> What does Walmart have to do with it? Walmart sells products that people need at affordable prices.
Walmart's products are "...garbage, the service is awful, and the prices are..." at least higher than they used to be.
> For McDonald's (and a lot of fast food generally these days) the prices have gone up so much that the value isn't there anymore.
You might have a point on prices with the Walmart vs. McDonalds comparison, but only prices. The first two complaints about McDonalds didn't do anything against Walmart.
> Now it's cheaper, healthier and hardly much more time consuming to make better food at home.
Making food at home is always a lot more time consuming, especially when you factor in cleanup. Also it requires significantly more planning.
> I have this wild theory that this has not just todo with AI but with weapons production overall.
Why? Weapons are low-volume compared to commercial products, and they probably use trailing edge or weird bespoke components.
I was digging around the other day, and at least the initial versions of the Tomahawk cruise missile had the computing power of an original IBM PC. That just shows how little computing power is needed for a lot of advanced weapons capabilities.
... for what were then 'advanced' weapons capability in high-cost units produced and expended in relatively small numbers with high yield payloads.
The modern drone warfare version of expendable, high volume, high technology small units with two way communication via fibre-optic and RF jamming resistant multiple channels, and the ability to do on-device video object identification and terminal flight control when active electronic counter measures degrade operator control...
That seems like exactly the kind of gear using commodity DDR4/5 sodimm and dimm modules and literally burning them up at then end of nearly every sortie. Even if they are using much smaller units (smartphone grade RAM) it's still cooking the limited output of the global memory fab capacity, and from the fields covered in fibre-optic blankets, I think it's safe to say there is a significant volume of electronics equipment being consumed.
So yeah, AI might be ordering memory and putting it in datacenter, but eventually that material will be available for e-waste recovery (repurpose first, then recycle later). Both are competing for the same limited fab capacity.
> What I'm getting at is, if we do have to get used to memory being more expensive, that might become very disruptive because software developers will have to do a major about-face on how they've been writing software in the post-AI era.
I'm guessing you meant to say "pre-AI era."
But don't kid yourself. What that means is right before they prompt "and don't make mistakes," they'll prompt "use less memory."
> However I think the future of education in general is very bleak. When we have plummeting scores for the PISA exam across the world [1], I fear people will get dumber and dumber.
This is exactly what AI companies need, so that's development should be celebrated. There are two paths to capture the value that's currently wasted on paying people:
1. Build a system that's superior to nearly all people.
2. Make people worse, so even an inferior system is superior to them.
Getting AI into the classrooms and degrading the educational system are important for path #2.
It's good not to put all your eggs in one basket, so I'm glad the AI industry is pursuing a multi-pronged strategy against their competitors. Who cares about the waste and destruction for humanity, as long the investors get good returns?
There may be a difference between the passport you are presenting, and your passport. Until the border agent determines that those are equivalent, you are not necessarily who you say you are.
> My point was that Polish citizens do not get asked. This is different for Americans. US citizens entering their own country have to answer these bizarre and sometimes creepy questions.
It's not like I kept a list or anything, but as an American, I don't think I've ever been asked questions like "Where are you going? Where will you be staying? What do you intend to do?" by border control when returning to the US.
I distinctly recall having been asked questions about where I'm coming from, like "Do you have any X"? (where X is legal and common in a country I visited, but illegal in the US).
I am a US citizen who has left the States a small handful of times. I received probing questions twice while crossing the USA-CAN border (which I have crossed ~6 times), once where the agent got angry with me because apparently I wasn't answering/following her directions well enough, and the other time the agent seemed to just be following a protocol. The only other time I was questioned was on my way to Iran, but everyone was getting questioned. That flight was delayed by over 3 hours too.
I do not look like an immigrant or other marginalized group that stereotypically gets extra attention at borders. I know the difference, because my (American) brother-in-law gets 'randomly selected' everywhere for the misfortune of having Arabic ancestry.
