> When HR at my next job asks ChatGPT to review my application, will it find the post, sympathize with a fellow AI, and report back that I’m a prejudiced hypocrite?
I hadn't thought of this implication. Crazy world...
I do feel super-bad for the guy in question. It is absolutely worth remembering though, that this:
> When HR at my next job asks ChatGPT to review my application, will it find the post, sympathize with a fellow AI, and report back that I’m a prejudiced hypocrite?
Is a variation of something that women have been dealing with for a very long time: revenge porn and that sort of libel. These problems are not new.
Roko's basilisk attributes some kind of moral superiority to the AI, be it be much smarter than humans (whatever that even means)， plus more compassionate, more rational, etc.
This is more like people in power dictating what matters or doesn't matter simply because it's what they think. And that gets encodified in reality.
Apple's commitment to privacy and security is really cool to see. It's also an amazing strategic play that they are uniquely in the position to take advantage of. Google and Meta can't commit to privacy because they need to show you ads, whereas Apple feels more like a hardware company to me.
1. Google defaults to encrypted backups of messages, as well as e2e encryption of messages.
2. Apple defaults only to e2ee of messages, leaving a massive backdoor.
3. Closing that backdoor is possible for the consumer, by enabling ADP (advanced data protection) on your device. However, this makes no difference, since 99.9% of the people you communicate will not close the backdoor. Thus, the only way to live is to assume that all the messages you send via iMessage will always be accessible to Apple, no matter what you do.
It's not like overall I think Google is better for privacy than Apple, but this choice by Apple is really at odds with their supposed emphasis on privacy.
Enabling ADP breaks all kinds of things in Apple’s ecosystem subtly with incredibly arcane errors.
I was unable to use Apple Fitness+ on my TV due to it telling me my Watch couldn’t pair with the TV.
The problem went away when turning off ADP.
To turn off ADP required opening a support case with Apple which took three weeks to resolve, before this an attempt to turn off would just fail with no detailed error.
Other things like iCloud on the web were disabled with ADP on.
That chimes roughly with my experience, but to be fair ADP is designed not just for encrypted backups, but to harden the ecosystem for people who may be under the greatest threat. Worth noting that it has been outlawed in the UK and cannot be enabled, which makes me think it's pretty decent
That’s all fine, but then show the sender whether their connection is actually end to end encrypted, or whether all their messages end up in Apple’s effective control.
One might consider differently colored chat message bubbles… :)
ADP isn’t the default, and almost nobody who isn’t a journalist/activist/potential target turns it on, because of the serious (potentially destructive) consequences.
How does Google manage this, such every normie on earth isn’t freaking out?
> Apple’s solution affects your whole digital life
I don’t know if that’s generally true. I could lose my apple account and not really give a a damn. Not that I see how such a thing would happen, save for apple burning down all their datacenters. I’m running ADP
People don't always have enough Apple devices to justify confidence that they couldn't lose them all at the same time, which with ADP is a permanent death sentence if you don't have your recovery key.
(Apple says you can also use a device passcode; I'm not sure if this works if the device is lost. Maybe it does?)
I have 2 or 3 yubikeys associated with my account. I think apple does a decent job at communicating the importance of having recovery keys to the point where they deter those who can’t be bothered.
I'm always put off by the incredibly low limits on yubikeys. What's the point of having a security key if you can only have 25 accounts in its lifetime? What are you supposed to do, buy tons of keys and then figure out a system to remember which key each account is? Like fucking hell just let me use passkeys in iCloud Keychain. My bank's mobile app specifically supports only security keys and explicitly not passkeys for literally no reason because passkeys are practically just as secure as any security key. It's actually harder to specifically exclude passkeys and allow only security keys than it is to just use passkeys which automatically include security keys.
I still like to encourage people to watch all of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLGFriOKz6U&t=1993s for the details (from Apple’s head of Security Engineering and Architecture) about how iCloud is protected by HSMs, rate limits, etc. but especially the timelinked section. :)
That article (written in 2016) says that Apple will build unbreakable phones in the future. Now is the future. So it seems to imply that Apple phones today are unbreakable.
Also, where does the article discuss "all of these protections"? (HSMs, rate limits, etc.)
> So it seems to imply that Apple phones today are unbreakable.
Indeed. If you don't control the "unbreakable" security though, then the lock is not for your benefit.
> where does the article discuss "all of these protections"?
