aylmao

If Alberta were to separate, I can only imagine it would be to become part of the USA. If Alberta became part of the USA, there would be many factors pushing the North West Territories, the Yukon and British Columbia to follow.

The Northwest Territories and Yukon simply make sense for the USA to want. It connects Alaska, they're relatively unpopulated (which makes annexation easy), and as northern trade routes become more feasible, are strategic for the USA to try to claim.

British Columbia has sizable population, but can it exist as part of Canada, isolated from the rest of Canada?

I think the geography of Canada is fascinating. It has long been a "river country", like Pakistan or Egypt, built around the St. Laurence river [1]. It inherited sizable "extra" territory on the west from the British— territory the Brits kept from the USA back when they were in a position to defend it.

This non-St. Laurence Canada has slowly been populating, but looking at North American maps— from population density [2], to roads [3][4], to railroads [5], it just seems so relatively disconnected at the longitude of Lake Superior. I don't really know if it's possible to build a big city in the Thunder Bay/Nipigon area, but it almost feels like there should be one there.

I get that Ottawa was made the capital in 1857 as a compromise between French and English speaking Canada, but if the USA keeps pushing this rhetoric (and we all know it's the USA behind Alberta separatism), would it be beneficial to move the Capital to Winnipeg? It's closer to the actual center of Canada, which would not only exert more influence on the west, but be a forcing function on east-west connectivity and with it, union.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_of_Canada#/media/Fi...

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_of_Canada#/media/Fi...

[3]: https://www.cec.org/north-american-environmental-atlas/major...

[4]: https://koordinates.com/layer/110462-north-american-roads-20...

[5]: https://www.cbc.ca/news2/interactives/map-rail-canada/

This certainly sounds to me more like a Texas situation. Independent for about a year, to then join the USA.

> Turns out, the vast majority of Chinese citizens with any means are interested in foreign products (like most people in the world).

Is there data that backs up this claim? Is this broadly the case? Cause I do know that local brands have been taking over foreign brands recently. Take for example Apple— sales in China plunged 50%, and reports are pointing at Huawei [1], which amongst other things has been making some impressive high-end phones. Tesla is falling to Chinese brands too [2].

Moreover, foreign brand != foreign product. Tesla manufactures in China, as does Apple, Louis Vuitton, etc.

But regardless of specific examples, I'd imagine the vast majority of consumption in China isn't products of foreign origin given its massive trade surplus [3] and just how much of what it imports are materials, rather than finished consumer goods [4].

[1]: https://www.asiafinancial.com/apple-sales-in-china-plunge-50...

[2]: https://carnewschina.com/2025/05/12/teslas-sales-in-china-do...

[3]: https://tradingeconomics.com/china/balance-of-trade

[4]: https://oec.world/en/profile/country/chn?selector343id=Impor...

Beyond national security or nostalgia, there's also simply the issue of skill and expertise. Factories are full of people actually working the tools, materials and processes. This is where generational experience forms— people learn a lot when they're actually hands-on. Tim Cook famously said they don't manufacture in China because of the low labour cost, but the quantity of skill (specifically, in the case of Apple, with advanced tooling and materials) [1].

This skill becomes innovation, quality, etc. and before you know it you're not inventing and designing devices for other people to build. You're buying devices designed, invented and built somewhere else.

I would also note that admiring and romanticizing capital over labour IMO is common in the USA than in other countries. I'd guess it's because the rest of the world saw some level of marxist influence that led to the formation of still-existing labour parties in the least, while the USA prosecuted marxism pretty strongly. Beyond how effective this marxist wave actually was in achieving better conditions for laborers, I'd say it at least did generally lead to ideological effects.

The general ideas that there's dignity in all work, that any job should pay a living wage, that money isn't the end all, that laborers deserve recognition, etc— I've noticed all those to be more prevalent outside the USA. Admiring people who make a lot of money with little work, or not working and living off rents, or wealth irrespective of the means to achieve it, etc— I've noticed that moreso in the USA.

So overall, you're right— I'm sure a lot of people in the USA wont actually want those jobs with how little protections labour has and how much people admire earning good money with little effort. Though nonetheless, I also believe there's a sector of the population —perhaps not in HN— that would appreciate those jobs.

