Not a huge fan of Star Wars movies, but I liked the movie. One of the better ones IMHO.

But: I had no idea it was out. I missed every single piece of marketing or announcement. If it weren’t for a friend who spontaneously invited me, this post would be the first time I heard of the movie.

So just saying: might be the marketing was shit? Cause the movie ain’t. Or nobody has money for movies, sure, not denying the economy is in shambles.

Also works the other way around.

I’ve got a friend from Germany with a Tesla and keeps complaining about it. Shoddy work, many pieces that are not aligned properly, vibrate a certain speeds etc. “Wouldn’t happen in a German car.” Yet the acceleration and some of the more advanced features still make it fun to drive. Tesla outperforms by looking new and advanced while cutting corners with the basics.

China would ask “why not?” and “who’s gonna stop us?”

Still shit for the SW engineer job market.

Gömmer?

I was looking for a tech positive outlook and found solarpunk for myself. Since then I’ve learned a lot that doesn’t have to do with tech, but also on the topic of how technology can empower people. It helps I was already an environmentalist before.

I started looking a lot more into contributing to open source projects. I started looking into decentralized networks like lora radios. I self host a lot more. Got rid of Google on my phone…

Biggest issue is the job. With my attitude change my well paid corporate tech job has become soul sucking.

They don’t care about HW. HW is just a “distribution line” for their software. They care more about people using their software and giving them data. Most Android phones sold are not Google’s Pixels but third party vendors. If a particular device doesn’t sell well they won’t care as ling as the Google ecosystem gets strengthend.

If you don’t differentiate and keep the two in the same pot you won’t be able to fund research into the useful stuff. It’s true that consumer hype and research funding decisions are not the same, but they may be indirectly linked. A public fund may fear public outrage if it continues funding X millions of AI projects even if they’re not LLM related.

So the reputation damage may affects viable, net positive applications.

… or to get all these cupcake recipes. If all that matters not to get fired is active agents…

Sounds to me they will be charging more for their services. Or do I need to purposely misunderstand the statement to be useless?

I think this idea was floated and partially implemented by Uber already.

People need to realize that it doesn’t need to be profitable. Public transportation is a service with many beneficial side effects and efficiencies. The money you lose providing the service to the public reduces other costs. This is why corporations can’t and shouldn’t take it over.

Just to be clear: it doesn’t need to be free. But it could “lose” money.

Oh we have to do exactly that, but my point is that just electrifying the cars is far from enough. We need fewer cars, not just have them be electric.

However the real transformation we gotta do is to move to more public transportation (which can also be electrified) but these budgets are all gone under Trump.

Bought the Fairphone with e/OS.

Problem is many see Android equivalent with Samsung and Samsung is the worst when it comes to customize your HW because they really lock down their shit.

For my phone I just bought a new battery after many years of use and it’s back to working as if it’s new. Before that I had a Shift phone (with Google, I think) which allowed me to replace the camera module once the autofocus in the camera broke.

Not sure if I’m old fashioned, but I like to own my devices and modify them if I please.

My wife would hate it, if I were no longer reachable.

No. I haven’t used Google apps on my phone for years already. That includes Google Play Services and the Play Store. Most apps are open source and I’m self hosting my media.

We gotta claw this shit back.

There’s stiff competition. Good for the consumer.

It’s not a defense of the LLM. They are bad tools: LLMs can be unpredictable and if you hand them a nuke they may trigger it for whatever reason, even harmless and unrelated ones.

So don’t hand them a nuke, idiots.

The guy betting on this even ran in to try and make Trump dance by shooting the ground under his feet like they did in old Western movies, but that didn’t work out either.

Not mentioned in the article but Gemini is obviously developed by the DeepMind teams, among many other things.