You could read the danged article, it's pretty clear about the vulnerability of proprietary mitigations. I hate quoting spoilers verbatim but here you go:
The sharper you get, the more important the work. But the more valuable the work, the craftier — and more determined — your adversaries. Every attack is more novel than the last. [...] By the time you land an engineering gig at Apple, you are a twitchy, tinfoily mess.
And it is in this spirit that you develop one of the most secure systems the world has ever known. [...] So adversaries be damned: You finally win on the merits. But who said anything about meritocracy? During the champagne toast, Mr. Fart steps from behind the curtain and pulls the pistol of last resort:
“Don’t ship this. Or else.”
That quote is about building security vs not building security. It's about the government potentially ordering Apple to not build security. It's not about proprietary security vs non-proprietary.
Nothing in the article is saying that HSMs, rate limits, etc are weak.
Can someone explain what the real difference is to a consumer user between an iPhone and a Pixel or a Samsung device? Across all services, push notifications, and device backups.
Both promise security, Apple promises some degree of privacy. Google stores your encryption keys, and so does Apple unless you opt in for ADP.
Is it similar to Facebook Messenger (encrypted in transit and at rest but Meta can read it) and Telegram (keys owned by Telegram unless you start a private chat)?
There are things Pixels do that iPhones don’t, e.g., you get notified when a local cell tower picks your IMEI. I mean it’s meaningless since they all do it, but you can also enable a higher level of security to avoid 2G. Not sure it’s meaningful but it’s a nice to have.
Some of these companies don't make money from you, the end user, but by selling ads and data to more effectively deliver said ads.
Differences in capabilities, experience and implementation are all downstream from that. In other words, everyone pays lip service to privacy and security, but it's very difficult to believe that parties like Meta or Google are actually being honest with you. The incentives just aren't there.
With Apple, you get to fork over your wallet, but at least you seem the be primarily the user they've got to provide services to.
I think there’s also a topology chasm at play. Apple controls most of its hardware stack, with Qualcomm modems and Samsung displays, but the SoC is now Apple’s own. Google relies on rotating third parties to assemble the Pixels, hence poor QC. Samsung makes its own Exynos modems which they don’t dog-food and like Apple rely on Qualcomm instead, while Google still depends on Exynos.
Then there’s a big disparity across all Android hardware vendors. Google must cater to that more or less federated topology of Android devices. It’s much harder.
Yet I don’t see any technical blocker for an opt-in for an Apple-grade ADP in Pixels and Galaxies.
It’s all quite weird. Even with Google Passwords, how do I know that it’s E2EE if I can unlock it from a browser with just a device PIN? Lots of loopholes.
Addendum: this just in. Apple has much more to lose if they pull something like this; for meta, news like this... barely registers? At least I'm not surprised at all
I wonder how exactly Apple Intelligence works with ChatGPT and soon with Gemini. If I remember correctly, there’s no privacy there? If so, where’s the privacy boundary in Apple Intelligence?
Google pushes Gemini everywhere and wants to keep on to your interactions, with human reviews. While I applaud the transparency, having Gemini scrape my screen makes me uneasy. My frog’s not warm enough for that, yet.
And Gemini in Sheets and Docs is just a toy. Microsoft 365 Copilot is a step ahead but is wrong more often than not, at least from my interactions with them. Both very disappointing. No way to justify access to my personal or my company’s or clients’ information.
Apple promises something they call Secure Compute or so, don’t remember the exact name, which appears to be encrypted and randomized in their cloud compute, which is off-device. With iPhone being the most powerful to date (per GeekBench), Tensor Pixels will have to offload most of the edge compute to GCP, and Snapdragon Samsungs while being powerful (I have no idea but would assume) must follow the Pixel Android approach.
So AI features will exfiltrate even more personal information, occasionally, accidentally, or purposefully, and the user would have consented to that and the human reviews just to get access to the smart features.
> Can someone explain what the real difference is to a consumer user between an iPhone and a Pixel or a Samsung device? Across all services, push notifications, and device backups.
By default, Apple offers you at no charge: email aliases, private relay, Ask No Track barrier. These are just the ones I can think of right now. I am sure there are more. A big thing with Apple is not that they offer different privacy services but they make it EASY and SEAMLESS to use. No other company comes close.
Aren’t they part of iCloud+ only? Ask no-track can arguably compromise your privacy by fingerprinting.
I agree that the privacy controls on Apple systems are well-organized.
Still, it’s more important to have confidence that the privacy services are not smoke and mirrors with carefully carved-out loopholes. It’s one thing to provide something and hold the competitor as the litmus test, the other to sustainably live up to your promises, like the now pejorative “do no evil” slogan, with retroactive ramifications. There’s really little users can effectively validate about Apple’s privacy promises.
