Bought and read the book and honestly the author is just as crazy as the rest of the executive team she skewers. I’m not too broken up that she didn’t get more money from my purchase.
Not without impacting other political aspects. Remember we only lowered the voting age to 18 some 50 years ago to justify the ability to send more kids to a war we started. And that's only the tip of the iceberg.
It still strikes me that some places consider someone fully able to freely consent to enrol in the army, to the risk of getting permanently maimed or mentally scarred, and consider them fit to make life or death split-second decisions for both themselves and everyone around them under terror In highly stressful situations.
But can’t be allowed to have a beer or a whisky, and isn’t able to freely consent to sleep with someone five or ten years older.
I wonder what the official legal justification for this dichotomy is, if there is any.
Edit: after looking it up, there doesn’t seem to be one.
You're not understanding my argument. Within the current way we do things, whatever age you pick is the age the transition period starts for a big fraction of people. Just picking a higher age doesn't work.
If anything, based on the median in the US right now, we should be introducing more self-determination earlier.
> Within the current way we do things, whatever age you pick is the age the transition period starts for a big fraction of people.
My point precisely. Many people only start experiencing life as adults once they’ve been declared adults. Which kind of makes sense.
Maybe something more progressive than a random date would be better. Some countries already do it for some things (both in rights, responsibilities, and legal consequences), many also have specific framework for people who simply can’t be held responsible for themselves (with, often, abuses).
I’m probably stating the obvious, but some things are complex and don’t have good universal solutions. Which is part of why we have judges and lawyers, not just laws.
> Pretty sure anyone who fights the US military finds out pretty fast it’s a good military.
I am not sure about that. Iraq, Afghanistan, to name the new ones and Vietnam to name an old one.
Sure you can take an easy/undisciplined target like Maduro. But many armies in the world can also do that. Another thing that has to be recognized: alternative warfare (ie: terrorism) is a legitimate form of warfare regardless of its morality. You can't, in my opinion, claim military supremacy while not being able to contain these other risks.
Perhaps you're considering only the European theater, but even that would have been significantly more challenging for Russia without the U.S. tying up (and degrading) Axis resources and manpower throughout Europe and elsewhere (e.g. the Pacific). Japan could have very well opened an eastern front for Russia.
And, it was the U.S. that forced a two front war that prevented Germany's fuller focus on Russia's western front (millions fewer troops). Not to mention U.S. logistical and material support to the Soviet Union, which may well have prevented their industrial collapse.
Even with all of this support, the fatality rates for Russia were astronomical. To this day, it boggles my mind that one nation lost ~26 million people in a single war.
Hard to imagine how they would have succeeded without the U.S.
I think that says more about our political leaders than our military.
Politicians choose the war and our military fights the battles. We're very good at winning battles. But some wars can't be won. The problem then lies in their choosing.
I imagine Sisyphus became the best, most effective rock push in the world. Unfortunately despite his talents, the task he was assigned was insoluble.
I generally agree that Americans tend to downplay the impact of Russia in WW2 but there is zero chance Russia would have won the war without the US. Even Lend-Lease going away would have resulted in a loss. Both Stalin and Kruschev agreed there.
The British Commonwealth was the biggest factor in Africa, but it's questionable how quickly they could have won out and taken the Suez without the Americans coming in late in 42, which was critical for both vital supplies like oil and also invading Italy. Japan was already getting bogged down with China and even Burma so they wouldn't have suddenly been free to do much in the European theater but just getting Italy out of the fight and forcing Germany to replace their divisions elsewhere. Italy exiting the war removed 30+ divisions between the Balkans and France, while another 70 Axis divisions were being held down by Allied forces in the Mediterranean during D-Day, with there being 33 Axis divisions in Normandy for D-Day itself. A lack of US involvement also likely means that Germany is able to hold Caucasus for longer (and take more of the oil fields), solving a sizable portion of their oil shortage issues.
With Lend-Lease but no active participation in the war from a military deployment standpoint, the UK and USSR do likely eventually win but at much greater cost and not without risk of losing. Without Lend-Lease it is highly possible that the Axis wins, at least in the European theater. Japan had kind of set themselves up to lose from the start no matter what the US did.
Sure, they will find out it is a good military. No doubt about that. What the US has found out repeatedly but fails to acknowledge is that the opposition proves to be a match. Vietnam, Afghanistan, Somalia have shown just how deep reserves of human resilience and arsenal of guerrilla tactics they have. This doesn't fit the US's mindset about how war is to be waged.
Meanwhile, the American public wants a quick skirmish and a bold "We WON" claim .. it has no appetite for body bags coming home and the price of oil rising.
Which is why if China makes a move on Taiwan, the US can do nothing.
I agree with your statement that human resilience can outlast a better army.
But then you go on to say:
> Which is why if China makes a move on Taiwan, the US can do nothing.
