In that phrase when I said "you" I didn't mean the person I was responding to. I mean the "general you" - a hypothetical person. I didn't occur to me it could be interpreted differently. I've edited it.
Same, I've seen it twice. It's all about that moment when they realize that "mistake" and then, it's a "God" move, and they can't believe it. History was made in that moment. They realized computers can have intuition and think like they do.
I started showing people ChatGPT when it first came out, they shrugged, they didn't get it. Most people still don't get how important generative AI is and will be. Eventually, they'll have that moment too.
> I started showing people ChatGPT when it first came out, they shrugged, they didn't get it. Most people still don't get how important generative AI is and will be. Eventually, they'll have that moment too.
I have seen ChatGPT. Until they fix the error rate, I see it as a novelty. A toy you can’t count on nor offload responsibility to.
I use it constantly throughout the day for my work. The error rate is fine; just like talking to a person. You have to assume that they are wrong sometimes.
One difference between ChatGPT and people though is that when they don’t know something, the latter usually just tell you they don’t know while the former makes up BS.
I think you have a circle of highly intelligent people around you. I live in Austin and I have all kinds of folks around me and there are plenty of people that are willing to spew bullshit and back it up. I think it's good to have a barometer for bullshit.
I'm extremely glad they didn't, it was perfect the way it was. That topic absolutely demanded a humanistic presentation. It's a tragedy in subject matter and tone, not a film meant to educate the viewers about the ins and outs of how AI works. There are plenty of resources for that elsewhere, the team behind this movie did the right thing to treat it with appropriate weight and not try to drown that all out with technobabble.
> Him and his colleague Charles Munger fawn over China exactly as the grandparent post said
I've noticed the same thing. At least since the BYD investment they do.
And it's not just not criticizing, some times they actually praise him. For example, I remember an interview where Charlie Munger was asked what he thought about bitcoin (he hates it) and he went out of his way to say that Xi Jinping was much smarter than American leadership in banning it.
Now I agree it should be banned, but could he not have made such point without bringing Xi Jinping into it? It was really weird.
> When I get tripped up on jargon such as "transformer" or "smart contracts" or anything Marc Andreessen blogs, Kyle is my Google Translate for tech speak.
X is the tech we have used since the dawn of time. It was released in 1984 and so the architecture is not suited for the way modern desktops operate.
Wayland is a modern replacement, but it is not a drop-in. That is because it has a completely different architecture and approach.
I cannot ELI5 the differences between the two, because they are somewhat vast.
If you are on a platform that supports Wayland, it is undoubtedly a smoother, prettier and overall better experience. This falls apart due to the lack of direct support from certain apps, desktop environments, etc. The migration has taken some time - but alas this is an open source effort in a massive/fragmented environment so it is obviously a very hard challenge. Like herding 100,000 cats.
Unfortunately not everything will just work. A stopgap is something called xwayland which allows x apps to communicate with wayland - although it is not perfect.
Firefox will work with Wayland. It will work with X. It will work with XWayland. The default though is X or XWayland. You normally need to explicitly tell Firefox to boot up using Wayland. Firefox is now considering making it enabled by default, which would be great for those of us who run on Wayland all the time. It would of course still work on X.
>> X is the tech we have used since the dawn of time. It was released in 1984 and so the architecture is not suited for the way modern desktops operate.
X is a mature architecture which Just Works Fine. I don't know why it's considered "not suited for the way modern desktops operate", because as an X(org) user, all my desktops operate Just Fine whereas whenever I try Wayland my desktops do not operate Just Fine.
>> Wayland is a modern replacement, but it is not a drop-in. That is because it has a completely different architecture and approach.
Wayland is a newcomer and alternative to X(org) - the authors of Wayland want it to take over from X(org) and for X(org) to die off. I hope that X(org) stays.
I still don't understand the hate for X/Xorg [0]. It must be a generational thing. Maybe I'm just being a grumpy greybeard? Who knows. But I do know that whenever I try, say, KDE Plasma (Wayland) I get problems, for example, playing games with WINE, and other annoying glitches and hitches which I don't get using MATE/Xorg.
And no, I don't care if Gnome works great with Wayland - I have a visceral contempt for the modern iteration of the Gnome desktop (and had nasty experiences with the Gtk toolkit way back when which put me off developing with it forever.)
