Chancellor Gerhard Schröder was last night within sight of an historic deal to shut down Germany's nuclear energy industry - the fourth largest in the world.
Yes. I've got no interest in leaving Spotify, I have the same loyalty to them as I do to Apple. Though of course anyone could screw it up. Then they lose me forever, like AT&T.
Fully remote, so not a thing, but also only one piece of the puzzle. The Ai can do the grunt work and more, what practices do we teach them? I think there is an amount of self reflection to figure out what it is we even do ourselves.
This concept of a story has been on HN so many times. It always starts with this technically correct but actually misleading headline fragment. Misleading clickbait works, even here. Every time.
The models aside, my impression is that Anthropic is winning in large part because of very pragmatic and high-velocity product development on top of them; like with Claude Code.
Like actually iterating hard to make them useful. Many, many details matter here.
I haven't tested the similar OpenAI/Google tools in detail lately though. Previously I found them way too generic and unpolished to be useful.
My impression as well. OpenAI was riding the high of ChatGPT with a very confusing and seemingly unfocused offering beyond that. Anthropic was always laser focused on business use cases. Claude Code being the big one. Finance seems to be their next target.
Anthropic has much narrower capabilities. No image generation, no video generation, no 3d world models, barely any voice stuff. But they know who their target customers are, and their API has a model selection anyone can understand and pricing that rarely changes. Focus and predictably
I recently canceled my Claude subscription. The token costs are outrageous. I maxed my 5 hour limit with a single request. If they fix that I'll reconsider but as things sit today Claude is a pig that's just not worth the cost.
The more important aspect is that the regime now feels certain enough that they have killed enough of the internal opposition so that the security forces can handle rest even with open comms.
They are not likely 'giving' , Sweden just got $90B in locked up Russian money and those 'freebies' are going to come along with a major purchase order.
That's right, but Ukraine got $90B from Europe knowing most of it would come back for equipment purchases. Also - I think that EU is going to try to figure out a way to get that Russian money.
If they can't, then the EU should not exist - literally. It's decisive evidence that the bureaucracy can't even face an existential threat on it's own existence because it can't organize it's own legal concerns.
"We remained lawfully committed to juducial integrity and processes ... as we were exterminated!"
This situation is similar to 'many other things' (capital markets, tech investment, border/migration concerns etc.)
> That's right, but Ukraine got $90B from Europe knowing most of it would come back for equipment purchases.
Thats standard for military aid to other countries. Almost all US military aid to Ukraine was spent in the US for equipment purchases. The benefit for Ukraine is getting the weapons to use in the war, although it's worth noting a decent portion of the military aid will be spent by ukraine on domestic manufacturers.
Also €30 billion is financial and humanitarian aid, almost all of which will be spent in ukraine proper.
> Also - I think that EU is going to try to figure out a way to get that Russian money.
It's already sending the interest on the money to Ukraine, that alone is worth billions a year.
Simply seizing the rest is more complicated and additionally probably not preferable. Keeping the rest immobilised gives europe and Ukraine a substantial bargaining chip in negotiations with Russia when the war eventually ends. Either Russia agrees to concessions to get the money back or it doesn't and it agrees the money can be sent to rebuild Ukraine.
It's much more preferable to take the money - and it would have been even much more preferable if Putin knew that from the get go.
In fact - if Ukraine were to have had that $90B 2 years ago, it may have accelerated the situation (though not guaranteed).
This is not 'EU strategy' it's EU crawling out from it's own disorganization.
This is Putin's only great advantage - to take advantage of complacency, bureaucracy, and inability for European nations to react with coherence.
If the EU was organized, Putin wouldn't have been able to make a move, not even in 2014.
The same thing in tech: no cloud, no mobile - and now no AI. These things have real ramifications.
For example, Ukraine's' decisive advantage right now is Starlink - as much as I don't like Musk, and that he has been allowing Russia to use it for years (turning a blind eye, though that is stopped now) - it's now being used by Ukraine to assault 100Km in the rear and could 'turn the tide' of the conflict.
Europe has no 'Starlink' because it's disorganized and complacent - and the Starlink competitor is years away, will be minimal, may never happen.
So even as the technology proves to be 'plainly decisive', the reaction is not strategic or organized.
> "We remained lawfully committed to juducial integrity and processes ... as we were exterminated!"
The rule of law, including judicial integrity, is their great strength. Corrupt dictatorships never are as wealthy and as powerful. Russia has always been far behind, and is falling further.
> If they can't, then the EU should not exist - literally. It's decisive evidence that the bureaucracy can't even face an existential threat on it's own existence because it can't organize it's own legal concerns.
> "We remained lawfully committed to juducial integrity and processes ... as we were exterminated!"
If you're happy being governed without process or accountability, why not just surrender to Russia? If the EU can't maintain its principles when things get tough then what's the point in having it at all?
If Russia is an existential threat to EU, wouldn't it make sense to confiscate that money and declare war on Moscow ? Either that or Russia is not a threat.
confiscating money is much bigger deal than you can imagine. Russia and the EU are not officially at war and just taking money because you can is a serious violation of fundamental rights.
Yeah rules apply only on one side it seems, russia confiscated western planes, factories etc. worth tens of billions. I'd say eye for an eye is the only strategy mafia state like russia understands. That and rule of stronger, bigger dog fucks weaker, as russia tends to frequently do.
the gp asked for confiscation and property rights are pretty fundamental. especially if you are acting as a trustee not only for russian money but for many others who are watching how you are doing your job.
Obviously not. Canada would gladly have kept paying 2x market prices just to stay in the good graces of the US, with a presumption of 'free' defense in exchange for paying so much.
This era is over. US defense companies now need to compete for real.
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