No, the "action" part is the distinction. Their world model is conditioned on robot actions for example, which gives you two things the video gen alone can't: predict the future frames that follow a given action (change the action, get a different future from the same starting frame), and run it in reverse to infer the actions behind observed frames or output the actions needed to hit a goal (the output is motor commands abd not video frames).
> the interspersed animated/interactive models often don't seem strongly connected to the text
It's indeed the part I struggled with most. The intent was to make the constraint more "visceral", so that the "the interceptor can't catch up" point becomes something you feel by dragging a slider and wtaching the gap grow. But you're right that I didn't do enough to stitch each properly into the prose around it. It reads a bit too adjacent to the text.
For what it's worth, an earlier draft was nearly twice the length and even included a small missile-interception game as the introduction. I think cutting it was the right call though.
Thanks for the notes! I'll keep this in mind for the next post.
Curious which parts specifically felt that way for you? I spent over a week on this, and yes ofc, I used LLMs to help reformulate some sections, but "didn't seem to care enough to make it appealing to read" isn't it. Happy to look at the spots that felt choppy if you can point them out.
> I personally can't understand anyone wanting to move to the US anymore except for extreme reasons.
I am German and honestly can't wait to move to the US once I get a suitable H-1B offer. I already spent 8 months in Boston for a research stay, and back then the doomer mentality among natives was wild to me. From an outsider's perspective it’s crazy to watch. Life, and especially the ceiling for what you can achieve, is still 10x higher in the US than anywhere else.
I think people in the US severely underestimate how stagnant it feels in Europe and other continents right now. We are basically just stumbling from one crisis to the next, without any strong leadership (the US two-party system definitely has its advantages here, as you're able to charge fullspeed into one direction instead of not moving at all).
If you actually want to build ambitious things, the friction here is exhausting. And instead of being rewarded for high output you get taxed to death to prop up a system favored towards an aging/declining population. It's essentially a massive boomer tax. Younger workers have zero political leverage to change it because our demographic is just too small to matter at the ballot box.
Sure, the US definitely has its ugly sides, but if you want to work hard and actually capture the upside of what you build, it's still the only game in town. Even if that means jumping through all the hoops the current gov throws in your way.