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The out-of-stock $6000 M3 Ultra Mac Studios with 800GB+ memory bandwidth are going for $24,000 on eBay, so yes definitely

I don’t think we should use current prices as landmarks for large scale demand. That Studio’s current prices is inflated because of a (presumably) short term supply crunch, not because the average user is willing to pay $24k for a home AI inference device.

It assumes that RAM remains supply constrained and that none of the existing RAM contracts are cut short.

But Meta and xAI putting A TON of AI compute onto the market. OpenAI and Anthropic are raising the costs of inference (by reducing how much inference users get via subscriptions). And we haven’t seen Oracle / CoreWeave struggle to pay their debts yet, but they will be selling assets once they get close to that point.


512GB M3 Ultra is out of stock, not coming back, and there’s nothing like it on the consumer market. That’s the reason they go for so much.

Funnily the current high end Mac Studio are not suited for current LLMs. M3 Ultra is "quite an old" chip for AI, despite its bandwidth. The issue for running local models (especially LLMs), you need few things to align really well: 1) compute power (affecting PP) 2) VRAM capacity (affecting model size you can load) 3) Bandwidth (somewhat affecting decoding speed).

The issue with the M3 chip is the compute performance, as it doesn't fit well the transformer architecture. This changed with the M5 (apple baked their own matmul into the chip), which would significantly speed up PP (and video/image generation btw), making the M5 Ultra significantly faster than the M3 Ultra and in practice much more usable. You can try to load Kimi or GLM on M3 Ultra, but it's not usable. Now the M5 Ultra is not out yet, but undoubtedly it will be a superior offering, and shilling 15k on 512GB version is actually reasonable (if it's every priced remotely around that tag).


But there will be and his point is they cut off supply to make room for the new M5 ultra which I hope has 768GB or more of memory.

By the way, they cut the supply because they run out of RAM. They still sell the 96 GB model. Everything else is gone, no stock, they cannot manufacture them. Even minis are 48GB max!

Let’s see, I hope!

Yea but how many of them are selling at that price? Dozens?

Do you honestly think that’s families buying them?

My money is on small companies or affluent programmers experimenting with some new hobby / business model.


What makes you think the supply crunch is short-term?

If demand doesn't fall down or current manufacturers supply go up, somebody (presumably in China) will spin up fabs. Apple wanted to use blacklisted Chinese RAM already.

It's the euv machines that are the bottleneck. Pretty hard to ramp those up any faster in the next few years.

DDR5 is still mostly made with DUV (remember Intel 14+++++++++?), and even though manufacturers have slowly been moving a few layers to EUV the advantage is at the margin. Lack of EUV at scale will not prevent China from ramping useful RAM into this market.

spinning up fabs takes ages, micron has a US fab started bulding in 2023, its still not operational (projected to start mid-2027)

That proves that spinning up US fabs takes ages.

Chinese fabs might not be so tied with red tape and regulation upon regulation (which is a funny reversal, in terms of "communism vs capitalism" bureucracy/inefficiency cold war thinking)


The Chinese don't have access to new EUV machines.

All of their fabrication ability is based on old processes.



DDR5 is DUV not EUV

1.) China is not communist, even remotely so. China is fascist in every sense of the word.

2.) Authoritarianism can move faster than anything. They can just say "wipe out that village, build the coal plant there, data center here, fab here.

3.) If it's red tape and regulation holding the US back, then that's clearly not "capitalism."


>1.) China is not communist, even remotely so. China is fascist in every sense of the word.

Except in the actual historical sense. They appear to enjoy all sorts of freedoms, increased prosperity, even have elections at different levels but under a single party system. Which is not necessarily that different than a effectively two party system.

>2.) Authoritarianism can move faster than anything. They can just say "wipe out that village, build the coal plant there, data center here, fab here.

Now that China is more effective, "it's easy because they're authoritarian". Before the argument was "authoritarianism can never be as effective as free-market democracy".

>3.) If it's red tape and regulation holding the US back, then that's clearly not "capitalism."

It's real world capitalism, not some fantasy some guy imagined removing all warts.


I think the most ironic fact of the 21st century is that there are less than 20,000 naturalized citizens in China. Western leftists don't really have a good explanation for that one and it definitely leans into the fascist characterization.

