Regulatory capture? One of the two companies that stands to benefit most has a founder who, together with his wife, donated $25 million to MAGA Inc, a pro-Trump super PAC, and another $25 million to Leading the Future, whose stated mission is to advocate for policies “friendly to the artificial intelligence industry.” Open-weight models aren’t necessarily aligned with the commercial interests of the industry’s largest incumbents.
More broadly, this is one of the things I dislike about the US political system. When executives or major shareholders can legally make very large political donations while their companies are lobbying on issues that directly affect their businesses, it creates an unavoidable perception problem.
It isn't just about building an alternate cheaply, it is about convincing people to switch. I wouldn't discourage anyone from trying, just that building the thing is just the beginning of a long journey.
Isn’t plastic nearly free as a raw material as a by product of fossil fuel production? I was always told it’s the opposite, plastic bags are better for the environment if disposed of properly because they’re so light weight to transport, didn’t need to be farmed, and companies basically give away the raw material because it would be more expensive to dispose of. A cotton bag needs to be reused upwards 1000x to be less impactful, or was I bamboozled?
> Isn’t plastic nearly free as a raw material as a by product of fossil fuel production?
Yes and no. Oil is cracked down for lots of different things, but one of the things that people are really aiming for is ethane which can be used to make industrial ethanol, and a lot of plastics.
What you end up with to get there is lots of propane and butane, which is used as a fuel gas, but most of that ends up going up the flare stack because there's so much of it. We won't stop doing this while we still use plastics and fertiliser.
You need very clean propane or butane for things like cooking stoves, but you can run car engines on it just fine because they're so much less picky, and the exhaust gases are far cleaner than engines run on heavier fractions like oh maybe octane. This is why things like warehouse forklifts run on gas instead of diesel or petrol - you don't die if you breathe in the fumes, because there's no unburnt fuel or carbon monoxide, because it runs as lean as a vegan's dog.
>What you end up with to get there is lots of propane and butane, which is used as a fuel gas, but most of that ends up going up the flare stack because there's so much of it. We won't stop doing this while we still use plastics and fertiliser.
The amount of gas flared globally adds up to little over 1% of global energy production. I know that doesn't sound like much but we're talking like terawatts. It truly is a mind boggling amount of energy that gets wasted because we simply can't get it to users cheap enough.
If only all (or almost all) of it was flared! Methane is a much more potent greenhouse gas than CO2, and unfortunately there is still a lot of it escaping from oil installations unflared (https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/potential-emi...).
It's a pain in the arse to run vehicles on methane (CNG) because it has to be stored at around 250 bar (or, 3600psi in Old People Units), and it's really not very energy-dense so you need a lot of it.
Again though flaring it off in a gas turbine to generate electricity and heat would be ultimately less harmful than just letting it out into the air.
By contrast the tank in an LPG vehicle is at around 8 bar, not a hell of a lot more than the pressure in a truck's tyres. On my old Range Rover the LPG tank is considerably less spicy than the air suspension tank at 15 bar, which is getting into "this can injure you" territory.
> because we simply can't get it to users cheap enough.
Or we can't get it clean enough to use as say cooking gas or aerosol propellant.
Stick it in cars, they'll burn any old shite and emit water and carbon dioxide - two terrible greenhouse gases, for sure, but you'll extract useful work from it instead of literally just heating the atmosphere for the fun of it.
Not when they are properly used as a fossil fuel source. As a fossil fuel source that just happened to also make itself useful in other ways on the voyage from mine to smokestack. As long as we still burn coal for electricity and/or heat it's just stupid to bury plastics (or, worse, let it slowly decay unburied)
It wouldn’t be so bad if you buried it and it stayed buried it, but whatever disposal technology you use it doesn’t work if the plastic is never properly disposed of. Even if people are really careful, for instance, some single use plastics are going to blow away in the wind. Something shoddily made in the bottom of a pond is going to come apart and shed plastics, etc.
It also burns quite well. If are in a location that burns trash in waste-to-energy plants you can get a decent amount of that energy back by throwing it away
It's like this in the early days of any technology. It reminds me of the early days of the internet before everything became hyper optimised algorithms.
It's like the late stages of a monopoly game - it's not fun for anyone except the main winner.
A lot of folks are finding GLM 5.2, Kimi 3, and Deepseek just fine for their use cases.
It does not have to beat US firms, it just needs to be cheaper.
I use Deepseek v4 flash for a lot of reviewing and summarizing tasks, only used 4$ in the last two months. No dramatic drop in performance against other US models, it works for my use case. I do use GPT 5.6 Sol for other things but tried GLM 5.2 and it was good enough.
There is an unfortunate cycle that has been playing out this year in USA. Insurance companies are arming up with AI to deny billing codes charged by providers. Providers are arming up with AI to listen in on provider-patient sessions to prove the billing codes are legit (And teach providers to use keywords in session).
The loser, as always, is the patient's quality of care.
> Providers are arming up with AI to listen in on provider-patient sessions to prove the billing codes are legit
This is not a decrease in quality of care - this is your provider having actual evidence of the care needs they discussed with you when they close their note, hours or days after seeing you.
I have two Bosch powered e-bikes (gazelle Modeo and Turn GSD) and one DJI Avinox (Amflow PL carbon)
A few years between each bike and very different bikes. But Avinox feels like it has come from nowhere to be on par or superior to Bosch. The charging plug egonicis is 100x better too.
In my experience, rental cars are the worst. They are configured to make so much noise. My kids sleep in rentals more than daily driving too (longer commutes when traveling). My 2022 Volvo treats me like a adult and makes very little noise. Heads up display shows things that might be important.
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