benjiro29

These may be perfectly legal (example xxx sites), gray at worst (like anime websites). Some anime site that had (for example) paypal for over 15+ years. Plop ... gone.

Crypto has become become the alternative payment method for those sites. So its not "dictators that are doing pretty nasty stuff" but a ton of sites and services that can be affected.

Ironically, there has been a lot of focus also in Europe regarding this issue, as much of the internet payment processors are in or linked to the US. With the focus to get a alternative to Visa/Mastercard going.

The reality is that a lot of power regarding payment processing is in the hands off one country, that has a lot of large companies with interests/powers to dictate over the entire world, what is and is not allowed. And crypto has becomes a necessary evil. In a ideal world we do not need crypto as payment processors are neutral or at minimum have very stronger requirements to kick off clients. But the reality is different...

There is just something about character driven shows, where you have the time to grow with 24~26 episodes per season. What gave us so many good episodes to develop characters that did not feel rushed.

We old geezers have found memories of TNG, DS9, Voyager (and so many other good series like SG, Farscape, Babylon 5, etc).

But i hardly see the same cultural impact from the new ST series and sci-fi shows. Battlestar Galactical maybe but that is already a 20 year old show also. The expanse is the only new thing ...

Beyond that just recycled 9 to 13 episode shows trying to use the old ST, StarWars names and milk it dry. With tons of memberberies to the point of insanity.

What is left for the teen or young adults these days? What will be their Scifi shows in 20 a 30 years from now to remember.

Actors like Patrick Stewart are those who came to the TV screen (or movies) often with a strong theatric background, and it allowed them to put forwards strong characters. But its easy to tell we are not getting this type of actors anymore.

Man, i an talking like a old guy. lol

O, those strategic taken pictures that hide the fact there is a large factor next door. Saves me a long drive. O, there is actually a main road / highway next to the property. Shit, a graveyard at not even 20m from the garden. Wait, is that a pig farm next door?!

Even caught a immo that was selling a "single detached haus". But inspected the areal pictures shows its bigger vs the pictures. Its was actually a double house (attached walls) in a inheritance dispute, where they have not even divided the land.

Immo: Come see, come see ... Told the immo to update his false advertisement, he kept refusing and very arrogantly mailing that he did nothing wrong. To this day, its still advertised as a single detached haus.

Hate how many immo are pieces of ** that deliberately take pictures from angles to hide issues, and wast peoples time (and money)! You can discover a LOT of issues when you get good at geolocating + google streetview/arial/3d view.

I hope they do not remove or ban it again in Germany, because its so extreme helpful tool vs the lying ** immo.

This is the goal ... They know they are at fault but admitting they made a mistake is damaging to careers.

In a lot of cases a carrot is dangled in front of people ... You can wast a lot of time (and money) fighting for your innocent, and take the risk your still going to get convicted.

Or you can take the plea deal, and it absolves us from our mistakes. And you save money because its cheaper then paying all those lawyers and court costs. And your innocent anyway, so that probations has no effect on you.

I forgot the source but the amount of prosecutions that are plea down is staggering. A lot of actual innocent people take plea's because its cheaper, then the alternative. And there have been plenty of people innocently convicted (even on shaky evidence), so most people take plea deals and they can move on with their lives.

This results in a culture where investigations are annoying. Where pressure is ramped up again and again to break people into taking plea deals. The biggest issue is, if you actually refuse to take a plea deal, then all resources are put against you to get a actual conviction, even if they know your innocent. "Why did you not just take the plea deal". Well, time to punish you for not taking it. Because repeat after me again, careers are on the line and losing cases hurt those future (potential political) careers.

Its the same why prosecutors fight tooth and nail, even if clear evidence is shows that a person was innocently convicted and spend X years in jail. It not about justice, its about protecting those careers.

The proof of innocents is heavily put on the other party, and it really hits hard on people who do not have the financial means.

If you want a government job, you need to be member of the party. That is no different then the old USSR system.

You end up with a overcount of "members" as people who ideology subscribe to the system, vs people who just become members for the better jobs. And yes, those people also get fired or leave government jobs (especially given the financial issues in the local governments the last few years because of the building crisis / lack of income).

So this type of throw towel over everybody to make a point is just a useless statistic.

Its not just the US ... Where do you think all those 5090's end up? Its just crypto mining all over again. Most people do not realize that China was the biggest crypto mining operation because of its cheap electricity and people willingness to take big risks.

The same happens now also, with people buying up 5090's (and lower class cards) in bulk, to strap into AI rigs. With Nvidia discontinuing the 32GB 5090s, we already see pressure on the lower end cards that had a better price / performance for a while now.

China will do China things *lol* ... People there are just more willing to take bigger gambles (and the cheap elec helps a ton). But that is also a factor why a lot of consumer level hardware gets under pressure. Its not just the supply chain to the enterprise market that is eating a lot for AI.

Consumer get the cheaper energy, while industry normally get the twice as expensive energy.

But for AI/Datacenters, there is a exception and they get the cheaper consumer level energy.

You need to take in account that the way China taxes is not the same as here in the West. And a lot more is put on the local governments regarding generating their own revenue (why there was so much building in China because those projects funded local government). A bit of a side topic lol. Its not so simple as they are making a loss on something because how its structured.

AI gets the cheaper tariffs then the rest of the industry, that is a fact. They simply have less energy profits on the AI energy. Now if you consider that subsidized or not, ... in both cases China is still making a profit.

What is overlooked is the massive amount of energy generation that China has and still keeps expanding. And that is a direct reflection upon why the prices for industry and consumers are so cheap. This buildout ironically had nothing to do with AI but was more about lower energy = cheaper industry production ... and a lot of buildout was also to build more independence from energy imports. They are not just throwing solar and wind turbines around like candy, the amount of reactors constructed and still under construction, ...

