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SAAB Automotive got killed by GM, resurrected by Spyker, subsequently killed again by debtors, resurrected again by Chinese investors who lost the rights to the brand, turned into NEVS (National Electric Vehicles Sweden), ran out of money again due to COVID, and has since been in “hibernation”/limbo. Most recently Stenhaga bought the remainder of the factory in Trollhättan, and EV Electra were considering to buy what’s left of the production models. That deal fell through and, last I heard of it, whatever is left of the NEVS were like 20 folks who got fired in 2024.

So yeah, to quote McCoy “He’s dead Jim”.

Amazing video, thanks for sharing.

Oh yes. TVR circa 1998 / speed 12 nonsense would be magical if they had the budget and freedom today that they did back then. I feel like a modern TVR would build something like a 4 motor EV with a manual transmission somehow. I’d be there for it honestly.

They were designed to do that on the regular. Especially Volvo’s polar editions were built to withstand just about any condition and kept simple and barebones for that reason.

Duesenberg. They made incredibly stylish and well engineered cars that were ahead of their time. I’d love to see a true competitor to Rolls Royce (Bentley doesn’t really compete with Rolls anymore. Sure they’re expensive luxury cars, but they aren’t anywhere near as bespoke as Rolls Royce cars are).

The Swedish Volvo died the day Ford took over, Geely is just there to trot around the remains.

Although, let’s be honest - Volvo had been on the verge of bankruptcy like three times before Ford bought them so it’s likely they would’ve died on their own too. Turns out making cars that are incredibly reliable is not a sustainable business model.

I always found it interesting how we went from garage tinkerers and counter culture aligned free and open software and hardware enthusiasts to big tech strangling democracy. Turns out, money (and by extension power) still corrupts as much as it ever has.

Oh yeah, I know their backend didn’t get exposed but it’s still looking pretty bad on them when you consider their target customer profile is enterprise. Enterprises don’t do well with onboarding security liabilities, and having stuff like this happen will almost certainly result in prospective customers considering Anthropic’s competitors.

Fascinating look under the covers, and probably the worst thing that could’ve happened to a startup like Anthropic whose eggs are all in the Claude basket. The most interesting thing about all of this is learning how copyright law will work on AI generated works here.

Oh, I am not saying they’re not still opportunistic money-chasers. Hence the comment about there not being any good AI companies. To me though, their reluctance on some topics and honest admissions on the capabilities of their AI make it appear that they less happy to throw all principals overboard in the race to win the AI market than the likes of Google, Microsoft, and Musk.

Still. I will happily take a company with some moral fiber over one with none when it comes to this AI race to the bottom.

Not saying Anthropic are the good guys here (there are none IMHO) but they are clearly trying to be the “less bad guys”.

I think that the nukes did certainly affect Hirohito’s willingness to accept a surrender, together with the Soviet attack on Manchuria. There is little evidence to suggest though that it was the population’s sudden lack of support for the war effort or an attempted revolution that forced Hirohito’s hand. As such I don’t think we can even consider the nuclear bombings to have had much effect on the population, which is generally the point of terror bombings - to break the population’s resolve and force them to depose of their leadership.

Terror bombings don’t work full stop. Even the nuking of Japan didn’t result in the populace giving up, and there’s ample evidence to suggest that it was at the very least the combined threat of the Russians shifting focus to the eastern theatre as well as the nukes that caused Japanese high command to conclude that their current losses would be infeasible to sustain. And even that wasn’t without internal controversy and disagreement.

I can see absolutely no way this could not go wrong.