NickC25

Ready Player One was completely misread and misunderstood by people who thought they could make a lot of money with VR.

It wasn't a homage to 70s/80s/90s nerd culture and a hopeful glimpse of what VR tech could be.

It was a warning for people to get off their fucking phones and to work together at improving the real world, versus ignoring it and living out unrealistic fantasies inside a digital ecosystem that makes us all a bit less human.

The whole point of the book is that VR and addictive tech is a red herring. It was deliberately misunderstood by Zuck and his ilk.

Greater returns for whom, and what would we gain geopolitically?

I don't disagree that money should be spent here. But instead of billions spent on military contractors, using some of that money in developing countries through USAID gets us some incredible returns...such as our work in the Congo securing our rights to the largest Cobalt deposit on the planet. Or our work in Namibia giving us access to the 4th largest deposit of Uranium on the planet. The top 3 countries for Uranium exports are either under the Sino-Russian sphere of influence (Kazakhstan) or are nations that could get there due to the fact that they fucking hate the US due to the genius words of Donald Trump (Canada and Australia).

You want America's sources of Cobalt and Uranium cozying up to China and giving the US the finger?

And not only accrues goodwill, it keeps American farmers growing crops that are otherwise unprofitable. US Farmers are too stubborn to keep up with the times, insist on growing crops that there's no domestic demand for (and are heavily subsidized), yet vote in jackasses that are going to take away the only market there is for their crops.

USAID somehow managed to get everyone paid and kept everyone happy. Who gives a shit if it was a CIA front?

It's what happens in China with Tiktok. The Party said Tiktok needed to have educational content instead of stupid content. Tiktok complied.

The CCP may be many bad things, but they don't fuck around when it comes to education and making sure their youth aren't wasting their youth on stupid dance videos.

US Aid has probably been the biggest ace the US ever had in its hand.

US farmers growing otherwise unprofitable crops with no buyer? Check. US exporters being able to export crops? Check. US Aid workers being able to give food to starving people in countries that have huge deposits of rare earth materials? Check. US intelligence apparatus having advanced knowledge of developing situations in strategically important countries? Check. US Aid workers being able deliver tremendous goodwill to countries that China or Russia would love to have their tentacles in? Check.

Everyone's happy, everyone makes money, everyone eats.

Yet Donald Trump and Elon Musk don't like it, so away it goes. And there's no adult in the room to say "no, you're not cutting it, here's why".

Correct.

Iran also has no nuclear weapons.

Just do what China does, how fucking hard is it? They have 4x, almost 5x the population of the US.

STEM or verifiable educational content only. Have a review team and an AI that moderates content. No politics, no stupid dances, no monetization of content, no slop, and only credentialed people can post on certain topics (ie a delivery driver shouldn't make posts on theoretical mathematics).

You can stop watching big budget productions, but you shouldn't skip out on your local independent cinema scene. If you're in or around a large metro area, there will be local(ish) folks out there making interesting stuff. Might not be super fancy CGI or incredible sound design, but it will be humans telling human stories, which is the heart of cinema.

>So you can go hog wild on exploiting labor and amassing wealth as long as you don't oppose the overall goals of the government

Or get TOO big. You can get a few billion here and there, but don't think that you're bigger than the government. And don't act like it, either.

>It's a bit of a trope to say that billionaires are hoarding wealth via financial shenanigans when all of their wealth is tied up in job and value creation.

Value for whom?

They do. Because Elon is proving himself to be quite an idiot.

China was more than happy to welcome him in, and have him teach them how to build an EV. They simply copied what they could and improved on it.

"The communists will happily sell the capitalists the rope the capitalists hang themselves with"

Sad. I think companies that have a near or quasi monopoly over regulated utilities should be banned from hiring cheap labor from developing countries.

Canada, USA, doesn't matter - if our taxes subsidize a market or entrench a player within an important market (telecom, physical infrastructure, etc), they should be mandated to keep the money in local economies.

I'm American, and find it deeply offensive if a company wants to offshore despite getting tax breaks, government protections against new market entrants, etc.

I'm not paying tax money so a utility can raise prices, pay its executives more, spend more on lobbying, and outsource labor to 3rd world or developing countries. I don't give a fuck how well those folks in those countries speak English.

I love this.

I'm also building a simple game using Claude, so this is quite inspirational. Keep going!

>and also in how the Republican party turned around and broke portions of that law for months until Trump could ensure the assets were handed to his major donor buddy--and fixing none of the original PRC influence issues. [1]

Are you even remotely surprised by that? Honestly.

