andallthat @ andallthat @lemmy.world

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418

Joined

2 yr. ago

Meta argued that "the FTC’s case rests almost entirely on emails (many more than a decade old) allegedly expressing competitive concerns" but suggested that this is only "intent" evidence, "without any evidence of anticompetitive effects."

Not sure I understand the argument. if I write that I'm going to buy another company instead of competing with them, then I go ahead and I do buy that exact company, are they arguing that the two things are not necessarily related?

They tried turning their branches into coffeehouses, apparently

it's so sad that I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not.... this sounds too much like a real thing that would now come out of official government communications.

The thing is... You know what CEOs do when they have no confidence in the economy? They cut costs. Also known as "employees".

That's true but at least one of these things needs to happen:

1. the forklift costs billions and consumes tons of energy, but it can lift a whole mountain, which no group of humans can do
2. the forklift helps a team of 10 do the work of 50 and, while still relatively expensive, it costs less than the 40 people it's replacing
3. the forklift becomes an inexpensive commodity and it augments human capabilities and creates new possibilities for society as a whole

This is roughly what happened with mainframes to personal computers to mobile devices. LLMs are stuck between 1 and 2, they are not good enough forklifts to lift a mountain and not cheap enough to replace 40 people and save money. There are some hints that they could at one point move to 3 but the large players that could make it happen are starting to be scared by the amount of investment to get there.

On a related note, lot of people are being fooled by this hype machine mixing GenAI with good "old" machine learning and you now read about all these "AI wins" like "student discovers new galaxies with AI" or "scientist discover new medicines with AI" that make it sound like these people just asked ChatGPT "how would you go about discovering a new galaxy?" or "could you make up a new drug for me pretty please?".

yes, but with at least $100M of additional VC funding

Consumer sentiment plummets and yet, Trump's approval is staying where it is. Not particularly high, but at a relatively high point for him: https://www.economist.com/interactive/trump-approval-tracker

I know it's incredibly hard to connect the dots between the economy crashing and the orange guy waving a neon sign that says "it was me! I crashed the economy! Tariffs!" but at least some of the most astute GOP voters should have had that a-ha moment by now, shouldn't they?

"organic AI"

no, no, no, RFK, it was this freaking "fascism epidemic" you were supposed to research

Remember when jokes were supposed to make people laugh? This is a horror movie. And we're all the happy young girl you see in the first scene that you know is going to be gored within the first 10 minutes

The thought of Kanye and Elon in a work camp, though....

seems like he learned his negotiation skills from the scene in Blazing Saddles where the black sheriff points a gun to his own head. "Do what he says! Do what he says!"

Apple is going to become a US company? This is yuuge!

So about those brown people, Mr GOP congressman... Do you see any now? Do they say something to you when you see them?

No, don't worry Mr. Congressman, there are no brown people here, see? These guys are completely dressed in white and they are only here to help you. They will take you to a place with nice soft walls, where you can't accidentally get hurt if one of those brown.... how did you call them.... "immigrants" pushes you. It's going to be all right!

Brain damage,just moves hands and can barely speak coherently.... Wait, did he acrually have a stroke?

More likely, they have been discussing about maybe starting official talks about what it would take to prepare, hypothetically.

But that doesn't mean there aren't alternatives to most big tech services that could be setup quickly. I personally ditched Amazon (shop and video... AWS doesn't depend on me personally) Meta and most of Google without sweating too much. Also, while convenient, none of their consumer tech is critical; we've lived without any of it until recently enough, so we could probably adapt to do without it for a while if we had to.

The parts I think (and I'm not an expert by any means) where Europe is completely vulnerable are payment/banking systems and advanced electronics.

On electronics, there's also China, which isn't a great alternative to depend on... But if Trump decided to weaponize SWIFT or the major credit cards, could he switch most of our banking system off?

Haven't you heard? China are already on the phone with Trump saying they are going to move the production of terbium to the US. Basically they'll use these very big drills to mine Chinese minerals right from Wyoming.

Two comments:

1. If you and Elon Musk are playing bad-cop-good-cop, how shitty of a person do you have to be for Musk to play the good cop?
2. This sound a lot like Russia saying they want peace. You know the argument that"if Ukraine just gave up their territory, government and freedom there would be no war, it's their fault!". Same here, if Europe removed all their social security and pesky regulations so that US companies could do everything they wanted there would be no tariffs!

"Praise Trump" is the only basis for working with him. Not that I feel any sympathy for Bessent; if anything, praising Trump's tariffs while not believing in them would make him a moron AND a hypocrite.

The article is not offering any real examples, except for one CEO's reaction to their stock drop in real-time during an investor's call.

Now don't get me wrong. I really want this to be happening for real. It's just that I would like to see more actual examples and less descriptions of hypothetical "CEOs with thousand-yard stares".