How is that ironic or necessary? Why should they hand out citizenships, when work or resident permits will do?

And that's somehow fascist, as if the problem with fascist Italy or nazi Germany was that they didn't hand out citizenships?


where is this cheap Chinese RAM? I'd like to buy some

Ebay and Amazon are flooded with it. Especially if you are looking for anything prior to DDR5. DDR2 and DDR3 are especially flooded with weird brands you've never heard of before.

Unfortunately its not so cheap anymore as everyone ramped prices up of course.

Last year I could still get 32GB of DDR4 for under $60 from chinese brands.


DDR3 is from 10 years ago. DDR2 is from 15.

And?

I just upgraded my 2008 Thinkpad R61i to 8GB of DDR2 a few months ago while I was also upgrading to a core2duo.

DDR2 and DDR3 are still in active use by SBC manufacturers.


> I just upgraded my 2008 Thinkpad R61i to 8GB of DDR2 a few months ago while I was also upgrading to a core2duo

Uhhh… ok… good for you I guess…


Some of us keep the worthwhile trash alive forever. This laptop is gonna be twenty years old soon and it's too comfortable of a machine to be tossed to ewaste.

I am hopeful but I am not confident China has the capability to do it.


As if it requires some unique genes or brains?

If a place can do it, another place, with a huge track record on manufacturing and lately expanding all kinds of tech, can.


It might help to not have much in the way of environmental, safety or labor regulations.

Whether or not you feel like those are good overall (I do), they do actually also slow things down.


>It might help to not have much in the way of environmental, safety or labor regulations.

Yes, like how it helped western industry early on. Or, well into the 70s for the most part.


If the increased demand is not short term, production capacity will eventually increase. In the meantime, the logistics disruptions and industrial material shortages and energy inflation will disappear as soon as the wars disrupting them stop, which should bring prices down.

you assume demand will remain flat

what if demand keeps rising faster than production capacity is deployed?


If demand and prices keep rising without production capacity being built fast enough, there will likely eventually be a rush leading to overinvestment and price crashes, but there are too many other factors involved; state investment for security, international politics and trade relations, the possibility of an AI bubble burst, etc.

There are wars coming. The prices are not going down.

We are in a bubble which will be burst the moment the world starts retaliating against the US' 20+ year history of supporting genocide and committing war crimes unabated.

Buy the AI toys while you still can.


DRAM doesn't require cutting edge Fabs, and Chinese manufacturers have finally caught up to the DDR5 standard.

> Multiple motherboard and PC component makers move forward with Chinese-made memory validation

https://www.pcgamer.com/hardware/memory/multiple-motherboard...

The only thing standing in the way of a major Chinese DDR5 ramp up is money.


The underlying demand for massive RAM builds is coming from AI hyperscalers.

There are lots of signals that the sector has been overinvested and that corporate customers are pulling back on spending as the cost of the APIs is revealed.

Once the hyperscalers start struggling to bay their debts (it will happen, just a question of time), there will be a supply glut.

So the only question is: do we share the same definition of “short term”.


Unless the raw materials have an inherent limit on mining/production due to the amount present on the planet, why should or would companies not ramp up to eventually meet demand?

Edit: Okay, this doesn’t mean that that’s actually possible in the short-term, so I think you’re right. But that means as the silver lining, in the medium term horizon there’ll be enough supply again? :’)


> why should or would companies not ramp up to eventually meet demand?

Memory is a cyclical market that has historically rewarded conservatism [1].

Counterpoint: there is enough demand from enough capital-rich customers that they may be willing to shoulder the capital risk.

[1] https://www.ldeepai.com/tech-hub/dram-industry-consolidation... Sorry for the slop link, it has a good chart from a solid source


For existing producers expanding capacity would be a risky move. But it's the perfect time for any newcomers to enter the market. Low yields and worse product don't matter as much right now, and by the time the market cools down you have everything dialed in and can compete on even ground

> it's the perfect time for any newcomers to enter the market

This is a good hypothesis. Curious if anyone has data on the failure rates of new entrants in semiconductors based on how frothy it was on founding.

