The entire use case of dynamic pricing is to raise prices.
Airlines were really the first to do this but there it kinda makes sense. You have a plane. It's going anyway. You want to fill it.
At the other extreme is RealPage, which is explicitly designed to raise rents and it's used by enough people that you can view it as the last frontier of anti-trust, anticompetitive behavior and price-fixing. It's also state-sanctioned violence because your price-fixing scheme has the threat of you being homeless attached to it.
That's another aspect to this: collusion doesn't happen in dark smoke-filled rooms anymore. It can be as simple as all "competitors" simply using the same software, which tells them all to do the same thing.
Another commenter had it right: this is beyond antitrust or competition law. It's a RICO issue.
There's no real structural reason for inflation since the pandemic. The pandemic simply broke the seal on raising prices and now everybody is in on it.
The benefits are twofold: physical colocation and bandwidth.
Thunderbolt 5 offers 80Gbps of bidirectional bandwidth. PCIe 5.0 16x offers 1024Gbps of bidirectional bandwidth. This matters.
TB5 cables can only get so long whereas fiber can go much farther more easily. This means that in a data center type environment, you could virtualize your GPUs and attach them as necessary, putting them in a separate bank (probably on the same rack).
Active optical (yes!) Thunderbolt cables can be much longer. After all, optical fiber was the original medium for Thunderbolt, back when it was still called Light Peak.
As for bandwidth, the medium transition seems to actually limit the author’s capabilities by losing some of the more advanced link-training features that are necessary for the highest-bandwidth PCIe 3 connections, never mind PCIe 5.
Hundreds of meters is considered short range in the world of *SFP. If you just plan on putting the GPUs in the same rack then I'm not sure it really matters, but you can really put anything anywhere in your DC and have things zoned with *SFP.
I don't think there is any reason TB couldn't do the same, beyond it would be even more niche to want non-modular/patchable cables+transceivers at those lengths (especially since fiber is often bundled dozens/hundreds of strands over a single trunk cable between racks).
Thunderbolt is kind of cursed. To insure maximum compatibility it mandates a legacy usb2 connection via separate connections. TB3/USB4/TB4 are packetized, but afaik there's no defined way to packetized usb2, it's expected there be a whole separate set of wires for it.
And because of timings, my admittedly so-aonunderstanding that you can only get about 7m before you absolutely have to have a hub/repeater (unless you can speed up the speed of light considerably). This limit to how long a single length can be can't really be cheated without violating usb specs.
It's awesome if folks have packetized USB2. A pity it's not in the flipping spec though!!
That Corning made it 50m is wild. You need a virtual hub at the start that can pretend to be hubs 1-5 (so it's close enough to time well). Then a hub on the other side of the cable at (skinny) tree depth 6. Allowing for 4 devices under it (the number of ports on a usb2 hub in the spec. But you could work around by faking being not a skinny tree but a fat tree, maybe?).
IIRC, USB-PD also requires USB 2.0 signaling. The idea of dedicated lower-bandwidth signaling wires isn’t uncommon in my very limited EE experience—level 3 charging reuses J-1772 signaling to control the charge available of the DC pins.
I was looking into the highest bandwidth optical transceivers. 400Gbps were easy enough to find so thanks for posting this. I honestly didn't know there were 1.6Tbps transceivers like this.
One note: I believe the SMF max fiber length is 2km not 1m [1]. The data sheet [2] also says:
The video is about a 2x1 link, which the author hopes to eventually scale up to 3x4 using 40 gig transceivers. I'd say thunderbolt is probably safe in the near future.
Bidirectional is a lot like biweekly. Biweekly depending on context means twice a week or once every two weeks and bidirectional can both mean per direction and total of both directions.
I'm only a single datapoint but I've never encountered that usage. My understanding of a bidirectional link is that it meets the same spec in both directions simultaneously. It's important precisely because many links aren't bidirectional, sharing a single physical link between two logical links.
There's a guy by the name of Michael Lacey who is popular in Tiktok under the name Comrade Sinque [1]. He spent 21 years in prison. It was a much longer sentence. I'm not sure what happened to get him out much earlier.