Just ask for a spot when you see someone available.

You humble yourself, you grow as a person by practicing communication, and you get to try to lift a little heavier as you know someone is there to help you when you eventually fail a rep (which is important if you're trying to bulk or get stronger). You thank them after and maybe even give/get a fist bump. That's it. Do this often while being mindful of people and their own workouts. One day, someone will ask YOU for a spot. Oblige.

Asking for a spot is absolutely a frequent and everyday occurrence at pretty much any gym. Most people are actually pretty honored when they are asked to spot someone's PR attempt.

You don't really have to make a ton of small talk unless both parties are open to it, but you'll get to know the regulars who will eventually talk to you.

Fellow Greenwich native here....though you're a bit older than me. My dad works with a number of hedge funds particularly those in the NYC area and the Miami area as a recruiter. Mind if I pass him your CV?

>, including Islam, are all influences on and in line with, traditional American values

My brother, in Sunni Islam practicing countries, they can kill you for drawing a stick figure.

Traditional American values include freedom of speech.

>(Saudi sovereign fund: you think we will only censor Kimmel and Colbert because they're making jokes about Trump. Sure, go ahead and think that...)

May 20th can't come fast enough....

The desire for financial hyper-optimization has been killing the economy for a very long time, not just recently due to AI.

That said, AI isn't helping.

>Meta is fundamentally a media company

You were soooooo close.

Meta is fundamentally a targeted advertising company, not a media company.

But chess is a turn-based game where there's no deception (in the sense that both players can see all legal moves for both themselves and their opposition at all times), whereas in table tennis, it's in real time, it's fast as hell, the table is small, and the ball can have 2 or 3 different spin types from the same arm/hand/wrist movement , and can land in a number of different spots.

This.

People don't understand that defense contractors are extremely wasteful in their spending, and the contractor's job is not to produce the latest and greatest. They have a dual mandate.

1. To keep supply chains active so we can continue to be able to wage tomorrow's war with yesterday's technology by introducing rent-seekers and middlemen into companies and processes where they shouldn't be.

2. To keep Wall Street, defense contractors, and defense lobbyists happy.

I gotta ask, while I have the attention of HN - why are defense contractors allowed to be public, for-profit corporations that serve Wall Street interests ahead of national defense interests? Am I the only one that sees a massive conflict of interest that can affect (or, probably has affected) our national security in profoundly damaging ways.

It almost feels like Healthcare companies, who are supposed to be focusing on our health and wellbeing, seem to focus on shareholder returns and denying service to the same people that pay the premiums. What's wrong here?

>Now if only the NSA would vet key people in our government

They probably did that for a while.

Sadly, they as an agency were un-vettable to the general public, and abused that position to create tons of blatantly unconstitutional programs that they tried to hide.

>I think it's grossly unethical and negligent that our DOJ/FTC allowed them to acquire film studios, subsidize them with outside business unit profit, put ads across their own properties, then give it all away for "free". This destroys actual healthy industries.

Film & entertainment is not the only area in which Amazon engages in this type of behavior.

They need to be broken up, and Bezos needs to pay his taxes.

> but the corollary to that is "this is the most aligned the incentives between model providers and customers will ever be" because we're all just burning VC money for now.

Please say this louder for everyone to hear. We are still at the stage where it is best for Anthropic's product to be as consumer aligned (and cost-friendly) as possible. Anthropic is loosing a lot of money. Both of those things will not be true in the near future.

Yeah, especially that same offender who was let off easy with 12 unindicted co-conspirators because he "belonged to intelligence" and had deep ties to Mossad.

Yeah, I'd totally let that guy manage my billions after all that.

Lex's entire net worth was managed by Epstein, both before and after the conviction.

This.

Sam's got 3 billion net worth.

Jensen's got 165 billion to his name.

They are giddy about taking jobs away, and both are engaged in "tax reduction strategies" and suck up to Donald Trump.

You wonder why people are pissed?

> Israel were to cross that line, it would be impossible for any government to continue to support Israel.

The same could be said for running a massive pedophile and human trafficking ring, but that line has been crossed and it seems that nobody seems to want to address the country that's found itself at the heart of it all.

Some of those that you'd call grifters are actually seen as leaders by those who claim to be in the movement. That's the problem. If they admit it or not, that's besides the point - if young men look to the likes of Andrew Tate or Clavicular as thought leaders, then they look to them as thought leaders and thus said actors are leaders if they want to be or not.

It's similar to how some athletes are viewed as role models even if they outright tell people "I'm not a role model, I just happen to be good at a sport".