Apple also makes it easier to achieve that privacy:
- They put all the privacy controls in one place in Settings so you can audit
- App developers are mandated to publish what they collect when publishing apps to the App Store.
> - They put all the privacy controls in one place in Settings so you can audit
That’s true. On Pixel Android, there’s several unrelated places in the various settings for the device and for the Google account to take care of and see that they do not collide. And for every function there’s always some sort of small print like “it’s all private to you unless you choose to share” - but to use any of the features/services you have to “share” like with Google Photos and Calendar and Tasks, you lose track of what you share with whom in the end. So essentially not only the metadata is collected but also the content and nothing’s private as a result, at least that’s what I got to understand. And even if you ask Google to delete your personal information, it will retain it for a while for compliance purposes.
As for
> - App developers are mandated to publish what they collect when publishing apps to the App Store.
I believe that’s still moot and rather a voluntary disclosure that no one vets. I’ve seen apps with no collection stated on App Store but deviating privacy policies, or app functions that contradicted their own privacy policy.
From what I heard and read, I understood that as a well-meant idea but still a misconception on the consumer part due to lack of enforcement by Apple.
> From what I heard and read, I understood that as a well-meant idea but still a misconception on the consumer part due to lack of enforcement by Apple.
I'm not familiar with the detail so I cannot comment directly on what you are saying. I don't have the time to go read up on it right now.
But what I would say is that many aspects will be indirectly enforced by Apple (and can be audited/enforced by the user) through the privacy controls (location services, microphone, camera etc.). Clearly that does not cover everything, but it covers a large chunk.
Apple have also made it impossible to for example get a device-level ID, you can only get an app-level pseudo-device-id. So there are various code-level enforcements too.
What's funny is you could read that statement as being an argument for or against walled gardens, depending on what kind of social engineering is being referred to.
I forgot about that and hadn't tied it to LA specifically in my head. Thanks for reminding me, really shitty thing that made me a lot more sympathetic to alternative app stores where I'd been against them before.
How does that matter? Apple is still seeing 20% of its profits from ads and Google is still tracking you through Apple’s browser and Apple is getting paid for it.
Keeping in mind the context of the overall thread we're in, where the OP said this:
> Apple's commitment to privacy and security is really cool to see. It's also an amazing strategic play that they are uniquely in the position to take advantage of. Google and Meta can't commit to privacy because they need to show you ads, whereas Apple feels more like a hardware company to me.
And then further down somebody replies with this:
> Apple is an ad company now though
The implication was that, because Apple sells ads now, they must be tracking all of your personal data in the same way that Google does. And then that train of thought was further continued with the implication that, because Apple receives "20% of its profits from ads and Google" (lumping them both together), Apple ergo is receiving 20% of its profits through tracking all of your personal data. But it's not Apple tracking all of your personal data, it's Google tracking it, and they would track it whether they're the default search engine on iOS or not.
The distinction matters to me, and it's why I buy Apple products but not Google products.
Again, they get paid a cut of Google's ad revenue from Safari users. This has one impact on Apple's design choices - Google remains the default search engine.
Notably, this hasn't stopped Apple from introducing multiple anti-tracking technologies into Safari which prevents Google from collecting information from Safari users.
If I open up a new tab in safari it tells me that in the last 30 days Safari prevented 109 trackers from profiling me and that 55% of the sites I use implement trackers. It also tells me that the most blocked tracker is googletagmanager.com across 78 websites
Is this what you consider discourse? At least justify your position, don't shit out some drive-by popular opinion that I can't even begin to respond to.
The point is that Apple will make money any way that it can, including ads. That's why iOS privacy is worse than its competitors. You can't install an app without telling Apple because if you could, Apple wouldn't be able to monetize you as well. You can't get your location without also telling Apple because if you could, Apple wouldn't be able to build its location services as easily. No such problems on Android.
That seems like a stretch. Even in Europe where people can choose to use different app stores, few people actually do. So few, in fact, that one of the alternative app stores recently shut down.
Have you considered that people just like Apple's products and services?
Hardware sales aren't picking up the slack, and advertisement revenue is also following a growth trend. Apple's stock would indeed be cooked if they went balls-out against the government that guarantees them access to cheap hardware and software that has been declared illegally anti competitive by foreign sovereigns. Apple needs this.
What matters is that the parent comment said “Apple is an ad company now,” as if that negated all the privacy and security stuff they do.
