But think about it this way: something simple like Slack charges $9/month/person and companies already pay that on many behalf. How hard would it be to imagine all those same companies (and lots more) would pay $30/month/employee for something something AI? Generating an extra $400 per year in value, per employee, isn't that much extra.
$35/head is possible but it has to provide tangible value to the user (beyond coding) which many pro-AI people will fail to recognize. People pay a lot for other stuff (ie: like their phone plan). Being digital or physical is not the issue here but the value perceived by the user.
The world IS responsible for handling the people. Thats the whole fucking reason we made society to take care of children. Nothing is inevitable. It serves the interests of the few.
I think they meant “society.” Society does, in fact, owe the people something, especially if we, the people, are expected to live by the rules, social norms, and expectations imposed by society.
Parent was talking about children (npi) — they don’t get out of society what they put into it. Society owes them care for bringing them into it, and if society defaults on this debt then society ends.
What your describing is a low trust society. If you disregard the social contract like that, then people wont owe the "the world" anythign either. Collaboration and civics goes out the window. If you want to look at what kind of a shithole that libertarian nonsense leads to, then try taking a stroll in SF at night
This is an important framing - we talk so much of "rights" but if you have a right to something, that means someone or someones have a duty to provide it.
No, no it does not. If we say everyone has a right to clean air and water, no one else has a duty to provide it. Those are given to us for free by the planet. The issue is that rich assholes (and poor assholes who only think of getting rich) take that away from everyone else by polluting what is common to everyone.
> I don't consider that to be saying that society "owes" me something. I regard it mutually beneficial, not some kind of debt/debtor relationship.
You know, in phrases like "you owe it to your spouse/sibling/friend/self to...", people aren't talking about formal debt. Please try to keep that kind of meaning in mind when people say that society owes its people.
humans collectively are responsible for the end results of innovations and achievements , otherwise who are you doing all this for. Wars are a extreme form of disagreements amongst a large body of opposing opinions or perspective IMHO. Earth (world!) simply exists, with or without you. You as Byorganism/Byproduct of this planet you have an obligation to this planet in good deeds. Have you not watched Star-Wars?
> * it’s a safe bet that labor will have lower value in 2031 than it has today
If AI makes workers more productive, labor will have higher value than it has today. Which specific workers are winning in that scenario may vary tremendously, of course, but I don't think anyone is seriously claiming AI will make everyone less productive.
The value of labor i.e. wages depend on labor demand (the marginal product of labor) and bargaining power, not output per worker. If AI is a substitute for many tasks, the marginal value of an additional worker, and what a company is willing to pay for their work can fall even if each remaining worker is more productive.
What you're forecasting is a scenario where total output has substantially increased but no one's hiring or able to start their own business. Instant massive recession is by no means a "sure bet" with technological improvements, especially those that make more kinds of work possible than before.
I'm not forecasting that, and it's a virtual strawman in the face of my much narrower claim: that wages depend on marginal labor demand and bargaining power, not average output per worker. If AI substitutes for labor, the marginal value of adding another worker in many roles can fall. That can mean fewer hires or lower wages in some categories, not 'no hiring' or an instant massive recession. I have no idea what the addressable market or demand for our more productive economy is, but for the record I do hope it's high to support new businesses and a bigger pie in general!
> My statement reflects that increased productivity means that fewer people are required to generate the same amount of economic output.
People have been singing that since the industrial revolution started.
What makes you think it's different this time? Other times increased productivity yielded fewer people doing what a machine suddenly can do. But never fewer people employed or smaller overall economy.
You can argue that our populations are older than ever before. There aren't enough kids, and consumers are saturated with consumption opportunities.
That's maybe never happened before during the industrial revolution. But it's orthogonal to AI.
Most people in the economy do not use Slack. That tool may be most beneficial to those people who stand to lose jobs to AI displacement. Maybe after everyone is pink-slipped for an LLM or AI chatbot tool the total cost to the employer is reduced enough that they are willing to spend part of the money they saved eliminating warm bodies on AI tools and willing to pay a higher per employee price.
I think with a smaller employee pool though it is unlikely that it all evens out without the AI providers holding the users hostage for quarterly profits' sake.
