panarky

Other than the NYT and WSJ, the only national example I can think of is The Guardian's US operation, but that one is supported by a trust plus recurring donations from readers.

There are some good regional examples that show people will still pay enough for rigorous, old-school, fact-checked journalism to make it sustainable.

Minneapolis Star Tribune: ~200 newsroom staff, roughly $220M annual revenue, solidly profitable, seven Pulitzers.

Seattle Times: ~600 employees (not sure how many in the newsroom), marginally profitable after paying legacy pension obligations, nine Pulitzers.

Guardian US: ~110 editorial staff in the US, no subscribers but ~270,000 recurring and ~170,000 annual one-time donations, one Pulitzer but maybe that one should be shared with Snowden.

404media: tiny, 5 people, but solid investigative journalism, national distribution, and some pretty impressive scoops, and it makes a profit from subscriptions.

I don't know how to quantify "national appeal", but the Post had about 2.5 million paid subscribers in 2023 and ~800 newsroom staff, while The Atlantic had about 1.1 million paid subscribers and ~200 newsroom staff.

Now the Post is down to ~2 million paid subscribers and 500 newsroom staff.

I don't think the Post was known as a slanted project for "the political opposition" during red or blue administrations, but it's got that reputation now.

My claim is that this new slant is responsible for the bulk of the paper's loss of paid subscribers. There's a market for rigorous, fact-checked reporting. Degrading that makes the business worse, not better.

Before Google, web search was a toxic stew of conflicts of interest. It was impossible to tell if search results were paid ads or the best possible results for your query.

Google changed all that, and put a clear wall between organic results and ads. They consciously structured the company like a newspaper, to prevent the information side from being polluted and distorted by the money-making side.

Here's a snip from their IPO letter [0]:

Google users trust our systems to help them with important decisions: medical, financial and many others. Our search results are the best we know how to produce. They are unbiased and objective, and we do not accept payment for them or for inclusion or more frequent updating. We also display advertising, which we work hard to make relevant, and we label it clearly. This is similar to a well-run newspaper, where the advertisements are clear and the articles are not influenced by the advertisers’ payments. We believe it is important for everyone to have access to the best information and research, not only to the information people pay for you to see.

Anthropic's statement reads the same way, and it's refreshing to see them prioritize long-term values like trust over short-term monetization.

It's hard to put a dollar value on trust, but even when they fall short of their ideals, it's still a big differentiator from competitors like Microsoft, Meta and OpenAI.

I'd bet that a large portion of Google's enterprise value today can be traced to that trust differential with their competitors, and I wouldn't be surprised to see a similar outcome for Anthropic.

Don't be evil, but unironically.

[0] https://abc.xyz/investor/founders-letters/ipo-letter/default...

> They historically had the best political coverage of DC

And then Bezos replaced veteran leaders with ideological leaders from the Murdoch empire. Then Bezos put his thumb on the scale and vetoed the paper's presidential endorsement in 2024, and 250,000 subscribers cancelled. Then Bezos dictated that the paper's opinion section will censor any idea that does not support conservative/libertarian/free-market ideology and 75,000 more subscribers cancelled.

Maybe the ideological reorientation along with savage cuts to the newsroom has something to do the loss of subscribers and the dire financial straits used to justify even more cuts to the newsroom?

There is a market for quality, fact-checked journalism that you can't get on podcasts and social media. But when you force that journalism through a right-wing ideological filter, you destroy the intrinsic value of independent journalism.

Keep everyone precarious and fearful, stringing together multiple bullshit jobs to make the rent, always one car repair or health scare away from the abyss.

Let owners/exploiters suppress the wages they pay workers in the name of efficiency.

Encourage owners/exploiters to relentlessly raise the prices workers pay owners/exploiters in the name of shareholder value.

Then say "there is no alternative", our civilization is predicated on systematic exploitation to survive, and if you try to change it now "everyone will die".

The owner/exploiter class is going to replace labor with capital like they always have.

The worker's enemy isn't the automation that eliminates work, the worker's enemy is is the owner/exploiter who weaponizes automation in their class war.

So much the better?

If the islanders are ever to band together and liberate themselves by seizing the magic stone, then they must first stop praising the owner for making them work, and they must stop plotting to destroy the magic stone that could liberate them from their toil.

A small island has 20 residents.

One farmer works full time to grow enough food to feed everyone.

One carpenter works full time to maintain housing for everyone.

The other 18 people work full time reciting incantations to the gods to prevent their destruction.

The farmer and the carpenter are too busy growing food and maintaining housing to recite incantations all day.

So each of the 18 incantation reciters spends an extra two hours every week to recite incantations for the farmer and the carpenter to prevent their destruction too.

