Good thing he gutted Twitter’s content moderation teams in the name of “free speech”, eh?
If I had a dollar for every time a billionaire loses more money than I could ever dream of because their hubris got in the way or they misunderstood a concept or were just plain dumb – well, I guess I’d be a billionaire too.
I don’t see YT being replaced in that sense any time soon. Federated text and image content is really still in infancy, and video hosting at the size of YT is a tremendously more complex feat, requiring, at the absolute minimum: a metric crapton of bandwidth and storage.
For me, I just use invidious and similar for the foreseeable future, or peertube when there are things on it.
At the very least, not being signed in to YT and having only a local watch history and subscriptions (=not on a YT or Google account) does starve the algorithm a bit.
Unfortunately, physical media for gaming died when always-online DRM was normalized. It doesn’t matter if you have a game on a disc when you have to phone home every time to use it. The corporation may still block your access.
One more step in ensuring no one owns anything. Lease or rent are your options.
The goal was always that the user would be the product. It was less clear at the beginning, because the advertising was far less intrusive (if you even saw an ad at all, in the early days), and the service was “free” at a time when the internet was comparatively young. So it gained a lot of popularity from novelty and being an actually useful communication tool.
But the communication tool portion was always a side effect of data collection. Any “free” service is ultimately just getting value from you in different ways. In the case of Facebook, once it had amalgamated enough data, the flood gates opened and the enshittification was extremely rapid. It will never go back to the way it was for many reasons, not the least of which being: it was designed to be the cesspool it is now.
Ultimately, all these seemingly random posts are an attempt to get you to continue to interact with the platform. If you read through comments on such posts, they do tend to drive engagement, even if it is just a user going “why is this in my feed?”
Elon has fucked around so much at this point, he should eventually be enduring a never-ending streak of find outs.
The paragraph
Which?
First paragraph had me laughing. Somebody has spent a lot of time in private industry and has gotten burned a few times.
Without regard for anything else you said, do you think your experience is more representative than mine?
And: fuck spez. Thanks!
They will, for the simple reason that the average person won’t be able to tell the difference in the short term. AI isn’t about “replacing” people in the entirety from cause to result. It’s about providing a plausible facsimile of any role such that company X makes money while relegating the actual role to a niche.
Interesting observations. Intent here is not to offer disagreements but just comparisons to my experience:
Yes, industry pays much better. The wage gap in academia is a huge deal and one which will not get attention until the general issue with low wages in the US is handled. That said, I make about twice as much in industry as I would have as a tenured professor in my field had I started at the same time.
This resonates with me in that I have heard it a lot. I think every person is different, but academia has a habit of supporting a kind of pretentiousness that is not conducive to pragmatic work. I would suggest this is highly field dependent, though.
Industry experience trumps academic, 100% of the time.
I came at it from a different path than you. I wanted to be a professor, through and through. The tenured professorship is generally unattainable, since the number of positions is nothing compared to minted PhDs. For that reason, I explored switching to industry. I ended up in a good space, but I am not at all suggesting that someone should get a PhD to go into industry.
Edit: there’s also an epistemological argument to be made about #2 (the readiness of academics for industry). A lot of industry is about very specific solutioning and methods which may even be company dependent. In that sense, it is a skill you can only get from industry.
Totally agree. I did not make the claim that copyright law will be affected.
I dont disagree with that about copyright law. But to think that AI is going to break you out of it is a pipe dream.
Copyright revision will not happen from people stealing content. It requires deep discussion and governments that actually listen. AI stealing content will ultimately enhance copyright rules down the road.
This is the main issue with AI. It is the issue with AI that should have been handled and ultimately regulated before any AI tool got to its current state. This is also a reason why we really cannot remove the A from STEAM.
Yes. A very different story in the US. I was consistently jealous of some colleagues’ experiences in Europe.
I should edit my original comment to specify specifically I am talking about the US.
It took me about 5 years to really transition into industry. It will, of course, vary greatly by industry specifics (mine ended up being tech, but my background is in Linguistics).
My best advice to anyone in this position is: stay in academic positions as long as you can (I lectured for nearly 10 years), but take on contract work concurrently until you find your foot in the door. A PhD is not really a “get a job out of academia” degree, and it really needs more work/networking to be respected in industry.
Edit: want to clarify this:
A PhD is not really a “get a job out of academia” degree
Remember that, typically, a Masters degree is where you go if you want to stand out in industry immediately, as it tends to be a more involved version of an undergraduate degree since it will have a more defined course structure and direction vs a PhD. Universities know this, which is why so many Masters programs are unfunded (many PhD programs are also unfunded, but friendly advice: never, ever do a PhD program that costs you money).
At the same time, it tends to be easy to get a Masters on the way to a PhD – usually just some paperwork. In that sense, you may have a leg up just only reporting your Masters to certain companies. And of course, if you are in a PhD program, ask if you can sign off for the extra Masters on your way.
The PhD is unique in that it is specifically designed to require new research. Many companies do not see the value in paying more for that, though if you have a chance to show them the difference between you and another candidate, you’ll win 99/100 times.
Edit 2: this is specifically PhD programs in the US, which are markedly different than other parts of the world.
Edit 3: and of course, the adage “publish or perish” does apply in academia. But academia, in my opinion, is not the meritocracy it used to be, at least in the US. Of my entire cohort of about 25 people, 2 became tenured professors – and both of them have parents who are professors. Nepotism is rampant and probably means more than publishing in certain fields.
For industry, publishing means very little.
Not trying to be defeatist or change anyone’s views here. Just giving my 2 cents since I have been in a relatively unique situation before.
Same, mine passed the test. But used only locally.
PopOS is pretty great. There is a polish to it that I haven’t seen in some other distros. Which is why it remains on my main gaming rig even though I have considered distro hopping for a while now.
100%. Every time consumers tolerate something, it will get worse. On the other hand, it seems so simple to tell people “just don’t buy a product that does X”, but in practice, it’s almost impossible to get people to stop giving these companies money.
Buy an expensive license
Install the software on hardware you own
Company puts ads on it that weren’t there when you bought the license
2024 is wild. Run Linux.
– the paper, probably