Hard Pass

The people that run CPP are underperforming, and paying themselves handsomely to do so.

First, the underperformance:

While the Fund earned an average of 8.8 per cent annually, [passive investing] earned 10.7 per cent – nearly two full percentage points more, on average, every year. These are staggering numbers. Take that first measure, the annualized 0.5 percentage point gap since 2007. Compounded, it means the contribution of active management has been to reduce the size of the national nest egg by more than $100-billion. Had the Fund stuck to passive management, its portfolio would today stand, not at $793-billion, but somewhere north of $900-billion.

And then there are the employees. The CPP has increased the number of staff more than tenfold:

From around 150 employees in 2006, the CPPIB has ballooned to more than 2,000 today. Personnel costs now total over $1.2-billion... Total costs, ... exceed $5.4-billion. Twenty years ago they were $54-million.

...

The top five most highly compensated managers at the CPPIB make an average of more than $5-million each, including salaries, bonuses and other benefits. Twenty years ago the corresponding figure was less than a sixth of that.

...

The chair of the CPPIB board this year will be paid more than $300,000 – three times what her predecessor was paid in 2006.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-cpp-investment-board-cppib-benchmarks/

Addiction rarely begins with harm. It begins with relief.

What Tim described didn’t sound like intoxication. It sounded quieter: people gradually relying on AI to reduce the discomfort of thinking.

Addiction medicine offers a useful framework. Many people use substances without developing addiction. The difference often lies in patterns of use and the role the substance plays in someone’s life. When something becomes the primary way a person manages discomfort — emotional or cognitive — risk increases.

The discomfort it relieves is subtle: the blank page, the uncertain decision, the difficult conversation, the effort of organizing thought. These moments are frustrating. They are also how competence develops.

When people hear the word “addiction,” they often assume it implies catastrophe — intoxication, loss of control, destruction. But addiction medicine describes a process long before those outcomes appear: the gradual shift from optional use to psychological reliance.

Framing AI that way makes people uncomfortable for a simple reason.

It suggests that something extraordinarily useful — something many of us already depend on — could quietly reshape how we think. And history shows that when a powerful tool offers relief from discomfort, questioning it often sounds like criticism of the people who use it.

The most transformative technologies are rarely dangerous because they are obviously harmful. They are powerful because they work so well that we stop noticing what they are replacing.

Rule

If

Claude's won the AI coding wars

I'll claim that the AI bubble's on the brink of bursting.

Nice number of posts

Nuclear research ended at the site in 1988 and rocket testing stopped in 2006. The defunct, 2,800-acre federal research complex—once jointly occupied by NASA, the Department of Energy and Boeing—still has radioactive and chemical contamination. Boeing has owned the site since 1996.

“The fire has not reached the Santa Susana Field Laboratory,” added Dowd, noting residents can track updates online.

All these years later, the SSFL cleanup plan still has not been finalized.

cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/tech/p/1144434/independent-review-confirms-critical-telegram-vulnerability-leaking-persistent-identifie

SpaceX conducted another successful Starship launch test yesterday evening.

You can watch the full, 1:40:00 footage here:

Invidious YouTube

I'd recommend watching it, it's a well-done video documentary, not too long, with good views.

They manufactured the 50s
The industrial complex
Brainwashed the 60s
Packeged em up
Called it the 70s
Hit the 80s like cocaine
To get fly like the 90s
Infect Y2k mind bug
Remanned n repackaged
For millennium

(1st draft)
They took the 60s
Packeged em up
Sold em
Called it the 70s
Hit the 80s like cocaine
But if you wanna be fly like the 90s
You'll let it all go
Consumed like the Y2k mind bug
Repackaged again
For the new millenium

Edit: Workshopped a second draft