Then a magic stone is discovered that can recite the incantations by itself, the gods are appeased, and nobody has to work full time reciting incantations any more.

How can the islanders possibly survive now that 90% of them don't have full-time jobs?

The farmer and the carpenter are no worse off, but they think it's unfair that they must continue working full-time while 90% of the residents don't work at all.

Perhaps the farmer and the carpenter should destroy the magic stone so that everyone will have full-time jobs again.

Or is there some other way the islanders can survive after 90% of the work has been eliminated?

Jobs are poison.

Why is everyone so worried about poison going away?

If the core issue is ending exploitation by capitalists and not about breaking machines, if you don't want to return to a world without automation, if the machine is just a strawman, then why do you describe yourself as "anti-AI" instead of "anti-capitalist" or "anti-exploitation"?

It seems like you identify yourself with the strawman instead of with the core issue.

Because life would be so much better if people still had to spin wool and weave cloth by hand, and grow their own food by digging in the earth with no tools.

Use whatever means necessary to stop powerful people from exploiting you and stealing the fruits of your labor. If that struggle involves monkeywrenching their machines, so be it.

But like any tool, the machines themselves can be used for good or evil. Breaking the machines shouldn't be an end in itself.

> you refuse ... you wouldn't ... you wish ... you let your political bias blind you ...

You don't know anything about me, but the strawman you're describing sounds like a real dipshit.

When the Fed purchases bonds, that reduces interest rates, and lower rates make asset prices go up.

The Fed purchases the bonds with cash created out of thin air with a journal entry. That newly created cash is used by private actors to purchase assets, which makes asset prices go up.

The Fed could purchase equities directly, but it doesn't have to own them to influence their prices.

He's the first world leader I've seen who publicly tells other leaders to stop complaining that the false thing is false, that pretending the false thing is true hurts everyone except the hegemon at the top. Taking concrete action to build a replacement system it is kinda the opposite of whining.

If equities are "too big to fail" then governments will do everything in their power to ensure prices continue to go up.

If the right price for equities is 30% of their current value, and if achieving that price means the regime will fall in the next election (or sooner due to civil disorder), then the regime will not allow that to happen.

A regime that controls its own currency has nearly unlimited power to prop up whatever asset classes it wants to, from bonds to equities to housing.

Doing that has consequences like inflation which people don't like, and could cause them to vote the bastards out. But the regime could also print even more money for direct deposits into voters' bank accounts before an election.

So it seems like equities have limited downside until there's a regime change.

>> Canada's Carney whines about "international order" when just a few years ago ...

> They have pretended to play by the rules

@YZF is unwittingly agreeing with Carney. The rules-based order is partially a fiction. Relevant snips from Carney's Davos speech.

"The system's power comes not from its truth, but from everyone's willingness to perform as if it were true, and its fragility comes from the same source."

"For decades, countries like Canada prospered under what we called the rules-based international order. We joined its institutions, we praised its principles, we benefited from its predictability. And because of that, we could pursue values-based foreign policies under its protection."

"We knew the story of the international rules-based order was partially false ..."

"This fiction was useful, and American hegemony, in particular, helped provide public goods, open sea lanes, a stable financial system, collective security and support for frameworks for resolving disputes."

When the US invaded Iraq, it at least pretended it was following the rules. It appealed to the UN for approval, it justified the invasion in the name of freedom and democracy.

It was all bullshit, but at least the US sustained the myth of a system of rules and a moral order.

But the US no longer pretends. It invades Venezuela and publicly states it was all about oil.

So even the pretense is gone now, and the benefits that came from pretending are gone. That's the "rupture" Carney is talking about, that sustaining the myths is not longer useful, so it's time to stop pretending.

A system that is closer to physical, tangible reality is more "real" than one built on many layers of concepts, beliefs and ideas.

Just as "real assets" like buildings, machinery and metals are more "real" than abstract assets.

Abstract assets like shares of a corporation, intellectual property, cash in a bank account, promises to deliver a commodity in the future, and other intangible concepts only exist because we collectively believe they exist and trust each other to follow rules.

There are real weapons and prisons at the bottom of this stack of abstractions to force people to comply, but it's mostly collective belief, trust, culture and tradition.

When we devolve from a rules-based order to might-makes-right, those layers of abstraction between us and the weapons evaporate, and ordinary people like moms and ER nurses get gunned down in broad daylight by agents of the state asserting raw power.

Abstractions like law and due process evaporate, and the "real world" underneath is nasty, brutish and short.

The international "rules-based order" is a good idea when most nations play by the rules most of the time, and when the most powerful at least pretend to follow the same rules as everyone else.

A world order based on rules makes it possible to live at a much higher level of abstraction.

