A lot of people are giving Tesla shit here, but surely there should be regulations in place to ensure something like this isn’t allowed to be released for public use?

On one hand, Farage is a massive cunt, an enemy of the state, and the man responsible for irreparable damage to UK politics due to Brexit.

On the other, if Reform is going to run against the Tories, there’s a real opportunity his tinpot party takes the Gammon/flag-shagger vote away from Sunak’s populist run as Tory leader, and in a month we see the Tory party get absolutely annihilated.

Years ago, I said that it was quite sad to see that Conservative’s had lost their party to the populism of the Boris era, because many MP’s that wanted to see a strong union (bear in mind the full name of the Tories is the Conservative and Unionist Party) were expelled from the party and ostracised to make room for grifters under BoJo. While I’m no conservative, many voters value conservatism in their politics, and while I don’t like Starmer much either, he’s basically the closest thing to a Conservative AND a Liberal in major party politics in the UK.

My vote is probably with the Greens this year, but in many areas Labour should absolutely destroy the Tories, hopefully to the point where they become the third or fourth party in the UK.

All of big tech is really worried about this.

• Apple is worried about its own science output, with many of their office heavily employing data scientists. A lot of people slate Siri, but Apple’s scientists put out a lot of solid research.
• Amazon is plugging GenAI into practically everything to appease their execs, because it’s the only way to get funding. Moonshot ideas are dead, and all that remains is layoffs, PIP, and pumping AI into shit where it doesn’t belong to make shareholders happy. The innovation died, and AI replaced it.
• Google has let AI divisions take over both search and big parts of ads. Both are reporting worse experiences for users, but don’t worry, any engineer worth anything was laid off and there are no opportunities in other divisions for you either. If there are, they probably got offshored…
• Meta is struggling a lot less, probably because they were smart enough to lay off in one go, but they’re still plugging AI shite in places no one asked for it, with many divisions now severely down in headcount.

If the AI boom is a dud, I can see many of these companies reducing their output further. If someone comes along and competes in their primary offering, there’s a real concern that they’ll lose ground in ways that were unthinkable mere years ago. Someone could legitimately challenge Google on search right now, and someone could build a cheap shop that doesn’t sell Chinese tat and uses local suppliers to compete with Amazon. Tech really shat the bed during the last economic downturn.

From a company perspective, it’s a common sentiment. Google and Amazon have mantras around trying to stay agile and relevant despite being behemoths, and both have arguably kept into boomer tech territory the second they made a poor CEO hire. Microsoft had their Ballmer era, and while Nadella did a lot of good at Microsoft they’ve had a lot of failures in established divisions to be soaked up by AI and sales.

I think that all of big tech has struggled over the last 3 years. Sacrificing employee skill for shareholder value has ultimately moved them all into IBM territory, whereas the cool tech is happening at startups again. If AI is a bust, and another company comes along and eats their lunch in their established markets like consumer devices, web tooling, or cloud computing, they’re in real danger of another huge set of layoffs and resetting their businesses to only core profit-making ventures. What I think we’ve seen companies shift towards death, Day 2, rotting from the inside, or whatever your business calls stagnation.

Definitely not a US thing. Here in the UK I don’t think I’ve worked 9-5 for over 20 years…

I work in AI as a software engineer. Many of my peers have PhD’s, and have sunk a lot of research into their field. I know probably more than the average techie, but in the grand scheme of things I know fuck all. Hell, if you were to ask the scientists I work with if they “know AI” they’ll probably just say “yeah, a little”.

Working in AI has exposed me to so much bullshit, whether it’s job offers for obvious scams that’ll never work, or for “visionaries” that work for consultancies that know as little about AI as the next person, but market themselves as AI experts. One guy had the fucking cheek to send me a message on LinkedIn to say “I see you work in AI, I’m hosting a webinar, maybe you’ll learn something”.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot of cool stuff out there, and some companies are doing some legitimately cool stuff, but the actual use-cases for these tools where they won’t just be productivity enhancers/tools is low at best. I fully support this guy’s efforts to piledrive people, and will gladly lend him my sword.

I liked Outer Worlds, but while I do see some “NV magic” there, it feels like both Bethesda AND Obsidian are no longer the same companies that they once were. Obsidian are still quietly putting out some solid games…but not to the same quality of two generations prior.

Tribalism is surprisingly rampant in gaming, especially when a developer picks a side/is acquired by the creator of “their” console.

Like most big tech companies, they’re actually several divisions all competing with each other. Lately, the AI divisions have latched on to the hype and they’re pushing their wares to other divisions, often with enough clout to keep those in security/privacy quiet. Integrating LLM’s is also a great way for a middle manager type to curry favour with the bosses, and to build little empires for themselves.

There have been several instances where people have released ebooks that are fully AI generated, and are basically scams with no real content or information.

Outside of the “Microsoft bad” comments, this is a prime example of why big tech companies need to stop promoting AI leads to a position where they are able to have influence over initiatives outside of AI.

The worst thing to happen to basically every product/service in tech right now is AI. It’s made Google unreliable in the eyes of normal people for the first time in decades, it’s destroying trust in Amazon content across reviews and Kindle, it’s adding features to Facebook that no one ever wanted, etc.

Most serious SW development is now on Linux laptops/desktops,

I’d love a source for this. To my knowledge, most people that build to Linux hosts still use OSX.

My newborn was having issues with reflux that affected their sleep. A mother in our support class recommended going to see an infant chiropractor for an adjustment.

I couldn’t believe my ears, and I probably made an enemy by outright asking why the fuck you would let a chiropractor crack the back of your 4 week old baby.

It amazes me how commonplace chiropractics are, and how people put a lot of faith in them before trying anything else.

The article says what part of Amazon it was for. It’s for logistics, not AWS, which is a separate division.

Metro is owned by the Daily Mail Group, which is why they’re so shit. It’s an output for news-esque shitposting.

That’s not fair. The switch is a great console for indie games.

Obviously, so is the Steam Deck, but that doesn’t discount the Switch for having a solid library of games outside of the usual Nintendo shite.

There is a term for this, but I can’t remember what it is.

It’s a phenomenon where a person goes through their formative years in a given structure, where you are raised by your parents, go to school, and are given set goals for every year - do X and you’ll get to Y. This goes all the way up to your early twenties if you go to university, possibly longer if you join a structured company with similar guardrails, or much longer when you join the armed forces and live in a regimented way.

Once people leave these guardrails, some really struggle with the freedom they are granted. No one has a goal to point you towards, no one cares if you fail, and ultimately your life has a degree of freedom you haven’t experienced ever.

One thing we’re terrible at as a society is either guiding people with no clear path, or supporting those that don’t want a clear path and want to find one of their own. Some people really struggle with this, and the freedom of being able to do shit like overindulge on drugs/alcohol/food with no support or community support can ruin lives.

This is an unpopular opinion, but vote for who you believe in. If there is a party or candidate that backs your beliefs then you should vote for them. You only need to look at UKIP/Brexit/Reform to see that a small party can have a big impact, even if it’s backed by the media and run by bellends.

Wanting your vote to count by voting for a big party is like supporting Man City because you want your support to count…

Alexa has had AI backing its services for the better part of a decade.

Source: I worked on some of it.

Uhhh…it’s had AI backing it for most of the decade