Andy Kessler

WSJ: Weird Naming Conventions

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https://www.wsj.com/opinion/cant-ai-think-of-better-names-for-itself-products-brands-technology-advertising-27bf4b6a

What is it with techies and their bizarre product names? After announcing ChatGPT-4o Mini—what does that even mean?—OpenAI’s Sam Altman admitted the company needed a “naming scheme revamp.” No kidding. Other names, such as Copilot and Gemini, are better but are used to describe a confusing array of products. OpenAI (which isn’t open) didn’t learn the naming lesson from the early dot-com era. Because techies liked the alliteration of “World Wide Web,” we are forced to pronounce the nine-syllable “double u, double u, double u.” A mouthful. Do I even have to mention NFTs, nonfungible tokens?

We can do better with the names. I blame Intel and its 386 and 486 microprocessors. The company found it couldn’t trademark a mere number, and it needed to hold off competitors’ clones. So instead of the 586, Intel came up with the name Pentium. Fine, but for a follow-on, they would likely have to skip Sexium and perhaps a deviated Septium. So we’re stuck with the Pentium name and all of its confusing flavors, such as Intel Pentium Gold 8505. Huh?

Bad names are contagious. The World Health Organization, trying to sound scientific, used the Greek alphabet to name Covid variants. Fair enough. Alpha. Beta. The short-lived Gamma. Delta. All the way through Mu. Next would have been the Nu variant, but aren’t they all? So they skipped Nu, which teed up the Xi variant. But no, the WHO, being overly deferential to China, skipped Xi for Omicron. And then for some reason stopped there, instead using strangely named subvariants, Omicron BA.1, EG.5 (Eris), BA.2.86 (Pirola). So confusing numbers and odd nicknames are an improvement? In case you’re interested, the latest is Omicron XEC, making up about half of cases today. Are they masking something?

Orwellian names are everywhere, reflecting “1984” doublethink: “War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.” Both sides of American politics are guilty of this. Ronald Reagan’s Peacekeeper missiles. Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act. The Green Spending Inflation Machine would have been more accurate.

Cars get funny names too. We are long past the Model T. We morphed into the Volkswagen Rabbit. No one who speaks Spanish would drive a Chevy Nova, since no va translates as “doesn’t go.” Hummers and the Ford Probe aren’t an improvement. But with a spark of creativity came the Ford F-150 Lightning. Cool name for an electric vehicle. Too bad production fizzled because so few wanted one. And telling someone you drive the funkily named Tesla Cybertruck, by law, must elicit the response: “Whoa, cool.” Cybersmudge might have been more accurate, as they all have messy fingerprints on their stainless-steel doors.

To stop squeaks on cars and really everything, we use WD-40. Its name means “Water Displacement 40th formula.” The first 39 attempts at the product didn’t work.

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WSJ: The New Wave of AI Is Here

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https://www.wsj.com/opinion/the-new-wave-of-ai-is-here-some-jobs-will-go-but-others-will-be-created-0dbf9f63

A recent meme captures the gnawing artificial-intelligence backlash: A worker says, “AI turns this single bullet point into a long email I can pretend I wrote.” In the next panel, “AI makes a single bullet point out of a long email I can pretend I read.”

Funny. But in reality, there’s a lot more going on. Right on cue with the backlash are questions about AI’s business model. This month, a Journal headline stated, “No One Knows How to Price AI Tools.” How true. Do you bundle it like Microsoft Copilot or like Google’s AI Overview to show up above web search results (which apparently can be turned off only by cursing at it)? Should you charge $20 a month? Or $200 like ChatGPT Pro? Or offer the open-source Chinese DeepSeek for cheap? It makes a difference as bills keep piling up for announced data centers and expensive Nvidia chips.

As we warned early last month about DeepSeek, competition is fierce. On open-source AI, even OpenAI’s Sam Altman thinks “we have been on the wrong side of history.” But DeepSeek doesn’t mark the end of U.S. dominance. No, no. Instead, it’s a sign that the next wave of AI is starting. Lower usage costs are great for those developing applications. Real productivity will define the next era as corporate America pays up for anything that saves money.

Call centers and agents. You scour the web for answers, but sometimes you just have to talk to a real person, which can cost companies up to $1 a minute, a huge pain point. Often the experience is in broken English, with long pauses as the agents look up the same stuff you did.

