There are two angles to this. One is that if you want to integrate your agent setup into the Apple ecosystem you need a network connected Mac running 24/7.
The second is that the puck is heading towards local models. The people running their own 'Claws are usually experimenting running their own services either to save money or to explore the future where 95% of requests are handled on device.
If the Delaware company has zero presence in Virginia then the state of Virginia can't do anything about it.
The presence of us-east-1 in Virginia probably will complicate the matter considerably and I'm guessing it's something the courts would need to sort out.
I think the article makes a bit too much of the decision to partner with Google for the AI model. Sometimes knowing where the boundaries of your business are is better than trying to expand too far and getting it wrong.
I think Apple understands that the moat in AI is the UX, something that historically they've been very good at. The model is a commodity and I suspect they will quite happily go with another provider if Google doesn't work or buy a company in the inevitable AI fire sale if they can see a good fit.
In-house vs Cloud Provider is largely a wash in terms of cost. Regardless of the approach, you are going need people to maintain stuff and people cost money. Similarly compute and storage cost money so what you lose on the swings, you gain on the roundabouts.
In my experience you typically need less people if using a Cloud Provider than in-house (or the same number of people can handle more instances) due to increased leverage. Whether you can maximize what you get via leverage depends on how good your team is.
US companies typically like to minimize headcount (either through accounting tricks or outsourcing) so usually using a Cloud Provider wins out for this reason alone. It's not how much money you spend, it's how it looks on the balance sheet ;)
There is no moat in the models. The moat is in the UX. The problem is that OpenAI is far away from where the user is and not going to get there anytime soon. Google meanwhile is exactly where the user is.
OpenAI IMHO is a dead company at this point. They are overvalued relative to the fundamentals and don't appear to have any way of getting the numbers to work in the timeframe that their investors will expect. They are throwing stuff against the wall in the hope something sticks.
They are almost certainly looking for a bag holder. This will either be the retail investor via an IPO or the Federal government via "we are too big to fail".
I don't think Nokia at that point would have gone with Android with Google services which what the market wanted. They would have gone with Android with their own services (Maps etc) and app store.
I don't think that would have succeeded against Samsung and the Nexus phones.
But TBH I think going with Android would have a better move than what Elop did.
The Pre and WebOS were hands down the best non iPhone experience at the time. The mistake Palm made was going exclusive instead of pushing it everywhere. I don't think the Pre ever recovered from that in the USA.
The BlackBerry Z10 was also a great device but by that point there was no way BlackBerry to deploy a competing ecosystem to iPhone and Android for it to matter.
European tech was doomed in late the 90s when the EU decided to throw in with Microsoft et al instead of supporting building out a homegrown alternative ecosystem based around open source software.
Nokia was dead company walking before Stephen Elop. Elop saw the writing on the wall and made one of the choices available. A different CEO would have made a different choice but ultimately at that point it would still have been too late to save Nokia.
Nokia was a great hardware company that missed the boat when the market changed to be based around software. When the market changed again to be based around ecosystems, Nokia was beyond saving.
The insidious part is that commercial real estate in California is paying the same rates as they were when the building was built, despite the fact that the value of the building has increased many times since and the building "changing" ownership many times since.
The second insidious part is that because of the enhancements to the tax code over the years it's possible to continue to pay 1978 property tax rates in perpetuity, and even pass those rates on to your descendants. You can even transfer those super low rates to a new property in some cases.
New buyers get screwed because they will be paying at today's rates. So you could be paying 10x more property tax as your neighbor for the same city services.
It's a fair take. California is now unaffordable for most families and it's going to get worse.
Example: New construction in Santa Clarita (north Los Angeles county) $800k 3 bedroom town house. Even with ~50% down you are still looking around $4k+ per month in payments, with 25% of that amount being property tax.
You'll also likely be paying more due to Mello-Roos and with HOA and home insurance on top of that. Plus it's unlikely at this point you'll be able to get fire insurance.
Good luck trying to make the numbers work on the country medium income of ~$100k.
(And don't ask how someone on medium income can put 50% down on a $800k home).
Prop 13 is the third rail of California politics that is choking the state.
Until someone is willing to grab the nettle and fix the property tax situation to be fair and equitable to everyone then California cities are eventually going to run out of money to maintain infrastructure.
It's largely the same issue that every sector is experiencing. Everyone is trying for the same high end of the market crowd to extract as much prestige and profit as possible and pricing out the mass market.
Cinemas and concerts are in the same boats.
With the cost of essentials through the roof spending $$$ for a night out is now a periodic luxury rather than every Saturday night.
The common pattern is that the off-shoring company will deploy workers on site for a year to do knowledge transfer and documentation of existing processes so that they can be moved off shore.
Usually (but not always) these workers come into the US on a H-1B visa.
There are two possible end-states for AI once a threshold is crossed:
The AIs take a look at the state of things and realize the KPIs will improve considerably if homo sapiens are removed from the picture. Cue "The Matrix" or "The Terminator" type future.
OR:
The AIs take a look and decide that keeping homo sapiens around makes things much more fun and interesting. They take over running things in a benevolent manner in collaboration with homo sapiens. At that point we end up with 'The Culture'.
Either end-state is bad for the billionaire/investor/VC class.
In the first you'll be a fed into the meat grinder just like everyone else. In the second the AIs, will do a much better job of resource allocation, will perform a decapitation strike on that demographic to capture the resources, and capitalism will largely be extinct from that point onwards.
Kaiser does give a more integrated European style experience, however the experience largely depends on the quality of service you get from your local Kaiser doctors and hospitals.
To get anywhere beyond senior engineer you'll need to be able to explain and convince people that your idea is solid. The best way to learn these skills is to mentor and interact with junior engineers.
The further you go beyond senior engineer, the wider the audience, but you start developing the skills at the 1-1 level.
The second is that the puck is heading towards local models. The people running their own 'Claws are usually experimenting running their own services either to save money or to explore the future where 95% of requests are handled on device.