Abstractions like rule of law, democracy, government currencies and stock exchanges are intangible and imaginary. They're mostly just figments of collective belief. But these wispy and unreal ideas that everyone believes in make it possible for most people to live longer, healthier and less difficult lives.

The "rules-based order" was always partly mythical, but as long as everyone kept pretending, it mostly continued to function.

But when we devolve from the rules-based order to the old order of pure power and might-makes-right, kings and dictators, when there's no more collective belief that the rules apply to the rich and powerful, then the tower of abstractions collapses, and we're back to the cold, hard, brutal and difficult real world.

People will find out that life in the real world is a lot poorer and more miserable than life at the top of the tower of abstractions, even if your brokerage account appears to double.

This is straight-up Baudrillard simulacra/simulation.

The moment you say "Dao" (or "Agile", or "methodology"), you've already moved from the thing-in-itself to a sign living inside a sign system. That sign can be useful, but it can't be identical to what it points at.

> “The Agile that can be PM’d is not Agile.”

That’s exactly the stages of simulacra in miniature:

- Faithful copy: "Agile" names a set of lived practices that correspond to reality.

- Masks/denatures: cargo-cult rituals distort it (standups-as-status-reporting).

- Masks absence: the org performs Agile theater to hide that genuine agility is gone.

- Pure simulacrum: "Agile" becomes a self-referential brand/signifier (certs, metrics, tooling) that relates primarily to other signs ("Agile maturity model", "story points velocity"), not to any actual working output.

Just tried it again. Creation took a very long time, then errored.

    $ sprite version
    sprite version v0.0.1-rc30

    $ sprite create quk

     Error creating sprite: failed to create sprite: Post "https://api.sprites.dev/v1/sprites": context deadline exceeded (Client.Timeout exceeded while awaiting headers)

But despite the error, the sprite was apparently created, and it runs continuously.

    $ sprite ls
    Sprites in organization <redacted>:

    ┌────┬───────┬────────┐
    │NAME│STATUS │CREATED │
    ├────┼───────┼────────┤
    │quk │running│14m ago │
    └────┴───────┴────────┘

    Total: 1 sprite(s)

No console activity, no HTTP requests, but it doesn't stop.

Can't find any place in CLI or web UI to see how many minutes are charged for CPU, memory, storage.

    $ sprite ls
    Sprites in organization <redacted>:

    ┌────┬───────┬────────┐
    │NAME│STATUS │CREATED │
    ├────┼───────┼────────┤
    │duh │running│ 23h ago│
    └────┴───────┴────────┘

    Total: 1 sprite(s)

There's no way to stop sprites from the CLI.

Supposedly they auto-stop when inactive.

But I've tried multiple times and they don't stop, and it's not just Docker that prevents them from stopping.

I created a new sprite and installed ffmpeg. Then exited. Next day I run `sprite ls` and it's been running continuously for 23 hours.

No way to tell if I'm being billed for it or not.

And the per-hour pricing is extremely expensive.

So for now it's `sprite destroy -s spritename`.

Maybe I'll check it out again in a few months after the fly team has iterated on this a few times.

When I see stories that make me want to click, I read HN comments first, and 8 times in ten that saves me a from a "won't get fooled again" moment.

There's got to be a way to generalize this for anyone who still cares about the difference between real facts and manipulation.

Sufficiently advanced ideological capture is indistinguishable from parody.

If you're not willing to pay for your own LLM usage to try a free resource offered by the author, that's up to you. But why complain to the author about it? How does your comment enrich the conversation for the rest of us?

Yes, it has actually worked starting with the Pixel 3.

It's called Dual-Band Simultaneous or "STA+AP" (Station + Access Point) concurrency that can bridge an existing wifi connection to an access point to other devices via a hotspot.

> Network controls alone don’t stop exfiltration.

Stop signs alone don't stop all traffic accidents.

And then a few of those users who you treated like adults who don't need surveillance make a private network among themselves and other nodes in Russia and China to exfiltrate the corporation's most sensitive intellectual property, serve as a bridge for state-sponsored bad actors to bypass your firewall, and tunnel command-and-control traffic through your "unrestricted" egress, and now your zero-trust philosophy has created a zero-accountability blind spot that your IR team discovers eighteen months later during a breach investigation.

The depreciation schedule isn't as big a factor as you'd think.

The marginal cost of an API call is small relative to what users pay, and utilization rates at scale are pretty high. You don't need perfect certainty about GPU lifespan to see that the spread between cost-per-token and revenue-per-token leaves a lot of room.

And datacenter GPUs have been running inference workloads for years now, so companies have a good idea of rates of failure and obsolescence. They're not throwing away two-year-old chips.

Better to spell out exactly what you think is misleading than to go for the ad hominem.