What was his crime? Felony murder. Sounds bad, right? So what were the details. At age 19 he and a friend burgled a house. The homeowner killed his friend. That was it.
Many Americans don't realize how this works and how insanely unjust it is. It's called the felony murder doctrine and it is unique to the US. It means that if a felony is being commited and if anyone dies then you, as the felon, can be charged with murder regardless of how they died. In states like Alabama, all burglaries are felonies. So if you and a friend break into a house, the police respond and kill your friend, you can get convicted of murder and sentenced to 30-years in prison.
Not a made up example [2].
Anyway, Comrade Sinque is better read than probably at least 95% of Americans. He is thoughtful and intelligent. He wasn't born a criminal (that's 18th century thinking). He's certainly not low IQ (as some would have you believe criminals all are). No, the issue is material conditions. Poverty and a lack of opportunity.
We probably spent about $1 million convicting and incarcerating him for 21 years. This doesn't really seem like a good investment.
Convictions/punishment is also meant to be a deterrent.
That one being: don't rob a house in a state with a castle doctrine where the owner is allowed to fucking kill you. If you first hand help someone get killed, you're at fault. Sounds reasonable.
But, I also wish we had far far more deterrents, and far more deaths, when it comes to robbers.
Deterrents assume criminals make good decisions though. While deterrents matter for career criminals who have the experience to make good choices about their crimes, I think they're almost entirely ineffective against initial offenders.
The uS has 4% of the world's population but 25% of the world's prison population. We have a higher rate of incarceration than, say, Russia or Iran [1].
If deterrants worked, why do these incidents keep happening? Why isn't this the safest country on Earth?
Poverty costs all of us but rather than lifting people out of poverty, we'd rather spend way more on the prison-industrial complex, slavery 2.0 (ie convict leasing) and law enforcement.
Look at the low numbers in Africa. Is it because they elevate their criminals out of poverty? Maybe their police have good relationships with the community? Maybe they're good at re-habilitating convicted criminals in prison? Or maybe it's counseling to heal generational trauma?
Obviously, stoning all the criminals isn't the solution, but having society rigidly define acceptable bounds of behavior that get you removed from that society if crossed (temporarily or permanently), isn't unreasonable.
To understand that high number in the US, I think you would have to look at who is in prison, and what they did, to understand. Good luck. They collect the data in a way so you can't do a multivariate analysis, because that would be unethical!
I don't know, we would have to look at the data. Again, due to ethical concerns, they don't record or report the data in a way where more meaningful conclusions can be made.
I think many many things contribute to the difference in imprisonment.
But, federal imprisonment is 42% drug charges [1]. Just looking at that, US has a cartel run country, with a near 20% GDP based on drug trafficking [2], at its poorly controlled border, with a whole continent below that containing exactly zero first world countries, some having > 40% GDP from drug trafficking! I've walked across the Mexican border. I've seen caravans of cars driving across. It's near fiction. Now, try to smuggle some drugs into an inner European country! Or, alternatively, just hop over to Amsterdam to avoid your countries laws. And, we also have the benefit of corporations fueling drug epidemics [3]. Is that imprisonment a deterrent? I didn't look up numbers, but have some useless anecdotal evidence: I knew two drug dealers in high school. They both stopped because their buddies were arrested, and lives ruined.
For direct evidence to answer the question "is punishment a deterrent" (I find it hard to believe this is an argument), see California Prop 47 [4].
I mostly think the US system is too punitive, but I don’t see a problem here. Someone died because of what he did. He did it deliberately and the death was a foreseeable outcome of what he did. I’m not too upset that he spent two decades in prison as a result.
> ... it’s not allowed to use immigration machinery as a pretext to punish political expression. That’s exactly what they are doing.
I agree: this is exactly what the administration is doing.
> I’m generally receptive to point the finger at Google’s intentions but in their defense, administrative subpoenas frequently include non disclosure orders.