[1]: https://observer.com/2025/04/apple-tim-cook-china-strategy/

China's GDP (PPP) is already ~22% higher than the USA's [1]. Arguably, isn't this a better measure of value? PPP measures the real value to the citizens in a nation, and more closely measures actual economic activity.

Say a bottle of wine costs $20 in the USA, and in total one bottle is produced and sold for a total of $20 GDP. France makes 10 bottles at $2 each, for a similar GDP of $20. It's cool that the USA manages to "extract more value" from its smaller wine production, but at the end of the day, France has the stronger economy.

There's more wine to go around, more resilience to the loss of a bottle, arguably this higher production means more export capacity, more employment, more generation of wine expertise, supply chains, etc.

The nominal GDPs might be the same, but the GDP (PPP) of France in this case would be $200 to the USA's $20.

[1]: https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/field/real-gdp-purcha...

China is automating at an impressive rate. Isn’t automation easier to face with population decline than with population increase? I’d imagine young people mind getting replaced by machines more than old people.

I can't decide how I feel about Google's design for this looking so Apple-y.

Didn't they just release Material Design Expressive a few days ago [1]? Instead of bold shapes, bold fonts and solid colors it gradients, simple lines, frosted glass, and a single, clean, sans-serif font here. The bento-box slides look quite Apple-y too [2]. Switch the Google Sans for SF Pro, pull back on the border radius a bit, and you've essentially got the Apple look. It does look great though.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43975352

[2]: https://blog.google/products/gemini/gemini-app-updates-io-20...

This is incredibly Google-y. From the ridiculous KPIs that attempt to create some framework of quantifiable improvement, to trying to make a big-deal launch out of what seems to be a minor iteration on what was there before (Material You).

This design system is screaming for attention. It doesn't need to make a big splash, only seem like it does to look good on a performance review / promo package. It all looks very MoMA-worthy on the website [1], but I wonder how much of the bold ideas here should and will make it to actual apps.

[1]: https://m3.material.io/

It doesn't have to be in the middle of the ocean to be less accessible than an on-ground data-center.

Even if it's in a giant pool next to an any existing data-center— accessing a machine that's underwater probably takes longer and is more likely to affect the operation of other machines than if it were on dry land.

> New York's subways were built by private companies. So were America's railroads.

Didn't this cause a lot of problems, which is why they were eventually consolidated under a public authority?

I do find interesting and cool that private urban transport seems to work well in Japan and do wonder what's the system around this private ownership to have it work as well as it does.

Famously authoritarian pre-1950s USA [1]...

[1]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-08-31/why-is-am...

> Microsoft had/has the Natick project which was an undersea data center testbed which allegedly had a bunch of benefits. That doesn't seem to have gone anywhere - or at least isn't really scaling up.

I think at the core of this there's a risk analysis. At one point I briefly worked in a team in charge of a company's servers, and there were plenty of stories of things gone wrong enough that someone had to drive or fly to the datacenter. These company's datacenters were named after the closest airport for this reason, iirc. A little optimization in case things went very wrong; you always knew where you'd have to fly in to.

Even if an undersea data center could potentially yield cost benefits, it's also significantly riskier in case something goes wrong. How long would it take to physically access a machine? Do you have to bring down other machines to access it? And at scale, things tend to always go wrong.

To comment on the original post, needless to say this is even more complicated, costly and untimely in space.

> It feels like everyone and their mother is building coding agents these days.

For real. I think it's because code editors seem to be in that perfect intersection of:

- A tool for programmers. Programmers like building for programmers.

- A tool for productivity. Companies will pay for productivity.

- A tool that's clearly AI-able. VC's will invest in AI tools.

- A tool with plenty of open source lift. The clear, common (and extreme?) example of this being forking VSCode.

Add to that the recent purchase of VSCode-fork [1] Windsurf for $3 billion [2] and I suspect we will see many more of these.

[1]: https://windsurf.com/blog/why-we-built-windsurf#:~:text=This...

