Universal Paperclips is much better and also that's what is going to happen to all of us.
384 karma · joined April 25, 2013
Nuclear it’s still the densest, most reliable zero-carbon option they have. Keeping the existing plants running (and ideally extending their life properly) is far cheaper and faster than hoping wind + batteries will replace dispatchable power.
At some point reality has to trump ideology.
Belgium seems to be slowly waking up to that. The deficit is real, but blackouts and intermittent electricity production prices are also real — and usually more politically painful.
It’s a mess technically: it mandates ISPs and DNS providers to block IPs/domains within 30 minutes of a report, with zero judicial oversight. It’s infamous locally for false positives—it has previously taken down Google Drive nodes and random legitimate CDNs just because they shared an IP with a pirate stream.
The NUCLEAR threat regarding the 2026 Winter Olympics (Milano-Cortina) is the real leverage here. He’s bypassing the regulator and putting a gun to the government’s head regarding national prestige and infrastructure security.
My personal take idea likely outcome: Cloudflare wins.
EU Law: The order almost certainly violates the Digital Services Act (DSA) regarding general monitoring obligations and country-of-origin principles. Realpolitik: The Italian government can't risk the Olympics infrastructure getting DDoS'd into oblivion because AGCOM picked a fight they can't win. They will likely settle for a standard, court-ordered geo-block down the road, but the idea of Cloudflare integrating with a broken 30-minute takedown API is dead on arrival.
Was Microsoft the blocker before? prior agreements clearly made true open-weights awkward-to-impossible without Microsoft’s sign-off. Microsoft had (a) an exclusive license to GPT-3’s underlying tech back in 2020 (i.e., access to the model/code beyond the public API), and (b) later, broad IP rights + API exclusivity on OpenAI models. If you’re contractually giving one partner IP rights and API exclusivity, shipping weights openly would undercut those rights. Today’s language looks like a carve-out to permit some open-weight releases as long as they’re below certain capability thresholds.
A few other notable tweaks in the new deal that help explain the change:
- AGI claims get verified by an independent panel (not just OpenAI declaring it).
- Microsoft keeps model/product IP rights through 2032, but OpenAI can now jointly develop with third parties, serve some things off non-Azure clouds, and—critically—release certain open-weights.
Those are all signs of loosened exclusivity.
My read: previously, the partnership structure (not just “Microsoft saying no”) effectively precluded open-weight releases; the updated agreement explicitly allows them within safety/capability guardrails.
Expect any “open-weight” drops to be intentionally scoped—useful, but a notch below their frontier closed models.
This is a small step in installing an app, but a giant leap for digital freedom. I hope that non-UE citizens can achieve this goal by the end of the decade, not because it is easy, but because it is hard.
I found out the record is 100 minutes. https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/705616v1.full
The improvement could be that it is done on a single commercial compute node.
$ brew cask install zoomus $ brew cask uninstall zoomus
so long and thank you for all the fish... Zoom
Here's all my first sale story.
-Inbound marketing
I setup a web site...and eventually got some leads (name email phone).
-Qualifying call
I call them up and asked them about the problem they were trying to solve. Many of them were just Software tourists (people that sign up just for fun) but some looked promising.
-Skype meeting Setup.
Some of them asked me to visit them... I said yes, but I told them that I would to set up a short Skype meeting first to understand their problem better... In reality I just wanted to know I there where really App-Worthy before doing the human brochure.
-Skype meeting.
At the beginning of the skype meeting I would try to know more about them, their role in the company etc.. After a little warm up I would dive into the problems list and asked them what my app should do for them rather then just presenting my app.
I asked them if they already have a budget, and when they would like to solve the problem
I show them part of my app (only the parts they asked for) and clearly asked them from 1 to 10 if they think my app would solves their problem.
If I got a vote 8 or below I asked what it would take to reach a 10.
If I got a vote above 8 I asked what we should next..
Most of them usually reply "send me a proposal"
-End of story
After few days... I received my first signed proposal... without meetng them.
If you are a company in Italy you pay high taxes and you are less competitive.
If you are a freelancer in Italy you are more competitive than other countries
That's the point of my post:
Incorporate your startup elsewhere and hire in Italy
THE CONS:
Italy environment is toxic for a startup.
Italy is a MandarinCracy.
It is a country, not ruled by politicians, but by self serving high level officials. They oversee 4 million strong public workforce, and have created the most complex set of rules & regulations and to justify they own existence along with the highest taxation (80%) on the world to pay for them.
THE PROS
Italy Freelance workforce is great for a startup.
They have a huge freelancers Workforce, (designers and Developers) with the same talent found in the Silicon Valley at the fraction of the cost. ($28K to $40K year salary). They are called "popolo delle partite iva" and are de facto a second level citizen. They do not have the same privileges as the rest of the 50+ workforce. Still.. they will work hard and passion for any project with great critical thinking.
My final advice:
Create a business somewhere else (UK or US) and setup a small R&D development team in Italy
I think is just a virtual product. Probably unused S3 capacity, at a much lower price, not a different technology.