> Is Putin a coward? Putin is not a coward in any traditional sense that I can see, but he should have a healthy case of paranoia. Everyone fears something. Putin hides his fear relatively well. I believe that he has body doubles. I saw a photo (AI? Who knows) of him meeting with his staff but keeping them all at physical distance. I read that his offices in different locations look the same so that it's harder to tell where photos are taken.

It's important to separate Putin from Russia. Russia could not possibly win a land war in the USA. They should have learned from Afghanistan and Ukraine that significant protracted conflicts, especially at distance, will completely drain their economy. So, any war with the US would likely end without a victory (OK, maybe he could take Alaska) or go nuclear quickly. I question whether his own staff would take steps likely to lead to a nuclear option, especially after losing so much in Ukraine.

So, going back to the original question, a traditional war: no. Other types of war are certainly already in play. One could even see parts of the situation in Ukraine as a proxy conflict between the Russia and the USA (with materials and likely eventually forces from NATO).

The Russian strategy seems to involve chaos, conflict, and disrupting other countries – since Russia can't actually rise, it tries to bring others down.

How would that be in their interest?

In that context, perspective may really depend on whether you expect the current generation of AI to really pay off. Personally, I have serious doubts, as do many. Apple may be concerned about looking worse by early roll-out, the potential for lawsuits, GDPR and similar concerns, and so forth; maybe safer to subcontract that to google with the option to turn it off if things go haywire. I don't know if they're contractually bound to provide AI services to any consumer devices. What we're now calling AI - which is apparently primarily LLM - looks like a risky gamble, not just financially but technically as well. Only time will tell, hopefully sooner than later, because a lot of people have been waiting for a while for this generation to improve and it doesn't seem to be happening very quickly. That doesn't mean that I see AI has having no value or valid uses (especially things like ML and in specific domains), but LLM has issues at best and I don't think we're anywhere near the AGI or ASI that people seem to expect is coming any minute.

> Sounds like a meaningless calculation based on really silly choices of data points.

Maybe their calculations only included average working days and hours in France, not *every* actual minute.

Sorry, that's supposed to be a joke of some sort.

That's probably still less than what they would have to spend to compete in "AI", and more than an order of magnitude less than google pays them for search engine placement. Plus, there's no guarantee that that will persist for a decade, and there's a very good chance that the cost of AI will seriously reduce in that time. Apple is a product company, not an AI company, not even a software company.

In general I agree with you here.

It seems to me that what makes it into the news cycle doesn't really matter. My news is absolutely clogged with stories about this administration that could have been scandalous enough to end an administration a few decades ago, like Americans have been gaslit into accepting almost anything. People might express outrage for a few hours, especially on social media, but it doesn't seem to change anything, and then there's just another scandal some hours later. It's like intentional overload – flooding the zone. Partially as a consequence, it feels like this administration can get away with anything, from controversy through clear crime and violations of the constitution and supposed American principles, and there will never be any consequences.

Personally, I feel that we're at a point in world history where individuals that control highly concentrated wealth basically control everything, like a layer spanning multiple nations, above government. It's amazing to me that a huge percentage of the relatively poor population (actually, indebted – personal/family debt as well as the national debt) supports this US administration, as it seems to be against many of their interests and supposed values.

It's hard for me to understand how thinking people can support what's happening in all three branches, the military, the regulatory agencies, and basically anything else involving federal government these days. Much of it just seems anti-American and anti-America.

American car sales must be dropping even in the USA. Better to keep some of the money in the USA to the extent possible than to let it go overseas to foreign car builders. Always follow the money, especially with Trump. This administration is doing everything possible to restrict poor people money from leaving US shores.

> Probability of video advertising effectiveness: extremely low

I *think* that I almost never buy things based on advertisement. But I think I bought a ground.news subscription after seeing several in-video ads on channels that I like. So far I'm not impressed. But in-video ads are one of the worst trends (especially as I pay for google Premium to block ads on all devices and for my children). If I can, I generally avoid companies that advertise at all, unless I already have an affiliation with the brand. For example, I'm not using any VPN product that advertises. Basically, I see marketing in general as one of the most evil forces in the world, especially when combined with technology, and with no restrictions on embeddings such as product placements. It seems that there was a time when there was more regulation against this onslaught.

I guess I'm a bit more pessimistic. I'm not saying that every single politician is bad, but it seems that dark triad/tetrad types gravitate towards authoritarian power, while many in government are there for self-enrichment, and others just create huge regulatory bureaucracy that often doesn't add much value. This seems to be the majority of human nature: a lot of people simply can't think or choose not to do so.

It seems that most people don't see the drawbacks or consider the declines to be inevitable. Or they're too focussed on making money from those declines.

It's almost funny now that this was controversial then, with all the crap that every tech vendor preloads and the ai they cram into everything and all the other enshitification.

Not a typo.

Yes, since the absolute value of a negative number is greater than zero. AI confabulates; only humans hallucinate.

I feel like there was a time when it was more accurate, but times have certainly changed and I find more exceptions now. It's generally not worth mentioning anymore.

Are you sure it was for seo? I noticed the trend but thought site were trying to increase impressions or view duration or something. Finding the meat of a page was increasingly time-consuming. Why would Google prefer that? Training its AI on that junk maybe?