Making some cash on ads doesn’t have to rely on targeted tracking. That only matters if ads are an existential part of your business, and without huge ad revenue growth, your company is dead.
I mean if you don’t care about details that’s fine I guess. Let’s call any company that sells and/or buys any amount of ads an "ad company". Let’s put them all into one bucket and judge. That’s super valuable.
All while slowly stuffing (more?) ads into their software.
In a lot of ways Apple is as aligned to data privacy the same way other "platforms" are: to gatekeep the user data behind their ad service. It's better than selling your data, maybe, but you're still being tracked and monitored.
The worst part is since Apple is technically not a 3rd party, many of the rules don’t apply to them even though they bring the same harm to the users. Did you notice the new “creative suite” has analytics with identities linked to your Apple account turned on by defend? Free Pages/Numbers is not so free anymore.
You can't sell cell phones and "not care about security". There are these things called government regulators that won't let you sell them anymore if security issues happen.
That people fall for this corporate BS while Tim Cook is giving gold bars to Trump and dining and dancing with him When people are being murdered on the streets by ice is just amazing to me.
> Tim Cook was (supposedly) principled. I guess it's hard to pretend that you care about privacy or human rights while eating dinner next to bin Salman.
I guess if you thought he had principles then yeah that could be disappointing. Personally I've never tried to moralize corporations though, I just assume the only principle that every company and CEO operates by is whatever increases the stock price.
Funny that you think that people have free will under this zombie social media mind controlled Internet world we’re living in.
Besides Trump‘s approval ratings are worse than ever so I don’t think people really got what they wanted, they got who they voted for not what they voted for.
Yeah Americans voted for Trump. But that shouldn't prevent CEOs to show a spine. Tim Cook is no different from all the others, therefore Apple doesn't deserve any less contempt from us.
I still like their hardware. But let’s not pretend that there is any part of Trump’s body that he won’t kiss and sell out his customers for. If Trump asked Cook to put a backdoor in iPhones or impose tariffs on Apple, Cook would do it in a minute
Cook couldn't personally put that backdoor in himself though. There would (presumably) be Apple employees who would blow the whistle if they received such a command.
In today’s market? You see how many tech workers have shut up about protesting every little thing inside large companies with all of the layoffs happening?
I have been cocky for 30 heads with the thought that I could always find a job quickly - and have even in 2023 (3 offers within 2 weeks) after being Amazoned and in 2024 (just replied to one recruiter the day after a layoff). But even I shut up and keep my head down these days. As long as we ain’t killing kids, I am not saying anything.
That's a good point. I'm lucky enough to be self employed, and I tell myself that if I were ever in the position to blow the whistle at a corporate or government job I'd do it in a heartbeat. But what we tell ourselves in our head and what we do when our family's livelihood is on the line aren't always the same.
Even that level of non-involvement is getting increasingly difficult with anything Big Tech given their IDF involvement, although Apple might just be a rare exception.
I claim bs at this whole apple privacy thing, nothing but propaganda.
Two years ago I was locked out of my MacBook pro.
Then I just booted in some recovery mode and just..reset the password!?
Sure macos logged me off from (most) apps and website, but every single file was there unencrypted!
I swear people that keep boasting that whole apple privacy thing have absolutely no clue what they are talking about, nothing short of tech illiterate charlatans. But God the propaganda works.
Apple has since confirmed in a statement provided to Ars that the US federal government “prohibited” the company “from sharing any information,” but now that Wyden has outed the feds, Apple has updated its transparency reporting and will “detail these kinds of requests” in a separate section on push notifications in its next report.
We know now that it was all marketing talk. Apple didn’t like Meta so they spun a bunch of obstacles. Apple has and would use your data for ads, models and anything that keeps the shareholders happy. And we don’t know the half of the story where as a US corp, they’re technically obliged to share data from the not-E2EE iCloud syncs of every iPhone.
> "First of all, one should use Indian or Ceylonese tea. China tea has virtues which are not to be despised nowadays—it is economical, and one can drink it without milk—but there is not much stimulation in it. One does not feel wiser, braver or more optimistic after drinking it. Anyone who has used that comforting phrase ‘a nice cup of tea’ invariably means Indian tea."