On one hand, more demand makes selling easier. On the other hand, a shortage makes your input costs (consumable and capital) pricier.

EDIT: It seems like the 2 to 3 year lead time and a crowding effect from new entrants historically made booting up a fab into a boom a bad bet [1]. (The article argues, convincingly, that this time may be different.)

[1] https://www.uncoveralpha.com/p/every-memory-cycle-ends-the-s...


I heard that China was spinning up DDR5 (but not HBM?) production in the next couple of years, with the hope of outcompeting Korea and Taiwan in the mid to long term.

It does seem like an opportunity on a silver platter for Chinese newcomers. Huge demand at the moment.

In two to four years, the Chinese will have at least half the memory market worldwide, and once in, they will continue forward and not look back.

I also believe there would be one or two tech companies that will get into memory by taking it in-house to make sure that they won’t have this problem again in the future.


Don't forget price fixing [1] which we are seeing clear indicators of happening right now too.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DRAM_price_fixing_scandal


Thanks for the link (and underlying thoughts), I really hadn’t considered that.

So essentially, due to technological progress and other factors inducing price collapses (or at least cycles), you can’t start stockpiling insane amounts of finished-product semiconductor, which means you can’t scale production at current technology levels to infinity either?


Let me clarify, I think Apple could sell a device at the scale Apple sells at around the $10 to 25 thousand price point.

Like, take out the price sheets for the Apple Car. Then sell me an AI tower at those price points.


In 2010 one of the standard configurations for the Mac Pro was $4,999. Once you customised ram, storage, peripherals and software it could easily end up above $15,000, or $23k today accounting for inflation. Apple hardware is one thing that has actually got cheaper over time.

https://www.macworld.com/article/209019/macguide2010.html


Or they could use that same amount of memory to ship 64x Macbook Neos, and probably make higher margins off the hardware volume.

Those Macbook Neo users would be very reliant on Apple intelligence, enough maybe to pay for a service with it. I think Apple's much happier going this path.


> Or they could use that same amount of memory to ship 64x Macbook Neos, and probably make higher margins off the hardware volume

If it's an "or," absolutely. But if it's an or, they should be prioritising Macbooks over the Mac Mini Doug Brooks is discussing.

When we breach the "and" of memory supply sufficient to allow for more Mac minis (and Mac Studios), I think it would make sense to consider relaunching Xserve (with new branding, of course) as a consumer/small business product.


Memory supply isn't what held back XServe. We wouldn't need XServe if Apple treated the Mac like a regular computer and supported usable, first-class headless workflows and eGPUs.

The writing has been on the wall since 2019. Apple doesn't like the old way of computing, their goal is to expand the ecosystem by prioritizing install-base and then pushing first-party service offerings like they did with the iPhone. And like they did with the iPhone, Apple is great at ignoring power users to focus on features that make them more money.

You may be waiting a few decades for this type of product, memory supply be damned.


If we reach the and, then they can no longer demand the price

They could do both though. The margin from one user buying a $25000 is sky high compared to sixty kids all with the cheapest computer possible.

It's really not. Apple's phone margins have been as high as 30-40% per-unit, it's likely that they make at least ~$80-150 per Macbook Neo sold.

At the $150 mark (which is probably accurate factoring in lifetime service spend), that's a $10,000 minimum return on the 64x Macbook Neos. Apple can charge that type of premium on consumer hardware, but they're in no position to command $10,000 margins on professional hardware. They're not Nvidia, Apple has always been LARPing as an HPC vendor.


Maybe margin was the wrong way to phrase it, but I know which customer I’d choose to have.

But surely you understand how your preferred customer is the less profitable one?

Apple won't subsidize these low-margin enthusiast products with the profits made from services and higher-margin hardware. Tim Cook would much rather ship the 64 Macs, and get ~15-20 school-age kids hooked on Apple One or the App Store for the rest of their life. There's understandably not much patience for catering to people that want to opt-out of the Apple Intelligence service ecosystem, effectively leeching off of more successful products. The volume and opportunity cost kills the concept in the cradle.


When I was at Apple we never wanted or. We wanted all. If that push to use Chinese memory works out it will be great for us and Apple.

