Companies that aren't technology companies but use technology that has been doing the job for 20 years.

What was the reason 20 years ago?

(I know, I know. That question might be a bit too loaded. I'm really very sorry. No, there's no need that; I'll see myself out.)

Those don't exist. I was told (over and over again) that every company is a technology company.

mild \s

> Their market share of EVs in the US went from 40.9% in Q3 2025 to 58.9% in Q4 2025.

You’re not wrong factually, but it doesn’t mean what you’re suggesting it means. Their share went up because EVs aren’t selling as much anymore. All companies including Tesla are selling fewer EVs. They just have a bigger share of the smaller pie, which isn’t exactly a success when you only sell EVs, but your competitors also sell non EVs.

I'm aware of the reason. Their market share is, nonetheless, up. That's still good for Tesla, their sales remained constant while people stopped buying other EVs.

Edit: Constant is the wrong word. Resilient or consistent is what I was trying to say.

Competitors leaving the market means less competition which is a good thing for Tesla. If the market for EVs returns in the future (if, say, the next administration reimplements the incentives), Tesla will be there to reap the benefits.

> their sales remained constant while people stopped buying other EVs.

Their sales did not remain constant.

> It is honestly truly fucking incredible how corps still find new, innovative ways to enshittify. Regular enshittification won't cut it, they have to exercise their artistic creativity.

I had a bit of an epiphany the other day thinking about these VC companies offering products to the public at unsustainable prices. It's classic anticompetitive behavior.

You imagine anticompetitive behavior to come from a monopoly because they can afford to burn money to drive competition out before they bring prices back to profitable but the whole VC burn is the same thing. People talk about it a lot without really saying it explicitly when they talk about moats. The only moat Anthropic and OpenAI have is money and they utilize it by offering products below cost.

The two companies are just trying to outlast the other one until they are the only one left.

So it's not really enshitification as much as you were previously getting the deal of a lifetime.

In physical markets we call this kinda thing dumping and it's often regulated. Maybe offering SaaS or compute at below profitable rates should be investigatable too, to avoid killing competitors too easily?

Dumping is typically used in the context of international trade.

There are some predatory pricing laws, but they're much more narrow than most people believe. There is no law requiring things to be sold for more than it costs to produce.

I think it's funny that these topics make people angry enough to demand that we make laws to force companies to raise prices. We'll stick it to these companies by forcing them to charge us more! That will show them!

Such laws would be very bad for startups and newcomers because they'd be forced to price their new product higher than established competitors who have economies of scale. It would be a nice handout to the big companies.

> Dumping is typically used in the context of international trade.

This is dumping and it is international trade. Maybe you don't realize it because you're American and have internalized it as business as usual.

The whole Silicon Valley VC industry and the majority of the net worth of SWEs on HN is based on dumping. "Burning VC cash" is transparently dumping, and it's squarely what the US big tech dominance is founded on. Amazon, Uber, Youtube, now LLMs. The huge majority of "success stories" of the last 15 years are based on dumping their product far below cost price, running at a loss for years until they dominate the market, and then jacking up prices/enshittifying/selling user data.

I didn't think Amazon engaged in dumping.

It took about 9 years of losses before they got profitable, which is the exact mechanism I talked about.

Dumping and losing money overall are different. Selling $100 bill for $10 is dumping.

2 day shipping is dumping i guess

Yeah, that's where the realization led me too.

These companies probably need to be forced to at least try to price their products at a level that would be sustainable long term.

This happens naturally because no company can run at a loss forever.

I think it's funny that we're getting subsidized and discounted services and this makes some people so angry that the comment section is demanding laws that would force companies to charge us more.

Of course but they can run at that rate long enough to make it impossible for another company to compete and go bankrupt. Which is the problem.

Like I said, this is the iconic strategy of monopolies. They take their pool of money, move into a new market, lower prices below cost until local competition withers away then buy their assets at bankruptcy prices and raise prices to whatever they want. Those temporary discounts are designed to kill competition, innovation and choice.

VC subsidized prices are exactly as bad for the market as that. It's unclear to me if the intent is the same but intent doesn't really matter.

I'd also like to state that I'm not angry about it.

  > It's classic anticompetitive behavior.

well, "competition is for losers" isn't it?

I'm not sure that I'm more impressed with LLMs than I am with alpha go.

Alpha taught itself how to play go by playing over and over again. It learned a new strategy never seen before. I find that a lot more intelligent than an static state LLM regurgitating for loops.

Money is created all the time.

I struggle to understand what OpenAI would look like in a counter factual.

Like Anthropic? Due to Altman being a lying psychopath, most of the talent left OpenAI, which is now fighting for its life -- but now they can't claim to have moral high ground or the best researchers anymore; profitability's the only way out remaining to them.

Who knows? It could have always ended up this way anyway. But Altman had a pretty big role in summoning his own competition.

First, Anthropic exists in this same "late stage capitalism" environment so it's hard to hold that as a counter factual l.

Second, Anthropic is the company that made a big public PR push to make a stand against the US government only to privately let the NSA use Mythos.

Amodei and Altman aren't much different and neither is Anthropic.

> profitability's the only way out remaining to them.

It's the only way out for either of them. That's the nature of business.

Since English has a glut of loaner words, I'd assume the two words just originate from different languages.

That's why you'd never see a company like Valve in a capitalist system... wait...

It seems to me like they are trying to find good people without having to struggle to fire bad ones. They get automatic churn because of the term and can offer the good employees permanent roles.

Given how difficult it can be to fire government employees, I think that's a good strategy.

An 8% budget cut isn't a crisis.

You're just scrambling to be technically correct now that you've been shown the data that their budget hasn't really changed much.

Politicians and pundits lie and exaggerate this stuff all the time. Don't take the bait.

This administration certainly isn't the most pro-science, but they did just complete a spin around the moon, something that will get more kids interested in science than anything NASA has done in the last 40 years.