baron816

> converting Fremont factory lines to make Optimus robots

I’m very bullish on humanoid robots, but this seems absolutely batshit insane to me. These things are no where near ready for full scale production.

It’s so strange to see people accusing tech companies of using AI to concentrate power and wealth when thus far, AI has almost entirely been all consumer surplus. You have crazily high competition in the industry that allows you the consumer to use SOTA models for free, or even run them yourself.

My prediction is that this will keep going all the way to the AGI stage. Someone will release (or leak) an AGI capable model that’s able to design AI chips, as well as the Fabs needed to build them, as well as robots to build and operate the Fabs and robot factories and raw material mines and refineries.

> Start with monopolies: tech companies are gigantic and they don’t compete, they just take over whole sectors, either on their own or in cartels.

>Google and Meta control the ad market. Google and Apple control the mobile market,

“Tech companies are monopolies”, proceeds to describe how tech companies compete with each other.

It’s not binary. It’s not existential. What’s at stake for Nvidia is its HUGE profit margins. 5 years from now, Nvidia could be selling 100x as many chips. But its market cap could be a fraction of what it is now if competition is so intense that its making 5% profit margin instead of 90%.

My prediction is that in the not-to-distant future, we’re all going to live indefinitely in simulations that optimized for human experience. To do this, AIs will “highjack” our nervous systems and feed generated worlds to use to experience. This kind of thing makes it seem like it’s pretty realistic.

I remember when it was a trope that the weatherman was always wrong and that the weather was the prototypal thing that was inherently “unpredictable”.

I think sama thinks money won’t really exist within the next few years. ASI will take over and create a world of radical abundance. Any revenue OpenAI generates is just to create leverage.

Have you ever worked in a manufacturing job? Surveys have shown that people are much happier, on average, with their service jobs than they were in the past when manufacturing was more prevalent. That's because factory work involves doing dangerous, repetitive, mind numbing work in a loud, often overcrowded, odorous, and hot space. It's a meme that everyone wants to bring back manufacturing jobs, but no one actually wants to work in manufacturing. People want cozy office jobs.

A key feature of “late stage capitalism” is that people move up the value chain, stop doing menial labor, and find better, more fulfilling jobs that don’t involve putting boxes in other boxes.

Because Apple has a whole lot of money, but no meaningful bets in the AI race.

It’s crazy to me that Apple hasn’t acquired them. Apple is looking for a way to get into AI, and I think this space is much more natural fit than some foundation model lab. The big hurdles to getting these into people’s homes is manufacturing scale, trust and privacy, and customer support, all things Apple is really good at.

> Engineers, he explains, are driven to build while lawyers are driven to argue, and obstruct.

This is kind of the criticism that’s provided in Abundance. American Progressives intentionally made it extremely difficult to build anything by giving everyone a veto to block anything they don’t like.

There’s a lot of people on the Left (Center Left, at least) who want to revisit this approach and make it easier to build things again.

I also want to note that they point out that the current administration has a policy of scarcity. Even if we get rid of a lot of regulation, tariffs, deportations, and high government deficits make it hard to buy materials, hire labor, and finance projects.

It drives me insane that the VC industry threw so much money towards delivery in so many ways (restaurant delivery, meal kits, ghost kitchens, etc), when that’s the part that matters the least.

If I were to do a startup, it would be a food company that leverages drive thru. Optimize everything to maximize throughput on the drive thru by only accepting orders ahead of time (maybe even days ahead of time so that the establishment knows exactly how much food to order and prepare). The food is ready and can be dropped right into the person’s car as soon as they pull up.

People are fine with driving around, especially if it’s on the way home from work or close to where they live. What they don’t like is going to the grocery story, cooking the same three basic meals they know how to cook, cleaning, and eating the same leftovers for five nights in a row.

I can’t believe VCs and startup founders failed to realize the driving part was not the thing people were willing to pay a premium for at scale. They want cheap, tasty, diverse, that’s more convenient than cooking, but doesn’t need to be dropped off at their doorstep.

Umm…hate to break it to you, but https://youtu.be/NeJ6wq2szVs?si=RFwtccO9_QH1CJzY

Robotaxis are good, but everyone owning a driverless car is bad.

Imagine you get to your destination, there’s no parking (or no free parking), so you tell your car to just circle the block while you’re inside. You spend an hour there at the tanning salon, and the car has just been circling, using the street as a parking lot and creating congestion. What happens when everyone does that?