Apple sure doesn't act like it. The Mac is still a minority market share of PCs, and their entrants into spaces like AR do nothing to compete with incumbents.

Now that the Mac Pro is depreciated, Apple's plan to pivot to service offerings seems set in stone. That's the "want it all" attitude they've adopted with the App Store.


I think so, too, and I think it'll end up being a race between Apple & NVIDIA (or NVIDIA partners) to see who realizes this first. It would probably be easier for Apple to do it because it wouldn't require a form factor adjustment [over the Mac Studio they already have]. That said, NVIDIA already offers chipsets for both the lower end (DGX Spark with Vera + GB10, at roughly the $4500 price point) and higher end (DGX Station with Vera + GB300, for $85-100k). The DGX Station is equivalent to ~5-6 RTX6000 GPUs attached to a mid-range CPU server, but far more than most individual developers would want or need. I've heard through the grapevine that NVIDIA's received consistent feedback that they need something like a "GB20" that slots above the Spark/GB10 and can simultaneously run larger models for inference while hosting a dev environment on the same box. You can daisy-chain Sparks just like you can daisy-chain Mac Minis, but you're still constrained on model performance based on what a single device can accommodate.

Form factor is the easy part - both Nvidia and Apple are experienced SOC designers.

The hard part is the GPU architecture. Apple Silicon was designed with a laser focus on raster efficiency (similar to AMD's GPUs) which makes a lot of sense for highly mobile hardware, but is a crippling mistake for high-performance compute. Apple's largest Ultra chips are hamstrung with SOC-tier GPU performance, their highest-end desktops are outperformed by Nvidia's laptop offerings. Apple has to find a way to scale upwards without imposing too much architectural strain on their cheaper hardware like the iPhone and Macbook. Nvidia has already solved this issue; full CUDA compute stacks are usable on extremely cheap GPUs like the Nintendo Switch's Tegra SOC, or the Mac Mini-sized Jetson boards.

In terms of "who needs to redesign more to address the market", Apple has a lot of technical debt to unearth before they catch up to Nvidia. And if they do catch up, Nvidia will still support Linux and other differentiating features that Apple refuses to implement. It definitely feels like Nvidia is closer to a winner with the Spark than Apple is with the Mini or Studio.


I’m still disappointed they didn’t make a Mac Pro with 4 or 8 or 16 or 32 ultra M chips for something insane

Yeh I don't know why the emphasise the 'neural engine' - it's their stonking RAM bandwidth that just blows everything else out of the water.

Not the same issue, but makes me nostalgic for these simpler times:

https://www.wired.com/2011/04/amazon-flies-24-million/


I’m sure that hasn’t gone unnoticed.

How much did Apple sell them for?

feel free to (and you should) audit! https://www.npmjs.com/package/@0xmmo/crew

I think you're looking at $60 an hour which is not horrible (estimating Waymo avg is 3 rides / hour x $20 per ride)


how do you select text?


Three finger drag. That was the best and unique thing about apple touchpads since, like, early 2000s, but then it was buried deep down the menus and forgotten for some reason. But seriously - try it, you might never go back.


Yep: tap to click and 3-finger drag are amazing. I know mice are useful, particularly for games, but every time I'm forced to use one when helping someone with their computer I absolutely rage at it. Apple's trackpads, and software for same, are a big reason I'm not tempted to go back to Linux.


The Supply Chain Risk label requires every single company in the supply chain of a product or service provided to the US Government to either drop Anthropic or get dropped themselves. This is not just suppliers, but also includes suppliers of suppliers all the way down. This is a much larger chunk of the economy (approaching 100%) than the Pentagon/DOW.


There are multiple designations, any part of government, defense applications, not allowed.

For example, in certain outcomes, Anthropic may not be used by the Pentagon, but still be used by the IRS.


Yes, but

> I suspect the admin will now just have an informal, not-written-down policy that does exactly the same thing.


That doesn't make any sense. You can't apply an informal policy to the entire supply chain.


Aaand that would get challenged in court, remember they had to get Congress to create this designation in the first place because it is not de-facto legal for the USG to discriminate between individuals or corporations.


I would love to see real-life tokens/sec values advertised for one or various specific open source models.