That AI will have to be significantly preferable to the baseline of open models running on cheap third-party inference providers, or even on-prem. This is a bit of a challenge for the big proprietary firms.
> the baseline of open models running on cheap third-party inference providers, or even on-prem. This is a bit of a challenge for the big proprietary firms.
It’s not a challenge at all.
To win, all you need is to starve your competitors of RAM.
RAM is the lifeblood of AI, without RAM, AI doesn’t work.
HBF is NAND and integrated in-package like HBM. 3D XPoint or Optane would be extremely valuable today as part of the overall system architecture, but they were power-intensive enough that this particular use probably wouldn't be feasible.
(Though maybe it ends up being better if you're doing lots of random tiny 4k reads. It's hard to tell because the technology is discontinued as GP said, whereas NAND has kept progressing.)
They will pay it but lay off the number of employees needed to balance it out, and just expect the remaining ones to make up for it with their new AI subscriptions.
This is true though I think even if the employer provides all this on a per employee basis, the number of eligible employees, after everyone who stands to lose a job because of a shift to AI tools, will be low enough that each employee will need to add a lot of value for this to be worth it to an employer so the stated number is probably way too low. Ordinary people may just migrate from Apple products to something that is more affordable or, in the extreme case, walk away from the whole surveillance economy. Those people would not buy into any of this.
This is true but unfortunately for Apple I don't buy anything from the app store except for a minimal iCloud subscription for temporary photo storage. I am in the process of unwinding that subscription in favor of local storage and periodic sync. I haven't been diligent about syncing things in the past so I did buy a subscription for photo storage to avoid losing photos. I know that lots of people buy apps for all kinds of things. I'm not one of those people though.
>Both that inequality increases but also prosperity for the lower class? I don’t mind that trade off.
This sounds like it is written from the perspective of someone who sees their own prosperity increase dramatically so that they end up on the prosperous side of the worsening inequality gap. The fact that those on the other side of the gap see marginal gains in prosperity makes them feel that it all worked out okay for everyone.
I think this is greed typical of the current players in the AI/tech economy. You all saw others getting abundant wealth by landing high-paying jobs with tech companies and you want to not only to do the same, but to one-up your peers. It's really a shame that so much tech-bro identity revolves around personal wealth with zero accountability for the tools that you are building to set yourselves in control of lives of those you have chosen to either leave behind or to wield as tools for further wealth creation through alternate income SaaS subscription streams or other bullshit scams.
There really is not much difference between tech-bros, prosperity gospel grifters or other religious nuts whose only goal is to be more wealthy today than yesterday. It's created a generation of greedy, selfish narcissists who feel that in order to succeed in their industry, they need to be high-functioning autists so they take the path of self-diagnosis and become, as a group, resistant to peer review since anyone who would challenge their bullshit is doing the same thing and unlikely to want too much light shed on their own shady shit. It is funny to me that many of these tech-bros have no problem admitting their drug experimentation since they need to maintain an aura of enlightenment amongst their peers.
It's gonna be a really shitty world when the dopeheads run everything. As someone who grew up back in the day when smoking dope was something hidden and paranoia was a survival instinct for those who chose that path I can see lots of problems for society in the pipeline.
But what about raising a crop right up to the point where it's helicoptered its genitals enough to have found a gullible pollinator or sprayed it's pollen widely enough to produce the seed for the next generation and then killing it, thus cutting it down in the prime of its life with no opportunity for that plant's descendants to sprout and grow (especially if they are Monsanto seeds) and reach the point where they too can wag their privates while looking for PILFs (plants ...)?
Everything has to eat something. Humans are omnivorous. We have a choice and some choose to base their diets on plant consumption while others eat a little meat and still others eat mostly meat. It's all okay. The universe is working as intended. Villifying those who choose a different diet than yours seems like a petty exercise by people who need to invent a reason to feel better about themselves.
If you enjoy and love the foods that you eat then you are doing it right. There is no requirement and no need to proselytize about your choices. We have enough other religions who have forgotten the main message to deal with. It will be just as easy for people to tune yours out.
Wait till you get into the other agricultural practices like raising sheep for wool or selecting your herd bulls.
Sheep get castrated, ears notched and tail docked. Then they get set out to pasture.
