I never thought forcing Google to sell Chrome was a good idea. Most of the companies lining up to buy it were AI companies flushed with private equity money. Does anyone really think those companies would do a better job at protecting user privacy and avoiding monopolistic practices?

This is why companies like Perplexity and OpenAI are creating browsers.

Okay, I’ll concede that point to you. U.S. carmakers suck at software. And, even on the hardware, they’re resistant to change and slow to innovate.

I don’t disagree with the criticisms of American cars – overpriced, uninspired, unreliable, over-engineered, etc. – but to everyone saying “we should just compete”, do you realize the realities that Chinese workers experience? Have you heard of 996? It’s shorthand for a common work schedule in China: 9am to 9pm, 6 days a week. Benefits that are common in the U.S., even in non-union shops, like retirement plans, PTO, worker’s comp, and overtime pay are rare. So, yeah, things can be made much cheaper if you are willing to feed your workforce into the grinder.

The article isn’t clear about the mechanism by which the data center is supposedly affecting the woman’s well. Is the data center using well water, depleting the supply of ground water in the area? Or is the claim that the construction disturbed the geology enough to cause problems with flow and sediment in a well 366 meters away? Does anyone know or have theories?

They might be using browser fingerprinting to tie you back to your banned account. Also, if you haven’t cleared all cookies and data (local storage, cache, etc.), then they might be using that. Try waiting until you get a new IP from your ISP and then use a different browser. Don’t use a VPN.

Thought experiment: What if AI companies were allowed to use copyrighted material for free as long as they release their models to the public? Want to keep your model private? Pay up. Similar to the GPL.

Trump did end the de minimis rule. The executive order was made April 2nd; the loophole closes May 2nd. https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/03/de-minimis-trade-loophole-to-end-may-2-white-house-says.html

I get that it’s trendy to bash Elon, but he has always said that X would attempt to follow local laws:

By “free speech”, I simply mean that which matches the law. I am against censorship that goes far beyond the law. If people want less free speech, they will ask government to pass laws to that effect. Therefore, going beyond the law is contrary to the will of the people.

He has pushed back on countries who attempt to push their censorship dictates on the world – hence, why many of the account suspensions are only in effect within Turkey:

Some accounts appear to be suspended only in Turkey and not in the rest of the world.

Larger question: Why is Elon/X getting more flak than the authoritarian douchebag – Erdoğan – and his cronies in the judiciary who are censoring and jailing political opponents?

You are proving the parent’s point and you don’t even realize it.

And what if 50% of people want to read what you consider hateful drivel?

In what I’m sure is totally unrelated news, South Korea’s work force is predicted to shrink by half in the next 50 years.

To be clear, Google will still be storing copies of the pages they crawl. They just won’t be making those copies available to end users.

This situation seems analogous to when air travel started to take off (pun intended) and existing legal notions of property rights had to be adjusted. IIRC, a farmer sued an airline for trespassing because they were flying over his land. The court ruled against the farmer because to do otherwise would have killed the airline industry.

While this is amazing and all, it’s always seemed to me that this approach of using hundreds of laser beams focused on a single point would never scale to be viable for power generation. Can any experts here confirm?

I’ve always assumed this approach was just useful as a research platform – to learn things applicable to other approaches, such as tokamaks, or to weapons applications.

I’m with you. Also, it seems like it would be much more efficient to do carbon capture at the source, where the fuel is being used, like a power plant, where the concentrations are relatively high, compared to atmospheric capture where CO2 is less than 0.1%.