"I don't understand why the EU loves VAT so much."
Because it's easy money as taxation goes. Facing growing fiscal deficit and worsening credit score, the first thing the government in Romania did last summer was to rise the (general) VAT quota and cut on some VAT exceptions. It works quicker and more reliably than other means for securing the budget needs.
The VAT related fraudulent schemes are a problem in EU as many other things are, but they are investigated, often prosecuted, and written about. For anyone interested, more can be found at the European Public Prosecutor's Office's site: https://www.eppo.europa.eu/en/media/news
To me, the rules stated by Phineas Taylor Barnum help one navigate in life while nonetheless contributing positively to society, whereas these "private rules for the Robber Barons" are just a pamphlet aimed to (politically) cast a bad light on the ruthless money making. The later, if taken literally, are more akin to stating how crime (as in practice detrimental to society) and abuse can be profitable.
That induced hydrogen, which you're looking for, can very well be the material particles in the solar wind. They don't reach much the Earth because are mostly charged protons and thus collide with Earth's magnetosphere. However, the lack of a strong magnetosphere on Venus means that, once that carbon dioxide layer gets reduced to lower levels and the reactive (free) oxygen can stay below a certain altitude, that shower of hydrogen should naturally become water. Therefore, the key to water on Venus is the reduction of carbon dioxide levels and production of free oxygen.
"The signal shifts from «I can afford this» to «I was invited to spend my money here.»" "the signal isn't wealth but access"
The most shocking aspect here is the mindset of these people that come to value this access, and the fact that they have to have their own self-perceived worth at some lower (i.e. improvable) level in comparison. It has to be, otherwise the value of that access can't make much sense, otherwise that association to a brand (as chosen not chooser) can't be perceived as something of value. The only (sane) question worth asking, knowing that about the people falling into this game is - do I want to count myself as one of them?
I think it just sounds like a fun game to be honest. By a goofy little overengineered piece of jewellery. Buy a bunch of them and join the club. Compare to your friends. Reminds me of pokemon cards on the school playground...
"They have a pretty straightforward business, make GPU cards and sell them."
They do, but that's not the (full) story here. Companies tend to easily migrate upwards, to a higher volume and/or higher profit margin market, and hardly (if ever) in the opposite direction. The painful restructuring necessary to enable this kind of reverse change is also damaging to the company brand, culture, and self-perception. If they ever get in such position, they may of course recover, but I wouldn't bet money on that.
The only reason for a source code to be is for humans to read it, bun when the source code gets churned (by AI agents) in too large of a quantity for any human to realistically read and analyze, then what's the point of having a source code in the first place? Generating binary directly simply makes sense. Working with binary does, even when a human is involved, as long as there's an AI helper as well. The human simply can ask the AI assistant to explain whatever logical aspects behind the binary code and instruct the AI agent to modify the binary code directly, if necessary. That may be scary and not easy to accept. Going further with this idea, even the written text may become "too costly to work with" when there will be an AI agent to verbally or graphically serve the human with whatever informational aspect of a given text that could be of interest in a given situation.
LLMs are trained on source code, so that's what they can (barely) write. Decompiling is a -lossy- action which means that training directly on the output would have much less information and would be a nightmare if one (human or llm) needs to debug.
>I cannot conceive of a way that any form of healthy life, does not want to expand it's resources to improve future outcomes, especially one that is maximally optimized for thinking.
"Then you have a very limited imagination."
This is not about imagination. Given the space of possibilities to act or evolve, if mentioned expansion cannot somehow be ruled out, then it makes sense for it to be assumed (with enough time, for whatever time can mean in this context) as a certainty, even for non-organic "life".
If the current RAM heavy buyers, the AI powerhouses investors, don't get the into a profitable state of business, then sustaining this rhythm "for a long time" becomes impossible. It won't matter much that "fab allocation is booked years out" if the client that expects the goods goes out of business, doesn't it? I, for one, don't find convincing hints that this free AI crazy partying will go on for long, so then what gives?
I think we both agree on that, just on different timelines. I think there's enough VC money to drag this out long enough for it to really hurt. And the longer they do, the more the entire planet becomes dependent on AI companies staying afloat lest the whole economy collapse.
> If the current RAM heavy buyers, the AI powerhouses investors, don't get the into a profitable state of business, then sustaining this rhythm "for a long time" becomes impossible.
Exactly that is the problem with the "pork cycle" we are seeing [1] - there aren't that many manufacturers and ODMs around nowadays for RAM, storage, CPUs and GPUs. The ecosystem was so much more vibrant even 10 years ago. When the AI bubble collapses, it will take the entire world's economy down the drain, and I think that quite a few of the brands we have now will be extinct after this iteration.
"Microsoft's GitHub is hosting the leaked source code (which probably got sucked into Copilot and every other AI under the sun as a result)." "However, I don't think copyright lawyers will care. «They're also committing a crime» doesn't mean you're free to do what you want. That applies especially in ReactOS vs MS, because if ReactOS succeeds, it will compete directly with Microsoft."
There's also such thing as being responsible (for an outcome), which in case of litigation means being culpable. Microsoft here is the sole actor that has any control on the GitHub Copilot, on what it was fed with, and thus - on its output (which would be the base of their accusation if they sue). How do you imagine such a case could be made to look like it would have any legal standing?
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