Salesforce now sells a service called Agentforce, a platform that deploys AI agents. After these new agents go through your data, the number of questions that required human intervention declined by half. While that’s mostly text-based, imagine soon an 800 phone number and the voice you speak with is AI-generated instead of human—you won’t even know. Maybe add a smattering of broken English for realism? The answers will be better, and the savings will be staggering. Yes, it’s ironic that Salesforce is hiring 2,000 new salespeople—humans—to sell these AI tools.

Doctor summaries. Tired of your doctor distractedly typing during your expensive five-minute appointment?

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WSJ: Severance and DOGE - How to Spend $1 Million in a Hurry

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https://www.wsj.com/opinion/how-to-spend-1-million-in-a-hurry-a-lesson-in-budgeting-and-bureaucracies-makes-me-skeptical-of-doge-1ea97897

Want to know if DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency, will work? Watch the terrific show “Severance” on Apple TV+. It had me squirming. It wasn’t only the delightful weirdness of what many viewers describe as “corporate dystopia” or the stark colors and retro terminals. It’s because partway into it, I thought, “Wait a second, I worked in that building.” Literally. Part of the show was filmed at a former Bell Labs building in Holmdel, N.J., sitting on more than 450 acres, transistor-shaped water tower and all. I spent five years there toiling for the research arm of AT&T—one of the world’s largest bureaucracies at the time.

The Holmdel Bell Labs building hosted 6,000 workers with multiple floors and hallways that all looked the same connected to a giant central atrium, much like a prison. I shared a two-person office. Managers had bigger, wood-paneled, carpeted offices—status was based on ceiling-tile count. I have flashbacks to mindless meetings, endless forms, soulless back-stabbing and macrodata refinement. So yes, “Severance” is personal.

Working for a big corporation and regulated entity has many lessons for DOGE. Here’s one that may handcuff it: I was all of 23 years old and working on chips for modems, enabling digital communications over phone lines. The nice thing about Bell Labs is that no one ever told you what to do. You just figured it out. So I did what I wanted and had a lot of fun. It was the early 1980s, and I think I made $21,000 that year.

On Dec. 20 my boss pulled me into his office: “Got a second?” I thought I was going to be fired. He smiled and told me that our department was under budget for the year. I was confused. “The way things work here is that if we don’t spend a bunch of money before the end of the year, we lose it in next year’s budget.” So? “Well, Andy, this is your lucky day. You can be a hero around here if you can figure out how to spend a bit over $1 million quickly.” That was a lot of money back then. And now. It was regulated ratepayers’ money. AT&T overcharged for long-distance calls. Who cares? “Oh,” my boss added, “and it has to be delivered by Dec 31.”

He didn’t have to tell me twice. I had a wish list of computer power that I needed for chip design and testing. The hottest machine at the time I could run myself was from Digital Equipment, a DEC VAX 11/780, which required an air-conditioned room with raised floors. It ran about one million instructions per second. By comparison, today’s iPhone can do about 38 trillion operations per second.

I called the DEC salesman and told him I wanted a VAX and three 176-megabyte disk drives. He laughed and said, “Who doesn’t?”

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WSJ: Trump Tariffs Are a Wealth Killer

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https://www.wsj.com/opinion/trump-tariffs-are-a-wealth-killer-imports-protectionism-483f8517

“We will tariff and tax foreign countries to enrich our citizens,” President Trump declared in his inauguration speech. Adam Smith is turning in his grave. Tariffs destroy wealth. No matter, Mr. Trump said he may slap 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico starting Feb. 1 and 10% on China. An executive memorandum demanded his administration study trade deficits and tariffs. Here’s a study guide:

In 1815, as the Napoleonic Wars ended and a fear of cheap grain imports arose, the landowner-protecting British Parliament passed the Corn Laws, imposing tariffs on foreign wheat and maize. This helped some farmers, but the Industrial Revolution was just starting, and workers who had flooded into cities faced shortages and high bread prices. There were many riots. Worse, reduced trade deprived the French and other countries of gold to pay for England’s new industrial output. The laws were self-defeating, yet they weren’t repealed until 1846.

Sound familiar? In a populist bid to protect our dwindling manufacturing workforce, economically clueless Trump whisperers push tariffs. A select few workers may be helped, but most Americans will be worse off—though I doubt we’ll see riots protesting higher prices on made-in-China Gap clothes, Barbie dolls or Hush Puppies shoes. But new Trump tariffs will raise prices and restrict other countries from affording our high-margin exports—drugs, phones, planes and many software and artificial-intelligence services. That’s dumb.

Why do presidents have the power to tariff anyway? Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution plainly states: “The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises. . . . To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations.” In June 1930, Herbert Hoover signed the disastrous Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, imposing almost 900 duties. After that mistake, in 1934 during the avoidable depression, Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Reciprocal Trade Agreement Act, enabling presidents to negotiate trade agreements and apply tariffs themselves. FDR enabled DJT.

