You're extrapolating one somewhat rude adiplomatic president to America going to war with Europe? That's enough internet for you, sir. Time to go for a walk.
Adiplomatic is... _very mild_ considering the threats he's made about taking over Greenland and Canada. Bluster or not, the fact is... the President of the United States is openly talking about it, and currently using the military and all it's levers quite actively here and abroad.
Russia is not at war with Europe, its at war with Ukraine.
Both the US and Russia are currently trying to influence the EU to do things that aren't what EU citizens want.
per the drunk signal text leak, Europe's shipping is being negatively impacted by the American Israel/Gaza stance, to the extent that the US has made up for it by bombing the Houthis.
...which says both that the US is an ongoing problem for europe, but that the relationship isnt nearly so shaky as it seems. Trump is getting US strategic goals in Europe, to make Europe pay for anti-Russia preparedness, while the US focuses on anti-China.
The problem here is that everyone thinks their ideas aren't radical and that sharing them isn't indoctrination. I once left a religion, peacefully, not loudly or trying to tell anyone else how to live their life. People still in the religion thought I was radical and dangerous to the fabric of society. Charlie invited people to have a debate. Whether he was right or wrong at least to me with my lived experiences feels irrelevant, if that's dangerous to society then society is wrong.
There may be no systematic way to draw the line between dangerous opinions that need to be silenced and those that do not. There may be many people who draw that line incorrectly.
But that doesn't mean there is no such line. Almost everybody agrees there should be some cost to expressing highly dangerous views -- where we disagree is what that cost needs to be for a given view (reputational, financial, capital).
And in this hypothetical world where having dangerous opinions has consequences even though sometimes we draw the line incorrectly, I'm assuming you think your personal views could never be marked as such? We still live in a free society where at least the aim is to not hurt people in any way for expressing their own views.
The idea that the world will ever have enough compute is ridiculous. I'm sure all of this sudden growth will need to be digested at some point, but that won't mean the industry will permanently lose a big chunk of its market cap.
Same argument can be somewhat applied to CPUs circa 90s. The growth did stop/stalled in the end.
I think the expectation of ever growing compute is not totally crazy. It will come with lower margins eventually though, and more players in the market. It also might get much more moderate, including from hardware limitations. Efficiency wise h200->b200 isn’t as crazy as a100->h100.
Same argument can be somewhat applied to CPUs circa 90s. The growth did stop/stalled in the end.
One difference is that the more compute you have, the more work you can do. You can basically run tokens 24/7 building apps or trying to do research or running a massive model in thinking mode.
With all due respect, do you folks actually think deep and hard about what you write before you do?
I get the impression that you don't. This isn't meant to offend you, since this stuff is really hard to do. But I notice this a lot - wishy washy comments, that lack deep thought.
This place would be better with less posts but more thinking.
When dot com crashed it was similar - compute use didn’t reduce, far from it, it’s just capex crashed to the ground and took 90% of Nasdaq value with it, for a few years.
Stop comparing to dotcom. There’s a big difference between the internet then and the internet now. Ignoring the astounding nature of the AI tech (dotcom isn’t even in the same ballpark), you also have to consider these two things:
1) We didn’t make the world digital native in that era
2) We didn’t connect the whole world to the internet
Personally I believe we will see some evidence of tacit collusion as it becomes more obvious the capital investments will not generate any returns (let alone surplus value). The only way to control investor sentiment will be for all big tech firms to collectively lie and present fake progress / wishy washy KPIs on earnings calls.
The people who understand corporate finance, valuation and product development can catch this stuff early on.
The folks who allowed the continent to fall behind through over-regulation would like you to know they'll now do a good job at being the capital allocators.
I hope all this stays true without growth. I hope it wasn’t a temporary utopia built on the tail end of centuries of theft and violence all over the world, and a relative peace subsidized by the US Navy. American problems generally last 4 years, and even our bigger problems sit on top of relative self-reliance. As far as I can tell you can’t even heat your homes in winter without Russian or American gas.
> As far as I can tell you can’t even heat your homes in winter without Russian or American gas.
LOL? Is this some strange side quest started by Russian propaganda? I wish I could link it but there was a literal Russian propaganda ad showing Europeans freezing during the winter of 2022 due to no Russian gas imports... which obviously did not happen.
1. Do you realize that the Russian energy sector is screwed for good, after the start of the war? European gas imports from Russia are basically 0. And Europe has diversified, it's now importing from the US, from Qatar, from Algeria, from a lot of places. Germany built a bunch of LNG terminals in 6 months. Russian gas imports are never going back.