Except immigration aren't allowed to put gag orders on administrative subpoenas [1]:
> First, any gag order in these subpoenas has no legal effect; you are free to publicize them and inform the target of the subpoena.
and
> The agency’s administrative subpoena power is limited, but ICE often uses the subpoenas to obtain more assistance than is legally required
This is the key problem. Companies like Google aren't making government agencies go to court to get a subpoena, they're not resisting that subpoena, they're not informing targets when they're legally allowed to and they're giving agencies more assistance than is legally required.
I don't think it's asking a lot to expect any platform to only provide the minimum legally required cooperation.
I sincerely don't understand why deportation is called a punishment in this discussion.
As in any country in the world, US immigration law operates on the principle that a foreigner is granted a PRIVILEGE to be in the US. Or this privilege is denied with no reason whatsoever. Just because it is a PRIVILEGE.
When someone is deported for participating in protests, they are still literally in a better position than the BILLIONS of people who want to be in the US but who are denied this privilege without any justification.
Why do we think this man was punished by the United States, at the same time thing that the BILLIONS of people the US arbitrarily bans from being in its territory were not punished? Compared to those billions, he rather have been granted the privilege of being on US territory (for a while).
> I don't think it's asking a lot to expect any platform to only provide the minimum legally required cooperation.
It is asking a lot. They can do minimum legally required things for environment, users, communities, charities and so on. This would be considered very hostile behavior. And companies don't do that.
So why would they be doing minimum required cooperation with government just because some people do not like government or its actions.
The Kalshi CEO should put their considerable wealth into bets on Kalshi that this will happen. I'll wait.
We have a situation where selective prosecution is used to command loyalty while the ringleader has been immunized from any kind of legal consequences by the Supreme Court, 6 of whom were appointed by said ringleader. Pardons are pretty openly sold now. It's cheaper to rip off the government then pay a fraction for a pardon, erasing any fine or repayment.
I bet there are lower level staffers who are profiting off inside information on prediction markets. Maybe some will be made an example of. I won't hold my breath.
But all the big insider trading is occurring in securities markets, particularly with oil futures and SPY futures. It's reached the point where no professionals trust the futre oil prices at all and and the physical oil prices differ from the future price by as much as $60/barrel. We've had $1b+ bets on SPY futures minutes before market-changing news. We don't know for sure who's doing this but my guess is that it's at the highest levels of the administration.
The answer to this is that Google gave ICE this power by complying instead of fighting the subpoena or notifying the subject of the subpoena, both of which they can do according to the ACLU [1].
Willing, optional compliance with the administration is the core problem here.
> This document explains two key ways that recipients can resist immigration
administrative subpoenas: First, any gag order in these subpoenas has no legal effect; you are free to publicize them and inform the target of the subpoena. Second, you do not have to comply with the subpoena at all, unless ICE goes to court—where you can raise a number of possible objections—and the court orders compliance.
It's relevant if you follow their legal advice and the government decides to pursue a case against you.
Even if you're in the right, defending yourself in a legal proceeding is expensive. You need a checkbook that can back up your confidence in what they're telling you.
And sure, Google has that money, but they're also fighting off half of congress trying to break up their business.
It's in their best interests to do whatever the DoJ asks of them.
Now consider that the Defense budget is ~$1 trillion and the Department of Defense has never passed an audit [1] and the administration is seeking $1.5 trillion next year [2].
I don't believe that either Anthropic or OpenAI are going to survive the AI valuation crunch. Google, Meta and Microsoft will because they're not AI-only companies. There are four reasons why I believe this:
1. I honestly don't think that AI is all that useful for anything other than suppressing labor costs and I don't expect that to change in the short to medium term;
2. I really don't think Anthropic or OpenAI can ever satisfy their stratospheric valuations. I foreesee no cash flow possible that will arrive quick enough to make that happen;
3. Hardware costs will devalue the trillions invested in AI data centers. By 2030 the GPUs will probably be at least 3x as good. Bear in mind, it's just over 4 years between the 3090 and 5090 and that's 3x TFLOPS; and
4. China or other actors will make sure that proprietary LLMs won't be dominant. DeepSeek was a shot across the bow. China in particularly won't want a US tech company to dominate this space. The increasing RAM in local, relatively cheap computers will make this more and more viable.