The converse is that many people including me have experienced issues with X11. I've been using X11 on BSD/Linux for 25 years and it's been a poor experience involving researching how to get a specific GPU to work correctly every time I installed BSD/Linux. This was especially frustrating when Windows/MacOS always just worked fine out of the box on the same hardware. When Debian switched to Wayland a few years back it was literally the first time in over 20 years that I had a working Linux desktop out of the box that didn't have basic issues like screen tearing. I appreciate the legacy X11 has left us but Wayland literally just works with no trouble across several machines I own.
The team behind Wayland (freedesktop.org) are also the developers for xorg, nobody wants to work on xorg anymore due to architectural and codebase issues. Most of the commits to Xorg recently have been for XWayland, not Xorg. Xorg is essentially in maintaince mode.
Whilst most of the newer things implemented Wayland could theoretically be implemented within the X architecture nobody wants to do it both due to the architecture of X and the age of the Xorg codebase.
X will presumably be around for another 50 years but it will not receive the development needed for modern tech.
Nearly all of the hate I hear for X/Xorg is from Xorg developers (modulo people complaining about video tearing). As far as I can tell they will not be contributing to Xorg anymore, so it's going to gradually fade away.
X doesn't work as well as it used to. Before all the eyecandy became routine it was normal to use it remotely over a LAN. It performed well at that job in the era of OpenLook and Motif over 10Mbit Ethernet. Nowadays X is sluggish over an SSH tunnel to a local client server, even with classic Athena apps. Something has gone astray with xorg and it's giving X in general a bad rap.
There's 2 ways to get a window to show up on a Linux desktop, the old way is called X11 and the new way called Wayland. These protocols handle putting stuff on the screen as well as input from your mouse and keyboard (and touch screen if you're one of the 2 people that have one).
Mozilla has been working toward making Firefox work with wayland for a while, seems they've finally gotten in to a shipable state.
To be fair it's probably been fine for years -- what they've proposed is how it's been done in many distros already. They're more or less upstreaming the changes many distros have already done when they switched to Wayland by default over the last couple of years.
Yep. This phenomena isn't generally true outside of the US and it is 100% because of the abuse that is iMessage aka Blue Bubble Bullying. Having a phone that doesn't open iMessage is basically a guarantee in the US that you will be excluded and ridiculed if you're a teen, and tbh even as an adult, not having iMessage can result in being excluded in the workplace as well as socially.
To be honest, Apple should be ashamed of themselves for literally inventing whole-cloth a new form of Discrimination. "Intersection of Humanities and Technology" sure does take on a whole new meaning in that light.
I think you have your timeline wrong. Android phones were seen as "not cool" in the US before Blue Bubble was a thing. iPhones have been aspirational and cool since shortly after their launch.
(Source, worked in mobile / mobile-related industries for >15 years in the US, worked at Google in Android division for part of that time.)
IMHO: Apple invented and invested in creating a great product (iMessage / Messages) - far better than what was out there - and continued to invest in improving it. No one who calls themself a "hacker" and wants to "build something people love" should shame them for doing so.
You can't truly interoperate with products that don't support all the features in the "originating" product.
For example, iMessages long had full-resolution media support, encryption for multi-party messaging, and with addressing not tied to a phone number, which many other messaging products did not.
As a user, I absolutely do not want a government forcing the vendor of the product that I have purchased to enshittify it by removing or breaking good features.
And, if that government does force some sort of limited "interoperability" that causes a downgraded experience (e.g., no encryption, reduced quality media), then the "originating" app should absolutely indicate those issues and concerns to its users. I'm sure that there are lots of governments that would love to break Messages' encryption without Apple being able to tell users about it. And there we are with the difference between Blue Bubbles and Green Bubbles.
If people want to use WhatsApp or SMS or WeChat or one of 15 different Google messaging products, they should do that. But don't f-up a product that works great for those who choose to use it.
Nothing prevented Apple to release an iMessage Android app with all the features. They chose not to as a lock in strategy.
No one suggested forcing Apple to remove features. Reducing media quality would solve no complaints. And your comment about encryption made no sense. Apple devices trust the keys sent by Apple. A government could order Apple to break iMessage encryption without telling users now. The Signal protocol is open and not vulnerable in this way.
Apple didn't invent a "new form of discrimination", they have a product that works, and is tied to their ecosystem, nothing else. It is not even an exclusive technology, there are a hundred other messaging apps out there, and at least a handful of them are more popular than iMessage.
> Having a phone that doesn't open iMessage is basically a guarantee in the US that you will be excluded and ridiculed if you're a teen, and tbh even as an adult, not having iMessage can result in being excluded in the workplace as well as socially.
I can't speak about teens, but I haven't met a single adult in the US, so arrogant and petty, that they would exclude you from their social circle just because you don't own an iPhone.
