The article is a little misleading. Ireland is the largest product of alumina in Europe, if you exclude Russia, which produces about twice as much.

The vast majority of alumina comes from China. All of Europe together produces less than 10% of what China produces. Ireland produces less than 1% of the global supply.

Gee. I wonder why anyone would want the inefficiency of local inference?

Dear Mr Altman,
We’re not turning to local inference for efficiency. We’re turning to local inference because we don’t trust you.
We don’t trust that your LLM will give us unedited results.
We don’t trust you to keep our data private.

Isn’t the joke the if you break a leg you get in the “cast”?

The average Windows users isn’t making the OS decision at all. They’re told by their boss that the company uses Windows and they’re given a Windows laptop.

When they get that laptop they sign something with fine print that tells them not to mess with the OS or they’ll get fired.

How do those suckers support themselves or their families when they get fired for violating the corporate IT policy?