megopie
@megopie@beehaw.org
- Comment on Microsoft CEO Admits That AI Is Generating Basically No Value 6 days ago:
It gave CEOs and excuse to do layoffs even though they knew it would hurt their human capital long term, and that they would probably have to hire back a lot of those positions long term at higher wages. In the short terms it gave them a few quarters of increased profits.It also let them push out blatantly unfinished products on the promise of future improbable improvements. This will hurt companies reputations long term, but in the short term is let them juice the stock price.
They needed the increased profit and the pie in the sky growth promises to game the stock market, say all the right buzz words and show an improving price to earnings.
Sure they made the companies worse and less sustainable long term, but, they got huge compensation packages right now thanks to the markets, and they probably won’t be running these companies long enough to see the true fallout.
- Comment on Is Google about to destroy the web? Google says a new AI tool on its search engine will rejuvenate the internet. Others predict an apocalypse for websites. 1 week ago:
I think Google is doing this specifically because of the anti trust trial against their ad monopoly/monopsony.
Like they’re clearly loosing the trial and that means they’re probably going to have to sell off parts of their advertising company, or at least massively alter how they operate to end the anti competitive practices.
It used to be that Google made money on every user, even if they left the site, because they served all the ads on every other site as well. Now that they won’t be making money that way, so they don’t want people going to other sites anymore.
- Comment on Is Google about to destroy the web? Google says a new AI tool on its search engine will rejuvenate the internet. Others predict an apocalypse for websites. 1 week ago:
I think the argument in this context it’s more about how Google is acting as a company, and less about how the underlying technology is dangerous.
Like Google clearly intends to turn off the web traffic to anyone who isn’t them. They want to maximize the amount of time users are spending on their page, seeing ads served directly by them. With their ad monopoly liable to get broken up in court, they won’t be able to monopolize advertising on other websites, so they’re just going to prevent people from going to other websites.
The fall out for smaller websites, news, blogs, ect, will be that suddenly a lot of their traffic is going to disappear because Google is no longer sending people to them, instead Google will scrape their pages and then just give that information directly to users.
- Comment on CIO wants to clone top techies as digital twin and AI agents 1 week ago:
It’s so funny to watch C-suite executives slowly turning in to fanfiction writers for investors and getting payed hundreds of millions to do it.
Meanwhile their systems are drowning in “exquisite attacks”. Of course instead of hiring more people to deal with that (or training up people to deal with it if there is a shortage of that skill on the market), they’re just making up these fantasies of infinitely scalable unpaid skilled labor.
- Comment on IRS Makes Direct File Software Open Source After Trump Tried to Kill It 2 weeks ago:
I suspect that they’ve been pressured to keep it out of public by turbo tax lobbyists, but with the straight on attempt to kill it lately, they decided just to ignore that pressure and push it out to spite those lobbyists.
- Comment on Trying to remember a game (military battle simulator) 2 weeks ago:
If it was from 10-20 years ago, top down from an angle with modeled 3d units, it might be one of the Wargame titles from Eugen, or if it was WW2 setting maybe Combat Mission: beyond overlord, Company of Heroes or Men of War.
If it was straight on top down 2D, it might have been Mud and Blood, which was a WW2 wave defense flash game.
Was it top down in the sense of looking straight down or from above at an angle? Were the units modeled as individual 3d models or just 2D icons?
Also, roughly what time period was it set in? Like, Napoleonic, WW2, Cold War, Contemporary?
Was it single player or multi player focused?
Could you get additional units as the game went on or were you locked with the units you started with? How could you get additional units? Points? Timer?
- Comment on Google settles shareholder lawsuit, will spend $500M on being less evil 2 weeks ago:
This group will report directly to CEO Sundar Pichai.
Don’t worry, the hen house guard force will report directly to the fox.
- Comment on Self-Driving Tesla Fails School Bus Test, Hitting Child-Size Dummies… Meanwhile, Robo-Taxis Hit the Road in 2 Weeks. 3 weeks ago:
And of course this is all definitely worth it so checks notes we can become dependent on a handful of private companies to move us through our highly car dependent society and dismantle what little public transit is left.
Yup, totally a good idea and definitely worth it.
- Comment on Self-Driving Tesla Fails School Bus Test, Hitting Child-Size Dummies… Meanwhile, Robo-Taxis Hit the Road in 2 Weeks. 3 weeks ago:
They’re assuming that just because they can bullshit legal authorities to get the things on the road, that’s a fait accompli. Once the services is operating and generating income it’s untouchable.
Thing is, they’re going to cause problems that will affect people, they will cause traffic jams, they will piss people off, they will cause accidents. These vehicles are, by design, unattended, sure they have cameras, but, anyone with nondescript clothes and a face coverings, can sabotage these vehicles without much risk of legal consequence.
The cost of maintaining a fleet of these vehicles in the face of road rage induced sabotage will sink these companies.