I'm currently shopping for offline hardware and it is very hard to estimate the performance I will get before dropping $12K, and would love to have a baseline that I can at least always get e.g. 40 tok/s running GPT-OSS-120B using Ollama on Ubuntu out of the box.


Look for llmfit on github. This will help with that analysis. I've found it reasonably accurate. If you have Ollama already installed, it can download the relevant models directly.


For reference, 12k gets you at least 4 Strix Halo boxes each running GPT-OSS-120B at ~50tok/s.


Why do all the discussion posts about ICE’s biometric app get taken down? Although they may invite politicing, they are very relevant to HN.

e.g [flagged] Target director's Global Entry was revoked after ICE used app to scan her face [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46833871]


Digital brownshirts, using moderation tools as weapon to stifle discussion critical of the regime.


[flagged]


What is "extremist" about "sabotage"? These are private companies and private individuals, they can choose whether to or not to interact with ICE. Unless its a part of some formal investigation there is nothing criminal or extreme about providing whatever data or response or lack thereof to them. Or do you not believe in freedom of association and free speech?


ICE is a law enforcement agency and so intentionally seeking to obstruct an investigation is indeed a crime. Impairing the access to data opens the door to fraud and other charges. And the manual linked goes above and beyond these relatively 'soft' crimes and into things like arson. Betting your life, and career, on these sort of things testament to how radicalized some have become.


How is this obstruction? Unless it's part of a proper investigation, they are just another private individual. You are free to do or not engage in business contracts with them, and any data given true or false or data not gievn can hardly be a criminal matter as its not an investigation and simply a business dealing between two parties.


A company is absolutely free to choose whether or not to do business with them, but an employee acting to try to undermine them as a customer or their relationship with the business is what would open the door to all these sort of laws and consequences, especially when that relationship is precisely in the furtherance of a law enforcement purposes, and the interference was motivated by an effort to impair that enforcement.

Stuff like actively expressing opposition to taking them on as a customer, trying to persuade management to do otherwise, and so on would all be perfectly kosher. But the stuff the top post in this thread alludes to, let alone what it links to, is how you end up in prison for a very long time after the 'I didn't know it was illegal' defense fails.


An employees actions would be a matter of judgment between the company leadership and themsleves, I don't understand how it's a criminal matter. To the outside entity it's a business contract, to the company it's an internal matter if and how to deal with any specific activities of the employee.


> An employees actions would be a matter of judgment between the company leadership and themselves

There has been a few news articles (and court cases) where this question has been raised and it is not strict true. Employee actions are only actions for which the employee has been given as an task as part of their employment and role. Actions outside of that is private actions. When this end up in court, the role description and employee contract becomes very important.

A clear case example is when a doctor is looking up data on a patient. Downloading patient records from people who they are not the doctor for can be criminal and not just a breech of hospital policy, especially if they sell or transfer the data.


I was tempted to add this very line when I wrote my message but I hoped it would be obvious I don't mean things like illegally stealing private data. I was talking about things like "falsifying" data to the contractor, which doesn't seem like a crime to me just a contract violation.


If the employee are destroying property owned by the employer, for which is not part of the employee role or assignment, then they could be charged with hacking and property destruction just as if it was done by someone outside the company. The way around this that some people can attempt is work-to-rule strike. That would be a legal way to sabotage a contract without actually going beyond that of the employee contract.


Again I was thinking of things like submitting non-functional application or data, not obvious property crimes like destruction of property.


You're granting an employee a special status that doesn't exist. Imagine a random person working to undermine a contract between the government and a business, motivated by an effort to obstruct law enforcement from enforcing the law. I'm sure you'd agree that this would obviously be illegal - that doesn't change simply because the person happens to be working for the business in question.


It's still not clear to me, where did I anywhere imply it's any different if a single individual or company is in question. I said it's a matter between the company and the employee because a company may dislike the employees actions and choose to deal with it eg by firing them, the contracting party isn't involved here. It still seems to me at most a matter of contract whether it's directly a single person being contracted or a person as part of a company.