I’m a big proponent of driverless cars, but we will need laws that ban individual private ownership. We’re going to have to experience the tragedy of the commons first because people really won’t want to give up their cars.

Correct. We’re not reversing things anytime soon, and the longer things stay like this, the more damage will be done.

Indeed. We’re not fixing it anytime soon.

The good news is that these economic problems are entirely the result of bad policies and can be reversed.

If we were to also raise broad based taxes, it would allow the Fed to cut interest rates, stoking long term investment, loosen up the housing market (which would allow more people to move), lower the Federal deficit, and improve the trade balance (as if that actually mattered).

Reporting agencies will get the headline figures a few minutes early under embargo. They have very strict rules on handling that information.

If there’s any issues with releases, they’re not going to be resolved by putting them on a blockchain

WTF are you talking about? All this data is freely available on government websites such as https://www.bls.gov/ and in easily downloaded formats. Putting it on the blockchain is pointless.

In a sane political system, we would’ve raised taxes (across the board). That would’ve slowed down consumption and allowed the Fed to lower interest rates, which would’ve raised investment. It also would’ve reduced the deficit, which would also be good for long term economic health.

Instead, we blew up the deficit and lowered taxes (but only for the really rich).

So many problems and social angst is downstream of expensive housing. Higher interest rates, fewer laborers, and more expensive building supplies (due to tariffs) is just making the housing crisis worse.

Oh and just wait until the Fed’s independence is completely gone. Our economy is galloping towards Peronism. Favored groups get economic benefits. Inflation is out of control. Competitiveness is gone. Capital flight. Rapid erosion of quality of life. It won’t be fun.

I was on Market Street yesterday on my bike next to a Waymo. A bunch of cars were blocking the intersection when we had the green. The light turned red and the cars blocking the intersection were able to move. I decided to stay, but the Waymo sped through despite the light being red. I regretted not crossing.

See https://www.derekthompson.org/p/what-caused-the-baby-boom-wh...

The mid-century Baby Boom occurred after a surge in affordable home keeping technologies (vacuum cleaners, washing machines, refrigerators, etc). I think a rebound in fertility will have to come from technology. Specifically, robots to help with child care and new fertility treatments to allow women to have children later in their lives.

> We need to build and maintain vast AI infrastructure and the energy to power it. To do that, we will continue to reject radical climate dogma

> This initial phase acknowledges the need to safeguard existing assets and ensures an uninterrupted and affordable supply of power. The United States must prevent the premature decommissioning of critical power generation resources

Yeah, they're going to do all they can to block cheap renewables and give handouts to fossil fuel companies.

Employee to CEO pay ratio is such a meaningless and distracting measure. Imagine there is a hedge fund that has only a handful of very highly paid employees. Compare that to a very large multi-national corporation that employs hundreds of thousands of low skilled laborers (something like Walmart). Let’s also imagine the CEOs of both companies have identical pay packages. All else being equal, the hedge fund that only employs a few people is much better for society than the company employing many many more people. I don’t think anyone here would agree with that.

One thing we absolutely don’t want to do is disincentivize companies hiring people at the lowest end of the socioeconomic ladder. If employing those people lowers how much executives are allowed to get paid, what do you think is going to happen?

I hope at some point, ride hailing companies will start offering something like a bus service. The trick will be normalizing prescheduling trips. Like, if I schedule a vehicle to pick me up at 8:15am to drive me to the office Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and a return trip at 5:30, you'd be able to better optimize picking up more people on the way who are going to a similar location and to do so in an appropriately sized vehicle. That would bring down prices a whole lot, while mitigating congestion.

I'd be willing to pay a bit more vs a bus if it means I can have a reliable pickup time, a guaranteed seat, and I feel safe.

The supply of housing is more elastic than you think. Some people have spare bedrooms, or second homes in LA. They may have previously chosen to leave them vacant, but for many people the higher rates they can get on Airbnb can entice them to list them. This happens at the margins—it’s not an all or nothing thing. So the higher people can earn renting out available space, the more they’ll be willing to rent. At some price point, even a billionaire will rent out their garage.

I’m optimistic about humanoid robotics, but I’m curious about the reliability issue. Biological limbs and hands are quite miraculous when you consider that they are able to constantly interact with the world, which entails some natural wear and tear, but then constantly heal themselves.

One thing Waymo did really well was roll out their service extremely slowly. They knew they needed to build a whole lot of trust to get people to accept them. Can Tesla do the same thing? Can they accumulate a track record of being nearly perfect for several years before trying to scale up?