A bull is selected to be your herd bull and any cows either get milked as you described or pastured to be mama cows for building a herd. Any bull calves either get sold off to be someone else's herd bulls if the genetics are good enough or they get castrated, notched ears and in at least one herd I have seen, their tails are docked.
As the old ag teacher in high school explained, you castrate them to keep their minds off of the ass and put 'em on the grass.
I thought it was a page about recipes for cannibals or tuberculosis tracking from the name. Luckily the title helped clarify the misleading website name.
Y'all some hungry mofos. That counter zipped thru 13 million poor tasty, little critters while I was on that page. The cattle numbers seemed low relative to others. Maybe because they are larger and each feeds more individuals.
What about normal game animals like deer, squirrel, wild turkey, rabbit, dove, quail, pigeon, etc? I think this site only gives a glimpse of the true scope of animal deliciousness.
I also disagree with the numbers since most look they are wild-ass guesses intended to inflate or mislead so as to cause those of us who consume all this delicious meat to switch to more sensitive plants, insects, or algae, or fungi.
Imagine the numbers you'd have to report if you were accurately reporting seed consumption of typical grains, legumes, leafy vegetables, herbs (which are delicious with meats), and spices and all the other things that vegetarians or vegans profess such deep attractions to that they can ignore all the destruction wrought by the agricultural practices relevant to their foodstocks. Some of the agricultural lands being tallied are used for growing crops like soybeans for consumption as pseudo-meat by vegans who couldn't be morally outraged enough about habitat loss for their beany things to worry about their own destructive impact on mother earth.
What happens to the collective consciousness of a fungal colony when someone comes along and rips off a few warty things for their supper? Do you think that the fungus stores a memory of the event and the participants so that once they finally hit the dirt that memory can pass along the subterranean chain so that the fungus can move in return the favor?
> I thought it was a page about recipes for cannibals or tuberculosis tracking from the name. Luckily the title helped clarify the misleading website name.
Agreed. It's called "human consumption", but it neither relates to the consumption of humans, nor the phenomenon in humans called "consumption", nor does it cover all consumption by humans, or even all food consumption.
> Y'all some hungry mofos.
Less than one animal per person per day, and the overwhelming majority of them are fish and invertebrate sea life (two thirds of that in the Asia-Pacific region).
It takes a lot of small sea critters to make on big fish like a tuna.
If we weren't supposed to eat all this stuff then why did Jesus feed those hungry people in Matthew (14:14-21) bread (vegan food) and fish (non-vegan food)? Was he just covering all his bases or was it because fish really aren't meat?
And if fish aren't meat then that website needs to account for that since the numbers would definitely seem to be greatly exaggerated on top of probably being invented.
The post title makes more sense now. The website name is a bit misleading but is out of your control. Leading with that initially created the opportunity to lampoon them in a good-natured sort of way.
If anyone's feelings were hurt by anything I posted here today I remind you to think of the plants. Mine have spent more than a week nearly frozen under a thick blanket of sleet waiting for me to have the opportunity to remove their cold weather protections so that they can once again feel the warmth of Mr Sunshine for a few hours before being covered again to protect them from the hard freeze we'll have again tonight. I love my plants and they grow well for me. And then I eat them, all the edible parts anyway, sometimes with meat but not always.
I still have my Mac 128k with external disk drive and printer. Bought new in Jan 1985 or late Dec 1984. I paid the exorbitant price to upgrade it to 512k during the first year I owned it. I think the RAM needed to be desoldered and new chips soldered in place so it needed to be returned to the store where I bought it.
Shout out to the author of the blog for writing an engaging post that accurately the MS experience. For me, switching is still a work in progress since I am the family troubleshooter and there are lots of things to mess with. It will happen because so far, the ones I have switched have no complaints.
Nice app but it really needs to allow the user to select the lights of interest before it displays. As noted in a different thread it has a display limit of 500 points and you need to zoom in pretty tight to see anything pop up in some places, like the Great Lakes, due to huge number of lights that are in the populated list.
The legend should show the color coded lights and allow the user to toggle each light type as a layer so that they can identify specific points of interest.