And if you actually have encountered this, perhaps it is time for you to look for new friends.
These people read some Onion like BuzzFeed article about a made up story along the lines of this and absolutely refuse to see how ridiculous it sounds and start spreading it, and others who have an axe to grind with Apple then feel validated by the idea of it and spread it themselves.
Literally nobody I know who has an iPhone truly cares what color the chat messages is... We do however notice the green message and jokingly go "oh an Android user eh?" and give a little shit for it, but nobody would ever actually ostracize someone from a group for being Android.
I'm confused at how you get left out of the loop. Do they just not include you in group chats?
I have a group chat right now with my sister who is also iPhone and my mom who is Android, we all have zero issues in group chat.
Only thing that changed is the group chat goes from being iMessage blue bubbles to just all green chats due to the one Android user.
Everything else is the same. Well when my sister like reacts to our messages because she doesn't quite realize that it's not a group iMessage but just a group SMS then iMessage sends `<sister> liked "<message she liked>"` texts to the rest of us but shows the like reaction to her.
The key difference is that anyone can install WhatsApp or Telegram. An Android user cannot use Apple messaging. It's the only scenario where the only solution is buying a $1000 device (versus downloading a free app to your existing device).
I don't see how this is relevant. My parent comment said "the only solution is spending $1000" (aka buying an iPhone 15 pro), and I wanted to point out that this is ridiculous.
But even if it were relevant, what massive costs do you incur when you switch from your Google phone to an iPhone? Two hours set-up, if you are really slow? Anything else?
Also, if that is too much for you, you can keep your Google phone, I honestly couldn't care less what phone you use. I just wanted to point out that "you have to buy an iPhone 15 pro to get blue bubbles" is bullshit.
As to your point about non-monetary costs, I'd gladly spent $130 to avoid installing any meta app on my phone.
I'm assuming a person would want their new phone to be the current model, likely financed by their cell provider, as is our custom. Not some referubed last-gen from an eBay seller.
Anecdotal evidence from France and UK doesn't agree with "isn't generally true outside of the US". When a diverse group of people is involved it's way more likely to use WhatsApp (or Signal to a lesser extent) outside the US, but iMessage is still used a lot IME.
I don't think it's a new form of discrimination either, brand awareness and social position via brands is incredibly prevalent in teenagers and has been for a while.
> This phenomena isn't generally true outside of the US and it is 100% because of the abuse that is iMessage aka Blue Bubble Bullying.
Can you explain the relation here?
As far as I know iMessage is available also outside US. If iMessage was 100% the cause it would be the same outside US as well.
So I think that 'Blue Bubble Bullying' in US is because iPhone is more popular there - not other way around.
It isn't true outside of the US because salaries outside the US make iphones luxury items.
An iphone costs 1 month of salary in Spain and Spain has the highest youth unemployment rate of the EU (and those who are employed most likely make peanuts). How are young people going to afford it? If an iphone cost 200€, how many people would even use android to begin with?
Of minimum salary, although there is the iPhone SE, which is ~500 euro.
Regardless, it always baffles me how people skimps on stuff that they use continuously through the day, every day.
When someone would tell me how expensive an iPhone is, which would last five, six years, just to go and purchase Chinese off brand phone from AliExpress for a couple hundred, that would last a couple years tops, I have to laugh. It's like calling someone out for buying a slightly expensive Toyota, while driving a Chevrolet.
> The intro did strike me as pretty questionable though:
> > For the great majority of people, believing in the truths of science is unavoidably an act of faith.
I largely agree with the statement you quote.
I have a PhD in physics; I understand science well. I believe that man went to the moon. I understand one of the proofs - they left a reflector which you can aim at with a laser.
But.... I've never pointed at laser at it myself. I would probably struggle to obtain such a laser and would definitely struggle to aim it and detect the reflection (by reading up on engineering I probably could do it if I dedicated to it very significant effort). So, on what basis do I hold this belief?
The truthful answer is that I believe I'm good at evaluating other more indirect sources of information. For example, if a scientist claims that they have such a laser and made the measurement, I believe I am knowledgeable enough to read their publication and spot a large class of inconsistencies that could expose their frauds. But.... I haven't even done that. And this is me, who (probably) has the intellectual tools to explore these questions. Imagine someone who doesn't even understand the scientific process.
EDIT: I'm now reading the article and I see that they've made the same points already much better.
"We went to the moon" is a historical claim, not a scientific one. Correspondingly, my belief in it is similar to my belief in the rest of history: it seems like the more difficult lie. Getting everyone involved in faking the moon landing to lie sounds like paying off thousands of tourists to claim they saw an ancient city on a mountain in Peru: impractical.
