The really crazy part is that it’s been like that for 4 years now, the models have improved based on arbitrary metrics the people making the models have decided upon, but in terms of real world usability they’re basically the same. Marginal improvement from running it twice to have it check its self, but only a marginal improvement by doubling the compute.

It’s insanity that they’re burning billions upon billions to keep this charade going.

At least with the dot com bubble there was a clear and obtainable use case to match the amount of hype. It got over invested in before it was fully ready, but there was at least an obvious path to something worth the cost of running.

Well, on top of the tens of thousands of volunteer developer hours put in to stuff like wine that they built upon.

The United States Geological Service. Has put out several reports on the topic of geological hydrogen deposits and that was their conclusion in everyone.

A pocket producing an amount is not the same as a significant deposit.

to date there is zero evidence of meaningful deposits of geological hydrogen. There is definitely hydrogen in the crust, but, so far zero evidence that it accumulates in meaningful amounts in the areas we can currently drill to.

I remember my parents got some Philips lightbulbs years ago, I set it up for them. They never used any of the functionality after the first month. They were just normal white lightbulbs that got turned off by a light switch.

Realistically, most of this stuff is just an excuse to harvest people’s data and up charge them for appliances.

It’s fine for hobbyists who can set up all this stuff properly and find use to it, but the vast vast majority of people who have this stuff aren’t hobbyists, won’t set it up properly or keep it up to date, and will never actually find utility in it. It’ll just sit there doing the same thing as a normal equivalent for twice the price and while being a massive liability.

Any of those analysts gonna point out that a significant portion of the demand driven by open AI is just them redeeming credits Microsoft gave them for free?

See the beauty of doing this now is that khan has been improperly removed from her position at the FTC by the current administration, of course the court will not take up the case about her removal, just strike down rules on technicalities now that they won’t be resubmitted.

I’m sure that the super AI they’re gonna build will find more copper. Like if we just poor enough capital and resources in to it, it’ll start causing new copper deposits to appear using psychic powers it will develop after we let these companies monopolize all information and blow past every single emissions target.

It’s just like the Hittites, if they had just prayed a little harder, and built more bronze statues, then their gods would have surely secured the tin and copper trade.

I am very interested in Fairphone, when my current phone inevitably breaks it’ll definitely be my on my short list. Also considering the pine phone pro.

It’s really cool to see the phone space opening back up with meaningfully differentiated options. Like foldables are starting to have a good selection, red magic has one with a fan for active cooling, and we’ve got phones with repairability and maintenance in mind.

I’m also curious to see if RISC-V processors start making any serious inroads in to phones. I know Qualcomm was talking about it a while ago, and there is some amount of support for android on it.

There is legitimately interesting things going on again, and it’s so annoying to have all the oxygen sucked out of the room by the current hype cycle.

they appear to be copying direct translations from chat GPT in to the subtitles, judging by the fact that one of the subtitles said “Chat GPT says:” and then the line in German. People who speak German also noticed that the grammar and sentence structure for many of these shows has been awful and nonsensical at times.

If anyone is doing any sort of oversight, they don’t appear to speak German them selves and are just betting that the output will be accurate and pasting it in.

Someone who spoke German and Japanese fluently enough to do competent oversight could probably translate faster than they could edit and rephrase the work of an LLM, which are notoriously bad at translating languages in a high context situation like dialog in a animated show. LLMs are also generally very bad with high context languages like Japanese, and even worse at translating between them and low context languages like German.

Residuals are standard in the American film/TV industry. They are paid a percent of ongoing profits of previous projects they’ve worked on.

Another fairly common practice is ESOPs where over time workers at a company receive shares in the company, and thus dividends.

The people who actually made the show, animators, voice actors, and writers do not get money based on your crunchy rolls subscription, and those production committees that do get money, didn’t make the shows, they just initially financed them.

Assuming the show is based on a manga or light novel, the original artist/writer might if they were lucky enough to negotiate shares in the production committee, but most are not in a position to do so.