If your opening thesis is true, then it's strange you follow it up with that. Taiwan has just as much a chance of outlasting a stronger competitor as those other countries that resisted US dominance.
And with the US providing them weapons, intelligence, and support, maybe a better chance. See Ukraine.
You are right to some extent. But there are huge differences between all the wars the US has fought and is currently involved in, and a China-Taiwan war.
Taiwan is only a couple of miles from mainland China at its closest point. It is possible to land large numbers of boots on the ground. Next, unlike the US, the Chinese govt is not dependent on the approval of its citizens for waging a war. It exercises complete control of the media, and squelches dissent immediately. AndIt has the largest navy in the world and a relatively modern fleet, and the supply chain is very very short. The US has no leverage over China.
You’re describing all the advantages that Russia in theory had when it invaded Ukraine. That war remains in stalemate.
With US support and the resilience and ingenuity of their people, Ukraine has persisted.
> It is possible to land large numbers of boots on the ground.
I think you need to do more research on how challenging a Taiwan invasion would be. It is nowhere near as simple as “just cross the strait. Put those boots on the ground.”
There is a reason it has not happened. It would be incredibly logistically challenging.
Love this kind of behind the scenes -- thanks for sharing!
Personally, I think in a way you both ended up right. Content is king. But with the iPad (my favorite PDF viewer) as an important part of the Preview landscape now, I view the right side as where content should live.
As long as both companies remain stable and viable, there's probably limited upside to pouring more money into them. If they fail, and bring down the AI ecosystem with them, that is very bad news for Nvidia. So they've been there nurturing their success and providing capital to backstop their exponential growth.
You can see Nvidia stepping in throughout the ecosystem with confidence boosting investments where needed. They haven't just supported Anthropic and OpenAI.
If OpenAI and Anthropic succeed, and get their business fly-wheels fully spinning, they don't necessarily need more capital from Huang. Ultimately the goal of Nvidia is to profit from their long-term success by selling them GPUs for a long, long time. The goal isn't to keep plowing money into them forever.
These days Nvidia has more money than it knows what to do with. They could certainly push $5b+ into each company annually and never miss it. They're tracking toward an astounding $200b in operating income (maybe over the next four quarters if the music doesn't suddenly stop).
Why would paying dividends not be like throwing money away for Nvidia, considering the alternative is to reinvest it into Nvidia's R&D, hiring & training, etc. Investors are already happily making money on NVDA stock appreciation, so what more would they gain from paying dividends?
It did not raise $110 billion. According to their own SEC filings $35 billion of Amazon’s funding is contingent on “(i) OpenAI meeting specified milestones, and (ii) OpenAI directly or indirectly consummating an initial public offering or direct listing of equity securities in the United States”
> I can hardly believe that this is legal. They’re basically committing money that doesn’t exist just yet.
What do you mean "just yet" :-)
I don't really know how likely it is that the money being committed will actually exist when the time comes (Softbank's commitment didn't exist, they had to sell off assets and rope in other investors to meet their commitments).
Maybe it is very likely to exist, but, really, who knows?
IOW, your statement would be equally true by ending the sentence at the word "exist".
Vault cash are actual bills in vaults. It doesn't even include the bills in your wallet or under your mattress.
It's small because few people go to the bank to withdraw a suitcase of $100 bills, it's a weird time series to pull up because it's not really indicative of anything outside of narrow interests for regulators and the mint - it's probably some conspiracy theory trope from crypto bros or something.
Most money exists purely in electronic form these days.
Monetary base [0] which includes the digital money banks have on deposit at the Fed, is over $5 trillion, and even that is tiny compared to M1 [1] which includes the kinds of things backing your money market account, which is around $19T.
When money is invested, they're going to wire it, not pull up with wheelbarrows full of bills.
GP is wrong though, vault cash is the incorrect time series for that.
GP should have used Monetary Base if they wanted to consider purely electronic cash (that is not a result of any fractional reserve stuff at all), which is over $5T disproving their point.
That's what I was referring to. They're committing money they don't have in any monetary form at all. They're just promising they'll have it when it comes due. This is kind of like MLM.
You could get something smaller but have it closer to your face than 1m?
The sort of “visual impact” a screen can have is mostly a combination of what percentage of your FOV it consumes.
People think they’ve got a bunch of screen real estate when they buy a big TV to use as a monitor… and then they use it a twice or more the distance of a regular monitor.
Personally at this point my combined AI spend is the most expensive recurring monthly subscription I have, and that’s even with my company also paying for the AI tools I use at work.
If it weren’t subsidized I would pay more. Wouldn’t be happy about it but I would do it.
At this stage in the game I don’t really understand where this skepticism of the value these tools provides comes from.
Actually it is not about this stage. It is about the sustainability of this when training data runs out and there is less and less human generated content.
When training data runs out, they usefulness will diminish quickly. They will still be useful for searching documents etc, but I guess they are not good at that even now.
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