The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade was created in 1947 and drove massive postwar trade and growth. But, worried about the Soviets, Congress passed the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 and specifically Section 232, which allowed presidents to restrict imports they deemed a threat to national security. Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 authorized presidents to impose tariffs on countries that violate agreements or burden U.S. commerce. The International Emergency Economic Powers Act 1977 allows presidents to regulate trade during national emergencies. Congress sure loves giving its power away. No wonder Mr. Trump has a crush on the word “tariff.”

Notice how everything is now either a national-security concern or an emergency.

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WSJ: My Festering Questions for 2025

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https://www.wsj.com/opinion/my-festering-questions-for-2025-investing-tech-pharma-advertising-ai-federal-reserve-e8f1ac69

While the culture wars raged on for the past four years, some real-world questions festered:

Is something rotten at Apple? There is little growth. Earnings per share are basically flat since 2021 even with stock buybacks lowering share count. Estimates suggest iPhone unit sales are back where they were in 2015, while iPad unit sales have declined by almost half since 2013. The Apple Vision Pro augmented-reality headsets are a bust. Remember, growth stocks are highly valued on, well, growth.

Apple is also behind in artificial intelligence. Siri, like Amazon’s Alexa, could have won the AI chatbot battle but is now a reminder of what could have been. A conversational Siri isn’t expected until the spring of 2026. Every year, Google pays Apple around $20 billion to be the default search engine on iPhones, iPads and Macs. That could go away with the Justice Department’s antitrust remedies for Google. Yet Apple stock is near record highs. Sure, many companies aren’t trading on real-world fundamentals—I’m looking at you, Tesla—but they will.

Is Google threatened? The good news is Google may save $20 billion a year in Apple payments. But Google’s problems are more structural: AI search could easily eat into Google’s almost $200 billion worldwide search revenue and its 90% market share. Softening the blow, Google does include verbiage from its own Gemini AI on top of its web search results. Still, this is a big change.

Will Ozempic pay for itself? GLP-1 drugs look to be the new aspirin. It’s hard to find diseases they don’t affect. So far, they’ve helped treat type 2 diabetes, obesity, stroke, heart attack, sleep apnea, kidney disease and substance addiction. And there are hints these drugs may reduce the risks of colorectal, pancreatic and endometrial cancer. Wow. In December, a preliminary Cornell College of Business paper reported that GLP-1-using households spend 6% less on groceries within six months, while spending on chips, sweet bakery goods and cookies dropped up to 11%. These drugs are still expensive, and saving on Pringles won’t pay for them, not yet. But they’ll surely change long-term healthcare spending.

Is the AI hype cycle rolling over?

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WSJ: Dylan, Musk and the Edge of Chaos

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https://www.wsj.com/opinion/dylan-musk-and-the-edge-of-chaos-bob-elon-electric-guitar-innovation-c514389b

With the release of the film “A Complete Unknown,” the world has been reintroduced to Bob Dylan’s all-electric set at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. The singer, formerly Robert Allen Zimmerman, brazenly played a solid-body electric Fender Stratocaster on “Like a Rolling Stone” and two other songs, shocking the crowd that expected snooze-inducing acoustic folk. Some booed. One critic said the singer “electrified one half of his audience and electrocuted the other.”

In 2025 we’re at a similar inflection point. It’s what happens when nonconformists seize the moment, leaving a trail of old and tired in their wake. It’s a story as old as time, and today it’s the story of Silicon Valley. The “edge of chaos,” an expression coined by physicist Norman Packard in 1988, is where creativity and innovation happen. On one side is staid order—the status quo. On the other side is total havoc. Stuff happens in the turbulence where they meet, where change in pressure spits off cyclones and twisters. Silicon Valley is the source of many of these. Sure, plenty of ideas fail, but enough drive long-term change for the better.

Creativity benefits from chaos. Music—from Elvis Presley to Shaboozey—often shocks before becoming mainstream. Same for film and fashion. Not everything that shocks turns into Bach. Especially art. I have finally learned how to enjoy the nonsensical dog’s breakfast of dreck in modern-art museums. I artfully remark to anyone within earshot, “This piece signifies an indictment of societal norms.” Or, to mix it up, I might say, “This is clearly about social struggles against the establishment.” Try it sometime. Every head will nod in agreement.