For me, what matters, is that the people who made the art get compensated fairly, that they are able to live a good life. That people are encouraged to make art by my consumption of it, and the current system doesn’t do that. It’s a horrific exploitative machine where purchase reward further exploitation of the people who actually put work and effort in to make the art.

They’re buying them from production committees and other such organizations. Most anime is made on essentially “commission” basis, where a studio is payed a fixed upfront amount by a group of financiers and other interests, who then distribute the show, sell the merch, and license it internationally. Essentially studios and those who work there are payed no residuals or other profit sharing scheme like is common in the American film and television industry.

There is actually a bit of a cartel in that regard, with the third parties that purchase shows from studios having collaborated to suppress the cost of seasons for nearly 2 decades, leading to stagnant wages and rampant overworking of artists as the quality and quantity of work expected increases while the budget stays the same. Increasingly artists at the companies have had to fall back on gig work beyond their standard hours to make ends meet, getting payed by frame in their off hours to make a little extra money, effectively working 16 hour days through this additional work. There is some movement to change this as of late, but, this is still essentially the norm.

That’s the core of the issue, crunchy roll has sat its self as a corporate middleman, buying the rights to distribute shows and then charging consumers a subscription for access.

But they can’t be bothered to do the only actual damn work their position would realistically demand, beyond renting server space; providing translations for the foreign media they’re distributing.

That’s without even discussing the fact that not a single penny users give them will end up in the hands of any of the exploited artists who actually made the shows, since the industry doesn’t work on residuals or any other kind of profit sharing, the licensing fees crunchy roll pays essentially going straight to financiers.

See that’s the kicker, for the longest time it was basically all fan translated subtitles, and only recently have payed for translation become the norm.

So it’s really quite pathetic for them to try and save a few bucks by replacing a proper translator with a LLM, given that there are still plenty of passionate fans who would have done it for free. Especially given that translating between Japanese and English in a cultural context heavy situation is something these LLMs are really bad at.

Be nice if there was a way to use it that was just a web page.

I think I have about 50 bucks of monthly subscriptions all in by this point, and most of that is to patreons or various similar systems for smaller independent creators I wish to support directly. The rest is for a VPN for cough “downloading Linux ISO”, also libro fm for audio books to listen to on the night shift.

I actually spend a fair bit monthly on one time donations, purchases of media or related merch, especially stuff I already have access to and wish to support the creators of. I’d probably support more creators this way if it was easier to do so but there are so many times where there just is no way to do so.

With media on big streaming services, it’s been made pretty clear that I have little to no input on if the money I’m spending will actually end up supporting the creatives who make the media I enjoy. In fact it seems most of the money I spend will end up getting spent on stuff I do not care about. “Supporting creatives” through these means feels more like handing the reins of culture and art over to large companies and shareholders.

It’s not even really cheaper. Especially for Microsoft who is actually footing the bill to run all the data centers.

But, the potential benefit lies in the fact that it’s a potential labor substitute that can’t unionize, can be rapidly switched between different skill sets, won’t quit, won’t ask for raises, and won’t protest when you ask it to participate in DOD contracts. The labor that goes in to making it work is constant, uniform, alienated from the actual outputs of the system, and easily replaced if they start causing problems.

Want more capacity at the company? Build another data center. Need to pivot company priories to the latest fad? Just reduce token allocation form one department to another, no need to fire a bunch of people and wade through that legal mess, then wade through the mire of hiring a bunch of new people from a limited talent pool. Not using all the data center capacity? rent out the remainder to other companies.

It reduces the complex and intricate system of a company to a simple resource allocation that can be wielded at will by company leadership.

Nadella is perfectly sane and doing the most logical thing given his set of priorities and incentives. He’s payed insane amounts of money to push initiatives and pursue goals at the behest of the board, the board is attempting to maximize shareholder value, the value of stock is largely determined by perceptions of theoretical future growth.

The reality is irrelevant, the narrative and adhering to the party line is what matters.

It gave CEOs an 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.