HN user
And a great deal of the talking shops/podcasts/keynotes/nonprofits around AI existential risk are all part of this same play. They receive funding from the large AI companies so that the latter can continue to talk their own books using this angle.
If, after all these years, Crypto has not become a stable store of value that can replace a fiat currency and let you buy your groceries with it, why do we suddenly 'need it' to do that now, and what would change that will enable that to happen?
You are missing the mass destruction of assets of the wealthy in WWII and the increase in bargaining power of labour in the post-war years (perhaps driven by loss of life/injury for those of a working age). The post-war public sentiment, at least in the UK, was that the lower orders of society had fought the most and suffered the most, and there was an appetite for a new social contract that saw Churchill voted out from office and gave rise to the National Health Service, etc.
Unfortunately, they will be replaced with those sympathetic to the nerd reich takeover and thus ultimately reduce friction and for those in charge looking to wield the wrecking ball. It feels like half the goal of DOGE and similar measures is to purge those with a conscience and loyalty to public service and replace them with those willing to do almost anything asked of them.
'We' being techno-utopian, libertarian startup types I guess. Which isn't that unfair on this site.
I've often wondered why HN so often seems to prefer to prefer to upvote some tangential rabbit hole rather than discuss the topic in the article itself.
Surely the same thing could be said about picking up a book or a newspaper first thing in the morning?
“Given that 100% tax compliance at the highest rates would not solve any high tax nation’s budget holes“
Can I ask where this claim originated from please?
"tax policies subsidize heavier vehicles"
Interesting post. Can I ask you/somebody to expand a bit on the quote above please?
There are plenty of legitimate points made in the article. It also seems uncontroversial at this point to claim that companies are struggling to justify the expenses and inflated share prices brought about by the rush to implement LLMs in as many use cases as possible.
As far as I am aware, the author is right to claim that there is no solution to AI hallucination on the horizon, which is a severely limiting problem. Also I understand we are reaching the boundaries of useful training data available. Both factors suggest current AI improvement simply cannot follow the same trajectory as transistors under Moore's law.
Very helpful, thanks for sharing the link.
What you say makes sense for the kind of business that wants to scale quickly to try and build a moat and dominate a given market (that is, before it frequently goes downhill once the investors and founders have exited and the cheap money ends).
On the other hand, it doesn't seem like the best move for some product that solves a very specific problem for a very specific group of clients. Why would such a product necessarily even need multiple rounds of funding to be profitable?
Do you mean VCs work undermine employee-owned businesses in some way? Why would they bother if we're talking about businesses servicing tiny niches?
I found this guy's take on the AI safety scene to be quite insightful.
In summary, he feels the focus on sci-fi type existential risk to be a deliberate distraction from the AI industry's current and real legal and ethical harms: e.g. scraping copyrighted content for training without paying or attributing creators, not protecting those affected by the misuse of tools to create deepfake porn, the crashes and deaths attributed to Tesla's self-driving mode, AI resume screening bots messing up etc.
Ryan Holiday is one of the best examples of the type that seeks to turn these ideas into a kind of prosperity gospel for grindset bros.
He has a history of being a BS merchant [1]: he's just found a new angle as a self-help guru.
[1] https://www.poynter.org/reporting-editing/2012/telling-the-t...
100%
Finally. For many years, Lisbon and Porto have been rendered totally unaffordable for average local residents by rampant Airbnb fuelled property speculation and general overtourism.
And all of this under a supposedly left-wing government.
"But many of the structural pressures that sociologists have long identified shape commercial and state sourced news stories just don't apply to independent journalists, who don't have to rely on continued access state contacts, commercial paychecks, don't have to serve ad revenue and corporate PR aims"
I was with you up until this point. Audience capture and the need to sell ads for brain pills etc. are a huge issue for many independent content creators: at least, the ones who are trying to make it their main source of income.
Cutesy corporate communication in general is just cringe.
Big law (at least outside of the US, in the UK/EU) is very much pyramid shaped. Typically the model is based on getting the maximum number of chargeable hours from the minimum number of associates, for a dim prospect of eventually making partner. The overwhelming majority of profits flow to partners at the top of the equity structure.
Libertarians of that stripe are essentially pro plutocracy, which would end up being massively anti liberty in practice.
But just as the winners write the history books, the richest libertarians like Thiel and Koch seem able to define what the ideology looks like in the popular imagination, because they can afford to shape the debate via think tanks, media ownership, campus outreach, lobbying, etc.
Why post an archive link? Nothing from the BBC is behind a paywall.
Sounds like a lot of tech and business blog posts when you put it like that.
Facebook became totally unusable for me the minute they started to publicise your likes, comments and interactions all over the wall, broadcasted to everyone you know in your network.
Who wants to get involved in a political discussion, or have their more quirky hobbies and interests silently judged from afar by the work colleagues or elderly relatives among your facebook friends?
"Accept that the future will bring exactly what one needs to grow."
Sorry, but this is panglossian nonsense.
That might be true up to a point, but I suspect that enough adversity, poverty and physical and mental ill health can crush the sunniest of dispositions.
Not when FAANG companies have an infinite war chest to buy out your amazing disruptive startup with the sole intention of killing it or stripping it for parts.
You might get some VC subsidised cheap rides or a lower cost stay. But zooming out, what is the wider effect on our economy of allocating billions of capital in the attempt to build virtual monopolies?
This money could and should be better spent elsewhere, on actual productive assets and activities, rather than pushing for digital rentiership.
Absolutely, especially as it feels like the "competition is for losers" people are completely running the show these days.
Do it and post it on here. Just be prepared to be flagged a lot.
Just look at the current state of Twitter if you want a further illustration of the issues with capricious feudal tech lords.