What about domestic use? Can we halt that too?

Did they have any to begin with? I don't think this will help them at all, but their alternative is to drown anyway. For reference, their stock is down 85% over a 5 year period. Maybe this will keep them afloat for a while longer (or more likely make them a more attractive buyout target) or it's just a last gasp for air on the way out (which is where they're less attractive buyout target, but eventually become cheap enough for someone to scoop up).

Presumably it's possible to have freedom of movement while still prohibiting people from establishing residence there. Crossing into Mexico from the U.S. is as hassle free as getting across the border (getting back in is another story) but if I tried to live there without authorization the Mexican government would deport me.

Also Dresden already has fabs owned by GlobalFoundries which were fabs for AMD before they were spun off, so Germany and Dresden in particular make a lot of sense.

Just tell her to buy you a nice shirt. Then when she visits make sure to wear it. She'll appreciate it at lot and if you're anything like me she has better fashion sensibilities and will pick out something nice. One or two new shirts per year is enough to maintain a wardrobe. Your mom is going to want to get you something regardless of you having outgrown birthday or Christmas presents decades ago and their wiring will make them disappointed if you tell them to stop.

Mom is happy that she gets to give a thoughtful gift even if baby is all grown up and if you're like me you'll be grateful that it saves you the time having to look for new clothes yourself. Maybe it's unthinkable when you're younger, but clothes for Christmas is the biggest win-win I've ever stumbled into. Younger readers can double dip and get socks and underwear from grandma.

The upper management at Microsoft is stupid enough to do that, but it won't fix their problems. They have some valuable IP that can sell millions of copies, but they bought a lot of past-their prime studios and have stuffed them with even more bloat to try to churn out sequels faster. Either they never read or understand the Mythical Man-Month. The people are n charge have no real understanding of games' development and treat like something akin to a factory job that can be scaled by adding more lines and workers.

Letting (or making) the developers use AI might make them more productive, but if the only thing it does is allow them to churn out uninspired crap that no one wants to play faster than otherwise, it won't fix their revenue problem. It'll only allow the gradual decline to go on for a bit longer.

Was anyone looking to build a data center in Seattle in the first place? Unless they were going to build something small, there's not enough space to build a new one and repurposing existing buildings for a data center might not be possible even if the rent weren't prohibitively expensive compared to building outside of the metro area. Even if a company like Microsoft wanted to build close to their campus, they'd be building a data center in Redmond instead of Seattle proper. There's still have a much easier time building outside of town because finding a few hundred acres that aren't already developed in a metro area is difficult as well as hideously expensive.

Forget the medical emergency stuff. Every pervert on the island can now helicopter their dick in full view of children knowing that there's no way that the kids will be able to record the crime and expose the exposers.

Some of those things are probably profitable if they can gut most of the staff and centralize the maintenance work while cashing the cheques from old people who signed up and keep paying. AOL has been coasting on that for decades already, so it's little wonder they and similar sites have wound up on the island of misfit internet companies. They're not making very much money for the valuation they're after though. The notion that the dozens of millions in profit will be able to turn into hundreds of millions or billions is a pipe dream. This IPO is the private investors trying to get out before the customer base dies off and the cheques stop clearing.

Maybe this is better than the Google approach of killing it off entirely even if it could eke out a meager existence, but it's a business that has no future. Dead or dying internet platforms don't come back. This company is just a hospice for websites and tech companies some people remember from years ago and haven't used in almost as long. There might be money to be made there, but it's not a billion dollar company.

He's probably using the term more loosely, but it is impossible. The human brain works in ways that no Turing Machine and therefore no algorithm can replicate. I think that it's possible to build something that can function that way using existing computer hardware that's really just simulating a human brain if such can't be directly implemented in hardware, but we're a long way off from being able to do that even if the current crop of LLMs have fooled a lot of people into believing they can already replace a human.

Assuming that he or anyone else does succeed, they'll have no better understanding of how what they made actually works than we do of how our own brain actually works. Whatever it is that's going on up there, it certainly isn't algorithmic in nature.

And give up on all the potential revenue they can suck out of these students through the student loans they receive just by being admitted. The universities will kick out the ones that are just there to party, but they'll gladly string along those who can just barely make it. Those are the students who fall into a sunk cost trap and will spend six years getting a degree so it's even better. The universities don't have to deal with the financial consequences and because they're all doing it to some degree it never causes serious reputational problems.

The universities will not fix the problem themselves because it would require the administration taking an axe to the university administration itself. If you look at the graphs the ratio between students and professors has remained stable over the last several decades as U.S. universities expanded, but the size of the administration has grown disproportionately and keeping it fed requires ever more revenue to support the ever expanding administration.

It's anything that will cause a strong enough emotional response to get you to turn your brain off for long enough that you click on a link, call a number, or something else to fall further into their claws. Amazon orders are common enough that the scam doesn't need to be tailored. I've seen others recently reporting to be from the city about unpaid parking tickets or from the state motor vehicles department. I used to get regular spam calls and texts about fraudulent activity on a credit card I didn't have from a bank I've never done business with. They don't need to be particularly good if the 1% that they successfully target fit the criteria and panic at the request for immediate action.

You presume that taxes are spent wisely. The reality is that more taxes simple mean more for bureaucrats to squander. Consider the state of California which spends increasingly more money on homelessness to poorer results. The bureaucrats don't make more by actually fixing anything and have no incentive to solve the problem they were tasked with and by taking the problem entirely under the wing of government they eliminate any chance of a competitive market forming or even charitable organizations from providing solutions.

You'd have an easier time convincing the wealthy to pay more taxes if the money were being spent well, but when it's not they'll leave. They have more mobility than anyone else and will leave when they realize that their higher tax dollars are only being pissed away. Of course the bureaucrats will not give up anything so you will get to pay those higher taxes yourself when the birder gets shifted to the middle class to make up the difference. Don't expect to get more for your higher taxes though.

No one is going to do that for free. Anyone who could pull it off is going to want to get paid and in time will become just as bad as Microsoft.

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

If the technology advances enough (which it will do in time) there will be commercial products. They may not be as powerful as the commercial ones but that's no different than any other industry. I can buy a personal computer that's a lot less powerful than ones some companies are sticking in their data center racks, but it's good enough for what I need. I'm not rich enough to own a private jet, but I could still buy one even though it's not capable of hauling as many people as a 747. If I wanted a simple personal aircraft, that is something I could already afford and kit aircraft don't cost much more than a car. Once upon a time electricity and indoor plumbing weren't something that common folks could afford, but now they're ubiquitous in the western world. All technology goes through similar stages. If quantum computers are at all useful to people, someone will make a business out of supplying that demand. It may be fifty years or more away, but in time it will happen if there's a demand for it. Any bet I'd feel confident making is so far into the future that I wouldn't be alive to collect even if I won. Out of curiosity what kind of odds would you offer for commercially available quantum computing by the end of 2036?