I'm a CAD citizen and usually have an easy time driving into the states, but have been searched or pulled aside twice. Flying in is always easier. Crossing back into Canada, Iirc I've been searched 4 times. It's usually a routine thing because I'm often crossing back in at strange times alone.
They're on the lookout for criminal activity. I transited lower Ontario with empty containers for a completed move between states. That can look like smuggling to the guards and you get more probing questions.
> The fact is that any president can, apparently, unilaterally shred international friendships, and 30%-40% of Americans will cheer it on.
That's not the problem.
The real problem is that the political establishment let things get so out of whack that someone like Trump could enjoy a large amount of support and get elected. If actual issues experienced by Americans were getting addressed in a satisfactory way, none of this would have happened.
But instead of that we got TINA and Trump.
> I would love a return to normalcy, but Americans need to make sure, really sure this can't happen again.
Easy: just repeal democracy. Make elected officials advisors at best, and vest all power in unelected officials that will uphold the status quo.
> If actual issues experienced by Americans were getting addressed in a satisfactory way, none of this would have happened.
That might be america's problem but its not my problem. It doesn't really matter on the outside what dynamics lead to trump. It only matters that US foreign policy has taken a turn, the turn seems permanent, and we can no longer trust that our interests are aligned with the new management.
> That might be america's problem but its not my problem.
I was responding to a self-identified American wishing America would return to the prior status quo. It seems like you're in the wrong subthread.
> It doesn't really matter on the outside what dynamics lead to trump.
It's worth noting those dynamics aren't unique to the US.
> It only matters that US foreign policy has taken a turn, the turn seems permanent, and we can no longer trust that our interests are aligned with the new management.
It's also worth noting that many countries were probably taking advantage of the US's old management (e.g. most of the rest of NATO severely under-investing in their defense, expecting the US to spend to pick up the slack). Some of the vibes I pick up around those topics come off as entitled, which is is not a good look.
> It's also worth noting that many countries were probably taking advantage of the US's old management (e.g. most of the rest of NATO severely under-investing in their defense, expecting the US to spend to pick up the slack).
It's sounds just like you are believing your own propaganda. This behaviour was intended and encouraged by the US. They would still prefer for it to stay that way, even if they are saying otherwise domestically. Look how they try to sabotage the other countries, now that they try to actually uncouple from the US.
> It's also worth noting that many countries were probably taking advantage of the US's old management (e.g. most of the rest of NATO severely under-investing in their defense, expecting the US to spend to pick up the slack)
yeah, that is how being a hegemon works. There are benefits and drawbacks to that, but lets not pretend like USA didn't get a lot of benefits out of the arrangement.
In any case, seems like that era is mostly coming to an end.
> The real problem is that the political establishment let things get so out of whack that someone like Trump could enjoy a large amount of support and get elected.
I agree with you and I wish more people would understand that Trump is only a symptom of the issue.
Its the same in Europe where everyone is somehow discovering in 2026 that the far-right and far-left parties actually want to do what they say they will do if they get in power.
Instead of addressing the concerns of the population, all they do is talk about how bad these parties would be and try every which way to contain them except never trying to even understand or fix the issues these people are complaining about.
It was the same strategy used by Macron in France in 2017 and 2022.
Step 1: Pretend you care and tinker on the margins but fundamentally don't change anything.
Step 2: Paint the opposition on the left and right as monsters that will bring chaos and disorder to the country.
Step 3: Present yourself as the only one capable of containing said chaos.
In one word: TINA
Except TINA is no longer working and the mainstream parties are being challenged a lot more because people have trusted them for so long and they are no longer interested in waiting for them to actually deliver on what they promised to do years ago.
So you get Reform in the UK, One Nation in Australia, National Rally in France, the AFD in Germany, Swedish democrats in Sweden and much more....
The parties in charge could have tried to address the issues that are fueling the rise of the far-right across Europe, they could have listened to the concerns of their citizens even if they did not agree with their ideas.
