russellbeattie (u/russellbeattie)

russellbeattie commented on U.S. government takes 10% stake in Intel cnbc.com/2025/08/22/intel... · Posted by u/givemeethekeys

BeetleB · 3 days ago

The US government is paying about $9B to Intel for this (on top of the $2B already paid).

russellbeattie · a day ago

> "About $7.8 billion had been been pledged to Intel under the incentives program, but only $2.2 billion had been funded so far. Another $3.2 billion of the government investment is coming through the funds from another program called “Secure Enclave.”"

The funds were already going to Intel. Trump just decided to demand 10% of the company for the already earmarked incentive programs. It was pure extortion.

russellbeattie commented on U.S. government takes 10% stake in Intel cnbc.com/2025/08/22/intel... · Posted by u/givemeethekeys

ocdtrekkie · 3 days ago

Arguably the alternative was the government just... not giving them the CHIPS Act money. (And there's certainly a point to be made that Trump altering the deal is... problematic.)

But I will say, I find the concept that when we invest public dollars in a private company, the public retains a stake appealing. I think about the strategic oil reserve, and how the government actually can make money by buying and selling oil to the open market. The idea that if we inject money into a company to help our domestic industries, that the government can sell it's stake back out at a later time is appealing.

(And again, to be clear, not a Republican or a Trumper here, and I assume in Trump fashion he will find some way to screw everyone involved and get paid himself personally... but the concept of the government acquiring a stake rather than just giving them a grant is on it's face... maybe not terrible?)

russellbeattie · 3 days ago

We haven't invested any public dollars into Intel, we just took 10% of it.

russellbeattie commented on U.S. government takes 10% stake in Intel cnbc.com/2025/08/22/intel... · Posted by u/givemeethekeys

russellbeattie · 3 days ago

> "The United States paid nothing for these Shares, and the Shares are now valued at approximately $11 Billion Dollars,” President Trump wrote"

This wasn't any sort of investment, it was blackmail. No corporation in the country would voluntarily give up 10% of the company to the federal government - for free - unless overtly threatened. The Trump administration is hoping that by exerting control over Intel, it can begin dictating conditions to Intel's customers, thus the tech community at large.

I also assume that one of Trump's cronies will take a spot on the board or some other oversight role, and in the near future, Intel will enrich Trump in one way or another, such as stock, investments, insider information, etc.

Nothing about this is good for the U.S. or Intel. It's not a bailout or a sign of support, but a way for Trump to have power over the tech sector.

russellbeattie commented on The End of Handwriting wired.com/story/the-end-o... · Posted by u/beardyw

russellbeattie · 5 days ago

There's a thing in China where younger generations have to write out the pinyin for certain words when writing notes by hand. (I'm not sure if it's because they've forgotten the characters, or just how to write them. Maybe a little of both?)

So for example, if someone is jotting down a grocery list, they'll write common words like rice or milk in Hanzi, but then struggle to remember the characters for deodorant, and just write it out using pinyin.

There's a lot of hand-wringing about it there as well. Kids these days!

russellbeattie commented on AI is different antirez.com/news/155... · Posted by u/grep_it

russellbeattie · 9 days ago

> "However, if AI avoids plateauing long enough to become significantly more useful..."

As William Gibson said, "The future is already here, it's just not evenly distributed." Even if LLMs, reasoning algorithms, object recognition, and diffusion models stopped improving today, we're still at a point where massive societal changes are inevitable as the tech spreads out across industries. AI is going to steadily replace chair-to-keyboard interfaces in just about every business you can imagine.

Interestingly, AI seems to be affecting the highest level "white collar" professionals first, rather than replacing the lowest level workers immediately, like what happened when blue collar work was automated. We're still pretty far away from AI truck drivers, but people with fine arts or computer science degrees, for example, are already feeling the impact.