Bonus prediction: I think China will be making their own homegrown NVidia equivalent GPUs on homegrown EUV by 2030.
I'm surprised the EFF didn't address the issue that traditional printer manufacturers already comply with law enforcement, specifically that a fingerprint of yellow tracking dots [1] are printed and printers will often refuse to or fail to copy images of money.
My point is there's already precedent for printers cooperating with authorities so one can see this as simply an extension to 3D printer manufacturers.
I suspect it's a losing battle for the EFF and 3D printer manufacturers to resist some kind of fingerprinting or even the prohibition of things that are guns.
I'm not saying that's right or wrong. That's just what I expect to happen. And if you want to argue against it, you should address the printer tracking dot issue or argue how this is different.
The bottom of that wiki page has links to EFF pages. However you are correct that they view it as a lost battle:
(Added 2015) Some of the documents that we previously received through FOIA suggested that all major manufacturers of color laser printers entered a secret agreement with governments to ensure that the output of those printers is forensically traceable. Although we still don't know if this is correct, or how subsequent generations of forensic tracking technologies might work, it is probably safest to assume that all modern color laser printers do include some form of tracking information that associates documents with the printer's serial number. (If any manufacturer wishes to go on record with a statement to the contrary, we'll be happy to publish that here.)
(Added 2017) REMINDER: IT APPEARS LIKELY THAT ALL RECENT COMMERCIAL COLOR LASER PRINTERS PRINT SOME KIND OF FORENSIC TRACKING CODES, NOT NECESSARILY USING YELLOW DOTS. THIS IS TRUE WHETHER OR NOT THOSE CODES ARE VISIBLE TO THE EYE AND WHETHER OR NOT THE PRINTER MODELS ARE LISTED HERE. THIS ALSO INCLUDES THE PRINTERS THAT ARE LISTED HERE AS NOT PRODUCING YELLOW DOTS.
This list is no longer being updated.
* EFF definitely did not think that the regular printer tracking dots mechanism was appropriate.
* You could probably argue this either as a modus ponens or a modus tollens -- that is, in either direction -- but one criticism that we made of the tracking dots was that they were (mostly) secret voluntary cooperation between industry and government, not an actual law. Perhaps an actual law is preferable because the public can understand in detail how it's being restricted, as well as oppose it politically and potentially challenge it in the courts.
Of course, the current 3D printing restrictions are proposed as an actual law. That does seem largely better to me than "we got most 3D printer companies to put some secret software in their printers to enforce some unspecified policies that the government asked them to, and the companies and the government don't want to talk about it", although one way it's better is simply the opportunity to oppose it in the legislature.
Thanks for trying to maintain the list as long as you could!
I think you are assuming that the government does not _also_ have secret agreements with big 3D printer manufacturers (to which the state of CA may not be privy)
Open source is core to 3d printing. I have never heard of an open source traditional printer. That is the difference. This is an attempt to lock down open source.
From purely a technical standpoint: the printer indiscriminately adds tracking dots to all documents, the proposed 3D printer regulation requires the printer to phone home and make some dispositive call on what it's allowed to do.
Airlines were really the first to do this but there it kinda makes sense. You have a plane. It's going anyway. You want to fill it.
At the other extreme is RealPage, which is explicitly designed to raise rents and it's used by enough people that you can view it as the last frontier of anti-trust, anticompetitive behavior and price-fixing. It's also state-sanctioned violence because your price-fixing scheme has the threat of you being homeless attached to it.
That's another aspect to this: collusion doesn't happen in dark smoke-filled rooms anymore. It can be as simple as all "competitors" simply using the same software, which tells them all to do the same thing.
Another commenter had it right: this is beyond antitrust or competition law. It's a RICO issue.
There's no real structural reason for inflation since the pandemic. The pandemic simply broke the seal on raising prices and now everybody is in on it.
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