As I have pointed out here previously, Microsoft is jacking up prices on 365 licenses, so when they say they have increased revenue on other cloud services, think squeezing the economy through their chokehold on governments and corporations.
I don't have statistics, but having gone through licenses during last year and ended up just avoiding a price increase (instead of getting savings), it's pretty clear that is what are doing.
My kids use Duolingo for extra training of languages they are learning in school, so this crapification hits close to home.
Any tips on current non-crap resources? Since they learn the rules and structure in school it's the repetition of usage in a fun way that I am aiming for.
I'm thinking stupid and frustrating AI will become a plot device.
"But if I don't get the supplies I can't save the town!"
"Yeah, sorry, the AI still says no"
Some years ago I read the memoirs of a railroad union boss. Interesting book in many aspects, but what I thought of here was a time before he became a union boss. He was working at the railroad, was trusted in the union and got the mission to make store keeping of supplies and spare parts more efficient.
This wasn't the first time the railroad company had tried to make it more efficient. Due to earlier mergers there was lots of local supplies and a confusing system for which part of the company was supplied from where. In short, it was inefficient and everyone knew that. Enter our protagonist who travels around and talks to people. Finally he arrives back to HQ and reports that it can't be done. Unless HQ wants to enact a program where everyone who is made redundant gets a better job, with the company footing the bill for any extra training or education needed. Then it could be done, because then it would be in the interest of the people whose knowledge and skills they needed.
This being in the post war era with full employment policies, labour was a scare resource so the company did as they were told and the system got more efficient.
It's all about who benefits from the automation. The original Luddites targeted employers who automated, fired skilled workers and decreased wages. They were not opposed to automation, they were opposed to automation at their expense.
Nah, this is real profits. Real profits turned over to Microsoft:
Microsoft’s current agreement with OpenAI entitles it and other investors to take a slice of profits until they collect $100 billion.
Heads, Microsoft makes tens of billions in profit on their investment. Tails and Microsoft keeps Open AI in a tight embrace until they have sucked everything they want from them.
Would be smart, except they are sucking poison. Let's see how Microsoft's monopoly position can get them out of this jam!
The famous story about a man using a drug that sets free the a-hole version of himself?
Oh, that was the drug! It was cocaine all along!
So one one hand the CEO's want their minions back into office and on the other they want to replace them with AI's?
Sounds like a conundrum. Or a business opportunity!
Presenting Srvile! The brand new Servility as a Service company, with AI powered robots that will laugh at all boss jokes at the water cooler and say things like "That is such a great idea boss! Since I am an AI I can't realise that you are just regurgitating what you read on Xshitter!" and "We certainly need more AI to solve any problem!"
Call now to order!
(AI may at times be enhanced by remote human control for "quality control". Actual level of servility may vary and is not guaranteed.)
I am not an expert, but I did take a couple of semesters of history, and I find him rather annoying.
Somebody who should have been infuriated was Manuel Eisner, who wrote the paper Long-Term Historical Trends in Violent Crime. It's a really good paper, and I have seen Pinker misquote it, so he can't claim ignorance.
Eisner's argument, which I find persuasive, is that it was not the state power increase as such that decreased private violence. Because if that was the case, southern Europe wouldn't have lagged as much as it did. Rather it was the transformation of the nobility from personally very violent knights and lords, to officers and bosses who wields state violence. And that happened at different times, matching the decline in private violence. With the nobility no longer needing personal violence, it goes down. Quite different from Pinker's take.
And then there is the question of where that state capacity for violence was wielded. I don't think Pinker includes Queen Victoria in his rouge gallery, yet the famines in India killed about as many as the ones in the Soviet Union and Communist China, and those are usually counted as state violence.
On the rise and fall of violent crime in the west during the 70ies and 80ies, there has been many candidates, but most fall away because they can't explain it both in western Europe and the US. One good candidate is leaded gasoline leading to lead poisoned babies growing up and becoming more violent in the crucial young adult age. It matches, but I haven't seen any proper attempts to really test it, by for example comparing cities to the countryside.
And to add, admitting that Tumblr had an admin who charged for banning trans women: Important.
Explaining wtf that was all about: Not important.
He probably should be in rehab.
I am late to sneer culture. I read HPMOR back in the day and even visited LW and then forgot about it. EA (mosquito) was on my radar but since philanthropy is anyway a bandaid on societal problems I hadn't bothered. Until FTX crashed. I already knew crypto was a scam, but a scam that wraps itself in bad philosophy is more interesting.
After a lot of old Twitter threads and Tumblr posts it finally clicked: They made the Harry Potter fanfic guy their prophet!
Which is so stupid that it fits perfectly into our timeline.
He also writes: "The entire human body, faced with a strong impact like being gored by a rhinocerous horn, will fail at its weakest point, not its strongest point."
If a rhino comes at Yud, he can use his mighty cranium, which is not his weakest spot, to defend his weak meat parts. Since the rhino horn only impacts his head and not his weak points, his body can not fail, and thus he lives.
Reminds me of Cyrano de Bergerac's Travel to the Sun, where the protagonist encounters a thin chain carrying a great load. Since all links of the chain were equally strong, it couldn't break as chains always break in there weakest link. De Bergerac had the excuse of writing his sci fi in the 17th century (he also features some pre-Newtonian physics), Yud lacks such an excuse.
A tangent: the tablet.
Why is the tablet ok for taking notes? Is it banned from the wifi? Does it lack a browser? Or are todays students unaware that most sites can be visited without an app?