[2]: https://community.openai.com/t/openai-is-acquiring-windsurf-...

Subscription services can sell ads too. See Hulu, or Netflix. Spotify might not play "radio ads" if you pay, but it will still advertise artists on your home screen.

These models being expensive leads me to think they will look at all methods of monetization possible when seeking profitability. Rather than ads being off the table, it could feasibly make ads be on the table sooner.

> Unless somebody else figures out something which is better by orders of magnitude and that Open AI can't copy quickly, it's going to stay that way.

This will happen, and it won't be another model which Open AI can't copy, it'll be products.

I don't doubt OpenA I can create the better models but they're no moat if they're not in better products. Right now the main product is chat, which is easy enough to build, but as integrations get deeper how can OpenAI actually ensure it keeps traffic?

Case in point, Siri. Apple allows you to use ChatGPT with Siri right now. If Apple chooses so, they could easily remove that setting. On most devices ChatGPT lives within the confines of an app or the browser. A phone with deep AI integration is arguably a fantastic product— much better than having to open an app and chat with a model. How quickly could Open AI build a phone that's as good as those of the big phone companies today?

To draw a parallel— Google Assistant has long been better than Siri, but to use Siri you don't have to install an app. I've used both Android and iOS, and every time I'm on iPhone I switch back to Siri because in spite of being a worse assistant, it's overall a better product. It integrates well with the rest of the phone, because Apple has chosen to not allow any other voice assistant integrate deeply with the rest of the phone.

I'd go further and say the US government wants "an instrument more powerful than any nuclear weapon" to be built in its territory, by people it has jurisdiction over.

It might not be a direct US-govt project like the Manhattan Project was, but it doesn't have to. The government has the ties it needs with the heads of all these AI companies, and if it comes to it, the US-govt has the muscle and legal authority to reign control over it.

A good deal for everyone involved really. These companies get to make bank and technology that furthers their market dominance, the US-govt gets potentially "Manhattan project"-level pivotal technology— it's elites helping elites.

> There's too much change for the sake of change.

+1 to this. Like a lot of issues, I think the root is ideological, but this one in particular very clearly manifests organizationally.

The companies building everyday software are ever bigger— full of software engineers, designers and various kinds of managers who are asked to justify their generous salaries. At an individual level I'm sure there's all sorts of cases, but at a general level there's often almost no other option but to introduce change for the sake of change.

> There's too much change for the sake of change.

+1 to this. Like a lot of issues, I think the root is ideological, but this one in particular very clearly manifests organizationally.

The companies building everyday software are ever bigger— full of software engineers, designers and various kinds of managers who are asked to justify their generous salaries. At an individual level I'm sure there's all sorts of cases, but at a general level there's almost no other option but to introduce change for the sake of change.

> A lot of the value in big tech comes from scale and integration and is inherently not sensible to have a thousand mom and pop shops do it and keep the same value.

Some of the most impactful large-scale tech that exist today isn't centralized or monopolized. The internet, for example, or email. There's been a long history of "email killers", but no company has been able to replace email yet. One can achieve integration with standardization, and scale through federation.

In fact, I'd say federation scales better than centralization. In spite of appearances, mom and pop shops scale fantastically. Having thousands of independent actors servicing a market makes an industry much more dynamic and resilient. It's why the biggest restaurants are franchises, for example.

I'd add that the period of greatest innovation in the web wasn't 2004 when IE had 95% of the market, or today when Chrome has 65%. Id argue it was that 2008-2018 decade; an era that also saw the most browser variety we've seen recently.

> any other company who is willing to value Chrome at any significant price is inevitably going to need a scaled product to tie this to and accomplish what Google did with Chrome

Chrome could well be an independent company, like Mozilla is. There's plenty of money to be made in being the middle-man for search engines.

Out of curiosity, what does SNI stand for?

> passenger volume will not be high enough to justify the costs.

Roads generally don't pay for themselves

The amount of conversation around this is testament it's not everyone's desired lifestyle.

In my region (Latin America) when a "boondoggle" of such high monetary cost happens, we call it for what it usually is— corruption.