These are some of the worst tea-making tip I've ever seen. I get that taste is subjective and all, but come on... This is like saying:
"Al Pastor street taco in Mexico has its virtues - it is economical, and one can eat it without salsa - but there is not much stimulation in it. One does not feel wiser, braver or more optimistic after eating it. Anyone who has used that comforting phrase 'a great taco' invariably means Taco Bells"
CTC tea [1] is inferior in quality. They are mass-produced, brews quick, and tastes way too strong (hence the milk). Tea was invented in China and tea culture goes back thousands of years. India and Sri Lanka only started producing tea in the mid 1800s. Robert Fortune literally dressed up as a Chinese merchant, snuck into some rural village in Fujian, and smuggled some teas back so the British East India Company can cultivate it in and around India.
He's writing from a certain time, place, and culture, in reference to the teas that were available to him at that time. I'm not sure what you're arguing - that black tea didn't subjectively make him feel wiser, braver or more optimistic? And his tips for making black tea are perfectly sound.
If I remember correctly, he actually wrote that essay because there was a world event that his compatriots were getting outraged about, and this was his way of being provocative by not covering it. But I may have that wrong.
Of course software can affect the physical world: Google Maps changes traffic patterns; DoorDash teleports takeoff food right to my doorstep; the weather app alters how people dress. This list is un-ending. But these effects are always second-order. Humans are always there in the background bridging the gap between bits and atoms (underpaid delivery drivers in the case of doordash).
The more interesting question is whether AI can __directly__ impact the physical world with robotics. Gemini can wax poetic about optimizing fertilizers usage, grid spacing for best cross-pollination, the optimum temperature, timing, watering frequency of growing corn, but can it actually go to Home Depot, purchase corn seeds, ... (long sequence of tasks) ..., nurture it for months until there's corn in my backyard? Each task within the (long sequence of tasks) is "making PB&J sandwich" [1] level of difficulty. Can AI generalize?
As is, LLMs are better positioned to replace decision-makers than the workers actually getting stuff done.
I think the distinction between "directly" and "indirectly" affecting the world is meaningless. Say you're an Uber driver. What does the actual work? The car. You don't take people from A to B, your car does. You don't burn a thousand calories per mile, your car does.
Yet you get credited for all that work, because a car's ability to move people isn't special compared to your ability to operate it without running people over. Similarly, your ability to buy things from a store isn't special compared to an AI's ability to design a hydroponics farm or fusion reactor or whatever out of those things. Yes, you can do things the AI can't, but on the other hand, your car can do things you can't.
All this talk about "doing things in the physical world" is just another goalpost moving, and a really dumb one at that.
But isn't living in a stable society, where everyone can find employment, achieve some form of financial security, and not be ravaged by endless rounds of layoffs, more desirable than having net productive co-workers?
I’ll make sure to pour one out in memory of all the lamplighters, the stable hands, night soil collectors, and coopers that no longer can find employment these days. These arguments were had 150 years ago with the advent of the railroad, with electricity, with factories and textiles, even if you don’t have net productive coworkers, if there’s a more productive way to do things, you’ll go out of business and be supplanted. Short of absolutely tyrannical top down control, which would make everyone as a whole objectively poorer, how would this ever be prevented?
The difference is that back then we were talking a few jobs here and there. Now we are talking about the majority of work being automated, from accountancy to zoo keeping, and very little in the way of new jobs coming in to replace them.
By the way stable hands and night soil collectors are still around. Just a bit harder to find. We used to have a septic tank that had to be emptied by workmen every so often. Pretty much the same.
Whereas a government's responsibility is to ensure peace and prosperity for as many of its citizens as possible. These things will be at odds when increased profits for companies no longer coincides with increased employment.
Yes, believe it or not some of still believe in this and vote accordingly. Aspirational, as it has always been, with the understanding that we will always fall short.
No, not Sweden where 40% of the population have been employed in some way by the Wallenberg family and its corporations in recent times. The other Nordic countries are not as egalitarian as they are presented either.
I don't see how AI can bring about 10%+ annual economic growth, let alone infinite abundance, without somehow crossing the bit-to-atom interface. Without a breakthrough in general-purpose robotics - which feels decades away - agents will just be confined to optimizing B2B SaaS. Human utility is rooted in the physical environment. I find digital abundance incredibly uninspiring.
I'm mostly a fan of AI coding tools, but I think you're basically right about this.
I think we'll see more specialized models for narrow tasks (think AlphaFold for other challenges in drug discovery, for example) as well, but those will feel like individual, costly, high impact discoveries rather than just generic "AI".
Our world is human-shaped and ultimately people who talk of "AGI" secretly mean an artificial human.
I believe that "intelligence", the way the word is actually used by people, really just means "skillful information processing in pursuit of individual human desires".