The EU (and Europe in general) is investing like crazy in renewables. Heat pump sales are up 3 digit percentages since 5 years ago. EVs, ebikes, solar panels, wind farms, etc, etc, etc. In 20 years there will be hardly energy dependency on anyone external.
> I hope it wasn’t a temporary utopia built on the tail end of centuries of theft and violence all over the world.
You mean, just like the US theft and violence all over the world? :-)
I think the concern is the fiscal ability for eu nations to continue to pay for the things that help it stay high on those metrics, especially without innovation.
The productivity numbers for the eu are dreadful so something needs to change.
The distribution of productivity gains in the US is beyond dreadful, so something needs to change.
Besides, it's screamingly obvious the US has literally chosen to pivot back to the Middle Ages, so even these captured productivity differences won't be an issue for much longer.
You did say literally so can you do a point by point comparison?
We have other people claiming the US is fascist and one of the aims of fascism was to take European culture and religion back to before the Middle Ages - they wanted to emulate the Roman Empire.
> The productivity numbers for the eu are dreadful so something needs to change.
A happy, healthy society does not need to change to meet capitalist productivity goals. Consumption is killing the world, led proudly by the US.
What needs to change are the metrics we use to judge a society, because if financial success leads to the United States, that's the cautionary tale for the rest of the world, not the example.
That may be true if the things driving quality of life metrics don’t require productivity. But many of them clearly do (e.g. social security for the aged in the face of demographic shrinking).
Pretty nominal for Europe to be honest. Most Americans don't realize a) how much money they make and b) how little taxes they pay. Apples and oranges with all the social safety nets and such of course, but still most (healthy) Americans get much more money in their bank accounts after all is said and done than they would in Europe.
Portugal is in a weird situation where it has high taxes and at the same time the median salary is too close to the minimum wage. This is difficult to overcome, and thus salaries are stagnated.
The government has no reason, in the medium to long term, to have such high taxes. Since, by keeping high taxation the state retrieves less money in absolute terms than they would if they let wages increase and steer away from the minimum wage.
I don't think you could say that about most EU countries. Portugal really is in a bad place.
(Edit: just clarifying that the situation is different, yes taxation is high as most others but in the case of Portugal its much worse)
> The government has no reason, in the medium to long term, to have such high taxes
It does - Debt.
Portugal's debt as percent of GDP skyrocketed during the GFC and Eurozone crisis from 75.8% in 2008 to 129% by 2012.
Unlike economies with a similar debt-to-GDP ratio like Italy, Portugal's economy is a relative minnow, and doesn't have a significant domestic capital market which can at least help stem some of the issues, nor can Portugal attract FDI at the same level as much more business friendly Spain, which made income taxes their only lever.
That said, the Portuguese debt-to-GDP ratio has gotten much better (99.10% in 2023), but that was because of how much of the Portuguese budget was spent on servicing debt.
It’s presumably very _cheap_ debt, though? Ireland’s in a somewhat similar situation (don’t be fooled by the headline debt to GDP figure; Ireland’s GDP is distorted to the point that the government has had to make up its own adjusted metrics), though it’s currently running big budget surpluses, and from time to time someone will ask “why, instead of lowering taxes and investing in infrastructure, are we not using this surplus to pay down debt?” And the answer is that the average cost of the debt is 1.5% (the expensive stuff from the financial crisis has largely refinanced). It makes little sense to aggressively pay down debt at those sorts of rates.
A quick google search indicated debt interest is about 5% of the national budget.
This does seem low in comparison to the US, where ~17% of the national budget is spent servicing debt interest. For context, this is approximate 1.5X what we spend on national defense. [1]
Huh. Ireland’s is about 2.5% (3.1bn on 119bn budget next year). Slightly puzzled at what’s going on with the US debt; that does seem very expensive. Though it’s not _entirely_ comparing like for like, in that states have their own separate budgets in the US (local authorities in Ireland do too, but their own revenue raising capabilities are very limited and most of the money comes from central government).
Looks like the US’s cost of servicing works out to about 3.4%, which definitely seems rather high (though, probably still not high enough that you’d necessarily want to aggressively pay it down; 3.4% isn’t a _great_ return). Actually, I’d wonder how much of this is related to the debt ceiling stuff; I would assume that makes refinancing when debt is cheap more difficult.
I'm aware, but we have been in that situation for almost a decade now. I'm portuguese.
I just think we would've gotten through this sooner by making use of the invisible hand and lead businesses to be able to prosper more and as a result, higher wages. This would lead to more modest taxes having a higher wield to the state.