More important, the chaos of innovation changes history, but it is often hated—at first anyway. When Elon Musk took over Tesla, he gave rides and pitched the electric-car company to scores of venture capitalists. Almost all declined. SpaceX launching private rockets? It’ll never happen. Brian Chesky and Airbnb’s idea of renting out your couch or spare bedroom? Ick.

What I love most about these stories are the entrepreneurs themselves—the freaks and the geeks. They are nonconformist in how they think, talk, dress and socialize. Many are self-taught to write code. None were going to be hired by the short-sleeve-white-shirt-with-a-pocket-protector-wearing IBM, let alone the white-shoe Wall Street or a corporate hierarchy like Procter & Gamble. Mr. Musk as an investment banker? Funny thought. If any of these nonconformists were actually hired, they were relegated to backrooms to work in anonymity.

The misfits got the last laugh.

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WSJ: What a Long, Strange Trip

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https://www.wsj.com/opinion/what-a-long-strange-trip-work-vacation-travel-experiences-8441fa22

I have a love-hate relationship with travel. The late chef Anthony Bourdain wrote, “Travel changes you. As you move through this life and this world you change things slightly, you leave marks behind, however small. And in return, life—and travel—leaves marks on you.” So true. Although sometimes those marks are welts. The 1990 Richard Linklater movie, “Slacker,” has a great line: “I’ve traveled, and all it is is bad water, bad food, you get sick, you got to deal with strange people, and when you get back you can’t tell whether it really happened to you or if you just saw it on TV.” Also true.

I’ve been fortunate to travel to see many man-made wonders, from the Tiger’s Nest in Bhutan and the Inca Trail in Peru to the Chouara Tannery in Fez, Morocco. Even more, I’ve loved seeing natural wonders, from Victoria Falls to Iguazu Falls, and from red-footed boobies in the Galápagos Islands to lions munching on hyenas in Botswana. I’ve spent time scratching my historic itch at St. Petersburg’s Winter Palace, agonizing through Auschwitz and crawling through the siege tunnels in Sarajevo. I’ve viewed street art in São Paulo and Hello Kitty cosplay in Tokyo. In our increasingly materialistic world, experiences provide the deepest and most lasting satisfaction.

Experiences are winning, but often you have to lose first. Starting with jet lag. Comedian Bob Hope said, “I’ve been to almost as many places as my luggage.” Relatable. And Bourdain was, again, on it: “The journey is part of the experience—an expression of the seriousness of one’s intent. One doesn’t take the A train to Mecca.” Sure, I’ve been stuck in airports and had to abandon trains. And that was just in Newark, N.J.

At age 19, a friend and I backpacked through Europe with only Arthur Frommer’s book “Europe on 5 Dollars a Day.” Now, technology is indispensable. Our phone acts as a Swiss Army Knife of maps, translators, bus schedules, car dispatchers, reservation makers, tour guides, Zoom cameras and money dispersers. The downside is a loss of serendipity, that cool bar or quaint café you stumble into.

Another downside is that you really never disconnect from your life anymore—you’re always in touch as your inbox and feeds fill with useless garbage. Donald Trump and Elon Musk convene. The mayor was arrested again. Buzzfeed’s “23 Exceptionally Weird Things People Found At Thrift Stores.”

Because of Hollywood and streaming, the Americanization of the world is in full force.

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WSJ: Division Isn’t So Bad

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https://www.wsj.com/opinion/division-isnt-so-bad-politics-polarization-disagreement-american-society-f83d6dd7

American culture is built on division. Left vs. Right, Coke vs. Pepsi, Ohio State vs. flag-planting Michigan, Classico vs. Rao’s, Red Sox vs. Yankees. Kanye West vs. Taylor Swift. Maybe you’re tired of it, but you can’t get rid of division.

Donald Trump has said, “The discord and division in our society must be healed.” Good luck with that. Then again, Joe Biden said we have to choose “between unity and division.” It never happened because it isn’t in any politician’s interest to heal divides. So we get “the vast right-wing conspiracy” and “own the libs.” Division is here to stay. The rest of us need to learn how to deal with it.

The Biden years encouraged division by identity for the pursuit of power. It ended up costing Democrats the election. The Trump 2.0 years will probably be about division by nativism—we were here first. Or we made stuff here first. Yes, “decentering whiteness” vs. tariffs. Voters chose. Hey, you can’t have it all.

Sadly, anxiety often wins out. Former comedian Ellen DeGeneres, perhaps stressed by Trump trauma, moved to London. Cheerio. Others have reportedly threatened, including America Ferrera, Sharon Stone, Cher and Sophie Turner (isn’t she British?). Fine, they can read daily New York Times tantrums on their iPads from Saskatchewan. I hear it’s nice this time of year.

