Twitter was a prime example of that. They started out with something so simple and people loved it. Then they started adding all of these features and I’m really not sure it was worth taking on huge amounts of VC funding to bloat it out to the point of enshittification.

Exactly this. “We have maxed out the amount of money we can extract from people and have reached diminishing returns on profitability.”

Why can’t anyone just create a billion dollar company that makes something people like and then be happy they can consistently earn $200m per year? Maybe ask the people what kinds of features they want and improve the service to increase the value to users once you need something for your staff to do when the product is complete.

Transferred prompts? As in sent my prompts through my browser to be processed on computers in China, exactly like I would fucking expect? Am I going to have to read this fucking article?

Okay so there’s not much there, but it sounds like the issue is really associating personal data with the prompts so they can build a profile of exactly which kinds of porn I like. I assume every AI company is doing that, which is why I really like to keep my prompts outlandish.

I don’t fucking want personalized ads no matter how relevant they are to me. I only have so much money to buy stupid materialistic bullshit and once that’s gone all an ad can do is make me want something I can’t have. Ads are just trying to make you discontent.

They just want you to spend more money in a failed attempt to be happier adding complexity to my life when I’d rather just be content with simplicity. And they work really fucking well on my wife. I automatically distrust anything someone is paying money to show me.

You are right that coming together and accepting one another’s right to peacefully coexist is the moral thing to do, but as that is a practical impossibility I didn’t/don’t really credit it as a moral solution (failing the second word of the phrase, not the first).

But look, people way smarter than me have tried to crack this nut and failed. I guarantee it won’t take a lot of effort to poke holes in anything I could say about this. I have my thoughts but always tempered by the understanding that I have more ignorance than knowledge about the realities of that situation.

“You wouldn’t SteAL a gUilLotINe!”

Trump’s play here will be to issue an order as late in the election cycle as possible while still accomplishing his aims and moving as quickly as possible. The changes they make will involve severe staff reductions and election infrastructure destruction that cannot quickly be undone.

The aim will be that legal challenges will take long enough that the changes can’t be undone for the current election cycle. The courts will bristle and wring their hands, but ultimately conclude that changing the election rules in the middle of an election is tantamount to interference and any rulings won’t take effect until the next election cycle (see for example court cases about gerrymandering).

AI will never, ever make anyone better at their job. It might in some cases help them to be faster.

If competency is the concern, AI has no role here.

Yeah. I mean. It’s the Middle East. There’s no clear moral solution (though it sure as fuck isn’t genocide). There is a huge grain of salt that needs to accompany any hot takes including mine.

I mean that’s fair, but the American people also voted for Trump and I don’t really get a say in how we are mistreating immigrants, so I don’t hold individual Jews accountable for their government unless they support advocate for that government and those tactics.

Problem is pro Palestinian people don’t hate Jews (with exceptions), they hate Israeli government, a quasi-fascist apartheid state. There is a real problem with equating anti-Israel sentiment with antisemitism. I don’t have a problem with Saudi people, but their government is awful. I have no problem with Afghan people, but the Taliban are cocksuckers.

There’s a real problem these days with governments not representing their people. The underclasses are going to have to break out the guillotines and straight up murder the rich in order to reset the cycle.

Man, I wrote this comment and I still feel like it took a couple of turns I wasn’t expecting.

People with $3500 of TSLA aren’t really who I’m talking about here. You have a technical point, but it’s not really what I was getting at.

You can bullshit the American people that they are paid protestors, but if any of his investors buy that line of bullshit, they deserve to lose all their money.

There’s something about the internet, isn’t there? It encourages us to presume discord when we come to the same point in two different ways. I’ll take full credit for misunderstanding your agreement and interpreting it uncharitably. I need to resist that instinct. Cheers, mate!

You don’t know how to draw, but do you suppose the AI is good at drawing?

Absolutely not! That was kinda the point of what I said. It only amazes when you are operating in ignorance.

I’m okay with 1 day a week in office. I’d prefer every other week, but it’s good to have face to face conversations on occasion. But the office needs to understand I’m going to be much less productive those days. I’m leaving at 2 to beat rush hour, and I’m not making up that 1.5 hours of commute time after I get home (I will eat the morning commute though). I’m taking a lunch with my coworkers instead of working through it.

When everyone understands that the office days are performative rather than productive, it’s not the worst thing. That said, keep fighting, my WFH brethren. Not everyone benefits from office time, and any time not spent in meetings it’s fucking ridiculous to see people sitting in a cubicle with headphones on trying hard to emulate the peace and productivity of just working from home.

Not that it doesn’t happen here and there, but AI isn’t taking the vast numbers of jobs many people think. I use AI professionally and personally a lot. The only things that really impress me are the things I have zero ability in at all: drawing character sketches of my roleplaying characters, composing music, and telling people to go fuck themselves in a professional manner.

The code is garbage. The prose is garbage. Lyrics/poetry are garbage (occasionally entertainingly so). And the longer the prompt/response chain gets the worse the output becomes—AI literally gets dumber the harder you try to get good quality out.

I think AI is amazing, in that it is barely competent to mediocre at damn near any basic knowledge task (presuming you can trust it not to hallucinate). But it’s not an expert at anything.

What it can do is generate a first draft of something incredibly quickly, but it will always need a human hand to make it good. And based on my observations, the folks who say that’s just today and in ten years no one will need to work—are simply wrong. Time will tell, but this technology seems to get exponentially more expensive for diminishing returns on quality.

I mean no company is innocent and the grudges I chose to hold are completely arbitrary. However one point you made was that the confederate flag is presently still a symbol of racism and slavery. Exxon and BP both fought hard to limit the damages they had to pay. Many people died without ever receiving compensation because their pockets were so deep that they could just wait out the survivors.

The fact that they are still in business and they have never fully compensated victims for their own willful negligence means that they represent an ongoing miscarriage of justice.

But mostly the arbitrary thing.

Yeah well actually that’s all true. Have never owned any of those and probably never will. I’m not sure who you’re counting in and so on, but unless it includes GM and Chrysler it has turned out that way mainly by happy coincidence.

I do. I haven’t been to an Exxon gas station in 35 years, nor a BO in 15, and I’ve never used a gas station flying a confederate flag. Fuck those imaginary constructs and anyone who flies their banners.