I doubt that. This isn't the nifty fifties and we don't moral panic over blowjobs anymore. Clinton was poking girls with cigars in the Whitehouse and the Bezos beams dick pics around to women. Jenson could handwave this, and she can't "Me Too" him because she's a spy that did it for her government.

searches made through its AI Mode generate less revenue than traditional search

Have you thought about disabling AI Mode and returning customers to traditional search? It'll not only make you more money, but result in happier users too. Everyone-except-Nvidia wins.

The data centers people hate are the ones powering the AI slop engines, not the Internet. There's a reason traditional data centers never bothered anyone.

vim is the reason I had to give on up using a Dvorak keyboard and switch back to Qwerty. It turns out I'm quite capable of typing text in Dvorak, but relearning the muscle-memory for all the different vim operations was a bridge too far :(

Perhaps, but in this case the real pressure comes from having to justify multiple trillions of dollars of debt, using a technology whose actual scope of applicability is much smaller than you've been leading investors to believe. You can practically see the flop-sweat at this point.

There is no alternative now, and there won't be an alternative for years.

Globalstar is far too low bandwidth for Ukraine's needs. Amazon doesn't have the ambition or nerve to risk building anything that approaches Starlink in the kind of time frame that is relevant to the Ukraine conflict, and they don't have the vertically integrated launch platform with the airline-like capacity and reliability of SpaceX to make such ambitions affordable, and they don't have the ambition or nerve to build that either.

Love him or hate him, for better or worse, Musk has the ambition and nerve to do these things. That fact is everything: the essential, exclusive ingredient. And Bezos et al. don't have it. You may wish they did, and regret they do not, but don't kid yourself.

The valuation is what mystifies me. Maybe, before Starlink, a constellation of 25 communication satellites was worth a few billion. Maybe $10 billion with IP, lucrative contracts and whatever spectrum they hold. After Starlink?

No. Just no.

Globalstar equity holders have played this one well.

If we build it, then it will frictionlessly tell us what to build.

It's supposed to be a benefit: better competitors that aren't governed by shiny-object leadership are supposed to take advantage and punish such clowns. That's the real cost of centralization, IP law and regulatory balkanization: the clowns rely on these to insulate themselves from the wolves that would otherwise end them.

Makes me think of the "bad faith" trope we see with some frequency from certain folks.

Recently some blowhard Reddit mod(s) went ham on AI in open source, and essentially outlawed discussion of any open source projects that are not purely organic from their little Reddit sandbox. When it was pointed out that this is pretty unworkable since significant open source projects, including Linux, Mesa and others are allowing AI generated code, they backed up. And that's all fine I suppose, except they characterized the response to their stupidity as deliberate "bad faith" misunderstanding of their original announcement. It wasn't that at all; it was exactly what you should expect when get all chesty with the world and can't handle the blowback, but they've adopted the cop-out of calling these self-inflicted episodes as some sort of "bad faith."

I see this often enough now that anytime I see someone claiming "bad faith" I assume I'm dealing with another nasty little shit-bird trying to cry-bully their way.

There is M-x vi-mode. So you are wrong.

or the models they actually sell. Maybe they'll make three of the $28k models and the rest will be $56k models with all the accessories you don't really want.

Fauci has a lamentable record for being "science" personified. He did the science. He got the data. He lied about the conclusions and financing it all. Fauci-ized science is travesty science if you prefer a different wording.
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Fauci is on record of falsifying data and making statements contrary to what he knew as fact. It VERY strongly appears he was involved in financing the development of the virus in Wuhan China, whether Xi "Poohbear" Jinping likes that or not. (All societies and people screw up from time to time. The real people can admit it, fix the problem, and move on. He seems to not get it.) So, yes, I state and believe it can (and has) been proven that he was up to his neck in creating the mess and only his blanked pardon is saving his neck.

Um, define what you mean by children. At 80 years old 30 was still relatively a child to me. I leave it at the legal definition of 18 in most places in the US. And, yes, there are some former children who went through sex change surgery as children and lamentably regretted it. Are you unaware of this? Or do you have a spurious definition of "children". Let's get terms straight. For the record, I strongly feel getting a sex change as a child is especially risky. The reward is great. The downside, the regret, the disjointed rest of the life is exceptionally great. Now, if doctors can 100% get it right on who should and should not get it, go for it. Sadly, they cannot even get it right for adults of the 30+ variety. They simply shift the blame to the "adult". Don't let them shift the blame to the children they fix/mutilate. Let them crow about their successes. Let the losses sue their asses off. Make it cost real money and even professional careers if they get it wrong. (And maybe we SHOULD give free required sex change surgeries for men who insist on living in women's prisons. Move them in 5 years after their surgeries.)

For the record I am one of the adult successes. I know and knew too many failures. Oh God they hurt! Sex change surgery is not very safe and effective.
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Ah, well, I have an intuition that you have no idea of what science really is. So should I operate on that intuition or should I investigate, test, produce DATA, and analyze the results thus producing tentative testable conclusions. I am not complaining about the scientific method. I am noting, however, that the scientific method involves honest data (something lamentably lacking in recent decades) and honest analysis before the conclusions are reached. I see that jump all over the place, here as well. An intuition is not and cannot lead to a conclusion without the intervening steps. WHERE IS THE DATA, for example? (I'm imagining a little old lady bellowing "Where's the beef?" It sorta fits.)

You seem to be stopping at intuition. Have you gotten to the real data stage? Have you even begun analysis? Current evidence suggests microplastics continue degrading down to nothing to the point that some bacteria are already using the energy stored in the microplastics. Nobody knows if this is a good thing or not, yet. (That continued breakdown is something asbestos and tobacco byproducts apparently don't do.) It hurts my autism when I see steps skipped.

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