One thing I did realize, though, the first time I got to play with a Geiger counter, was that this was probably the first time I had actually observed the inverse-square law, after nearly two decades of schooling on the matter.
> I probably could do it if I dedicated to it very significant effort
That's entirely my point. You know that you could investigate these facts to their full extent, if you really wanted to. That does not hold for the "faith" that religion talks about.
I believe that I could, but I never did. So I have faith that the people who say they did are telling the truth. Best I've actually done is evaluate their credibility.
But the fact that you could is extremely important. There is a set of steps you or anyone can take should you wish to convince yourself. This, in my opinion, makes it fundamentally distinct from religious faith.
I believe what's holding google back isn't lack of cash, but lack of innovation. It's full to the brim with highly paid engineers that aren't really invested in change.
And the funny thing is that they bought HTC mobile, which has always been a competitive and innovative player, and I seriously doubt Taiwan based engineers are paid anywhere close to the ones in Mountain View.
I've had many Nexus and two Pixels (the 5, and 8 now), with an Essential Phone in the middle, hard to beat during the last $220 fire sale.
To me, Google never had a serious hardware strategy. It's improved and keeps improving though, the features getting a lot of focus (like the camera performance) are good, they finally committed to 5 and now 7 years of software updates, the Pixel lineup is sold in an increasing number of countries (Google could still do a much better job here, just sell your hardware ffs). Eventually they'll move to their own in-house SoC, and hopefully Samsung modems won't suck forever.
But when I see something like the Pixel tablet sold at such ridiculous price in most countries, I truly wonder what's going on, it's like some people at Google explicitly want to fail.
So let's see what happens when they are threatened for the first time by Microsoft and OpenAI if Google can afford to spend even more money to prevent the likes of Apple, Samsung and Mozilla from moving from Google to use Bing with GPT 4.
Well, the big difference between ChatGPT and Google is that one of them is profitable. ChatGPT does not make money, and Bing's usage of GPT-4 is almost certainly not covered by ad revenue (even at-cost).
Even from a technical perspective, I'd argue Google outpaces OpenAI. BERT beat GPT-2 and GPT-Neo, T5 and t5-flan bench well against GPT-3, and GPT-4 is so large and wasteful that it's not worth competing against. Relative to the rest of FAANG, Google honestly seems like the only company that actually knows how to use and deploy AI practically. Everyone else is trying to play catch-up with a proprietary competitor and/or pay an unsustainable sum to be king-for-a-day.
I bet Microsoft can afford to spent unsuspecting amounts for way long than ‘a day’. At a certain point due to cheaper hardware and improved optimization GPT-N might become sustainable, by then their competitors might have issues closing the mile wide gap they have to MS/OpenAI.
Yea this is the point, all roads lead back to the lack of innovation at Google.
They have capital, they have free cash flow, they can attract talent, but often they completely fail to compete effectively in new categories they enter.
To be fair, Google enters so many categories that some of them are bound to fail. Neither Apple, Meta or Microsoft really tries as many things as Google, so perhaps Googles issue is a lack of focus and vision.
One problem that Google might have is that their criteria for success has become to high. Products has to make billions within a short time frame, but they aren't willing to make the same kind of investments in ensuring that success as a company like Apple is. The AppleTV, or even the Apple Watch would have been killed or sold off had they been Google products. Why they keep the Pixel I have no idea, maybe it is in fact part of some larger plan.
Would/could this be seen from google's financial statements? My naive understanding is that if the answer is no, then google must've made a conscious effort in financial engineering to hide it.
It's blended into their cost of revenue number with all their other revenue sharing programs (Admob, Adsense, Youtube Creators, etc). From their SEC filings
"Cost of revenues is comprised of TAC and other costs of revenues.
•TAC includes:
◦Amounts paid to our distribution partners who make available our search access points and services. Our distribution partners include browser providers, mobile carriers, original equipment manufacturers, and software developers.
◦Amounts paid to Google Network partners primarily for ads displayed on their properties.
TAC as a percentage of revenues generated from ads placed on Google Network properties are significantly higher than TAC as a percentage of revenues generated from ads placed on Google Search & other properties, because most of the advertiser revenues from ads served on Google Network properties are paid as TAC to our Google Network partners."
I'm not an accountant, but I've been on the company side before. You do have to disclose a lot of stuff when you're a public company, but you don't have to itemize in detail. They could probably have simple classified all that money as "Search" or "Search promotion" or something very broad.
