Most companies' debts are not backed by the government, which is what OpenAI asked for today. This is not remotely close to how most financing works. This isn't even how free markets work. This is a very literal shift towards "too big to fail" in a way that is unprecedented in modern history.
Devil's advocate; if the fed decides to give it to them, how is it any different from ordinary financier economics?
I don't think this is a remotely smart decision, for the record. But the market has long been enabled to make stupid decisions, even by the command of the US government. We really screwed this pooch when the US ended the gold standard and decided that we would play with funny-money until the players could shake down the bank. Investing in a ludicrously-unsustainable global surveillance network like OpenAI is the next logical step after refusing to prosecute Google and Apple for abusing their control. The next "great work" is convincing the masses that AI is an ordinary part of their lives like the smartphone, and in many cases it's already working.
From a completely cynical perspective of OpenAI and the federal government colluding, it makes perfect sense.
If you're American, go on strike. Nobody gives a shit about people holding signs and protesting peacefully. If you can't do anything to make the opposition care about you, don't expect them to do anything other than ignore you.
Ok. I'm a contractor. I live in Florida with zero protections. I have three kids. I'm 51 and have had a hell of a time finding work the last few years. I'm pretty scared of doing this, honestly.
Peaceful protest makes the massive assumption that there is a working press out there that is willing to be sympathetic. Instead, our press seems to be at best complicit and capitulation-minded, at worst collaborative.
For what it's worth, I don't think this is a new phenomenon. I remember quite clearly the way the press treated Occupy Wall Street, pretending that it was just a bunch of random loiterers who didn't have clear demands and goals.
In that case, the media simply made the editorial choice not to go out of their way to engage with the protesters, metaphorically covering their ears and then asking why they couldn't hear anything. Things have only gotten worse in the decades since.
Name some historical examples where people only protested on the weekend, didn't go on strike, and didn't have a threat of violence or some sort of leverage behind it.
I totally get it and appreciate your words. When I step back I realize I have a lot of privilege and many others face much worse prospects and are much more courageous than I am.
You really think a bunch of people holding signs on the weekend, then going back to work the next day is accomplishing anything? What are you accomplishing?
It doesn't matter how many of you there are if none of you are willing to actually do anything. If I just ignore you, how does it change anything in my life? The only thing you're achieving is making yourselves feel better about accomplishing nothing.
at a minimum, it makes it clear to others that they are not alone in thinking this regime is beyond the pale.
people who are able to take other actions like engaging via the judicial system, or peacefully refusing to continue working, are also encouraged by seeing peaceful masses of people agreeing with them.
it actually harms the cause to be dismissive of people who can contribute by simply making their peaceful objection visible.
> it actually harms the cause to be dismissive of people who can contribute by simply making their peaceful objection visible
I think it harms the cause to feel better about accomplishing nothing. You've created a morale booster, but you haven't actually achieved anything or put forth any sort of plan to enact any sort of change. Assuming your goal is to make the government function according to written laws, why would the current president give a shit about anything you say when he can just continue to ignore you? If he ignored you before, you holding up a sign isn't going to do anything.
Protests work when there is some sort of threat behind it. Most protests you read about in history aren't a few hours on the weekend, they're ongoing where everybody is already participating in a strike. And many of them have the obvious threat of violence behind them. This "protest on the weekend" shit is pathetic. I'm not going to congratulate you for wasting time while everything continues to get worse. From my perspective you are part of the problem.
> Nobody gives a shit about people holding signs and protesting peacefully.
Do both. The person in this story clearly was not ignore.
They do in fact care otherwise they wouldn't be so beligerent about it. It takes 3% of the country protesting to get undeniable attention and last weekend was getting close to that threshold. 330m Americans or so, the threshold is around 10m. And this weekend was counted with 7m.
Your voice does matter, don't let anyone tell you otherwise.
I don't know, it'd be kind of funny if there weren't any protests, just everyone goes home and plays GTA VI. It's not like the cause of the striking would be unknowable.
> but we're probably on a trajectory to be able to do it in 1-3 years
This is wildly optimistic. I quit working in robotics because I got tired of all the bullshit promises everybody made all the time. I'm not saying robotics isn't advancing or the work is unimportant, but the spokespeople are about as reliable as Musk when it comes to timelines.
I doubt it will happen in 10 years, even with a constrained environment and hardware that costs well into 6 digits.
I think GP was basically talking about doing it on a doll. As in, a robot in 1-3 years might be able to change diapers with occasional success, but half the tries will result in a dismembered diaper user: we'd use dolls in this scenario, since dismembering babies is taboo and generally frowned upon within the robotics community.
It will have to be a robot doll. Changing my baby's diaper was a piece of cake until he learned how to escape midway through the process. Babies can be surprisingly hard to restrain!
