Taldan

@Taldan@lemmy.world

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Companies with TLDs named after them is the best example of how ridiculously big those companies are.⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Glad I wasn’t the only one disappointed

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨A Project to Poison LLM Crawlers⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Let’s say I believe you. If that’s the case, why are AI companies still scraping everything?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Inside ICE’s Tool to Monitor Phones in Entire Neighborhoods⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  US surveillance is far more effective than North Korea or Russia’s domestic surveillance

  Only China is in the same realm in terms of ability to surveil citizens. They’re just more open about using it for low-level offenses

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Inside ICE’s Tool to Monitor Phones in Entire Neighborhoods⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  The choice does exist, but it gets harder and harder to go without a phone

  Many jobs expect us to be available at all hours. Younger generations cannot navigate without maps. Phones are also the primary way we record/observe ICE. They’re also our calendar/organizer, notebook, and many other things

  Sure, we can have an independent GPS, camera, calendar, and notepad, but the barrier keeps getting higher

  We need to develop counter measures, and long-term pass strong laws banning this level of government surveillance

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Do people actually believe those "gurus" on the internet that supposedly "give advice"? These seems very sussy and feel scam-adjacent, isn't it?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Some do apparently or they wouldn’t keep making the videos

  Whole lot of people are desperate to make money. They’ll keep doing it for a while even if it isn’t making money. Multi-level marketing schemes as an example. A few make a ton of money on MLMs, more than 90% lose money. They’re still everywhere

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Why would they blame the poor? The need the poor to be their excuse for getting a bailout. Not sure how they’ll sell it yet, but somehow all the AI companies will get bailouts to “help the poor” through our upcoming difficult economic times

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Off the Rails⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Considering the human eye is basically backwards, I always found it funny people would try to use it as an example of an intelligent creator

  Like we seriously have all the working bits in the path of light, permanently blocking our vision in spots. We just hide it with some post-production brain magic, and I’m supposed to believe that’s evidence of an intelligent creator?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Not so fast!⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Housing got cheaper in Japan. They went from the most expensive housing in the world to the cheapest in the industrialized world

  They did it by removing barriers to building housing, and incentivizing building homes. The downside is that rich people can’t profit as much off housing, which is a non-starter in many other countries

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Flock Exposed Its AI-Powered Cameras to the Internet. 404 Media Tracked Themselves.⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Honestly? Good. These cameras should either be public or dismantled. I’d like to see them dismantled, but worst case scenario is the current one. They’re selectively used by law enforcement

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Totally unhinged⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Do they?

  I’ve never met one. I’ve seen plenty of rage inducing posts online though. I’m sure somewhere, someone like this exists, but it’s probably rare enough most of us would never encounter someone so socially maladjusted in our entire lifetime

  Which isn’t to say entitled people don’t exist - they do - more so that this level of oblivious entitlement is unlikely to continue existing into adulthood. Eventually it comes in conflict with reality and they learn acting like that only ends in mockery

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨4 reasons Plex is turning into the thing it replaced⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m kind of surprised Lemmy allows duplicate comments like Reddit. Super easy to prevent the issue, because there really isn’t a case where a person would want to post the same comment multiple times

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨4 reasons Plex is turning into the thing it replaced⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m so confused why so many people think a VPN is the best solution. It’s easy to implement, but hardly optimal, and certainly not the only solution

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨ChatGPT is down worldwide, conversations disappeared for users⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Do less drugs.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨ChatGPT is down worldwide, conversations disappeared for users⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  you don’t know to use AI. no one here does. I do.

  That’s hilarious. Everyone thinks they’re some kind of savant while using LLMs. The reality is quite different

  AI is a useful tool, but people who misuse it, primarily due to overreliance, end up creating more work than AI is solving

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Half of the US Now Requires You to Upload Your ID or Scan Your Face to Watch Porn⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s a coalition of groups with different purposes

  One group wants to ban porn entirely

  One group want to collect data on everyone. Your porn habits can be valuable if you’re a future political rival

  Some people believe it will prevent children from seeing porn

  Others use it as a way to assert control over sex workers, especially female sex workers

  Probably a few other smaller groups too. End of the day, none of them have your interests at heart

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨YSK that americans can now deduce private jet expenses from their taxes⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s true for many planes, but not a Cessna 150. Hangars are generally very cheap, if you can get one. Depends on the area, but couple hundred dollars per month. Fuel mileage is comparable to most SUVs and trucks. Insurance is cheaper than car insurance, although maintenance is a bit higher

  I don’t own a car, but I do own a plane. It has been cheaper for me than the average American pays each year for their cars

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨YSK that americans can now deduce private jet expenses from their taxes⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Yes. My point was that’s less than the average new car, which most Americans buy. The average American could own one if they wanted

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨YSK that americans can now deduce private jet expenses from their taxes⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  To be fair, America has the best aviation infrastructure in the world, and it is almost entirely socialized. So we do socialism sometimes

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨YSK that americans can now deduce private jet expenses from their taxes⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  To be fair, you don’t have to be rich to buy a Cessna 150. $35,000 can get you a nice old one

