Rob Fahey

After using 1Password for many years, I was worried that moving off it would be seriously painful - not in the slightest, migrating everything to Proton Pass was seamless and took 30 minutes tops out of my evening. Doesn’t seem smart to go this mask-off when your company’s moat is so shallow.

Ahh, the Tokyo Vice quandary - everyone who knows anything knows how fictional it is, presumably the editors did too.. and yet, and yet… 🙄

Any half decent system (including phone CPUs) with 64Gb of RAM can do 98% of the actually useful things that LLMs do. Why do you think they’ve bent over backwards to sign bullshit contracts that pretend to tie up the world’s RAM supply?

Is Claude Code better? Yes! Is it a trillion fucking dollars better? No. And that’s “no” as the CTO of an admittedly small but quite cutting edge company where we have to develop new algorithm stuff and wrap it in cloud infrastructure every day, which is meant to be the best case for these systems.

Any half decent system (including phone CPUs) with 64Gb of RAM can do 98% of the actually useful things that LLMs do. Why do you think they’ve bent over backwards to sign bullshit contracts that pretend to tie up the world’s RAM supply?

These models will fundamentally change how we interact with computers. That’s wonderful! But a new paradigm in computer interfaces isn’t a machine god, let alone a global economic upset. And everything OpenAI claims to do will ultimately run on your wristwatch.

Any half decent system (including phone CPUs) with 64Gb of RAM can do 98% of the actually useful things that LLMs do. Why do you think they’ve bent over backwards to sign bullshit contracts that pretend to tie up the world’s RAM supply?

I’ve spent 30 years writing about the games biz, which has fended off countless waves of hucksters and bullshit artists, but none quite as awful as the AI bros selling a future where we’ll all consume slop through a hose with no human creativity on the other end. But like every other bullshit trend…

Any half decent system (including phone CPUs) with 64Gb of RAM can do 98% of the actually useful things that LLMs do. Why do you think they’ve bent over backwards to sign bullshit contracts that pretend to tie up the world’s RAM supply?

This is the one conspiracy theory I’ll subscribe to. AI companies and companies deeply dependent on AI (like NVIDIA) recognised that their USP was months away from being entirely doable on local devices, and acted to fuck the global supply chain.

To play devil's advocate for CRA: poll data show that most Japanese voters consider themselves centrists on the vast majority of issues, primarily valuing stability / competence on valence, pocketbook issues. "The LDP is going off the rails, we're offering continuity" isn't the worst campaign ever.

Also, while I personally think Komeito has generally been a positive influence in Japanese politics over the past 20 years, the fact remains that they're the political wing of a cult, and tying up with them largely defangs any critique of the LDP's slimy entanglement with the Unification Church.

To play devil's advocate for CRA: poll data show that most Japanese voters consider themselves centrists on the vast majority of issues, primarily valuing stability / competence on valence, pocketbook issues. "The LDP is going off the rails, we're offering continuity" isn't the worst campaign ever.

It's not for nothing that the biggest electoral threats to the LDP have always been forces led by former LDP figures! When the LDP is out of favour (which it still basically is, despite Takaichi juicing cabinet support polls), voters swing to "kinda like the LDP but without the scandals" offerings.

One further thought on this immigration thread. While the proposed cost rises aren't a major issue for most people in relatively high-earning fields like tech / finance, I don't think we should underestimate the impact this "mood music" has on the ability to attract / retain international labour.

Aside from the obvious populist scapegoating, a striking thing about the government’s stance here is how utterly incoherent it is with the past decade of LDP policy - including that of Takaichi’s icon Abe, who squarely aimed migration policy at shoring up the country’s dwindling workforce.

For all the rhetoric, Japan struggles to attract migrants - salaries are poor and the weak Yen dissuades migrants from the developing world who need to send money home. The relatively open, easy to navigate immigration system was a rare boon to employers trying to access international labour pools.

Aside from the obvious populist scapegoating, a striking thing about the government’s stance here is how utterly incoherent it is with the past decade of LDP policy - including that of Takaichi’s icon Abe, who squarely aimed migration policy at shoring up the country’s dwindling workforce.

There’s a case for bumping fees associated with visas if it funds better staffing etc. at the immigration agency, which is operating wildly beyond capacity in Tokyo in particular. The proposed rises go beyond that and are clearly intended to be punitive and dissuade migrants from coming / staying.

Takaichi wins, with Koizumi falling surprisingly short in the lawmaker votes - he didn't even win all of Hayashi's votes. Probably in part down to lawmakers not wanting to ignore the constituency votes, but also a pretty clear sign of a party running scared of populist challenges from its right.

Takaichi and Koizumi go into a runoff, as expected. Her popularity with the rank and file was key - she won over 40% of membership votes (Koizumi got 28%). Weird upsets do happen in the runoffs, but note that Takaichi didn't even come second in her colleagues' votes - she was third behind Hayashi.

The campaigning for today's LDP leadership election has largely been very dull, enlivened only by Takaichi speed-running the Kemi Badenoch "politics is when you see stuff on Twitter and then make a speech insisting it's true" path to insanity. Most predictions seem to think it's Koizumi's moment.

I've seen suggestions that declining membership is bad for Takaichi because it implies defections to Sanseito etc.; I'm not convinced. Anecdotally, I've heard of insiders bemoaning older, more moderate members abandoning party meetings increasingly dominated by Twitter-brained conspiracy theorists.

The campaigning for today's LDP leadership election has largely been very dull, enlivened only by Takaichi speed-running the Kemi Badenoch "politics is when you see stuff on Twitter and then make a speech insisting it's true" path to insanity. Most predictions seem to think it's Koizumi's moment.

Polling for LDP elections can help to show how the wind is blowing, but as Jeff points out, only members get to vote (and are actually very hard to pin-point in polling data so these estimates are always very rough). Plus, the decisive second round is very heavily weighted towards lawmakers’ votes.

In this instance, there’s also a problem with just doing a popularity contest style poll like this. Candidates like Takaichi are very polarising; arguably the really important indicator of public opinion would be to ask “which of these candidates do you absolutely NOT want as LDP leader?”

Whoever leads the LDP next needs to balance holding together an increasingly fractured party with building alliances with opposition parties to pass legislation, as well as handling U.S. political instability and tough economic headwinds. Motegi probably ticks a couple of those boxes, at least.

He’s one of the more palatable figures to right-wingers in the party, while having a track record of working with centrist colleagues. As a former faction leader he’ll be able to scrape up the 20 nominations required; but he’d need to do some very deft backroom deals to pull together a majority.