The problem with providers like z.ai is running into compliance problems and corporate paranoia.

If you are that paranoid, then your only solution is running local models. They do run OK'ish on a modern MacBook. The twist is: all the good ones are Chinese. And the MacBook is made in China too.

Though to much groaning from the tech staff he's also recently discovered vibe coding so. who the f*** knows anymore.

I'm Australian too as it happens, and my boss has just discovered the joys of vibe coding. The rapid progress is gives you a real sense if accomplishment and mastery at the start. Everyone who didn't approach it as a Luddite raves about this programming gig for the first few weeks. But then they hit "the wall", where every new feature introduces a fresh bug, and every bug fix introduces two more, and all the time they are racking up token costs. They have no idea what is going on under the hood, and no way of fixing it. Disillusionment sets in, and they give up.

You can get past the wall using the usual programming techniques like writing specs, then tests, then code. Token costs can be reduced by selecting the right model for each job. If you break up the tasks into simple enough steps and supervise it you can use an open source model, and the tokens cost you nothing. But those skills and applying them well are the things a professional programmer brings to the table. Tell a manager about specs, tests, and selecting the tool, and he'll look at you like your speaking Klingon, which you might as well be. He will then slink back into his hole - which is probably a well lit office with bay window views, that let so much light in you get eye strain from looking at the screen when programming.

TL;DR: don't worry about it. It's just a passing phase. Provided he doesn't do too much damage in the next 6 months, you'll be fine. If the business is selling software to customers, long term I'd be far more worried about what they are doing with LLM's.

True, you aren't going to be running this at home. But then no one runs the SOTA models at home. You can GLM-5.2 on z.ai's hardware, using a subscription plan similar to the plans offered by Anthropic and OpenAI. The most notable difference is: it's 1/2 the price.

It is big'ish - 4GWh on an average day, or 500MW when the sun is shining, assuming 40% panel coverage. But no, it's not 7%. More like 0.014%. And the sheep or whatever they graze under it will be very happy - lots of shade, better grass.

As for your arithmetic - 2,400 acres is 3.75 sq mile. Or it's about 100 hectares, or 10 sq kilometres, or 10,000,000 sq meters. This is why the rest of the world is using metric. Imperial units make as much sense in todays world as "Drill, Baby, Drill".

The White House wants to avoid any political repercussions if a devastating A.I.-enabled cyberattack were to occur, people in the tech industry and the administration said.

The top open source models, which are developed primarily in China, are about 6 months behind the top proprietary models developed in the US. I'm sure the Chinese developers will be working very hard to subject themselves to Trump's laws. /s

Meanwhile, the one defense we in the West have against state level attacks using 0-days is to use that 6 month gap to find them first.

But it's OK, as I'm sure Trump has thought all this through and is busy making deals as we speak. If you don't make the deal, well, nudge, nudge, wink, wink, something unfortunate might happen to your infrastructure.

The problem is trump is fucking over the whole planet.

Actually, I think he did the planet a favour - by fucking over the USA. With his Iran war, his anti-vaccine war, his anti-renewables war, his anti-EV war, his anti-science war, his anti-university war, his disregard for law, his anti-China stance, and his flagrant corruption all on display the rest of the world has a real life example of what happens when you elect a narcissistic moron.

Almost to the man they've recoiled in horror, and are moving as fast as they can in the opposite way to just about every direction Trump has taken. Renewables have got a boost, EV's take up just had a rocket put up its arse, trade deals (that exclude the US) are being signed furiously. Everyone is comparing China to the USA and wondering who they can trust more. It's not such an easy call (they now don't put infrastructure in both countries), which was unthinkable less than 2 years ago.

Yes, Trump has done a lot of unbelievably dumb things. But the USA is only 25% of world GDP, and thanks to Trumps example the other 75% of the world has accelerated their program towards just about everything he opposes. He may well be the best thing that's happened to the planet in my lifetime.

OMG. I feel so dumb. I've noticed slashdot summaries have been getting longer and longer. I never twigged as to why.

And now I do know why, it's not a good look. Before the submitted had to type the characters, so screw you I'll just type the bare minimum. Now the submitter just can the AI slop, so screw you, I'm make you wade through 1,000 words when 200 would have done.

My suspicion is the Russian government isn't scared of its citizens, now. That's mostly because they have been well-behaved about the war so far, (reprobates like Prigozhin notwithstanding). Why would that change?

I guess Putin is expecting it to change, and that's probably because he is about to do something they won't like. Such as expanding conscription. He has a history of planning and preparing these sorts of moves well in advance.