I really don't understand the timestamps on HN. I made this post days ago, not hours ago. I understand it was reposted but it's disingenuous to lie about the timestamp.
> Musk's approach is that if you have an infinite supply of fresh grads who really believe in you and are willing to work crazy hours, giving them a "next year" deadline is more likely to give you what you want than telling them "here's your slow-paced project you're gonna be working on for the next decade". And I guess he thinks to himself that some of them are going to burn out, but it's a sacrifice he's willing to make.
This feels incredibly generous. I'm pretty sure his approach is that he needs to keep the hype cycle going for as long as possible. I also believe it's partially his willingness to believe his own bullshit.
As of the time of this comment, it's a whopping 247. There is no possible justification for that kind of valuation. Even if Robotaxi is a huge success, they sell more rides than Uber, Lyft, and traditional taxis services combined, it wouldn't justify it.
> My morning starbucks routine has changed from 2 food items to just 1, which alone saves me $200/mo
> Now, since I stopped snacking and eating much less, groceries simply last way longer. <-- $$ saved in groceries significantly offsets the monthly price of the medication
JFC, how much were you spending on food? I just looked it up and this drug costs hundreds of dollars per month, and apparently that's just a fraction of your food budget. So you were spending well over a thousand dollars on food each month?
I'm sure Novo Nordisk would survive even with slightly lower margins.
Also what proportion of that $1,000 goes to the manufacturer? From what I understand various middlemen and such get a significant proportion of that without providing any value?
I have no idea what Americans overpaying for healthcare has to do with a Danish drug company participating in the Canadian Healthcare market.
I’d rather thank the Canadian government for having a drug pricing review process.
If these companies don’t want to sell their drugs here, no one is making them. They are still here, so I think it’s safe to assume that they are still making money.
I don’t think it should be controversial to say that if the US imposed a Canadian-style price control regime on more than the handful of drugs currently regulated by Medicare, the future number of drugs developed and commercialized would drop significantly.
It’s just basic addressable market vs. development cost math.
The drug companies in Canada are part of the drug pricing process. Their development costs are considered. In exchange, they get additional monopoly priveleges on patented medicine.
Canada doesn’t even have particularly low drug pricing compared to the rest of the world, the opposite in fact. Canada just had low drug prices compared to the most expensive market on the planet.
It’s possible that lower drug prices in one country would disincentivize a global industry that touches almost every human on earth. Or it could not.
The number of drugs developed would drop. In particular, the really expensive to develop drugs that target rare conditions, exploit novel pathways, or require difficult synthesis.
The kinds of drugs that routinely experience years of delayed availability in markets like Canada and the UK until the learning curve has kicked in via the US and other less constrained markets.
Personally, I think that they would cut other cost centers before they cut the only department that ensures their long term success
The industry could save tens or of billions per year by not advertising (this is a US thing, drug ads are nonexistent in many places), and eliminating pricing games, cost rebate programs, coupons, drug reps, etc. These are all significant costs and friction that don’t exist in most other countries.
My personal feeling is that claiming that the worlds least cost efficient healthcare system with many layers of added complexity is the driver behind pharmaceutical budgets is marginal.
And of course you have to consider that a significant portion of drug research costs are paid by government and other institutional grants
Your comments come across as more aggressive than perhaps you intend them to. We've had to ask you similar things before.
Telling someone that their spending is "fucking egregious" and "who knows what else you didn't mention", would land with most people as quite a provocation. The fact that cj replied courteously says something good about cj, but your comment broke the site guidelines and we need you not to do that.
It's easy to underestimate the amount of provocation in one's own comments—we all do that to some extent. I don't know if it's helpful or not but here are a bunch of past attempts I've made to explain this: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
I dont track it. I order instacart a couple times a month which costs $300 per order. Plus eating out. So about $1k or more a month. Single, live alone.
If you don't cook, it is very easy to spend $1000+ on food in a month, especially if you live in a high cost of living area.
I'm single, live alone, work a lot, and earn a lot. Food delivery apps are hella expensive... but I still pay it quite frequently. Yes, I am ashamed, thanks for asking.
Your evidence is that there are more billionaires when arguing there is upward mobility? We are talking about completely different things. Many of those people started out as multimillionaires and then became billionaires - almost none of them started out poor. And you're focusing on a tiny percent of the population and extrapolating that to everyone as though it's representative of anything meaningful.
The last bit is sus though. "Only inherited after making a million". Sounds like it would include born rich, high education, basic necessities covered, can work on startups without worrying about earning a salary, many such cases.
Trump has no moral compass; and the only thing that matters is his ego.
Harris had domestic policy that I almost universally disagree with.
I did vote in the primary, but it didn't matter at that point because the only other option was Haley. I would have been enthusiastic about any other Republican primary candidate.
Thank you for outing yourself as willfully ignorant. I also appreciate the unintended admission of privilege.