New post format: a weekly rollup of links, comments on those links, activity updates and attempts at humor. The intention is quicker hits in addition to the less frequent big posts and more timely hammering on my favorite themes. This is my primary hangout until the contours of the post-Twitter world become clear. Be sure to subscribe below and to the right to receive all my output via email.
Note that my poor, overtaxed server struggles to serve up all the images to email users at the same time, so if you don’t see images, be sure to click through. Server upgrade in the works.
Google: Code Red Now?
What will it take to get Google CEO Sundar Pichai to actually declare “code red”?
Previous: Google’s “code rouge”
Related: Google CEO spends more time denying he ever called a “code red” than talking about product
AI Regulation: Move Fast and Regulate Things
“…over just 11 days this small group of politicians hammered out what could become landmark legislation, reshaping the regulatory landscape for OpenAI and its competitors.” Fortunately the EU has an unrivaled grasp of technology to inform them as they move this quickly. And lots of wine and cheese.
Related: Regulatory Superpower
AI Regulation: FTC Takes Op-ed From 2016, Adds “AI”
A choice of responses to this embarrassing op-ed from the head of the FTC:
- It is Day One at the FTC for AI. Even the EU is on Day Eleven…
- Realizing they are once again behind the curve, the FTC rolls out its standard speaking points for why it hates social media companies
- The New York Times seems to have truncated the “Here’s How” part
Previous: A New Antitrust Doctrine
Europe: Investing in Slave Labor
The mercantilist European economy, especially the Federal Republic of Volkswagen, is massively wrapped around an axle attached to the internal combustion engine. They thought their future was selling Volkswagens to China. Despite a seemingly unbounded eagerness to do business in Xinjiang, recognition has sunk in that the strategy isn’t panning out. A continent can’t live on US tech company fines alone…
Seattle Public Schools: Investing in the Arts
In the midst of a financial crisis, the school system’s response is to close schools, fire staff, and cut back on electives like the arts. Except for performative legal arts like their “laughably stupid lawsuit” against social media for being a “public nuisance”
“Seattle taxpayers should be furious that their taxes, which are supposed to be paying for educating their children, are, instead, going to lawyers to file a lawsuit so ridiculous that it’s entirely possible the lawyers get sanctioned.”
Paul Krugman is Wrong Even When He is Right
In what has become a continuing series about a theoretical economist opining on topics he probably shouldn’t, Paul Krugman cites Michael Pettis incorrectly. The de-dollarization doomers are wrong, as Pettis regularly explains (his book is the best explanation of the imbalances driving driving the world economy), but not for the reasons Krugman suggests.
Previous: The Krugman Files
The Google CAPEX Mystery
A quick Tweetstorm digest on the mystery of Google’s plummeting CAPEX. Where is their madcap “code red” GPU shopping spree? Always fun when one can combine two favorite topics: CAPEX and media quality control.
Previous: CAPEX, Living in a Glass House: The New York Times on Tech
