I think the UBI experiments were one-sided. They may have proven that the receivers have profited. But did they show that the givers profited as well, or at least did not suffer enough to significantly reduce their economic output and therefore risk the financing of UBI?
You'd need to check something like take a group of high-earners, increase their tax rate by say 100%, increase their cost of living, and validate that they neither leave the experiment nor work significantly less.
The thing is, there is no hive mind called "society". Everybody works in their own interest. Always, and in every "society".
Individual workers work on failing initiatives as long as they get paid. The outcome of the initiative may be bad for "society". But was it good for the individuals working on it? Maybe they got paid well. Maybe they enjoyed the work? Maybe the work was easy because they knew that it would fail anyway, so they didn't have to put much effort into it?
Maybe it was also good for the management or politicians? Maybe it was a step up in their career. And maybe, if they could jump ship before the failure became obvious, they could climb up the ladder to get to an even better position? You can always blame your successors for ruining the project.
And maybe it was good for whoever ordered it? If it's a local project, maybe they got subsidies from federal government bodies, and they don't even care whether it succeeds, as long as it created employment and the illusion of progress? Or if it's a private project, maybe they just tried a moon shot that, if it fails, was useful as a tax write-off?
In real life, there are so many layers to a 'failed' project. It can be a failure for some and a success for others. And those for whom it is a success will defend it, maybe even deceive to keep it running.
The prosecutor's description of the "ICE protest" is "setting off fireworks, vandalizing property, and shooting at police officers who responded. One officer was struck in the neck with a bullet and survived.".
"Prosecutors said that the group launched a premeditated terror attack on the detention facility inspired by antifa ideology, by setting off fireworks, vandalizing property, and shooting at police officers who responded. One officer was struck in the neck with a bullet and survived."
1992-me hates the author. Coming from 68k assembly, x86 was a nightmare. And together with the ridiculous number of registers, segments made up a huge chunk of that horrible experience.
"Elon is currently sitting on 817,000 lifetimes worth of money."
I think that's a wrong perception, especially in this case. Elon Musk does not have nearly a trillion dollar in cash. He holds shares in companies that have a market worth of a trillion dollar. But as soon as he sells, and thus wouldn't be involved with them anymore, they would be only worth a fraction of that. Tesla, in particular, would probably be bankrupt.
And if you sell the shares, you get money back. He owns assets that are valued in excess of 800,000 lifetimes of money. If you can sidestep income tax by simply getting your income in assets rather than banknotes, something has gone wrong somewhere
A Tesla without Musk isn't worth much. It's not that profitable. Tesla's P/E ratio is 350 or so - absolutely crazy. Ford's and Toyota's are about 10. The largest Chinese electric car maker's (BYD) PE/ratio is 20. People are buying Tesla shares because they believe in Musk. The moment he announces that he is out, his wealth is going down by 90% or more.
If he wanted to get out and sell his stocks, why would he care if it collapses after he leaves? He sells his stocks when the value of the company is still high
> If he wanted to get out and sell his stocks, why would he care if it collapses after he leaves?
"Selling the stock" is not a single transaction. The moment he leaves Tesla, or starts selling shares (which would take weeks or months), the stock collapses.
I think it is too early to answer that question. If I really wanted to, I could 'vibe code' Photoshop. But my estimate is that it would take me 2 years, as a solo dev. And by 'vibe code' I mean not write a single line by hand - I would still define and specify an outline for important data structures and algorithms. And then work through the system feature by feature, with many prompts needed for each feature, until it is perfect. It is much faster than coding by hand, but still a lot of work.
Currently, I am working on a smaller-than-Photoshop solo side-project that would have taken years, but now I am close to a beta after 6 months. If the main work is coding, I am easily 10x as productive. But those productivity gains don't hold up when teams are larger, because communication and processes are not really accelerated. So be a bit more patient. It's too early to expect vibecoded Photoshops.
I watched it last week, and I loved every moment of it. It's really the Muppet Show, not one of those boring remakes and spin-offs that never worked.
Even my 9 year old daughter who would usually roll her eyes when I would even suggest watching Muppets, watched it till the end. Probably mostly because of Sabrina Carpenter, but whatever.
I can understand why you want an AI to use a desktop. But it's still absurd to use the least efficient interface possible for interactions with the outer world.
Having said that, fun project, good luck :) I am sure quite a few people would want to try it.
I'm curious - what would you imagine as a better interface? The desktop approach has overhead, but the advantage is it can use ANY software (VS Code, browsers, GUI apps) without needing custom integrations for each tool.
As much as I like the Claude models, they are expensive. I wouldn't use them to process large volumes of data.
Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite is $0.10 per million tokens. Grok 4.1 Fast is really good and only $0.20. They will work just as well for most simple tasks.
You'd need to check something like take a group of high-earners, increase their tax rate by say 100%, increase their cost of living, and validate that they neither leave the experiment nor work significantly less.