Others have retreated to comfortable echo chambers. Former Elon Musk fanboys—now haters—have debarked for Bluesky, a Twitter alternative, which almost advertises in its name: No red rhetoric here. Some simply unplug. CNN and MSNBC audiences are plummeting. Many will play Wordle for four years.

But it’s better if everyone stays engaged.

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WSJ: It’s All a Conspiracy, Right?

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https://www.wsj.com/opinion/its-all-a-conspiracy-right-rfk-hhs-8bcd2df7

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., nominated to run the Department of Health and Human Services, has brought conspiracy theories back into the mainstream. In the past, he has claimed vaccines cause autism (since debunked), that we should drink raw milk (last month it was found possibly to contain bird flu), and that 5G broadband is used to “control our behavior” (well, it does tell my Uber driver where to go).

Mr. Kennedy recently tweeted: “Seed oils are one of the most unhealthy ingredients that we have in foods.” He’ll even sell you a $35 “Make Frying Oil Tallow Again” hat. Ending corn and other farm subsidies would solve their overuse—but tallow? Cardiologists suggest that saturated fat in beef tallow increases heart disease. Can we agree that policy should never be based on lawyers’ theories?

Humans are gullible. We like to be told tall tales. We eat them up. The Central Intelligence Agency killed John F. Kennedy. It must be true, I saw it in an Oliver Stone movie! Go to the Texas School Book Depository in Dallas, and you’ll find a 1980 Texas Historic Landmark sign that reads: “When Lee Harvey Oswald allegedly shot and killed President John F. Kennedy.” Allegedly? Well, those dissecting frames 313 to 316 of the Zapruder film think so.

Who hasn’t fallen for at least one of these myths? Paul McCartney is dead. I am the walrus, goo-goo g’joob. UFOs at Roswell, N.M., and now in New Jersey. The moon landing was staged. Sept. 11 was orchestrated by government. Aliens crashed Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. Pizzagate. Meghan Markle is a robot. Dinosaurs built Stonehenge.

Fluoride in our water. Subliminal ads in movies. Stolen elections. The Elders of Zion, Illuminati or Freemasons running the world. Barack Obama’s birthplace. Russia collusion. “Deny. Defend. Depose.” The deep state carrying out Donald Trump’s assassination attempt in Butler, Pa. Great movie plot, but c’mon.

We fall for conspiracy theories because they either sound plausible or contain some small tinge of truth that the rest of the made-up stuff hangs on.

WSJ:How Progress Builds on Itself

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https://www.wsj.com/opinion/how-progress-builds-on-itself-innovation-biotech-artificial-intelligence-engineer-science-d447ab4a

“If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants,” Isaac Newton wrote in 1675 to polymath Robert Hooke. That expression is often used to explain progress: inventors and entrepreneurs building on the work of many others. I don’t like it. Stack too many smart folks on top of each other and things become slow-moving and get wobbly fast.

Here’s a better analogy: One of the most awe-inspiring places in the world is Victoria Falls, on the Zambezi River between Zambia and Zimbabwe. The locals call it Mosi-oa-Tunya, which translates to “smoke that thunders.” At 355 feet high and over a mile wide, it’s the largest sheet of falling water in the world. I stood on the precipice of the falls on Livingstone Island and looked down. It scared the living daylights out of me.

In the distance was Victoria Falls Bridge, built in 1905. The bridge is 650 feet long and 420 feet above the rushing river. According to Zimbabwe Field Guide: “The ravine was bridged by firing a rocket with a thin string attached from one bank to the other which was hauled across pulling after it a thicker cord, then a rope, and finally a steel cable was hauled across. A bosun’s chair was strung to the cable, which then moved engineers across the ravine taking ten minutes to cross.” Then add steel trusses, railroad tracks and asphalt and you have a usable crossing. It’s now frequented by bungee jumpers.

The bridge was a long shot followed by many, many, many repeated improvements. We’ve come a long way from Newton’s being hit on the head with an apple to SpaceX rocket launches. Back in my engineering and chip-designing days, a friend was astounded: “Wait, you use computers to design new computers?” Well, yes.

The original Bell Labs transistor, patented in 1948, looked like a mutant grasshopper. Starting in 1958, Texas Instruments and then Intel each put eight of these transistors on one device, an integrated circuit. Thirteen years later, Intel connected 2,300 transistors together and created the microprocessor—the brains of a computer on a chip. Around the same time, we got silicon modems to communicate over phone lines.

Then it was off to the races.

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