And every time I mention it, some angry soul mods me down.

This is exactly why universities can seem aloof to industry needs. Industry decides they need everything to be focused on *insert most recent shiny thing*, and suddenly every company is demanding that every new employee aBsOlUTeLY MuST have at least 10 years experience in something that basically didn’t exist 4 years ago. And they blame universities for a “disconnect between the ivory tower and the real world”. The universities roll their eyes, and start making noises about catering to current needs, knowing full well that the bubble will pop and the focus will be replaced by the next shiny thing.

Universities need to be prepping people to use AI, for sure but it’ll be one skill among many. You know what else employers like to see in their new hires? Decent speaking skills, decent writing skills, an understanding if basic professionalism, the ability to work on a team, basic mastery of the standard CS topics developed over the last 25 years, an ability to work with non-CS types. And, yes, some skill with upcoming AI/ML/LLM tools. Oh, and all this has to be taught in 4 years. Any university that actually listens to the industry screaming about AI will dump all those other skills, implement 4 full years of AI-centeric content, and their CS program will crater like the tunguska event when the AI bubble pops.

No, LLM models are NOT the start of the singularity. Sam Altman and all the other AI-tech-bros want you to believe that because they want investors to cough up all-the-dollars so they can play in the big leagues of the most recent computing fad.

Maybe I’m wrong and the world will blast past me while I gumble about people on my lawn. I acknowledge that AI will have a significant impact. But, 30 years from now, workplaces will look a lot like they do right now. The main difference is that people will have one more useful tool in their belt to use.

Neither China nor the US have signed on. In other words, this is basically nothing. Its like an agreement on cell phone battery standards that doesnt include Samsung, Apple, or any of the Chinese manufacturers.

are always low. Like, only a few percent of people respond to random requests for survey info.

Plus, nowadays, why would people even bother? The Trump admin is busy deleting every scrap of public data from the web. I don't really get it, but somehow, scrubbing all data off government websites must play well on Fox. Maybe it's a small-government thing. Or maybe it's just to trigger-the-libs. To me, it just screams "ignorance is bliss".

Whatever the reason is, the top of the government has made it clear that they don't care much for data. This is America. Our elections are fair. We get the leaders we want/deserve, and they tend reflect the current feelings in society. So it's no surprise to me that people aren't bothering to answer annoying survey requests.

I dont think that a few million is enough anymore. Inflation, ya know.

You hit the nail directly on the head when you say that Robinhood is fun. So is every casino. By design. But the house always wins. Robinhood will make TONS of money.

I looked that over. It syncs with my memory of the situation, which is that Cambridge Analytica was an outfit of rightwing bros who scraped Facebook to support Trumps reelection campaign in a way that involved outright lies and deception (pretty much an everyday occurrence in politics nowadays), and Facebook is largely guilty of “being a social media website that got scraped”. Again, Im not a Facebook fan. At the time I was pissed off and ready to see Facebook shut down over it. But a few years later, its clear that there are hundreds of Cambridge analytica out there harvesting net data for various purposes, and pretty much every large net company has the same vulnerabilities as Facebook. The whole thing about Facebooks TOS is largely a technicality. Yeah they claimed they were more secure and had more control over data than they actually did. Does that really merit a billion dollar fine? What about the other social media companies that get scraped? What about outfits like Craigslist that have literally zero control? What about companies like lifelock that built an entire business about making people feel better about their security on the web while providing nothing but security theatre? What about every single AI company with a model that can spit out your personal data if a user pushes it hard enough but the company totally claims they didnt use private net data for training because *gasp* that would be illegal. Facebook is dirty, yes. So is practically every other company on the well, to a very similar degree. If justice is inconsistent, its almost as bad as no justice at all for society.

You dont really get it. The Cambridge Analytica thing was all about *gasp* scraping data from the web. Well, if we punish every group that scrapes net data, we’d have to shut down every single AI company out there, every single social media site, every significant political PAC, and probably hundreds or thousands of smaller companies that are data scraping, If I understand correctly, you can practically vibe-code a data scraper using Chatgpt and github.

This is like trying to outlaw and punish gum-chewing. Have you ever heard the term “fighting the tide”?

This is all true, but the bar has moved way, way, wwwaaaayyyy downwards since then. When the cambridge analytica thing happened, what they were doing was shocking. Nowadays, “cambridge analytica” is a strategy that pretty much every political messaging org employs. Actually, what they did is now considered pretty tame, everyday stuff.

I’m no fan of facebook, but they’re being forced to shell out a billion dollars for something that thousands of companies and orgs are doing nowadays, and very few people or governments seem to care much any more. This should be dropped for the sake of consistency. Why should they be the only ones to pay up when literally every player in the room has the same dirt on their hands?

This is why publicly-funded research is an absolutely critical part of the system. The incentives of the state (at least in western countries) are pretty well aligned with what the population actually wants. In this case, that would be an actual understanding of heart attacks and possible fixes.

Also, Im not as down on industry research as you are. You say the statins-makers have an incentive to suppress other ways of fixing heart issues? Yeah, they do, and thats a problem, but if they the company ignores the ethics and acts as a cabal/cartel, they run a big risk of being the next Sacklers. No CEO wants that. Plus, if a statin company suppresses the next heart treatment breakthrough, some upstart competing company will go ahead and develop it and eat the lunch of the incumbent. I know I sound like a right winger here, but capitalism actually incentivizes companies to push forward with real advances. If I dont want something to advance, that creates an opening for YOU to exploit. The result is a constant corporate push for better medicine and anyone standing still gets passed up in the race.

Nope. One thing Trump cant stand is people who try to out-Trump him, which is exactly what Dotcom has been doing. Fight everything, admit nothing, litigate everything, accuse the other side of everything that you’re doing yourself, and generally strut around with both your middle fingers stuck high in the air.

Plus, Dotcom isn’t wealthy enough to afford a pardon and probably doesnt have anything else to offer Trump. That guy is probably screwed.

Is because the other 5% were false negatives.

Chemical assays nowadays can detect near-single-molecule quantities of stuff. The problem is that we don’t really understand what concentration of these molecules are bad for you (yet).

There’s radioactivity in literally every object on the planet. Lead and Arsenic contamination is detectable in every object you put in your mouth. Same goes for PFAS.