"Decimation" is definitely an accurate way to describe what's in the process of happening. What used to take 10 floors of white collar employees will steadily decline to just 1. No idea what everyone else will be doing.

russellbeattie commented on PYX: The next step in Python packaging astral.sh/blog/introducin... · Posted by u/the_mitsuhiko

kouteiheika · 11 days ago

It can. That's what uv is. Put an '#!/usr/bin/env -S uv run python' shebang in your script, add a `pyproject.toml` with all of your deps, and you're done.

russellbeattie · 10 days ago

Again, you're creating a new session with special environmental variables. It's nice that it uses pyproject.toml (well, except for the toml part), but it still needs uv.

I was suggesting that the Python executable have this sort of functionality built in, with no need for a new session.

russellbeattie commented on Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy theguardian.com/film/2025... · Posted by u/nemoniac

russellbeattie · 11 days ago

I am absolutely astounded by the pirate streaming sites for a bunch of reasons.

First, I'm amazed that they exist at all. I don't understand how they do it for both legal and monetary reasons. Serving thousands of gigabytes of video daily cannot be cheap! And their domains continue to stay active despite what I'm sure is legal barrage from rights holders.

Second, the UX of these sites is better than any commercial service, hands down (as long as you use an ad blocking browser or VPN). The GUIs are super clean and provide all the features you'd want: Sortable lists, the ability to search how you like, clickable links for actor, director, year, etc. to get a list of just those shows, links to Trailers on YouTube, constantly updated new releases carousel and more. And again, this is content that's streamed straight to your browser - no torrenting or external downloading, etc. Just tap and watch.

Third, as mentioned in the article, the pirate sites have a catalog of every video and TV show/series you can imagine. Just about anything that's ever been on physical media or streamed, it's there. Every time I read about how such and such show or movie is unavailable on any streaming platform because of licensing disputes or other reasons, I go check my preferred pirate streaming video site and it's always there.

Bonus: There are live streaming sites as well dedicated to sports. Everything from BBC Olympics coverage to subscription only Soccer/Baseball/NFL etc.

Bonus 2: If you're impatient or too broke to see a newly released movie in theaters, decent quality cam recordings always appear within a day or so, and are replaced when the original is published.

Seriously, if any company were to provide the same level of service, they could charge tons of cash for it and have millions of subscribers. They're that good.

Again though, how do these sites exist!? Where is the data stored? How is the bandwidth paid for? Who is updating the sites daily with new content? So many questions.

russellbeattie commented on PYX: The next step in Python packaging astral.sh/blog/introducin... · Posted by u/the_mitsuhiko

russellbeattie · 11 days ago

What are the reasons that Python can't implement the same sort of module/packaging system as NodeJS? That seems to work well enough.

Executing a Python script in the same directory as some sort of project.json file that contains all the complicated dependency details would be a pretty good solution to me. But I'm probably missing a whole bunch of details. (Feel free to educate me).

In general I really dislike the current system of having to use new environment variables in a new session in order to isolate Py scripts. It has always seemed like a hack with lots of footguns. Especially if you forget which console is open.

russellbeattie commented on I tried every todo app and ended up with a .txt file al3rez.com/todo-txt-journ... · Posted by u/al3rez

russellbeattie · 14 days ago

I tried a bunch of different shoe styles, but decided that cheap sandals are really all you need. You people wearing boots, sneakers or loafers should really consider going back to basics.

I mean, we all have feet, right? And we all want to protect the soles of our feet, so there's really no need for all the bells and whistles like laces or padding.

russellbeattie commented on I tried every todo app and ended up with a .txt file al3rez.com/todo-txt-journ... · Posted by u/al3rez

fmbb · 14 days ago

Also, if you are a developer by trade a lot of these features are quick and easy to implement.

russellbeattie · 14 days ago

Exactly. Most people wish they could customize their Todo app or system to their specific preference or need, but have no way of making it happen. Devs can, so they do.

What's interesting is AI is going to change this. Entering a prompt for an app that has all the features you want is already pretty trivial, and will only get better.