Tier ? cities like Coimbatore already have great EV penetration compared to the metros. Due to better charging infra, and low 4W penetration. Basically low penetration overall. Of course. Taxis stick to the CNG Dzire, so maruti will always appear really high in market share numbers. And they have the aspirational SUV owner covered too with Ertiga (7 seater for 9L).
Oh yea cities that are Coimbatore, Nagpur, or Ludhiana tier have already seen a boom in car (EV or Gas) sales, but the main market being targeted now is small towns (think Palani, Satara, or Kurkushetra type urban settlements).
Basically, if a Domino's, KFC, Chaayos, Reliance SMART, or Motilal Oswal can operate in that district, it has become a target market for consumers, and most dealflow is now trying to find opportunities to enter that market (eg. Lahori Zeera).
There is a real reason though. Limiting it to verified users is the easiest way to have a KYC on everyone generating images. That way they can respond to legal requests with the KYC of the account that asked grok to undress a minor.
Post 9/11 US president is allowed to take action against terrorists without any approval(AUMF). Hence the months/years long messaging around "narcoterrorism" and it's links to venezuela. Not saying the drugs don't exist, but AUMF is selectively applied to say the least.
Now the real reason is that venezuela is a "hostile influence in the western hemisphere" both from a russia/china perspective as well as an energy security perspective so this was a matter of when not if (monroe doctrine and all that).
This is not the first time the US has intervened in LatAm, and it won't be the last. Being the sole influence in N and S america is a defining feature of america and all americans, and has been so since 1823.
The current US administration seemed to prefer isolationism (at least up until today), and seems hellbent on destroying the US economy. If they're successful in their goals, this might very well be the last SA intervention from the US for a very long time. Maybe they're aware of this, and this is some sort of dead-cat bounce or whatnot.
Isolationism will never become so strong that they limit influence to literally the country USA. If anything, they will refocus efforts on the americas, taiwan, rest of the pacific, away from the middle east and the indopac[1]. This means making sure japan, phillipines and taiwan are US allied, and of course that they are the sole influence in the Americas.
[1] which they have taken a lot of massive steps towards recently
That would require a functional economy though, which is why the US been able to do what they've been doing. Without it, I'm not sure how they're hoping to achieve this, but I'm guessing "oil" somehow is involved in the calculation, considering today's actions.
Ya, I find predictions for what would happen in that scenario extremely noisy. Tend to avoid them.
But I do believe that a lot of the US government posturing that if implemented would be bad for economy (which you are alluding to), will not actually happen. A massive revamp of the economy is what the majority voting bloc in the US wishes for, so the winning politician will have to keep signalling in that direction. But actually following through with it, be it in a way with positive or negative effect, is extremely difficult. So I don't pay much attention to it.
Eh, most of his income and livelihood was from an ad company. Ads are equally wasteful as, and many times more harmful to the world than giga LLMs. I don't have a problem with that, nor do I have a problem with folks complainining about LLMs being wasteful. My problem is with him doing both.
You can't both take a Google salary and harp on about the societal impact of software.
Saying this as someone who likes rob pike and pretty much all of his work.
The point is that if he truly felt strongly about the subject then he wouldn't live the hypocrisy. Google has poured a truly staggering amount of money into AI data centers and AI development, and their stock (from which Rob Pike directly profits) has nearly doubled in the past 6 months due to the AI hype. Complaining on bsky doesn't do anything to help the planet or protect intellectual property rights. It really doesn't.
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