There's a lot of mystique about the legendary Johnny von Neumann. But was he really superhuman? Perhaps much of the legend was made up. That seems to be a common thing.
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Norway is finding that their wealth tax is backfiring on them. The wealthy are fleeing. Oregon and Washington will learn similar lessons. Those Scandinavians seem to be making a lot of dumb decisions lately, especially with immigration and dealing with rape, assault and murder.
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There is increasing resistance to data center construction now. Oregon will face this, too. There is an Oregon law against the construction of new nuclear power plants. That was after the Trojan power plant was decommissioned as there was a lot of concern after the Three Mile Island disaster. But that was 45 years ago, and the technology has changed. We need to rethink this.
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Sheesh. Comet sends all your URLs to Perplexity servers and there's no way to stop it. Why do people think the Comet AI browser is worth it? Just so you can have a browser plan your next vacation for you with AI? Silicon Valley nerds live in a different world.
And many people hate that Windows 11 is devolving into an agentic OS. Microsoft is willfully ignoring their users.
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Another tech nerd, Bradley Tusk. wants to use crypto-technology to make it so that voting can be done on a mobile phone. Doesn't he realize that people already stay far away from crypto? That they don't trust this tech? That the few people who do understand the tech can undermine it? Sometimes the best tech for something as elementary as voting is low-tech, pencil and paper. Verifiable and easy to understand. No Dominion or Smartmatic voting machines. We learned that lesson the hard way.
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Editing the genes of babies is something that we'll end up doing someday, but I don't trust Sam Altman and his husband to be the one to do it. Just because you have money doesn't mean you're the right person.
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A guy asked 9 different frontier models to vibe-code an analog clock. The results are straight out of Picasso, or some modern artist. It's amazing how so few get it right with zero-shot coding. The best efforts are from DeepSeek and KimiK2, which are both Chinese models. The American models are lousy.
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Seattle mayor-elect to enter office facing challenges with empty storefronts, restaurants. The city is in dire straits, and look who they elect for mayor. Seattle is f*cked.
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Reading this article, I was surprised to read this statement from Multnomah County economist Jeff Renfro, who says that he "had expected the county to start 2027 without a deficit or surplus". Whuuut? And whom does he blame? Why Trump and tariffs, of course.
Oregon's state economist is more realistic. John Tapogna states that “Across all of our domains, we are falling off the U.S. pace.”
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Rogue Brewery abruptly shuts down. Very sad. There's a lot of history with Rogue. The surf contests. Those were nice times, and we shall miss them. One by one, all we will have is memories. Sentiment like this always seem to conclude with a reflection of Oregon's natural beauty and the belief that we will recovery. Or that we have a "legacy of innovation" but can only point to Nike. I'd feel a lot better if there were numerous more examples of Oregon's enduring excellence. Lumber's gone. Tech is imploding.
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