And no I don't think it's illegal. You seem deeply confused, where is the "obstruction"? If there is obstruction there should be a specific court order and the parties involved, otherwise it's just business. Do you think say, telling a amazon delivery driver who's asking for the location of some address a bs route is illegal?


If it's still not clear, I am saying my understanding is unless it is very specifically part of an investigation and involves the party in question, the entity whether an individual or a company is irrelevant, they are just as far as it seems to me engaging in a business deal.


The other side of this is, if you don't obstruct, you will eventually have to be the guy saying "I was just following orders" [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superior_orders


The Nazis were engaging in systematic and large scale genocide. ICE is deporting people in the country illegally back to their home countries, free of charge. I'm not being snarky there either, immigration offenses are taken seriously worldwide and in many places you can end up in indefinite detention, required to pay for your own deportation + fines, and more. The 'penalty' being a free ticket home is a pretty sweet deal.


The Nazis started with a deportation plan [0] and building camps as well. It never starts with genocide, you slowly work up to it. The "final solution" happened once they realized the impracticablity of mass deportations.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madagascar_Plan


The Madagascar plan was Germany scheming to to remove all Jews from Europe and their occupied territories. It has nothing, whatsoever, to do with a country removing illegal immigrants from its territory as happens every day, world round. The only thing that makes it notable was previous administrations intentionally enabling and encouraging illegal activity which turned a small problem into a big one.


What "illegal activity" were previous admins "intentionally" "enabling"? Be specific. Cite specific facts and cases. And give comparison of rates of "illegalities" against the current admin.


Instinct says if this current admin had any at all even remote evidence of some wrongdoing by the previous government, they'd already have been screaming their lungs out about it. I mean they always are screaming and blithering about incoherently, but they'd be screaming along with suing at least.


This doesn't justify it by any means, but the parallel between the Madagascar Plan and the issue with illegals in the US is actually quite similar in reasoning for how the perpetrators end up opening concentration camps.

There are several countries that refuse involuntary repatriation of their citizens. With the Jews in germany, same issue, hardly anywhere was willing to take them. And that's when you ended up with the perpetrator buffering them in these camps until they just gave up because there was no place to send them other than back into the broad population.

Of course it is the fault of the USA if these people are abused in these camps, but these peoples' home country are not doing any favors to the people stuck there by refusing to take them back.

People in i.e. France are dealing with similar issue where much of their criminals are Algerian because Algeria is refusing much of the repatriation of illegal immigrants in France. France has chosen to just release them back into population rather than build camps, with end result Algerian gangs terrorize the populace knowing they can't be sent back, which obviously plays into the hands of pushing voters towards the right-wing.


The German plan for deportation was never executed. There were programs against the Jews, they were persecuted and encouraged to leave, but the Nazis never formally banned them. They ended up going the other direction as genocide approached and made it impossible for Jews to leave.

But the situations are again nothing alike because in that case you're speaking of Germany trying to dump Germans on other countries. In this case you're speaking of the US returning e.g. Salvadorans to El Salvador, which the latter country generally having obligations under international law to accept their citizens. The handful of exceptions, like with Venezuela, have all generally been resolved.


It is the exact same thing, with a different outgroup.


No it obviously is not. You do not have a right to stay in a country illegally, anywhere in this world. If you want to migrate to a country, you need that country's permission. Without it you are an illegal alien and will, at the minimum, be removed from that country as soon as you are caught. In many places in this world you then may end up in detention - potentially indefinitely, imprisoned, fined, and so on. The US system, which is mostly just giving you a 'free' ride home, funded by US taxpayers, is incredibly lenient.

There is no in group, out group, or whatever else. Go to Mexico or Canada illegally, as an American, and you're getting deported, same as everybody and everywhere else. Vice versa if a Canadian, Brit, or whoever else comes into the US illegally, they're also getting deported.


Not to make it out to be some paradise, but illegal immigration isn't a crime in Argentina or Brazil. Argentina doesn't enforce it, and in fact I have read court cases of people criminals arriving illegally with fake passport and granted citizenship.

If you are illegal, you can literally show up fresh off of jet and on day one in .ar, file a court case for citizenship, have a lawyer run down the clock for a few years (by constitution in argentina illegal residence and subsistence for a few years = citizenship), and all the meanwhile they are legally barred from deporting you.


