Well fuck me I guess lol

Are most people in "the west" worse off today than they were 150 years ago? Are there fewer well functioning democracies than there were then? Has no minority group seen any improvement in their freedom? Has there been no improvement in how people interact with each other? No improvement in poverty?

TD Cowen (which is basically the US arm of one of the largest Canadian investment banks) did an extensive report on the state of AI investment. What they found was that despite all their big claims about the future of AI, Microsoft were quietly allowing letters of intent for billions of dollars worth of new compute capacity to expire. Basically, scrapping future plans for expansion, but in a way that's not showy and doesn't require any kind of big announcement. The equivalent of promising to be at the party and then just not showing up. Not long after this reporting came out, it got confirmed by Microsoft, and not long after it came out that Amazon was doing the same thing. Ed Zitron has a really good write up on it; https://www.wheresyoured.at/power-cut/ Amazon isn't the big surprise, they've always been the most cautious of the big players on the whole AI thing. Microsoft on the other hand are very much trying to play things both ways. They know AI is fucked, which is why they're scaling back, but they've also invested a lot of money into their OpenAI partnership so now they have to justify that expenditure which means convincing investors that consumers absolutely love their AI products and are desparate for more. As always, follow the money. Stuff like the three mile island thing is mostly just applying for permits and so on at this point. Relatively small investments. As soon as it comes to big money hitting the table, they're pulling back. That's how you know how they really feel.

It varies based on local legislation, so in some places paying ransoms is banned but it's by no means universal. It's totally valid to be against paying ransoms wherever possible, but it's not entirely black and white in some situations. For example, what if a hospital gets ransomed? Say they serve an area not served by other facilities, and if they can't get back online quickly people will die? Sounds dramatic, but critical public services get ransomed all the time and there are undeniable real world consequences. Recovery from ransomware can cost significantly more than a ransom payment if you're not prepared. It can also take months to years to recover, especially if you're simultaneously fighting to evict a persistent (annoyed, unpaid) threat actor from your environment. For the record I don't think ransoms should be paid in most scenarios, but I do think there is some nuance to consider here.

How's that going? I just read that there are several lawsuits about these SSDs loosing all data.