Also, to preempt any pedantic response, yes, I'm aware that Cray computers are still very much a thing. But, using the phrase "Cray computers" as the epitome of computing power is very much a thing of the 1990s and before.

Hah, now see, I left some keywords in my last post you would have picked up on if had done national security work (at least connected to one of the bigger players).

That Wikipedia page is severely out of date. For instance, it quotes Hayden as NSA director talking about "Cray" computers. Hayden hasn't held a position in maybe 20 years, and his last position was as DCIA! US Intel is very, very aware of the computational and hacking abilities of China, North Korea, and others.

> Indeed. The Chinese also know that publishing a story about a found backdoor in their software would be a great exploit for the US and hence they know that the US is looking. Strangely, nothing has been found so far. Or rather very obviously, nothing has been found and the whole thing is nothing but lies.

Or maybe, just maybe, when the Chinese AND the Americans IC agencies find exploits and backdoors in the other's countries, they keep them quiet and monitor, save for later, watch other people exploit, etc.

Maybe, when 3-letter agencies in McClean and elsewhere catch incursions, they monitor them closely, analyze their tactics and techniques, and contain. It's a pretty Byzantine system, but that's modern spycraft.

Investors are chasing a company that achieves some kind of AI singularity. Let's set aside the fact that there's no reason to believe there is anything but diminishing marginal returns by making marginal refinements to current frontier models. Let's imagine someone hits the jackpot and gets, not even AGI, but a system that's as far ahead of today's frontier model are ahead of 2020's GPT 2.0 in performance.

Globally AI revenues are 150 billion, against a cumulative burn rate of 450 billion. A model that is a generation ahead of others would almost certainly capture the lion's share of that revenue.

If AGI magically appears as a Sam Altman has promised investors it will, a hundred million is way too low. Add, maybe, another zero to the revenues.

Conservatively, a safer assumption is that frontier models will get marginally better based on refinements in training and reinforcement and the other bits and bobs that go into these systems. The nobody is winning the lion's share of anything, at least overnight. But you have to define "safe". By "safe" I mean unlikely to lose money. But some investors are clearly defining "safe" as "having the greatest chance of owning a piece of the biggest thing ever."

I'm not following this super-closely, but if Anthropic is pursuing adding multi-step model based reasoning to their system, that could be the basis of a generational leap in capability. But if that is an approach that looks like it has a chance of working, then their competitors are no doubt pursuing the same thing. In that case you'd expect the revenue pie to grow as the scope of model utilty increases, but that growth to be split among several competitors. This could credibly result in a revenue stream for some of them that is as big as the entire industry's revenue stream today. But there's going to be hell to pay on the data center impacts end of things.

I'll believe they're serious when they start living the lifestyles they claim we'll need to curve the trend. Tons of posts about Trump but none about the supposed environmentalists who are still living the same lifestyles of the average Trump supporter. Where is the low-hanging fruit? Why aren't these people changing their ways? Why ask those who oppose your agenda when your own "believers" can't be bothered?

If these people were serious we'd see EV adaption in the double digits and be able to walk into any restaurant and get a vegetarian meal without having to double guess what may or may not be used to create it. We're not seeing that. We're not going to see that because environmentalism is only an issue when it comes down to politics and not lifestyle in the minds of these people. They want to weaponize environmentalisms as a political tool, not as a practical guide for end-user consumption.

But, you know, fOlLoW tHe ScIeNcE!!!

Family member who lives there is a Environmental Studies professor. He uses his own trash/garbage pickup as a case study for students to calculate vehicle wear+tear, ROAD wear+tear, impact on traffic through the area, transportation-related CO2 emissions, and so forth.

Not that it's a shocker, but yeah, tl;dr, privatizing garbage is a ridiculously bad idea.

Hah--funny! No, needless to say, they do not. I have had a sticker put on my rolling recycle bin before saying that it was picked for a random inspection to make sure we're only putting recyclables in there, and threatening fines and penalties, but that's it.

I also read up on my city's solid waste quarterly reports, and the vast majority of what goes in recycle bins ends up going to a landful. It's a pitiful fraction, especially for plastics. So, I just through those away. I do dispose of some kinds of batteries and other ewaste specially.

Single stream recycling is about 90% performative theater. Other kids of recycling are like 80% performative.

It's very common outside of suburban and urban areas. I like in a large suburban/urban area and I have to go to the dump for certain kinds of waste (batteries, UPSes, eWaste, etc). We have municipal compost/recycling/yard waste/trash.

Also pretty common in mountainous areas to take your waste either to a transfer station or a dump.

I have relatives in Minnesota, in the Twin Cities. They have to buy private trash and recycling service. The end result is every week 3-4 different "brands" of recycling trucks go rumbling down their small area, and 3-4 trash trucks do the same.

Oh, I thought you were just using this as another excuse to rant about Apple and Trump and your usual list of things. Forgive my confusion.

If you find that confusing, that's totally fine with me! It's a nice service to have around, either way.

"VPN for normies" -- as I said, in iCloud Private Relay word, Safari is a special citizen with hiding IPs and using its own DNS, etc. It's a "VPN for normies" who don't have a full VPN.

I'm very happy that Apple is including a VPN for "normies." I see a lot of traffic to sites I manage coming from iCloud private relay blocks, and the demographic is teens and twenty somethings.

Having said that, for me, it's a bit mixed. Things get confused when running my OpenVPN or Wireguard split DNS vpn with--and sometimes without--iCloud relay. There are also some OS network-specific settings that involve blocking trackers that impact things too. Safari is kind of "special" in terms of how it looks at networks and DNS as compared to base *nix utilities or Chrome/Firefox. I'm still entirely on macOS 15 (skipping macOS 26, we'll see about 27), and the situation has gotten much better since early OS levels.

Click the links. They have exlpoded parts diagram, step-by-step instructions, diagnostic software, etc. If you want pictures of every step along the way, iFixit has you covered there. I've repaired many Macs over the last ~30 years (Plungers for iMac monitors, etc) and I'm glad Apple had made it easier again. Hilarious joke about "biting that apple" lololol!

I think you replied to the wrong post.

Fallacious argument. A Macbook Neo is not the same as a sub-$200 Chromebook (I cannot find a single Chromebook for that cheap on Amazon, either. The ones that are close, in the $250+, are dramatically inferior to the Neo in every way I can see.). I am speculating, but I expect that a Neo would be more durable and longlasting than a budget Chromebook. The screen, keyboard, trackpad, and everything else is certainly better.

If school systems with 25,000+ students are deciding to make this investment, there is a reason. They also have far more information about the financial realities of using Chromebooks and the costs of acquiring 25,000+ Neos. The proof will be in the pudding, and we'll see what happens in the next several years.

My own personal opinion--Chromebooks suck and worst of all, they make computing utterly miserable for students.

https://selfservicerepair.com/en-US/macbook-neo/display

https://support.apple.com/genuine-parts-distributor

https://support.apple.com/en-us/docs/mac/301292

Apple went through a span of time where it was unfriendly to repairs. People rightfully complained, and they got better. That's everything working like it's supposed to, and Apple should be praised for improving.