As it stands, they are taxing people for a very low absolute amount in the end. Not to mention that taxes go way lower the closer you are to minimum wage (a good thing, but it also shows how little they gain from this strategy). In the meantime they strangle any small to medium sized company, which are the ones driving the wages for most.
What happens to the unhealthy Americans? What happens to the Americans who are too poor they cannot pay health insurance and the cost of medicine/surgery.
I think only the wealthiest Americans have much more money in their bank accounts than they would in Europe.
Unhealthy people get left behind in Europe all the time. I hope as a European you’ll never have to go through the hell of trying to deal with any kind of complex chronic illness. The doctors have no clue how to treat these kinds of problems, and any specialists are very few and far between. Go spend some time on forums for people dealing with chronic health problems and you’ll find many Europeans who’ve had to empty out their savings in order to get treatment.
Medicaid expansion has fixed this for the poorest Americans unless you live in a few red states, and ACA subsidies cap private plans at 8.5% of your income (+ cost sharing on top of that obviously, but there is a maximum per year) for the rest.
This is a misconception. Even in the poorest state here in the US, the median income is far more than most countries in Europe, pre tax[1,2]. And unlike what the internet says, we do have government programs that provide healthcare for those that cannot afford it or are out of work.
Agreed. There are many reasons to prefer living in Europe to the US, but "more money in their bank accounts" of non-wealthy people is certainly not one of them even though the American must sometimes use the bank account to pay for things that are provided by the government in Europe.
Unless we talk about Switzerland. But that's like 2% of the continent so what you say is valid.
And given too left-leaning and fanatical green-deal-at-all-costs push from Brussels economical situation won't get better, in contrary. They could be pouring money into defense, its not like in 20 years russia will stop wanting to subjugate/murder us all. Or they could try not killing their own automobile industry so quickly. Or...
EU started a slow but steady decline given changes in global economies, it will take probably a long time due to various factors but trend is clear.
> And given too left-leaning and fanatical green-deal-at-all-costs push
Investing heavily in renewable technology and R&D doesn't mean spending less on military or industrial capacity - in fact it's fairly dual use.
Furthermore, US, China, SK, JP, and others manage to balance both.
The issue is most EU members stopped funding their militaries following the fall of the Berlin Wall and redeployed that capital elsewhere - especially during the European Recession+Currency Crisis (1990-95), GFC (2008-11), and Eurozone Crisis (2008-2014).
And Switzerland is most like the US out of European countries, albeit an idealized version of the US.
It has private healthcare mandated by the government, and an economy favorable to capital. It has a federal system where most of the power and spending resides with the cantons(states), and much closer to the voters.
The Swiss constitution was actually modeled after that of the US.
> Swiss constitution was actually modeled after that of the US
“The Amercian national constitution, the Articles of Confederation, was constructed on the Swiss model of a confederacy of some over sovereign states. Then, Americans repudiated confederal government in 1787 as impotent and unworkable and adapted a new federal constitution. The opponents of the new charter, the Anti Federalists argued that a Swiss style government was still a viable model which offered the best hope for the preservation of American liberty. The Swiss themselves repudiated confederate government in 1848 using many of the same arguments Americans had marshalled against it in 1787 and adapted a Federal constitution modelled after the American constitution of 1787. After the Civil War many American state and local governments adapted constitutional reforms borrowed from the Swiss. The initiative and referendum – which continues to this hour to give the politics of California and other influential states their distinctive tone.”
I think that supports what I said, but I love the added detail. There was more back and forth exchange than I remembered.
Another fun fact about the Swiss government that I think is superior to the US is that the effectively have seven presidents which form an executive council. The executive council debates behind closed doors and presents a unified public front. Internal debates of the executive counsel are sealed for 20 years before release to the public.
That said, my favorite thing about Switzerland is still that the vast majority of tax collection and public spending occurs at the local level. Federal spending revenue is approximately 30% with the rest being the local cantons. Swiss Cantons are smaller by population then a typical California county.
I think this emphasis on local government results in Civic engagement, oversight, and empowerment while reducing political strife.
No, the Swiss federal constitution is based on America’s federal constitution. The American Article of Confederation, our previous Constitution, was based on our Helvetic Confederation constitution. Strictly speaking our constitution is based on the American Constitution.
> I think only the wealthiest Americans have much more money in their bank accounts than they would in Europe
Well, you thunk wrong.
Median household income in the US is $80,000 [0] and taxes like VAT are nonexistent.
Throw on top of that access to subsidized plans like Medicaid or ACA plans for households that earn below the median, and most Americans come out ahead.
