One could take a slightly different view. Training is teaching. And I don't know about today, but back in the day of books, they were expensive. My college book costs were hundreds per semester. There was no fair use. There was buy the book for class. Even high school grade school books cost and either parents or the school district pays. Knowledge costs money, even digital books cost money. So slurping every book ever known to humanity for teaching should cost money, and if my college text books are any sample, a great deal of money. And even as an adult, those O'Reilly books on X, Tcl, Python, ... were not free either. Actually quite a bit more expensive than any paperback fiction book I've purchased.

States rights was important back before Roe V Wade was overturned. Now it is federal rule all the way, have to forbid the states that allow abortions to continue. And certainly as you say, donnie the diktator wants absolute control, and is doing quite well at getting it. I expect short lived though, well another 9 months. Iran is blowing up and I expect it is a long long long way from over. 5+ buck average gas price in rural areas with big SUV's are going to feel that pain and take their own revenge. donnie could get convicted at his next impeachment.

I see this here too. I walk my dog daily and almost all adults, even those with dogs that should be paying attention, are glued to their phone. I think the biggest loss that cell phones have made is people do not spend those moments alone in thought, they spend it watching cat videos. Humans seem to have lost the ability to entertain themselves without external stimulus.

Here is a study of Florida's ban. https://www.nber.org/system/fi...

My general read of it is, first year is small improvement in test scores, but elevated suspensions. 2nd year suspensions fell back to what they were pre-ban, and scored ticked up a point to a point and half. Not bad for two years. I imagine over time, scores may come up a bit more. I think it said that unexcused absences decreased some too, not sure what caused that.

Or Secretary of defense oops I mean war in the US. https://www.cnn.com/2025/12/03...

Now you'd expect the officer to be dismissed and he may well be since he is a pleb, and I would have expected hegs to be dismissed, but yet here we are a year later where orangey still denies it was even a problem.

Well I did say 500 tops. I agree, probably less and much less. My point was even at 500, the math is just awful. But then politicians usually suck at math. They like presents though.

I'm not sure. I've many friends from TW, and the consensus is that TW will just be absorbed. China does not want to lose the chip making that TW has via a war. And I expect it may take a bit longer than 2027, maybe 2030 or a bit sooner depending how the orange diaper behaves in the coming months. I mean if orangey really does try to forcibly acquire cuba and greenland, if I were TW, I might prefer China.

How long before they realize humans just aren't needed.

Everybody loves a discount. I just marvel at furniture ads where they are slashing prices 70%. Like I believe they are losing money with 70% off. I feel sorry for the schlup that paid full price. Gouged or even gored might be more appropriate.

When I worked for IBM straight out of school(82), during orientation a sales guy was giving a talk about how ibm could charge 3X for the same item just because no one was ever fired for buying ibm. Eventually people did stop buying and ibm hardware is a shadow of its former self. And that sales guy was giving the talk with his fly down. ibm used to also mention they had never done a layoff. Internally people joked about being retired they did so little and knew they would not be fired.

We may discover just how weak microsofts software is. I imagine Iran is looking for weak points to get some revenge.

I can't remember it and can't find it but I thought in the 70's or 80's Lockheed had an L1011 that could taxi, takeoff, fly, land and taxi back. The demo I recall included the captain sitting with the passengers during the flight. It was just a demo and never was adopted probably for a multitude of reasons. The main one I heard was just no one is going to be willing to fly on a pilotless plane. My main point though is if they could do it in the 70's, it should be very possible now.

So curious, would you consider xai small or large? Because they were so anxious to put their memphis operation they did install their own gen's to supplement the 50mw limit memphis could provide. Some quotes,

" And Garcia, at the SELC, says that while xAI waits for more power to become available, they’ve turned to non-legal measures to sate their demand, by installing gas combustion turbines on the site that they are operating without a permit. Garcia says the SELC has observed the installation of 18 such turbines, which have the capacity to emit 130 tons of harmful nitrogen oxides per year. "

"For instance, there’s a major divide between how much electricity xAI wants to use, and how much MLGW can provide. In August, the utility company said that xAI would have access to 50 megawatts of power. But xAI wants to use triple that amount—which, for comparison, is enough energy to power 80,000 households",

"Data centers use water to cool their computers and stop them from overheating. So far xAI has drawn 30,000 gallons from the Memphis Sand Aquifer, the region’s drinking water supply, every day since beginning its initial operations, according to MLGW"

Quotes from, https://time.com/7021709/elon-...

You are deluding yourself if you don't think the big guys are slurping energy/water at enormous rates.

The things you mention that serves these people are stuff like netflix and utube. These services were provided before at smaller DC's.

From the article, "Ten years ago, a 30-megawatt data center was considered large, according to an analysis from McKinsey & Company. Today, facilities using 200 megawatts or more are becoming common, driven by the rapid growth of artificial intelligence."

So it appears as if those services would still be possible by existing/new DC's that are of similar size. What seems to be forbidden is new AI DC's, which I doubt would serve the needs of citizens of the rural areas.

Lastly you almost know the BS is deep from the DC's are wonderful crowd. Also from the article

"A 2025 report from the Ohio Chamber of Commerce projected data centers would support 132,500 jobs and add $20 billion to Ohio’s economy by 2030."

That is just beyond bullshit. At around 500 jobs tops for a DC, that is around 300 DC's. At 500MW for a supersized DC they seem to want to build nowadays, comes out to 150GW of juice needed. For reference, today the entire state of TX will be burning around 50GW at peak.

Like I said, gambling. And states are noticing and not liking it. Note AZ just filed criminal charges. https://finance.yahoo.com/news... May go nowhere, but they are noticing and given the likability factor for the polymarkets, I expect them to be killed.