borski

This is just untrue.

Do you have anything to indicate this? A source or any analysis?

They often have promotions which can make this very lucrative. “spend at least 1 mile, get 40% off” etc

I’m familiar with the margins in retail (my parents ran a retail store their entire lives).

My point wasn’t that they don’t do a lot of volume; it’s that their retail business is not what’s driving their profit, and I don’t believe it’s growing.

I wouldn’t be surprised (though have not looked) if DoorDash (with DashMart), Uber Eats (which does more than just food), and Instacart have eaten significantly into Amazon’s revenue by solving the “get it to me” problem even faster.

True, but at higher prices (and with delivery fees), which somewhat defeats the purpose of the cost savings at Costco.

In Q1 2026, AWS was 60% (roughly) of Amazon’s operating income.

I’m not so sure their retail piece is the part that’s making them big money.

Well, there you go, he said it: https://x.com/petehegseth/status/2065897156226015690?s=46&t=...

David Sacks could not be further from a reliable or impartial narrator on this topic.

And before someone calls this an ad hominem, it isn’t; I am not saying he is bad or morally wrong or anything else (you are free to think that or not, as am I).

But Sacks has skin in the game. And that makes him both unreliable and partial.

I put sunscreen on my hands.

Yes, and if you’re driving late at night near a college campus I’d recommend slowing down and being extra careful.

College kids are allowed to get drunk and act stupid.

You are still not allowed to hit them.

Out of how many pedestrian-vehicle collisions?

Anyway, I am not saying it never happens.

I agree, of course. That is far from the most common scenario.

In the most common scenario, it is the driver’s fault.

Of course there are exceptions to everything.

It is either a YC company or the poster was (or is) a YC founder.

I agree.

If you walk around yielding a knife, and you accidentally walk into someone who wasn’t paying attention, it is definitely your fault.

If you drive a car and accidentally drive into someone who isn’t paying attention, that is also on you.

You are holding the bigger weapon. That means you have the higher requirement for safety, imho.

I track cars and race, fwiw, so it’s not like I don’t like cars.

The pedestrian is not the one driving the weapon. It is your fault if you hit a pedestrian, even if they walk right off the curb, even if they’re drunk.

Unless they intentionally jump in front of your car in an attempt to commit suicide, it is always on you to ensure you can stop and respond to an emergency, and a pedestrian is such a thing, imho.

> I'm doing no such thing. By invalidating the Monet piece if it is described as AI-generated, art becomes entirely about the creation story. So that moves the bar to telling a convincing story.

No. Art isn’t about the “origin story,” but about what it makes you feel. In part, what it makes you feel is due to the fact that it was made by a human, with human emotion and intent, to communicate an idea to the world. AI has no such emotional backing.

> And LLMs can absolutely do that at the level of those museum placards next to each painting. So if you add an actor to pose as the artist, the art is the performance now.

Museum placards are not what make art interesting.

> But I no longer believe people care about empathy. The US wouldn't have elected a grifting performance artist president twice if they valued empathy.

Irrelevant; two things can be true at once. Also, not everyone has empathy, and not everyone likes art.

That’s why most people don’t have art on their walls, but random prints from IKEA.

> We're much more hindbrain-driven than I suspect you think we are.

Many people are! But “people who like art” is a relatively small subset of people, and I maintain that nearly everyone who likes art likes it because it makes them feel something.

Otherwise, there would be no difference between a Picasso and a print from EBay.

People who like art don’t buy NFTs. They buy art made by humans.

You misunderstand art. If art were solely about the outcome, we’d all be staring at photographs instead, as no art will ever have as high fidelity.

Art is about the journey of the artist; the meaning with which that art is impregnated is the point. What you cynically refer to as “human-level BS,” others refer to as “the human condition” because we can relate to other humans, and empathy is a thing.

It’s okay not to like art. But pretending art is just “the painting at the end” is nonsense.

That was just as true a decade ago, and two decades ago, as it is today.

Bad “software engineers” have always existed. That hasn’t changed.

It does, in the higher echelons of performance / seniority.

Junior wages won’t change, and may even get lower.

But, at least at present, the top devs are earning more than ever as their skills are much more leveraged.

I don’t see that changing anytime soon.

Not any efforts.

But this one is certainly allowed to be a dumb effort, if it is.

Not all things that are called “ethical” or “safety” are worth doing.

Getting excited about the announcement of new capabilities is very normal.

People used to wait in line all night to buy an iPhone. This isn’t that different.

VC, by definition, primarily banks on moonshots. That’s not unique to defense.

It’s the other side that’s changed. Venture investors have both a much greater appetite for large amounts of funding for defense and IC startups, and a lot more experience navigating the defense/IC procurement process, at least in part due to success with Palantir, Anduril, SpaceX, and others.

I agree the overtures to attract the Bay Area are small potatoes, even if DIUx does help.

I would agree that it used to be more of a challenge than it is today. For what it’s worth, I worked at a defense contractor and have advised / invested in defense startups.

The government is much more open to it today than ever before. Is it still hard? Yes. Does it require funding? Yes.

But unlike before, it’s much easier today.

Completely agreed.

It is absolutely true that there are people out in the world who would love it if we had no defense. You can argue (validly) that we have made a lot of poor choices, but it’s definitely defense.

Sure, and I’ll totally switch to calling it “X” instead of Twitter and the Gulf of America instead of Mexico.

Nope, hard pass. I’ll use the real names and people can understand me just fine.

If they insist, I have little desire to continue the conversation.

> Turns out that start-ups can't wait several years for a contract award.

This isn’t true. They literally do this all the time. They just need funding. This is also true for biotech.

> They tend to die in that time if they have no funding.

Right. So they raise funding.

Your argument boils down to “the DoD won’t work with startups that don’t have funding,” which is both true and, frankly, as it should be, in my opinion.