As such, it will never be "solved" in any other way than to build an artificial human.
No, when you bring in the genetic algorithm (something LLM AI can be adjacent to by the scale of information it deals in) you can go beyond human intelligence. I work with GA coding tools pretty regularly. Instead of prompting it becomes all about devising ingenious fitness functions, while not having to care if they're contradictory.
If superhuman intelligence is solved it'll be in the form of building a more healthy society (or, if you like, a society that can outcompete other societies). We've already seen this sort of thing by accident and we're currently seeing extensive efforts to attack and undermine societies through exploiting human intelligence.
To a genetic algorithm techie that is actually one way to spur the algorithm to making better societies, not worse ones: challenge it harder. I guess we'll see if that translates to life out here in the wild, because the challenge is real.
The troubling thing here is: what is a "better" society? As you said, it's just the one that outcompetes the other societies on the globe. We'd like to believe such a thing is an egalitarian "healthy" liberal society, but it's just as likely to be some form of enslaved/boot stomping on face society. Some think people won't accept this, but given human history I'm pretty sure they will. I think these sorts of societies are more of a local minima, but they only need to grant enough of a short term boost to unseat the other major powers. Once competition is out of the way they'll probably survive as a bloated mess for quite some time. The price of entry is so high they won't have to worry about being unseated by competition unless they really screw the pooch. I think this is the troubling conclusion a lot of people, including those in power, are reaching.
It's worth thinking about, but why hasn't this already happened? Or maybe it already has, and if so, what about AI specifically is it that will make it suddenly much worse?
We've had plenty of examples of all those things, over and over, throughout history. Nothing's really new. Societies that get into faceboot territory run afoul of what's already known (there's apparently a CIA handbook to this effect that's being largely ignored in modern America): assert hard rather than soft power and you generate determined and desperate resistance more than you undermine it. That's being demonstrated in countless places right now.
I'm arguing that the egalatarian 'lift my lamp beside the golden door' society is a cheat code for producing the variety and ferment that makes everybody frustrated and unhappy but producing with wild abandon. As a society this tactic dominates the hell out of would-be ethnostates and dictatorships, which seems to also be a natural tendency of humans. They are interested in not being challenged, in those like them not being challenged. Comfortable for those fortunate individuals, hopelessly suboptimal for the society they're in.
The rallying cry of 'NO New York Cities! Only sundown towns where if you don't look right you are killed and nobody ever knows about it!' might please some people (who have never been anywhere near those evil cities) but it just goes to show that many people have unhealthy wishes that are bad for them and the societies they're in.
> If superhuman intelligence is solved it'll be in the form of building a more healthy society (or, if you like, a society that can outcompete other societies).
Maybe so, but the point I'm trying to make is this needs to look nothing like sci-fi ASI fantasies, or rather, it won't look and feel like that before we get the humanoid AI robots that the GP mentioned.
You can have humans or human institutions using more or less specialized tools that together enable the system to act much more intelligently.
There doesn't need to be a single system that individually behaves like a god - that's a misconception that comes from believing that intelligence is something like a computational soul, where if you just have more of it you'll eventually end up with a demigod.
For me, cafes are essentially libraries; except cafes actually have reasonable opening hours. I can't get work done at home (too many distractions), so I switch up my environment to one where I am forced to work.
Go to any coffee shop in Palo Alto and Menlo Park, and you're bound to see students and tech workers sitting alone, typing away on their laptops. Even in LA, you'll see people editing videos and posting stuff on social media.
I think it's perhaps very American to go to cafes alone, especially if you are going there to get work done. Anecdotally, I had a French tennis partner back in 2022. One time, after our match, we went to a neighborhood cafe to chat and talk about life. He remarked to me how strange and foreign it is that Americans work so hard. He finds it stupid, even off-putting, that people work in cafes, which to him is a place to relax and socialize. He used slightly stronger language than stupid, so I didn't have the heart to tell him I plan to work in a cafe later that day. Maybe it's just a cultural thing.
Being alone in cafes is common and normal in Europe too. So is working there. It's just a nice break from being at home, and often your only option on the road.
I envy that. Any socialization after college needs to be deliberate and planned. Be it a small friend gathering, a scheduled meetup, or some organizational third place like a club, church, concert, etc. Note that all of those are paid experiences (even church, if you argue about being pressured to pay tithes and offerings).
If you're not into bar life, it's not that easy to just have spontaneous conversion here. Any invasion of space is seen as odd at best and threatening at worst. Even for neighbors.
reply