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Chinese start-ups such as DeepSeek are challenging global AI giants
Actually that's exactly what happened with DeepSeek. It may be the case it has managed to cut costs and compute, but we do know that it is built at least in part on the shoulders of the giants: it uses Nvidia chips – albeit older, cheaper versions - and utilises Meta's open-source Llama architecture, as well as AliBaba's equivalent Qwen. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2jxvn0r51o They copied Meta's open source. And by all accounts DeepSeek is not as good as the US competition, for instance you can't ask it questions about Tiannamen Square. It censors itself when it comes to Chinese topics. -
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Are markets still relevant?
Well, few tourists buy anything, especially tourist junk from online stores. In addition to that, hard for them to get the same feeling as wandering in tourist market alleys from browsing lazada. Staying in room watching TV or browsing aliexpress would probably make them asking why did I come here anyway so they go out. Comparable to question of whether agogo's are still relevant. Residents I believe is fairly small percentage of customers there just like in tourist markets, and no matter who the customer is, they go there for the experience. In both cases (tourist markets and agogos) you can order the actual product or service online at much lower price. Just that the experience of shopping is very different. Residents rarely go to either as they had enough of the experience. They just want the product or service at good price delivered to their home. -
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Worst or lowest part of your life ?
I have always enjoyed my work, and have been productive for several companies. I was interrupted at the peak of my productivity. My encounter with the management consulting firm of McKinsey was without doubt a low point in my life. McKinsey is a global giant, with about 27,000 employees. Like law firms, the holy grail is to become a partner. Many ex-employees wear their association as a badge of honour. In my view, it should be a badge of shame. McKinsey operates on a simple and fraudulent principle. It makes a presentation to the board or senior management of a target company, promising with its cost-cutting programs to improve the bottom line. From memory, the target was $180 million, with a fee of $18 million to McKinsey for their expertise. Most boards are hypnotised by the prospect of substantial cost savings. Such is McKinsey’s reputation, it would take a brave senior manager to reject their overtures. McKinsey does not target small businesses, because those simply could not afford them, or be worthwhile. My company was a large and juicy target. It sounds wonderful, except it is smoke and mirrors. Two to three years after McKinsey has swept through an organisation, no-one ever goes back to the cost savings they have claimed to measure whether they were achieved in reality. A number of individuals were selected as team leaders. Declining was not an option. I was isolated in a demountable hut outside the Engineering Department for six months, with a 386 laptop issued by McKinsey for company. I was supposed to sit there and think of nothing but cost saving ideas. My only human contact during that time was a few minutes every day with a McKinsey facilitator. The rest of the time I spent staring at a computer screen, wishing I could be back at work doing what I did best – finding new insights, developing new methods , and solving plant and customer problems. I regard that six months in the demountable hut as the most barren and wasted of my entire life. Not surprisingly in hindsight, I developed depression. My wife was completely unsympathetic, telling me to get on with it. To her, I was just a provider. I went to see the Works Doctor, in despair. I suspect I was not the only person he was seeing affected by the madness of McKinsey. He forthwith prescribed doxepin, a classic tricyclic antidepressant. I was to be on that medication for the next 20 years, and it may have contributed to the benign prostatic hyperplasia I have now. I was quite stressed, even with the anti-depressant in my system, because one of the cost savings forced on me by the program was a reduction of two people in my department. These were human beings reduced to a bottom line. At the end of the six months, all team leaders were to make a presentation to the CEO, who had the reputation of a hatchet man. The HR manager made his presentation before me. He achieved the required savings while adding four people to his staff, and was fulsomely praised When my turn came, I was excoriated by the CEO for not doing enough, despite reducing the staff level by two people. When I pointed out the discrepancy between my presentation and the HR manager, he got quite angry and told me to stop being evasive. I was outraged by the unfairness of it all. It was only my sense of self-preservation that prevented me from telling him to shove his program up his @rse. Financial independence would have been a wonderful thing at the time. If I owned a business, and a manager came to me wanting to bring in McKinsey or any other consultant, I would fire that manager on the spot. My logic would be any manager who needs someone else to tell him how to run a business is no manager. When an organisation kills or injures a person physically, there is usually hell to pay. Organisations such as BHP, Exxon and BP have shelled out billions for the environmental damage they have caused. I am wondering how much mental damage McKinsey has initiated, and whether there will ever be a reckoning through a class action by an enterprising legal firm. I suppose there were a couple of positive results from my six month sojourn in Siberia. I had a truckload of work waiting for me, with various clamourings for priority. I had come through fairly severe depression intact, with my medication reduced to the minimum level. Perhaps most importantly, I had realised my marriage was no longer sustainable, and it was only a matter of time before we split up. I am in remission from three types of cancer. Being diagnosed with them was not the lowest points of my life. -
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Why do people still deny the Holocaust ever happened
I do know what the word means . Clever that way you added the word Genocide to Holocaust and then gave examples of some other genocides . *Holocausts /Boxing happens all the time, Mike Tyson Cassius Clay Henry Cooper The list of Holocausts /Boxing is quite long* Clever, but no subtle enough to go unnoticed -
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Why do people still deny the Holocaust ever happened
Why are people stupid? They just are. Why do people believe in one of those gods? See above.
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