The big issue with the US is the de facto inability to commit mental health patients to involuntary mental health holds unlike much of Europe due to the current interpretation of the 14th amendment, which has caused the mental health crisis to become a homelessness and drug crisis.
That said, as a whole, most Americans live fairly comparable lives to most Western countries, as HDI shows. In fact, much of Europe has a much lower HDI than the US once you exclude Scandinavia, Germany, the British Isles, and Switzerland.
When you look at a subnational level, it is the Deep South (Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas) and Appalachia (West Virginia, Kentucky) that continues to lag, but they represent less than 5% of the entire population of the US.
> The big issue with the US is the de facto inability to commit mental health patients to involuntary mental health holds unlike much of Europe due to the current interpretation of the 14th amendment
… Eh? Large-scale involuntary committal largely ended in Western Europe decades ago. What figures are you basing this on?
Honestly health care in Europe isn't great either. My Dutch GP seems to think acetaminophen is the cure for everything. They're decades behind on things like discussing menopause, TRT, etc.
Death and disease are not real, my mind zones them out. I never remember when i was the last time at the dentist, so why include that part in my lifes plan? That is just a blindspot of everyones mental model. They parked a whole scaming theme park in that in the us.
Just looking at salaries and taxes makes for a very distorted view of wealth and affordable lifestyle in the US vs elsewhere. Even if you take into account ALL the major variables such as college costs/loans, housing prices, real estate taxes, cost of healthcare, retirement, etc, it is very difficult to compare.
You can better see the reality by looking at actual examples of families with massively different incomes living in the US vs elsewhere. It takes WAY higher salary (5x?) in the US to enjoy the same lifestyle as someone in the UK, for example.
..... really? I'd take $200k in the US over 40k GBP any day of the week. And in the US I'd have bug screens in my windows. And air conditioning. And food I can taste.
Depends where in the US of course. $200K isn't going to go very far if you have to pay $1M for a house, 20K for r/e taxes, etc... One or two kids in college and you are f'd.
I don't know exact salary figure, but my sisters family in UK have medium income (1.5 jobs) new BMW, two kids in college, foreign vacations every year, kids got latest Apple phones/watch/laptop growing up ... A bit like 1950's America living the dream on a single income with foreign holidays and iPhones added.
House bought a while back before prices shot up, so maybe mortgage paid off ... I don't know. OTOH college costs alone make the US ruinously expensive.. $200K/kid perhaps... That's the point really - you need to look at full financial picture in the US - especially costs. Looking at income tells you nothing.
I'd also take $200k in the US over £40k in the UK, but let's not overdo things: Here in London I have bug screens, air con, and basically any food you could think of (and quite a lot I've never heard of).
I should look more into cost of living in Portugal, maybe, but one of the other commenters mentioned housing prices being… high. In US, making ~$20,000 you’d be considered poor (maybe not “officially”) and probably pay zero federal tax and receive quite a bit of assistance.
$20k is technically above the US federal poverty line for a single person. I live in a state where anyone under $30k is considered low-income and qualifies for full benefits.
Top rates are kind of useless; some countries have many more brackets than others. The US used to have a 90% tax bracket, but that didn’t make it a particularly high-tax country; effectively no-one paid it. Comparisons, are in practice, inherently difficult, because the curves caused by the tax brackets and credits can be very different. It really depends an awful lot on income.
That extra money comes in handy when you're paying $15K/year for health insurance because if you don't a few hours in the hospital would cost you triple that.
If your business depends on it, not backing it up in some other place on a consistent basis is a bad idea. The cost of this should be factored into the price you charge people. 800GB would be less than 20 dollars on S3, all you have to figure out is the replication process, but that shouldn't be rocket science either.
Quality very much depends on the language I've noticed. I don't use ChatGPT but I do use Github's Copilot. The main way I've been using it lately is to make manually written algorithms more efficient. So I'll write an algorithm, select it and ask it to figure out a more time/space efficient way of doing it. Still makes a mistake every now and then, but at the very least it helps me quickly see things from a different perspective.
I mainly use copilot for its ability to figure out patterns. It’s pretty nice when working with frontend code with tailwind. Not perfect but has sped development up a bit. One thing I like is if I put a rem size in css and wanted to comment what the equivalent pixel value is it does the math.
But the equivalent pixel value depends on the root element font size, so the comment will be wrong when that changes. If you leave the math to the browser dev tools you'll get accurate results without any AI figuring out patterns.
Yep but in our workflow we’ve never deviated from 16px base. The comments in the code are purely to help when translating designs to rem in particular with tailwind.
