If this happens it's not going to take the form of them getting "acquired", they're going to end up forced to become a defense contractor like Lockheed Martin or Raytheon where their primary customer is the USG and all of their sales require governmental approval.
And the absolute last group the government would ever approve access to would be "We the People".
I know it's not realistic at this point, but I really hope the Chinese labs will release models that run local and are on par with the abilities of frontier models. That is, I hope the idea of frontier models goes away. Because if not, what we're looking at is a seriously bleak outlook with respect to economic freedom for anyone outside the 0.1%. We may even be looking at out and out lack of economic viability for vast segments of the population.
Our best bet is competition stays healthy, and the model providers keep "releasing" their best to stay ahead. Even then, or even if every human was given equal tokens and access, we'll see crazy inequalities just because of how effective the tool is. The smart get smarter and more effective while the dumb will be swallowing down infinite memes and letting the LLMs do all their thinking.
A term hire is still a federal employee, just with the uncertainty of your term being renewed or extended. I’m not really sure what they are hoping to get out of this- even if they were hiring at the highest step, this is trying to hire an engineer from the space industry with significant experience for 200k. That’s total comp because you don’t get options as a federal employee and the retirement matching for a short term is insignificant.
It really seems like they haven’t done anything to change the value proposition of being a government employee, they just made a cool name and website.
But the _qualified_ people who are willing to work for the government in the space industry would already be familiar with their options. Anyone who wasn’t already willing to work for NASA probably isn’t swayed by the fancy name and website. As soon as they get into the actual paperwork process and talk to someone they’ll realize it’s not that different from having applied through the regular process.
It seems to me like they are trying to find good people without having to struggle to fire bad ones. They get automatic churn because of the term and can offer the good employees permanent roles.
Given how difficult it can be to fire government employees, I think that's a good strategy.
It also aligns suspiciously with the decline of the sedan and the near-total victory of SUVs and pickup trucks in the American passenger vehicle market.
Good point. The missing statistic in this thread is the number of injuries, which you'd expect would help tease apart big cars (mass) from phones (attention).
SUVs and pickups did not win anything in 2010, F-series trucks had been number one best seller through the entire 21st century, and the top 10 selling cars were half and half Camry/Civic/Accord and trucks and SUVs.
>Seven out of the top ten best selling vehicles in 2010 were sedans
I only see six sedans in your link. But regardless if you count CR-V or Fusion as a sedan, you are arguing for me. 2010 being a recession year is prominent for drop of trucks and SUVs in sales, not "near-total victory of SUVs and pickup trucks".
>In 2025
And how does this align with increase of pedestrian deaths from 2010 to 2023?
There was a lawsuit about the constitutionality of only requiring men to register back during the first Trump administration that won at the District Court level but lost on appeal in the Fifth Circuit. SCOTUS declined to take the case at the time because Congress was considering changing the Selective Service System. Then Congress ultimately did nothing, and the same people are now suing the government again in a different circuit.
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