All those billions of dollars are going to someone's pockets. There's a lot of money to be made from inefficient infrastructure projects.

Very cool idea! It reminds me of how software works— you usually drag an LFO to the knob to modulate a parameter.

A few people have pointed out that the knob can act as an attenuator when it's being modulated via a jack, but sometimes the goal is space. I can also imagine a version of this that uses the same technique, but where the knob has an audio jack on it. You wouldn't need to unplug it to connect the incoming cable, and you could use the still-connected knob as an attenuator if you wanted to. This would get you the best of all worlds— maximum space, an intuitive interface, and attenuators if you so choose to have them.

Unsure what the tone of this message is, so I don't know if you're aware, but that's included too:

> Behind the figures of the human beings, the silhouette of the Pioneer spacecraft is shown in the same scale so that the size of the human beings can be deduced by measuring the spacecraft.

It's good to have redundancy, not just so someone interpreting the plaque can confirm their hypothesis, but also in case one of the messages fail. In this case, the spacecraft could break, but we can assume quantum transitions will always be observable.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_plaque

"that’s when it struck me. coding isn’t about the finished product. its a lot like writing. its about the process. its about how you approach a problem. its critical thinking."

I like this analogy, because anyone who has written and/or has a habit of writing would attest this is not (only) some ideological claim about developing skills by doing the hard work yourself.

Writing clears up the brain, a lot. It structures ideas, both on the paper and in your brain, in a way you can't structure them any other way. It leads to new ideas, makes you realize mistakes or fallacies, and somehow can make you feel less worried when writing about things that stress you out. The way you write matters too— handwriting not only _feels_ different from typing, in spite of being slower it's sometimes the better tool to write certain things. Part of writing effectively is knowing when the slowness of handwriting is actually what you need— speed isn't always better.

It's often useful and productive to write things, even if no one will ever read them again.

I think it's similar with coding, and in a way I think it's related to something that happens all too often with engineers too. There's a lot of talk about developers having side-projects that are never done, and many see this as negative thing, but I've long held on the contrary, that it is in fact a very healthy thing. Sometimes you just need to code for the sake of organizing your ideas and laying them on the screen, not because you'll sell what you write, or someone else will use it or read it. Heck, often you won't even yourself. But that's fine, often the concretizing on "paper" ideas floating in your head is itself is what you actually need.

+1. Software developers has long leveraged "someone else" writing code for their projects— be that "someone else" another human, via libraries, platforms, frameworks, etc. Or a computer, using codegen tools, compilers, etc. Sometimes it's to save tediousness, sometimes to save time, sometimes to leverage better code than one could've written.

I think AI is best when used in this same way of thinking— not a tool that should handle all the coding for you, but as a very powerful codegen tool that you can leverage in many parts of your project.

What languages is their codebase developed in?

China is socialist.

> I've always been a staunch defender of capitalism and free markets, even though that's historically been an unpopular opinion in my particular social circle. Watching the LLM market, I can't help but feel extremely vindicated.

> The brutal and bruising competition between the tech giants has left nothing but riches for the average consumer.

Capitalism has always been great at this: creating markets, growing them, producing new goods. It's widely acknowledged amongst people who actually seek to gain an understanding of Marxism, and don't just stay in the surface-level black-and-white "socialism and capitalism are opposites" discourse that's very common in the West, especially the USA, especially after the McCarthy's Red Scare.

The problem is what comes once the market is grown and the only way for owners keep profits growing is: 1. consolidating into monopolies or cartels, so competition doesn't get in the way of profits, 2. squeezing the working class, looking to pay less for more work, and/or 3. abusing the natural world, to extract more materials or energy for less money. This is evident in plenty of developed industries: from health care, to broadcasting, telecommunications, fashion, etc.

If we view Socialism for what it is, namely a system built to replace Capitalism's bad parts but keep its good parts, China's system, for example, starts to make more sense. Capitalism in a similar way was an evolution from Feudalism that replaced it's bad parts, to achieve greater liberty for everyone— liberty is very much lost as Feudalism matures, but great for society as a whole. Socialism is meant to be the similar, aiming to achieve greater equity, which it views as very much better for society as a whole.