28 May 2024

OpenAI board member reveals what led to Sam Altman's ouster last year. Doesn't look good. So now Sutskever is gone, and Altman is back in charge, pretty much allowed to do whatever he wants.

Meanwhile, California is considering a proposed law (SB 1047) to regulate AI. Some people are strongly against it. If it passes, it might make California AI companies leave the state for more favorable areas. Oracle is already leaving. Washington is looking better already. But Silicon Valley is shoring up California's treasury, so this could really hurt the state. Hollywood probably can't do it alone.

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Now the COVID scientists are complaining that they are getting harrassed. Like Fauci and Hotez. The damage has been done. I can't feel too sorry for them. Shoulda been honest.

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What happened to MySpace? The Murdochs bought it. Put tons of ads on it. Turned it into something else. And Facebook took over. Somethings are better left alone. Like the Internet.

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Yeah, ousting Mike Schmidt is just the start. We still have Ted Wheeler and the Portland City Council. But it's a start, I guess.

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The massive strain of illegal immigration on the school system. Isn't this what conservatives have been saying? People complain about inflation, and many libertarians blame the Fed. But they don't seem to care about the money that is injected into the system by supporting all these illegal immigrants with food and housing. Whether it's injecting money into the banks or injecting money into housing programs or food vouchers, it's still injected money. Maybe some of it is debt financing, but that's not good either. And then there's student loan forgiveness. The end result of that is also money injected into the system. Yeah, it makes the injectees feel good, but at the cost of inflation for everyone else. Like legislating an increase in minimum wage, without any increase in productivity. With a stroke of a pen, somebody gets richer, but the majority of us don't.  And increased demand for goods is inflationary until a new equilibrium is reached. Our economy is not ready to absorb a mass of new consumers that just increases the demand side. We need to increase productivity, and that's much harder to do. The Democrats were never good at making that happen.

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And here's an example: Pacific Foods was sold to Campbell Soups, who will not shut down the Tualatin plant, resulting in a loss of jobs and productivity there. Which means unemployment, and more people who will seek checks from the state, and who won't be paying income tax anymore. The company says the closure is due to it being an aging facility with an inefficient configuration, but rather than refurbish it, their solution was to close it.

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