- Comment on Scientists created contact lenses that make farts visible 3 weeks ago:
Butt why?
- Comment on Google is Using AI to Censor Independent Websites 3 weeks ago:
Enclosure of the digital commons. An attempt to at least. I do think that it’s ultimately doomed.
Fundamentally, the internet is an open thing, by the very nature of how it works, thus it is difficult to enclose. Google is more likely to destroy its market share than to fully gate off its user base.
But when all is said and done, the average person will be left to pick up the pieces of the fractured web they leave behind.
- Comment on My theory about the easy to spot bots in YouTube comments 4 weeks ago:
Maybe some of the obviousness is a sort of camouflage in that if it looks like a fishing scheme, people at YouTube won’t look any deeper. I think the actual goal of the bots is to manipulate the algorithm. Like, most of the time, the obvious bots just get ignored, especially on videos from bigger creators, no reason to put effort in to making them believable.
Like, maybe they comment on video A to show “engagement” with that content, then they go and comment on video B. Fool the algorithm into associating people who engage with video A as the same kind of audience who would engage with Video B. Thus getting the algorithm to recommend video B more often to viewers of Video A. For something like that you wouldn’t need the bots to look real to other commenters, and having them seem like innocuous fishing scam bots might reduce the scrutiny on their activity.
I could see a lot of different reasons to do that. Could be as simple as some shady “Viral marketing consultancies” trying to boost a client’s channel in the algorithm. Could also be something more comprehensive and nefarious, like trying to manipulate social discourse by steering whole demographics towards certain topics or even away from specific topics. I do wonder how much the algorithm could be nudged by an organized bot comment spam ring.
- Comment on Nvidia’s RTX 5060 review debacle should be a wake-up call for gamers and reviewers 4 weeks ago:
Often times reviewers will get cards before release day without going through the manufacturer, as cards will ship to wear-houses and stores in preparation for launch day, and reviewers can get access to buy the cards early through contacts at those places.
One of the things nvidia did this time was they blocked reviewer’s access to drivers until release day, despite them having the cards.
- Comment on Nvidia’s RTX 5060 review debacle should be a wake-up call for gamers and reviewers 4 weeks ago:
Oh yah, for sure 90% of people shouldn’t be wasting the money on Nvidia cards at this point. There are very few situations where they make sense.
Intel and AMD both have way better price to performance cards.
- Comment on Nvidia’s RTX 5060 review debacle should be a wake-up call for gamers and reviewers 4 weeks ago:
To some extent it comes down to nvidia’s software. Like, some people like their upscaling, and I’ve heard from streamers that they need them for NVENC.
On the other hand, their Linux drivers are awful and they’ve been less than cooperative on that front in the past.
- Comment on Signal calls out Microsoft for poor implementation of Windows 11 Recall, blocks it by default 4 weeks ago:
Until Microsoft decides that enterprise customers should be using it and enable it by default with an update.
- Comment on Signal calls out Microsoft for poor implementation of Windows 11 Recall, blocks it by default 4 weeks ago:
That seems like a fairly credible threat.
Realistically, most of the users are on smartphones, so, they could do that without seriously hurting their user base, and they’re also not a for profit company obsessed with maximizing the growth of their user base
- Comment on Signal calls out Microsoft for poor implementation of Windows 11 Recall, blocks it by default 4 weeks ago:
issues around these kinds of legal liability situations are why so many companies hung on to systems like fax machines for so long. Or why so many banks still run on cobol.
If a company’s machine does something illegal, the company is liable for allowing the machine to be set up in a way that allowed it to happen.
“Your honor, I didn’t know the computer would do that” is not a viable legal defense.
- Comment on Signal calls out Microsoft for poor implementation of Windows 11 Recall, blocks it by default 4 weeks ago:
The issue is that there are a lot of situations where a file can not legally be copied, saved or shared, and a screen shot by these systems would be considered that. It’s not that the files would be impossible to save or copy as is, but it’s not legal to, and having a system that might due it without human input is a massive legal liability.
Even if companies in such a situation turn off the system, there is no guarantee that windows won’t at some point push an update that activates recall on systems that had previously opted out of using it, or even reinstall it on systems that had physically removed the program from their system. Such as was done with programs like edge and Cortana.
- Comment on Signal calls out Microsoft for poor implementation of Windows 11 Recall, blocks it by default 4 weeks ago:
It’s so crazy they’re still trying to push this.
Like, even if the screenshots are stored locally, even if they’re encrypted, even if they get deleted after being scanned by the model, even if it’s turned off by default.
Any company that is handling sensitive information that they can’t legally save and/or share won’t be able to use windows if this is even an option to have on. Like, their business OS monopoly is going to get knee capped by this. To what end? To get training data for agents? For better advertising targeting? To force people to buy new computers, and thus new licenses, by obsoleting and ending support for older ones? It just doesn’t even make cold corporate sense.