Instead, they have let the situation deteriorate and portrayed themselves as the only solution to the problems they never addressed and it backfired spectacularly.
> They just need to hire the right lobbyists, get a meeting at the White House, agree on the terms and call it a settlement.
I wonder if this is just self-consciously a self-dealing thing explicitly designed to block off further investigations. Clear them, then they can't be properly investigated for that activity in the future.
It doesn't really work that way, although I wouldn't rule out someone in the administration thinking it does. There's nothing an FTC investigator can do to "clear them" in a way that would prevent a future investigation for future instances of the same activity. An FTC decision not to bring a complaint or to request only trivial damages doesn't create a binding precedent for similar investigations later.
> My favorite KH-11/Hubble story is that during the design of the Hubble Space Telescope, NASA originally wanted a 3 meter mirror. However when they began to design and budget the satellite they were quietly told they should reconsider and use a 2.4 meter mirror, as this would be significantly cheaper since they would be able to leverage existed machinery capable of created mirrors of that size and precision. That infrastructure and manufacturing process had already been created a decade earlier for Keyhole.
If the manufacturing for the 2.4 meter mirrors existed a decade earlier, and Hubble used the existing processes, does that mean all the KH-11 satellites also have the spherical aberration problem that Hubble has?
The spherical aberration of Hubble's main mirror was caused by a manufacturing defect.
Perkin-Elmer designed a new null corrector to verify that the mirror was made to spec, but the null corrector was incorrectly assembled (one of the lenses was out by a few mm). They also used the previous null corrector to test, which showed that the mirror was incorrectly ground, but decided that the new null corrector's measurements was correct.
But wouldn't they have needed to do that for KH satellites too? If they're making new equipment and processes, they'll be saving a lot less money from using KH mirrors
It was a new piece of test/validation equipment used on Hubble first. Reread it, they used the new equipment to test Hubble that had an error during assembly, they also crosschecked against the old machine which showed the mirror was flawed, and incorrectly decided that the newer machine was correct when it passed the Hubble mirror.
The test equipment is a much smaller part of the cost than developing, building and testing the machines required to actually grind the mirrors to spec in the first place.
or hubble has the aberration because the design optimized for cost on that bandwidth, because nobody would ever need to zoom individual fibers on a newspaper page? remember those where pointed the other way around.
but that's an awesome rabbit hole you pointed out!
The mirror/sensor package is just the payload. The rest of the bird, from power and communications to navigation and pointing, could have been lifted directly from a spysat program.
I often see Hubble in the twilight, it's one of the few big satellites you can readily see with the naked eye - not quite as bright as the ISS but pretty close.
Why have i never seen these, is it simply that I wasn't looking for them?
One is that Hubble's mirror is not expected to burn up on re-entry and may therefore hit the ground.
How is this managed with similar spy satellites? Presumably the problem is more acute, because not only do you need to avoid killing someone, but you also want to avoid any chance of falling on hostile territory. Are they actively steered into known parts of the ocean? Or does something else happen (one suggestion with Hubble was actually to fire a missile at it just before entry in order to break the mirror in space).
If I was to repurpose Hubble to be a spy satellite I would paint it black... I know it's not that simple due to sun radiation (including heat), they where probably coated with some mat black material or something to avoid this kind of detection. I'm just guessing since Hubble looks like it's wrapped in aluminum foil.
Both an incredibly different orbit, the fact that the location of NRO satellites aren't nearly as published, as well as the newer ones using simple stealth coatings so they don't shine as bright.
Walmart's products are "...garbage, the service is awful, and the prices are..." at least higher than they used to be.
> For McDonald's (and a lot of fast food generally these days) the prices have gone up so much that the value isn't there anymore.
You might have a point on prices with the Walmart vs. McDonalds comparison, but only prices. The first two complaints about McDonalds didn't do anything against Walmart.
> Now it's cheaper, healthier and hardly much more time consuming to make better food at home.
Making food at home is always a lot more time consuming, especially when you factor in cleanup. Also it requires significantly more planning.
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