It is still a crime even in Brazil and Argentina. Whether or not it's enforced and/or the degree of exceptions allowed, are another issue. For instance obviously illegal immigration was treated radically different during the previous administration, but the laws remain overwhelmingly the same. For instance the most controversial issue in contemporary times is deportation without trial. That's called expedited removal [1], and was passed under Bill Clinton's administration, 30 years ago.

One thing that I really don't like about the way the Democrat party is handling illegal immigration is that they know it's overwhelmingly unpopular, so they say one thing and do another. For instance part of the DNC 2024 platform was "Securing the Border" [2] which they tried to argue Biden had done, and that the only reason he hadn't doing more was because of Congress. Obviously that's overt gaslighting. If they want to run on a platform of defacto open borders, more power to them - laws can be changed, but they need to actually run on that platform instead of lying and gaslighting.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expedited_removal

[2] - https://democrats.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/FINAL-MASTE...


Obama and to a lesser extent Biden weren't soft on illegal immigration, but they did two things that differ from the current administration:

* They followed the law. Crackdowns like the one Trump is taking are only possible if you treat law as a fluid concept and ignore judges consistently. A democrat is never going to get around that, and yes, laws can be changed, but notice how Trump isn't even bothering to do that also (he just ignores them), the best he got from a Republican congress was extra funding for ICE (and remember, Bush was worse than Obama on illegal immigration).

* They just treated them with some dignity (which Trump sees as soft, dignity isn't really in his vocab).


Judges aren't powerless. If an administration genuinely ignores a judge's lawful ruling, they can charged with contempt, with penalties up to imprisonment. But there's a lot of judicial activism leading to 'creative' rulings. Like the Supreme Court, Federal judges are appointed with life terms. And they can be even more impactful on a day-to-day basis, especially when they intentionally step outside the bounds of their authority. One of the more extremist judges did try to charge this administration with contempt - it was tossed. So the admin tried to charge the judge with misconduct, which was also tossed. It's just a lot of back and forth nonsense with checks and balances generally still working okayish.

So for an example from the previous administration, they wanted race based admissions for colleges. That is obviously illegal and unconstitutional. After the Supreme Court predictably ruled against them, they worked to circumvent their ruling in various ways including in a 'Dear Colleagues' letter [1] offering guidance on ways universities could achieve a racial quota while remaining within the bounds of the law, effectively laying out a proposed blueprint for intentional Disparate Impact [2], which is *drum roll* also illegal.

The main difference you're seeing in contemporary times is the way the media is spinning everything, intentionally looking to foment conflict and radicalism. We live in amoral times and so working around the judges and legal systems is framed primarily in terms of who's doing it.

[1] - https://web.archive.org/web/20241127174625/https://www.ed.go...

[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disparate_impact


Judges aren’t powerless, they can always ask the executive to enforce their rulings (except when it’s the executive who’s disobeying their rulings…oops).

Yes, that poor justice lawyer who broke down when the judge berated her that they were just ignoring his rulings, the lawyer replied that being sent to jail for contempt would at least let her get some sleep!

So you shifted from immigration to DEI stuff? Yes, white people no longer get preferential admission like they once did and it’s somehow now racist, do you even realize how bad you guys sound? Anyways, yes, Obama looked for places in the law where he could do things, which I guess you will just claim is just as bad as ignoring laws and rulings straight up?

The main difference is that we literally elected a fascist with dementia as President. And you guys would claim media bias if the press simply played videos of Trump talking.


You did not have a right to stay in Germany as a Jew either. My point exactly.


This is both technically and logically incorrect. From a technical point of view - it's just wrong. Jews were persecuted and encouraged to leave, yet never formally expelled from Germany. And as the Nazis moved towards genocide, they moved in the other direction and made it impossible for Jews to leave the country.

But from a logical point of view, it also fails, even in a parallel reality where you were right. Countries are generally deemed to have the right to kill their citizens for major violations of the law, in the pursuit of justice. But that does not mean a country has the right to just start killing their citizens on a whim. And similarly, every single country has the right to expel people who enter their country illegally or remain beyond the terms of a granted temporary stay. This does not mean a country has the right the randomly start expelling their own citizens, en masse, for no normal reason.