- Comment on China begins assembling its supercomputer in space 5 weeks ago:
Judging by the fact these are launching on long march 20s. It’s probably not going beyond LEO, so it doesn’t need proper deep space hardening like the RAD750 or the like.
It’s probably closer to off the shelf parts like what’s used on the ISS.
- Comment on China begins assembling its supercomputer in space 5 weeks ago:
That’s still not very much compared to most data centers. Like, 7000 terabytes is a lot of storage for one person, but it barely even registers compared to most modern data centers.
Also, 7000 desktops networked together isn’t really a super computer or a data center.
such a network is interesting as a scientific tool for gathering and processing data, certainly, but not a data-center and not a super computer.
- Comment on China begins assembling its supercomputer in space 5 weeks ago:
These are likely only using a few kilowatts, calling them data centers or super computers is an absurd hyperbole.
- Comment on China begins assembling its supercomputer in space 5 weeks ago:
it seems a bit disingenuous to call these “data centers in space”
30 terabytes of storage across 12 satellites? So 2.5 TB each and 744 tops (which is like, a modern mid range graphics card for a PC). Like that just sound like they’re launching a gaming PC in to orbit, not a datacenter.
The idea of processing more data on the satellite rather than processing it on the ground is interesting and neat, but representing these as anything more than that is… weird.
- Comment on Shower thought: Valve could do the ultimate boss-move this year 5 weeks ago:
The thing is, I don’t think valve wants to become a desktop OS provider. Becoming the provider and maintainer of an OS for hundreds of millions of users is so far beyond their scope as a company. They’ve got a third the employees of Canonical and a fiftieth the employees of RedHat, the companies behind Ubuntu and Fedora. Maintaining a limited scope console/handheld OS that runs on a handful of hardware set ups is one thing, but supporting a fully fledged daily driver desktop OS meant to operate on any system is something else entirely.
Right now, most of their users are on windows, which makes them nervous because Microsoft is a known monopolist and has been slowly creeping deeper in to the PC games space. That’s why Valve has put so much effort in to software to support comparability on Linux, so there is a viable alternative if Microsoft try’s to push them out. I think the steam deck and steamOS were a means to that end, create a business reason to develop and support those tools, not a first step towards becoming an operating system developer.
A better route forward for them would be to use their reach and public trust to help people make the switch to other extant distros. For example an all in one utility on the steam store that helps people select the right distro for their use case and set it up, have a hardware scan and a little quiz to choose a distro, a hard drive partitioning tool to set up dual boot, a tool to write the ISO to a USB drive (or maybe even just set up a bootable on the disk using the partitioner IDK) ,and migrate important files over using their cloud file system.
If the issue is that people trust stuff with the valve branding on it, but are not willing to try Linux on their own, then Steam acting as a guide is much more practical than Valve taking on all the work needed to maintain a proper distro.
- Comment on Eric Schmidt apparently bought Relativity Space to put data centers in orbit 1 month ago:
Ah yes because the cost savings on solar power in constant sunlight over nuclear reactors or solar with batteries definitely justifies the cost of launching hundreds of thousands of tons in to orbit, including the miles of radiators that will be needed to cool all this. Oh and definitely justifies the cost of having to hire astronauts as technicians to repair the thing when something goes wrong.
The numbers for these data centers don’t even work on fucking earth, how does increasing the set up cost by an order of magnitude make this work?
- Comment on OpenAI scraps controversial plan to become for-profit after mounting pressure 1 month ago:
Lmao, of course they backed off, they need to say they’re going to do it to get cash to keep going, but they can’t actually do it.
Because the moment they go for profit they’re gonna have to start explaining how they loose money on every single user of the product, all the way up to the highest tier of subscription. Then people might start asking hard questions like “wait…isn’t this more expensive to run than just having a person do these things?”
- Comment on China admits to being behind Volt Typhoon cyber activity targeting US 2 months ago:
So two anonymous observers saw someone else receive an indirect and somewhat ambiguous comment? And this is a bullet proof definite smoking gun admission? Or just… mildly informed speculation that could mean a thousand other things?
- Comment on Bubble Trouble - An AI bubble threatens Silicon Valley, and all of us. 2 months ago:
It’s so funny, because people act like open AI has a viable business model, but they’re loosing money even on their paying customers, even the highest tier of subscription. The product they’re selling really isn’t good enough to charge the price they would need to charge to pay for the operation costs, let along the training costs, and that’s with Microsoft giving them a bunch of servers for essentially free.
Like, there isn’t a path to profitability for them, certainly not on this scale. They’re just praying that if they throw enough data in to a big enough model that somehow it will start doing something different than what it currently does. It’s not a plan, it’s a prayer, a cult.
- Comment on AI surge to double data centre electricity demand by 2030: IEA 2 months ago:
“ don’t worry, we’ll offset some of the demand by restarting nuclear plants to prevent burning as much fossil fuel”
“Wait so we could have just had those running already rather than burning fossil fuels?”
“Noooo… because… uh… reasons”