Hosting a climate conference in an OPEC nation, not sure what they thought was going to happen.

I bought a new Brother laser printer in 2021 and it has no problem with third party toners.

It never stopped. Hasn’t even really slowed down.

People need electricity. Renewables are great, but they don’t provide for the full generation need. Coal and natural gas power generation will continue unabated until a better (read: lower price for similar reliability) solution takes their place.

In my opinion, fossil fuel generation won’t take a real hit until the grid-scale energy storage problem is solved.

They need to make some money - infrastructure isn’t free, employees need paid, etc. they should be self sustaining.

They don’t need to be 2009-Google profitable though. That pipe dream needs to end. 3-5% YoY growth is plenty.

Aid for Ukraine is almost entirely flowing through DoD’s budget (DoD sends weapons from storage, then buys new ones - this also helps end-run Dept of State export rules). DoD acquisitions don’t shut down with the rest of the government, they never have. Ergo, military aid to Ukraine will continue unabated through any shutdown.

Anyone in DC who’s surprised by this has no idea how a government shutdown works.

My 80 year old dad has been using a XUbuntu for years and never even noticed. The only reason he knows he’s using Linux at all is because he saw a news story about Windows tracking and asked about it. He was quite happy not to be affected.

More mandatory overtime for her staff. She'll never know it happened unless one of her social media managers sees it on Twitter and mentions it to her.

Take off the masks, cowards.

Well that puts the “Ethical Altruism” board members’ willingness to risk it all on such a wild dice roll in more context.

It’s probably lost their entire movement any influence on the future of AI research, but them’s the breaks.

This guy tries to exert way too much influence for someone who only won his last race because both candidates were under active criminal investigation.

This is how you say “wait, shit, we fucked up” in Board of Directors.

Be interesting to see how many of them still have seats by Christmas.

Wow, that’s a shock. RIP.

I’ll most miss the musicians spreading random delight. Those were always fun to watch.

Oh, are we acting surprised because we forgot all the people that got screwed exactly like this on Kindle books in 2009?

Welcome to digital media. If you can’t play it without some company’s say do, you don’t own it.

Also knowing that you’re guaranteed to be “downsized” on the first day of the next party change in the White House.

These shenanigans have me rapidly transitioning from “I don’t want to see your annoying ads” to “I don’t want you to make any money at all”.

The shocking part about this is that they installed a dedicated defeat device and expected no one to notice. Come on guys, cars are software, if you want to end run the emissions standards just write more creative code.

They’re talking about the stuff on the shelf, not the good stuff that’s locked up because it actually works.

That’s a good raise, and the govvies I’ve worked with over the years deserve it.

It’s still far too small to stop the perpetual brain drain from federal agencies to government contractors. It’s going to take a lot more than 5% to keep good people in place when they can double their salary overnight by joining a contractor.

If you only do the easy part, then yes that’s infinitely replaceable. Being a pretty face is exactly that, and AI can do that all day long.

Being actually entertaining and engaging, though, is a different story, and AI is struggling to pick that up. And of course teams of corporate marketers continually fail at this.

But yes, the “job” of “being attractive on the internet” can now be outsourced to machines.

The idea that non-profits aren’t profiting-seeking is the biggest misunderstanding in the world. I work for a large one, and it’s absolutely the same rampant penny-squeezing 30%-unsustainable-growth-seeking monstrosity as anything in the Valley. The pittance that gets thrown to “charitable causes” is just another tax dodge in an otherwise profit-demanding venture. Swap “shareholders” with “the endowment” and there’s no difference at all.

Much better to be a for-profit company with a charter demanding where profits in excess of modest growth targets are spent internally.