Your core assumptions are incorrect. Jews were not considered German Reich citizens. [0]

Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuremberg_Laws#Classifications...


Your link does not conflict with anything I said. Jews were never formally expelled from Germany. You might note the page you link even lays out various rights for Jews living within Germany. In any case, this would not change the issue even had they been expelled, for reasons already mentioned.

Those who do not read their links are doomed to misrepresent them.


You had a whole long paragraph about how it's all totally different this time because the Jews were German citizens.

Except they were not and your whole point was wrong.

There are none so blind as those who will not see.


You're engaging in banal semantics, in lieu of any form of logical or meaningful debate. When I say "citizen" obviously I am referring to the contemporary usage where you'd call somebody who is of a country - a citizen of that country. In the past this was not the case in many places where people could be legally within their own county, yet not considered civilians. An example you may be more familiar with is slaves in America.


These banal semantics are the legalistic excuses used by genocidal regimes to justify the unjustifiable and to assuade the conscience of collaborators.

A close mirror of what is happening in this thread, if you will.


Deporting illegal aliens as literally every single country in existence does has no need of justification. You're the one that needs to justify claims of deporting people, for free, back to their home country as being an 'unjustifiable genocide', but in the end that's fundamentally illogical which leaves you with hyperbole, misrepresentation, and of course these sort of semantic games.


Run me the numbers on how many people sent to el salvadore were illegal salvadoreans.


> which leaves you with hyperbole, misrepresentation, and of course these sort of semantic games.

> They say, ‘It’s not so bad’ or ‘You’re seeing things’ or ‘You’re an alarmist.’

> "And you are an alarmist. You are saying that this must lead to this, and you can’t prove it. These are the beginnings, yes; but how do you know for sure when you don’t know the end, and how do you know, or even surmise, the end? On the one hand, your enemies, the law, the regime, the Party, intimidate you. On the other, your colleagues pooh-pooh you as pessimistic or even neurotic.

[...]

> But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That’s the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked—if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in ’43 had come immediately after the ‘German Firm’ stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in ’33. But of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.

~ They Thought They Were Free - The Germans, 1933-45; Milton Mayer


Yes but first prove illegality. And if you believe killing any person on the streets without any suspicion or charge is legal, cite the laws for it.


I mean why not, if they are just taking on a blanket software or data proposal, its no different than say a local government contracting the construction of some accounting software. At most they could claim failure of contract, I don't see how it should be a criminal matter if non functional or bad outcome was delivered.


That's the point, it's not an investigation in the first place so how can you "obstruct" an investigation. It's just a business deal. Unless you believe special rules apply for business deals with them that make perfectly normal things crimes.


They do not at any point outline how cooling will be done, they simply say "it will be more efficient than chillers due to the larger delta T" which is incorrect because it's about dT not delta T


> "The only logical solution therefore is to transport these resource-intensive efforts to a location with vast power and space. I mean, space is called 'space' for a reason. [crying laughing emoji]"

This is all the reasoning provided. It is quite sad how a company I admired so much has become embroiled in financial doohickery.


It’s not SpaceX’s fault. It’s still a company to admire, it’s just that nobody appears to be able to stop Musk.

I wonder why SpaceX investors aren’t revolting.


> I wonder why SpaceX investors aren’t revolting.

Because if SpaceX were valued like a normal company, they would lose their money.

SpaceX, as technologically awesome as it is, simply cannot be that big of a company because the market for space launches is relatively small.

SpaceX is targeting an IPO at a valuation 500x earnings. They need to jump on the "AI" / datacenter bandwagon to even hope to sell that kind of valuation.

The whole "datacenters in space" thing is an answer to the question "what could require 1000x the satellite launches that we have now?"

It has nothing to do with what makes sense economically for datacenters!


I wonder why the SpaceX top management is going along with this. It's clearly not in their long term interest to do so.


From what I understand, Musk owns 42% of the company and nearly 80% of the voting rights, so I guess that answers the question.

I guess this is the price you pay for buying shares with less voting rights.


Their CEO is revolting.


new trolley problem just dropped: save 1 billion people or ...


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