  Issue is with taking advantage of the tax benefits

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨YSK that americans can now deduce private jet expenses from their taxes⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  It was a quote from the article. Your complaint is with Boomerang, not the guy quoting them

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨YSK that americans can now deduce private jet expenses from their taxes⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  The cost ranges from $30,000 to over $100M

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨In wake of Windows 10 retirement, over 780,000 Windows users skip Win 11 for Linux, says Zorin OS developers — distro hits unprecedented 1 million downloads in five weeks⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Are they getting people onto Linux, or absorbing people that would be switching anyway and taking advantage of those users by charging them? Hard to say which it is

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Radon⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  The problem, to me, is that not everyone on a boat is catching fish. There are plenty of different roles. It’s just that people outside the industry don’t have a concept of the nuanced differences between roles, so it gets simplified to “I catch fish” even if they aren’t involved in catching fish at all. Most people outside of tech have no idea between the different roles that exist in tech either. It wasn’t too long ago where no matter your role in tech, you’d tell laymen, “I work in IT” as a catchall for any technical role

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨People who say 'the rich get richer, the lazy live for free, and the middle class pays for it all' don't realize how expensive it is to be rich and how close middle class is to being below the poverty line.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I would argue there are at least 3 classes:

  • The impoverished class that makes their living from the charity of others

  • The working class that makes their living from their labor

  • The ownership class that makes their living from owning things

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Google CEO: If an AI bubble pops, no one is getting out clean⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Many electricians, carpenters, and steel plant workers are currently working to build AI data centers. Funding other projects has been postponed or cancelled as the AI data centers are able to pay more

  Electricians especially. Trump cancelled many clean energy projects, which created large swaths of electricians without work if it weren’t for AI data centers

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The moment we've all been waiting for: you now can have targeted ads on your 2k smartfridge⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Streaming is a perfect example of this, as people don’t seem to realise just how expensive it is to maintain the infrastructure for it compared to traditional cable infrastructure

  Much of the cost of streaming for platforms like Netflix, and especially YouTube, are due to the need to centralize it to allow for more data collection. The cost of streaming also gets overblown, by a lot. Companies like Google and Netflix are spending huge amounts of money trying to build out new features and offerings, like games, that make it look like maintaining the streaming service is far more expensive than it is

  But that price was also only possible because of various venture capitalists investing heavily in Netflix

  Netflix has never needed to rely on venture capital for their streaming platform. Netflix has made a gross profit every quarter since 2011 when this data starts. They have also had a net income all but one of those quarters, which is absolutely insane for a new tech company investing that much in R&D + licensing

  The recent hikes (all the way up to what, $20?) are the result of venture capital drying up

  No. They’re the result of perpetually increasing profit margins. They were very profitable before the price hikes. Their expenses have gone up far slower than their revenue. It’s simply extracting more wealth without providing additional value

  as Netflix went from a market-shaker startup to revenue generating machine

  It’s a bit pedantic, but Netflix wasn’t a startup when they got into streaming. They were an existing business that was profitable to fund their pivot to a technology platform

  So how do you offset these increases?

  Netflix has had an operating income (revenue - operating expenses) of $12.6B over the past 12 months. With ~300M subscribers, that’s about $3.50 per subscriber per month. Subscription prices are much lower in most countries than in the US. For the ~80M US subscribers, that is probably $6 in profit. The $5 cheaper ad tier is probably about what we’d expect their prices to be if they had simply continued to make a couple billion a year in profit. Also keep in mind they would probably get and retain more subscribers with a lower price, and their increased operating expenses includes them building out tons of stupid mobile games most people don’t want, and one-off necessary expenses like building out their original content capabilities

  Note: This last bit is doing some napkin math and is subject to error. I didn’t feel like digging deep enough into their financials to get more exact numbers (such as the average subscription price for the rest of the world)

  TL;DR – Much of the price increases and addition of ads can be attributed to increasing profit margins, not increased operating costs

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The moment we've all been waiting for: you now can have targeted ads on your 2k smartfridge⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  How long until we have no real choice? The vast majority of TVs are smart TVs now

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The Answer May Surprise You⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  The largest cost is going to be building out data centers and buying the chips to fill them. OpenAI has essentially been telling investors they’re only losing money for now as they build out infrastructure, but when that’s done they’ll be making money hand over fist

  We have no idea what the compute costs actually are since OpenAI is a private company. It’s just a shift in the speculation that it’s higher than previously estimated

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨FFmpeg to Google: Fund Us or Stop Sending Bugs⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  That sounds like what they’re saying, but they don’t provide any reason for us to believe them

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨FFmpeg to Google: Fund Us or Stop Sending Bugs⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  The truth can absolutely be a bad thing. If google reports an important vulnerability, then buries it in CVE slop for 90 days, and publicly announces details of the important vulnerability that hasn’t been fixed yet, it would be worse than if they had never reported it

  The 90-day publishing window is tough when OSS projects are getting buried in AI slop reports