I knew nothing about, and had no opinion on, daycare facilities in Minnesota run by Somali immigrants, before Trump-supporting media entities decided to make the topic an astroturf issue. On the other hand, I had plenty of experience with people whose worldviews had been severely warped by such coordinated media campaigns. Mr. McKenzie should take some time to reflect on this.

Did any actual billionaires show up to press their case, or was it all just cronies?

if realized, this allows volkswagen group to manufacture regular cars for a long, long time even after oil refining stops. originally, it was proposed as a hypothetical luxury product for antique car owners, because it’s physically possible, but doesn’t make sense in energy or cost terms.

If VW is trying to mainstream this, that tells me they’re scrambling to keep milking the premium end of their portfolio that relies on extravagant IC engines (Porsche, Lamborghini, Audi etc.). Very bad sign for them, as the ID Buzz van looks to be a complete failure to the point of “pausing” production, and VW Commercial Vehicles is their backbone in Europe, much like Ford relies on truck sales in the US. I watched a video a few weeks ago that discussed how their European van/utility vehicle portfolio is aging and totally fragmented, to the point that they are selling rebadged Ford Transit vans manufactured in Turkey. I thought it was bad when they were badge-engineering Dodge Caravans for the US market for a few years, but totally bungling the EV van rollout in Europe is seriously bad business for them.

It was also hilarious how the rich guys on the Porsche forums were bad-mouthing the rather sexy Mission X EV supercar concept a couple years ago. No matter how cool a 9,000-rpm flat-six is, letting yourself be driven by the guys who just want you to keep making that forever will not stave off everyone else (now including China and Vietnam!).

eLite like the old Apple Newton eMate: transparent, limited functionality, not actually all that powerful

This is the first time I have ever seen the term “AI design agency,” which raises some yellow flags

One thing I discovered on my mom’s late-model VW SUV is that the manufacturer-provided semi-physical/capacitative touch dash buttons are pretty much useless when interacting with Apple CarPlay; that all becomes touchscreen-only. And the forced transition in inputs is not particularly obvious. I have to wonder if most implementations are like that, compounding confusion on top of distraction.

Huh. Are the remaining “classical liberals” in the wild just naturally covered in this much slime, or is it something Yud applied to himself specifically for this conversation?

Hmm, we already tried the thing where a bunch of startups have their cash on deposit with a couple of normal, FDIC-insured banks that had grossly mismatched duration in their capital structures. I wonder how this will play out

it is relatively rare that a major donor is using your acceptance of donations to get social cover for an island-based extortion operation,

Now wait just a goddamn minute, I thought the whole schtick here was that our gracious correspondent is better than anyone else at evaluating situations that are relatively rare but nonetheless highly consequential

Double-highlighting this choice bit:

Diligence is costly in executive attention,

Your periodic reminder that this man is considered a major influence by many of today’s working venture capitalists

Yeah, @XiWellWisher going up against Aella on X, The Everything App is well into late-SNL stages of unfunny parody

In ~9 months of searching, I’ve gotten to two second-round interviews out of dozens of applications to LinkedIn listings. Take that as you will.

The headline alone is worthy of upvoting. About halfway through the article, the author includes an embedded YouTube video of the Dilberito Flash game. Made me reflect that 20 years ago, they might simply have directly embedded the game itself. And contemplate what the Web might look like if/when external YouTube embedding craps out.

And goddamn:

his former syndicate, publisher, and professional organizations have all declined to pay tribute or even acknowledge his passing.

I didn’t realize it was quite that harsh, but so it goes. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

Counterpoint: these guys

(Expect the Las Vegas Raiders to announce their organization-wide AI initiative some time after the Super Bowl)

that is best studied using the Wolfram Language,

isn’t this just a particularly weird lisp </troll>

at least Khan Noonien Singh had some fucking charisma

Somehow, I registered a total lack of surprise as this loaded onto my screen

He doesn’t even seem to grasp the concept that a machine needs to take input; none of his examples even consider that.

So in a way, what you’re saying is that input sanitization (or at the very least, sanity) is an important concept even in theory

oh man, it’s Aumann’s

I am confident that Altman in particular has a poor-to-nonexistent grasp of second-order effects.