> China currently has 36 to 38 nuclear reactors under construction, maintaining the largest nuclear buildout in the world and accounting for roughly half of all global nuclear plant construction

So yea ... The AI in the west have a issue because it really does not matter if you cut China from Nvidia GPUs or advanced nodes, they compensate on the power level.

Edit: And a little extra, the irony is here in the West building nuclear is expensive as hell because we barely do one or two at the time. With a lot of lost expertise. China doing tons of them non-stop cuts down on the costs a lot.

* Models like DeepSeek V4.1 Flash are much cheaper on DeepSeek their API directly because of the cache handeling is better. Neuralwatt can hit up to 98% but DeepSeek can do 99.x... That may not sound like a big difference but it quickly widens the gap on long tasks to grow 2x a 3x in price. DeepSeek their cache handeling is S-tier (with a ton of features, for instance 24h caching).

* The same issue is also present if you compare GLM 5.3 Flash with z.ai vs Neuralwatt. Its just way more cheaper from the source, then from Neuralwatt.

* The energy numbers from Neuralwatt are ... to be taken with a ton of salt. Past energy numbers had the same models (for instance) GLM 5.2 up to 6x cheaper in energy usage, then after they "fixed" issues with the energy numbers. In reality, those energy numbers are just a different form of billing, but not a actual representation of the energy usage of AI models. Things like profits are inside those energy numbers. So seeing 4kWH used for a model, does not mean that it uses 4Kwh.

Edit: That are some interesting downvotes ...

To answer the questions. It was stated by the CEO himself in one of the video blogs that the energy prices inc their profit margins. Regarding their published numbers ... I like to point out that this is the same company that had up to 6x cheaper energy numbers at the start of the year until they got updated. Again, its in one of those video blogs the CEO did. Its around the same time when they increased the price from $5/1kwh to $10/1kwh.

Yes, DeepSeek API is cheaper then Neuralwatt. I have done way too many comparisons between NW and other providers, regarding their prices. Over long sessions, that gap grows because of the differences in caching. You need to use the NW Flex option to reduce the impact but then your constantly waiting on responses (good for overnight work, not great in prime time).

Edit 2: I am getting a little bit fed up with the people who downvote and do not give their reasons for the downvotes.

This screams to be that Sol vs Terra model problem that OpenAI had. On paper half the price, in actual usage the price gap was so close for less good results, that everybody just spammed Sol.

One of the issues mentioned is PFAS, ... ignoring the fact that we have tons of PFAS pollutions already in our soils and not a darn thing is done.

We live very close to one of those sites, but its always excuses after excuse to solve. But PFAS on labels, panic, panic, ... The whole label issue can easily be solved by random sampling at import and a fine system. That automatically puts backpressure to fix it. No need for certificates left and right.

My point is that we keep making bureaucratic rules, that make every step more difficult for entrepreneurs here in Europe, instead of having a proper compliance setup. There is a entire industry around yearly audits (that cost 10.000's), like people who do it non-stop suddenly forget how to do it.

That is the issue ... Its not about rules but about barriers that make often setup in such a way to be barriers of entry/working, then compliance.

Tell me, how many times do you go to have your car checked. Yearly or every two years? That is one of those example where in some countries its yearly, other twice. Do the countries with two years have issues with their car park. No ... The result is the same but some people get to be inconvenienced twice (and pay twice). Do you understand it a bit more now?

There are rules and there are rules that add little beyond making everything difficult, when it can be solved in a better way.

A new regulation when importing into Europe, is that you need to show that import materials do not have toxic substances, ... on ... shipping labels (meaning the physical labels are free from harmful chemicals like BPA, PFAS, or PVC).

You need from every company that ships from China, they need to provide certificates that their shipping labels are toxic free.

Pulled from AI because i hate summarizing this...

* EU Ecolabel: The gold standard in Europe. It officially guarantees that a product has low aquatic toxicity, a reduced environmental footprint, and strictly limited hazardous substances throughout its life cycle.

* EN 13432 Certification: If using compostable labels (like those from Better Packaging Co.), this mandatory European standard ensures the label, liner, and adhesive break down safely in industrial composting without leaving toxic chemical residues.

* FSC (Forest Stewardship Council): Certifies that the paper backing and label face stock are sourced from sustainably managed, non-destructive forests.

* Phenol-Free / BPA-Free Declarations: Thermal printing labels must formally declare compliance with EU Regulation 2016/2235, which legally restricts bisphenols in thermal paper across the European Economic Area.

Its a mess of paperwork ... We have not talked about a ton of others, and those are on the import side.

We had some fun discussions about vitamine pill manufacturing, where importing materials made it "made in China".

But if we imported the raw material, and the capsules are made in Europe, and its mixed / bottled here. Well, made in Europe. But the prime materials that goes into your body is from China ... Does not matter.

But wait, if the capsules are made in China and mixed / bottled here in Europe, then its still made in China. Because the capsule somehow made the difference?! I do not remember the details but the amount of easy customer cheating that can be done with "Made in EU / Germany / France"..

I can go on with some of the insanities i get told about ... There are good rules but a lot are like this mix that make no sense, and you can almost hear that somebody pushed for exceptions when the rule was designed. So you get this odd crap that half the time makes no sense.

Hard to do business when the rules are often a issue.

Here is a idea, why not combine both? Have the advantage of Rust its build in checks and LLMs independent checks. Now you get both for a even more safe program.

I simply mention what came to mind ;)

A quad 6000 with 96GB, can run this model at NVFP4. That is 60.000 Euro for the GPUs and lets be generous with another 20.000 for the rest of the system. The price of a single developer for a year.