I've already been using ChatGPT to evaluate my blood results and give me some solutions for my diet and workouts. It's been great so far without any special model.

I think an electric full sized truck was always a mistake. To me the market is in the Tacoma/Ranger size for an EV truck. It's pretty simple. Those don't need to haul anything, they are smaller, more aerodynamic, can look sportier because they are more compact, etc. The Tacoma even today gets like 20mpg, which is absolutely abysmal for a 4-cylinder, it's so ripe for an electric motor. The obvious obstacle to overcome is longevity, given Tacomas especially are known to last practically forever.

In 2005 McDonald's net profit margin was ~12%, today it's ~30+%. Obviously that doesn't account for the entire price increase and wouldn't make that much of a difference...but worth noting.

Yes, they have progressively become a higher-margin business, which necessitates moving up market to consumers who will pay those margins.

Why do you _have_ to extract more money out of people just because you can? Is it truly not enough for the McDonald's executives?

Their function is to maximize profit. I doubt they think about their company's position in society often if at all.

But there are many factors. Allowing stock buybacks is definitely one of those.

If I'm reading this chart right they're spending about $500M/quarter on buybacks? https://www.financecharts.com/stocks/MCD/cash-flow/repurchas...

No, it’s extracting more money out of different people. Because they’re a more profitable target for investment than the former people.

publicly traded company, the stock price must go up. always.

and it's not the executives, it's the owners. those on the board, or who own a ton of shares.

stock price doesn't go up and those execs get replaced until they find someone who will.

10 USD is still the magic barrier, Id say?

I'm not sure where this number comes from but McDonald's profit margins may be misleading due to their franchise and real estate based model. If you spend $10 at McDonald's that's paid to the franchise and the central McDonald's corporation isn't necessarily profiting $3.

McDonalds business model is to own real estate and lease it to franchisees, and to sell those franchisees supplies to make hamburgers and fries so they can pay the rent.

It’s a commercial real estate company with extra steps, not a restaurant company. Once you understand that, McDonalds net margins are easier to understand.

Google ‘McDonalds real estate’ for a longer write up about the business model of McDonalds

It’s because their cogs is basically same. They are vertically integrated.

I think AI is a bubble, but I don't think we're close to the peak yet.

Ever literally blow bubbles? You never really know how big each one will be.

My biggest worry is that what will be left standing after all of this is the organizations that are quietly all the AI slop everywhere, be it the normal web or YouTube.

The biggest worry are companies taking on debt or issuing equity in order to build data centers. It's a massive gamble (they are very very expensive to build.) There is a backlog for now, but in 5 years? I don't know, you might end up just sitting on a pile of chips and buildings that no one can use or wants. That would massively reverberate through the economy, maybe not akin to housing but it would definitely blow up some companies. For now, I think the math works, but I can't see into the future and that's where the risk is.

I do the same thing, except I subscribe to Thorne. I haven't noticed an uptick in perceived brain capacity, etc, but I can tell that my skin and hair are healthier. I started taking it because my cholesterol was all over the place and I desperately want to avoid taking a statin later in life. I'll be retesting that early next year. I've also started eating smoked salmon and canned sardines.

I’d really be interested in hearing what your heritage is, specifically on your mother side. If you read my other post, you’ll understand why I’m curious.

English/Scots-Irish/German

Obviously not all of those laid off met the new criteria for what Microsoft, et al were/are looking for, but there's no way you convince me that -probably- a majority of them do. The system is so ripe for abuse. I'm not sure I agree fully with the "if you're laying off people, you can't do X" aspect, but I do think sometimes it is cheaper for companies to lay people off, especially those with certain benefits, and hire immigrants than it is to move the original employee around the company. This very obviously happens, all the time.

While I understand from a purely capitalistic view that it makes sense, but Microsoft and others are multi-trillion/billion dollar companies, and they are skimming every last dime while also hurting Americans. The system needs heavy reform, this current change isn't close to enough. To me the rightward shift, especially among college aged men, is partially because of things like this. You can preach that the "replacement theory" is all nonsense, but if you're trying to convince people that have seen their friends or themselves literally replaced at the job with non-Americans...well, it's obvious they are going to start to lean into those ideas.

So much of the right-wing surge could be thwarted by simple policy reforms and it seems like no one wants to do it, or is too beholden to corporations, etc to do it. It's a bit baffling. I've always said politics is a pendulum and it should come as a shock to no one that a problem that is constantly ignored or written off will eventually swing back hard the other way. I think we're seeing that. I think that's why compromise is more important than purity a lot of the time. Unfortunately there will not be much compromise for a long while now.

> So much of the right-wing surge could be thwarted by simple policy reforms and it seems like no one wants to do it

I am not sure if you are talking about just USA or entire west but this can be said for most western countries.

I believe it applies to the entire West, and explains why there is a surge in "right wing" parties. I believe it could easily be fixed with reform, but everyone on the "left" is too scared to do it but in doing so they are conjuring something worse. Even those who I've known that used to be "open border" have started to shift away from that idea. That's not going to go away until the problems are at least addressed in a meaningful way, and honestly more so in Europe than the US where integration is generally easier and more common.

That's the idea, but I don't think it's used like that in practice and is actually heavily abused.

Recall is off by default, it's no more enabled on a clean install than Hyper-V. I think the idea is actually very good, but obviously the privacy concerns are not great. Microsoft has made a lot of changes from what I've seen to allow you to block it on x, y, z, etc.

It's off by default but still present on the system. You can remove it entirely via the "Turn Windows features on and off" dialog.

Eventually as models become cheaper, the big companies that would do this won't have control over newer generated content, so it's fairly pointless.

The thing is, while we care about it here at HN, most people don't really care. Apple is a cult among consumers and they aren't going to switch even if they started putting in way more ads. They know, similar to Windows, that they have an ecosystem lock in and people aren't going to escape it.

People think they don’t care, or they tolerate it, but it still has an impact on the experience. It comes in the form of fewer glowing reviews, fewer recommendations to friends, more complaints and less forgiveness for problems. The pressure builds up over time, and then they snap.

Windows is the perfect example against the claim that Apple should be comfortable to abuse their users. Windows marketshare has been steadily dropping for the last 15 years. People are tired of the abuse, and slowly but surely leaving the platform. We now have people like PewDiePie making videos about switching to Arch Linux and self hosting, large companies offering employees a choice of Windows or Mac… things that would have sounded extremely unlikely 10+ years ago.

I’m pretty deep in the Apple ecosystem, having been in it since 2003. I could transition out of it within a week if I had to. There are some things I’d miss, for sure, but I’d live.

Exactly. Just because someone says they don't care, or they don't even consciously see it, doesn't mean it's not internalized in some way. A lot of the time it simply degrades the importance of the notification, making them more likely to be passively ignored in the future, however it probably runs deeper too.