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I’ve been working on splitting an idea out from government-funded academia into an industry-supported non-profit. Universities kind of like that, and industries (at least in my scientific domain) are fairly receptive to consortium-type arrangements.

Of course, industry is pretty gun-shy right now too, due to the general economic conditions and AI sucking all the investment out of everything else. So it’s not going according to plan.


> a commuter plane where the wings iced up a bit and the airplane stalled. The crew kept trying to pull the nose up, all the way to the ground.

There’s probably a lot that match, but sounds like Colgan Air 3407 in 2009 (the last major commercial airline crash in the US before the mid-air collision earlier this year in DC)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colgan_Air_Flight_3407


Yes, that's the one. Nice work finding it!

I went there and saw two hairs, and yeah thought it was a nice funny touch.

I then went back to HN and turns out one of the hairs was real and I needed to clean my laptop screen :)



Borrowing to fund AI datacenter spending: https://x.com/MikeZaccardi/status/1984036161426485358


I feel proud that my 50 PRs are a part of that. Truly a worthy investment. Here's to the next 50 PRs.


Hmm, interesting. I hadn't realized how much companies were starting to borrow.


First paragraph for those unsure whether they want to prove that they are human (and for non-humans of course):

"Just this month, Meta Platforms Inc. has secured about $60 billion in capital to build data centers, part of its spending to get ahead in the artificial intelligence race. Half of that won’t show up on the social media giant’s balance sheet as debt.…"


OpenAI "spent" more on sales/marketing and equity compensation than that:

"Other significant costs included $2 billion spent on sales and marketing, nearly doubling what OpenAI spent on sales and marketing in all of 2024. Though not a cash expense, OpenAI also spent nearly $2.5 billion on stock-based equity compensation in the first six months of 2025"

("spent" because the equity is not cash-based)

From https://archive.is/vIrUZ


How the fuck does anyone spend 2 billion dollars on sales and marketing. I’ve seen the odd ad for openai but thag number seems completely bananas.


Astroturfing on social media, most likely. The AI hype almost certainly isn’t entirely organic.


All that free use by millions of users is sales and marketing.


I’ve always found the pioneer, settler, town planner model to be a great way of thinking about this. Successful, long-term projects or organizations eventually can use all 3 types.

Maybe vibe coding replaces some pioneering work, but that still leaves a lot for settlers to do.

(I admit I’m generally in the settler category)

https://blog.gardeviance.org/2015/03/on-pioneers-settlers-to...


This made an impression on me:

https://www.spend-elon-fortune.com/

Buying all this stuff that seems expensive, but then seeing that it barely makes a dent in a truly wealthy person’s fortune.

Of course, he wants even more…


It's a clear sign of a simpleton when a person thinks of Nintendos and other stupid gadgets as "how you would spend Elon's money"


I wanted to buy a thousand tanks for my own private army, but it's a pain to buy them one by one.


I'm somewhat split on this issue.

We already do have different kinds of organizations. We have "research universities" (R1 or R2) that give out PhDs and are somewhat like you describe. And then we have Primarily Undergraduate Institutions (PUIs) that focus more on education.

The risk you can run into is that dedicated education institutions can fall behind current trends, especially in fast-moving areas like tech. Sometimes the best educators are those that "practice what they preach", and you begin to lose that if you stick them in classrooms all day.

On the other hand, some of the best researchers are terrible teachers, especially those who don't really care about it and just want to focus on bringing in funding.

I think the split you have could work, however there must be a lot of incentive for cross-pollination of some sort, or else the teaching side isn't preparing students enough for the research (or industry) side.


I think the key part is "spirit" of the 1st amendment.

A better way to put it is that even if the 1st amendment doesn't apply, it's still against the ideal of "free speech"


Not just spirit, they do entirely apply. Some Supreme Court decisions (there are many clarifying the first amendment)—

Bridges v. Wixon, 326 U.S. 135 (1945)

> freedom of speech and of press is accorded aliens residing in this country.

Plyler v. Doe, 457 U.S. 202 (1982)

> constitutional protections extend to “all persons” within the U.S, including undocumented immigrants.


So it doesn't apply to people that are applying for visa status?


Being subject to unreasonable searches likely does, still. Depends on what is “reasonable” or not, but just because they’re applying for a status does not mean they give up their right to unreasonable searches and detainment.

Note: US Embassies, where interviews are often conducted, are still considered US soil subject to US laws (otherwise the latest declaration from Trump pausing them would not apply to them)


> Note: US Embassies, where interviews are often conducted, are still considered US soil subject to US laws (otherwise the latest declaration from Trump pausing them would not apply to them)

I don't think that's how it works. The US visa application requests significant amount of personal information, and this is supposedly cross-checked with the US databases/intelligence agencies.

So I doubt they sit down with you going over all your posts on hackernews, but rather ask what you use and your usernames and cross reference that with lists of people interested in ISIS telegram groups.

I would be uncomfortable giving that data myself, but i was uncomfortable writing a lot other things in my visa application, and never thought anyone is forcing me to visit the US


> You can still buy the console that can read physical games and buy the physical games and never plug it on the internet, right?

I'm not positive this is possible. I seem to remember times when trying to play a newer game on the Switch required a system update, even though I had the physical card. I might be misremembering, though.


Games can require a firmware update to play, but AIUI the physical carts are supposed to have their required firmware bundled alongside the game so you can update without an internet connection.


They even did that on the original Xbox. The first year of consoles didn't have Xbox Live and therefore had no knowledge of the service to obtain updates, dashboard updates were delivered on games that used Xbox Live. For that first year, the only thing the Ethernet port was used for was LAN games (and WAN games with private networks). To my knowledge, dashboard updates were only delivered with games but title updates and DLC could be downloaded over the internet.


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