It is functionally unusable in some areas due to the huge number of navigational buoys, etc along inland rivers and it apparently has a problem determining window extents and centering the display on the user's area of interest. If you display the entire Great Lakes region you will find that your displayed lights are along a couple of rivers in the lower left with nothing in the center of the display. If you shuffle to the north a bit and zoom another notch it suddenly fills the lower right corner, still with nothing in the center of the display.
Filtering by type of light would solve a lot of that if you keep the 500 point limit.
I understand that it took a lot to get this far. You are close to having a great app that I would be comfortable recommending to a friend who travels specifically to visit lighthouses. This is not that app yet but it could be.
>No. That is excessively cynical. Even GW Bush and the neocons really thought toppling Hussein would benefit Iraqis more than just Americans.
The push into Iraq to remove Hussein was an effort to gain control over the oil and gas production in Iraq. It was favored by the domestic oil and gas industry here in the US and once we had boots on the ground in Afghanistan after Sept 11 and Bush&Co began making noise about Iraq and WoMD, the industry began digging up old geological and geophysical studies of the region to build interest and knowledge base domestically so that once our troops had control of the production areas domestic operators could move in to handle production. Industry publications had adverts for old Iraq datasets and services related to it before any invasion happened. Maybe they were just hedging their bets you say. Yeah, right. It was always about oil and gas in Iraq. They just needed to remove the thorn in their side and install a compliant government.
According to that page Texas also requires data brokers to register. As a Texan it seems unlikely that they do this to protect consumers. It feels more like they want to know who their market is as they surveil their citizens and rake in as much moola as possible. Identifying which broker will pay the highest premiums for real-time information about Texans' travel from license plate and traffic cameras, which businesses they visit, etc will allow them to get sweet kickbacks from the industry lobbyists who can openly pass around envelopes of cash on the floor of the legislature.
>information about Texans' travel from license plate and traffic cameras, which businesses they visit
Texas is already doing this to track women seeking out-of-state healthcare. Whatever "side" you're on (for that argument): THIS. IS. WRONG.
In addition to ditching your cell phone, consider ditching Texas, too (as a Native™, I did so almost a decade ago). Still toying with the idea of expatriation, but honestly I feel too old for that, now =P
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We seem to have a lot in common, fellow retired Xeon user. My PO Box is in my profile.
Recently saw a video of some pro-life preacher explaining that he would not donate baby formula for a young mother that he saw as "whoring around". If the hell that he professes to believe in is real, he's definitely going there.
It’s a rules-based morality. The rules say, punish those who get abortions. The rules don’t say, provide public assistance for health care.
There’s a massive disconnect between people with rules-based morality and people with outcome-based morality. I often see people arguing against abortion bans by saying that they don’t actually cut down on the number of abortions, they just make them more dangerous. Which is entirely missing the point.
They don’t want any particular outcome. They don’t want to save babies, nor do they want replacement slaves. They want the state to punish abortions. That’s the goal in and of itself, it’s not the means to an end.
I don’t endorse any of this. But I think it’s important to understand how people actually think. If you imagine your understanding of morality in someone with a completely different approach, and try to reverse engineer their thinking from their actions on that basis, you’ll end up with something completely wrong.
>There’s a massive disconnect between people with rules-based morality and people with outcome-based morality ... it’s important to understand how people actually think.
My most-sobering book read in 2025 was Tim Urban's What's Our Problem — it definitely helped me better understand my two lawyerbros — there is an inner gollum driving everybody, and we need to ascend towards higher thinking.
Texas has robust laws against facial recognition (and biometrics in general), including winning a major lawsuit against Facebook. Texas also has pretty good privacy laws in general. Right now, flock cameras are still permitted - but there's been talk about cracking down on them. There are also a first set of restrictions on ALPRs - not as restrictive as I would like, but generally data can only be retained for people suspected of committing a crime.
If you are a Texas resident, you also have a right to request data deletion (or correction) from brokers or other sellers of data, and permanently opt out of personal data profiling for a wide swath of industries including insurance and finance purposes.
Texas is one of the best states for privacy laws, even though we can obviously do better. I'd still like to see a general prohibition on things like flock and more restrictions on ALPRs, but much better than most states.
As a current iPhone user, I'm not signing up for that especially if it is on top of the monthly cell service fee.
I do realize though that you were trying to provide useful context.
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