When throwing meat waves at the front hasn't worked for 4 years, the obvious solution is bigger meat waves :D.

I'd be trying a QUIC based VPN. Done well, port 443 still serves web pages - but hit the right URL and you have a VPN instead.

The Russians have always been afraid of their government, with good reason.

True. But this is not a symptom of the Russians being afraid of their government. These are the actions of a government afraid of it's citizens.

will it be increased until it's no longer economical

Unlikely. The gap between the open source models and the top proprietary ones is 6 months to 2 years. A H200 capable of running those models is can support about 6 developers and costs $30k, or say $6k per developer, or $250/mo amortised over 2 years. But no developer works 24 hours, and you can rent them on AWS. So you don't need to buy or run the H200. Amazon's 200% markup comes from sharing it. They don't need a H200 either - like Google they have developed their own hardware to these models.

Notice the $250/mo is very near Anthropogenic so called "heavily subsidised" enterprise plan which is $200/mo. That puts an upper cap on it. It isn't going to get that much more expensive.

Russia signed a treaty to defend Venezuela just two months ago

To be fair I'm betting Venezuela put as much faith in that as Ukraine places in Trumps promises of defending them against Russia, should they accept the peace deal.

At this point it would be easier to simply list legitimate legal ones.

That's more or less the same set of countries as the rich ones. The USA a very recent outlier, but that's because full effect will take a while to hit. And the USA has a long way to fall I'd expect all hell to break loose before it gets too far down the pole.

The driver of birthrates is really quite simple: when people are given a choice, most choose to have fewer (or no) babies.

I don't think it's quite that simple, most due to the evidence provided by TSMC. Children born to TSMC employees in Taiwan accounted for approximately 1.8% of all babies born nationwide in 2023, even though TSMC employees make up only about 0.3% of Taiwan's population. The usual reasons why women in OECD countries have low birth rates are turned on their head here. TSMC employees are highly educated, and well paid. So while the women in Chad probably no choice if the wanted to be sexually active, these TSMC employees could make any choice they wanted, and they chose to have children.

What stands out is TSMC spends a lot of money in supporting it's mothers. For example, creches are located right beside the workspaces, they provide child care and social structures. This corporate culture that is very supportive of women and motherhood does not come cheap, and it's difficult to see large direct benefits to the bottom line. I've never seen it in Western companies, that are drive purely by the bottom line. It's amazing to see it in TSMC.

In contrast, the highly patriarchal Japanese society is well known for the reverse. Japan consistently ranks near the bottom of the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Index (118th out of 148 in 2025). The gender pay gap in Japan is approximately 22%, the worst in the G7. Women are frequently pushed into "non-regular" (part-time or contract) work after having children, making it difficult to return to a career track. It's not entirely a surprise that a society that does not support women had a chronic birth rate issue.

But the light has finally switched on. The government is almost in panic mode now about the demographic time bomb. In 2023 (or so?) the government significantly increased the Childbirth Lump-Sum Allowance to ¥500,000 to cover delivery costs. They also expanded monthly child allowances and eliminated income caps to ensure more families receive help. I'd be surprised if this effort stops until it sees some success, but they are trying manufacture societal change and that will take a decade or two.

Yes, Australia has a good weather bureau. As do most countries. The corporate sites people love to quote get their data and forecasts from the national bureau's, and dress it up with slightly better eye candy. Only the national weather bureau's have weather monitoring stations distributed around the country, and the supercomputers needed to make the forecasts.

Australia is unusual in one way: most people do get their data from the Australia's BOM (Bureau of Meteorology). The web old site was rock solid, and not too badly organised. I had no trouble finding local creek levels during floods for instance. But it was very old. So old it didn't support https.

So now they have a shiny new one, that does support https. And they took the opportunity to re-organise it, in a way most professional weather people say is in improvement (with some exceptions, but it's mostly better). But that means all existing users no longer know how to find their way around it. And did I mention it's very popular? So that meant a lot of existing uses are pissed off because their world changed. Hence, this story hitting slashdot.

We have a company in Australia taking a different approach. They recondition truck diesel trucks due for a rebuild. The range is about 500km, which is doesn't work in Australia as we have about 1000km between major cities. So instead of recharging they replace the battery with a forklift, which takes a few minutes. They have built replacement stations along the east coast of Australia, which is a road about 4,000km long.

You can read what they say about the comparative cost of diesel and EV trucks on their web site.