Aaaaanyway, because Bari Weiss is incompetent she didn't realize she was only spiking the story in the US. It aired in Canada and it's on the Internet where anyone can check it against what she eventually chooses to run in the US.
@snarkyrobot.bsky.social comments:
The only good thing about the people who want big important jobs they don’t know how to do is that they don’t know how to do those jobs and don’t inspire loyalty in the people who do.
Think about this: CBS had an option/requirement to provide this to Global-TV and nobody, NOBODY told Bari about it.
That doesn’t just happen! There are likely long-standing contracts in place that made it happen. The lawyers knew. The producers knew. Everyone involved in the reporting knows where their work is being aired, I imagine. And they followed the order to kill it on CBS…and refused to proactively do more
And now every reporter at every other outlet can go minute by minute and see what was cut and what was added. Any verbiage changes to make them look worse. Every single edit is now a potential story, a potential scandal. Her fingerprints will be all over the scale if she dares to put her thumb there
It’s vindictive and glorious. It’s the perfect form of malicious compliance. Because a real head of news who wasn’t spending their day in the worst group chats imaginable would know this could happen.
And because she only cares about the title and power, learning the job was treated as beneath her.
And, ultimately, this technology simply isn’t going away. You can rage against this literal machine all you like, it will be in use.
GenAI is a bubble, it is going to burst, and that is going to have a significant impact on its viability going forward.
It is possible that some limited uses of genAI, like the ones mentioned in this story, will continue. But it is not inevitable. Pretending that a short-term trend is a 100% reliable predictor of where technology is headed in the future is silly.
And it's not just about Trump, or Republicans or Democrats. It's about powerful men (and it is almost entirely men, with a few exceptions like Ghislaine Maxwell) acting with impunity. Politicians, royals, Ivy League professors, Fortune 500 executives. Powerful men flaunting their power, their ability to do as they please without consequence.
If we're going to reckon with this, really reckon with it -- and I have my doubts -- it's going to mean some very big changes.
Maybe. But I'm not so sure this is really about the Epstein files.
I think that, by and large, people are really fucking unhappy with the way things are going right now, including a whole lot of people who voted for Trump.
But Trump voters won't admit, even to themselves, that this is exactly what they voted for; they have to make excuses, come up with some reason they were tricked, that Trump isn't who they thought he was or his policies aren't what they thought they were (even though they absolutely fucking are).
Trump's association with Epstein has been a major outlet for those excuses, but if it weren't that I think they'd find something else.
I agree with you that these people legitimately do not care that Donald Trump is a pedophile and that, with the exact same information but different circumstances, they'd be defending him. But I think that if the economy were better, most of them would be defending him even now.
Both of those posts attracted reply-guys eager to assure me that because my statements aren't true in 100% of all cases therefore I'm wrong. Like they can't tell the difference between conversational English and a mathematical proof or something.
The infuriating thing is that generative AI does have some practical uses (not fancy autocomplete or shitty image generation) and when the bubble bursts nobody's going to distinguish between the valuable uses and the stupid ones, nobody's going to want to invest in anything ML-shaped.
Firefox is in a separate category because it's not a widely-used product like Windows or Google.
Firefox's problem isn't that it's trying to justify AI investment by forcing it on existing customers. Firefox's problem is that management thinks its userbase is small because it doesn't imitate Chrome hard enough, instead of understanding that being different from Chrome is the only reason it has any userbase at all.
Hell, Gemini too for that matter.
Two of your three examples are cases where companies with a large existing userbase have added AI to their products, turned on by default.
That's not evidence that people want genAI, dude. It's evidence that the only way Big Tech can get most people to use it is to force them to.
Eh. Doomers are real, but Tim's pulling some rhetorical sleight-of-hand here and lumping legitimate concerns about workers being replaced by AI with TESCREAL fantasies.
And then acknowledging a couple of paragraphs later that yeah okay some workers are going to be replaced with AI.
“AI-controlled opponents” have existed since the days of Street Fighter II, if not further back than even that.
I'd describe the algorithms that determine the ghosts' behavior in Pac-Man as AI.
Hell, electronic chess sets are a primitive form of AI.
Similarly, I've seen people talk about using genAI to generate maps, and that's another example of something we've been doing for generations with much more efficient algorithms. Procedurally-generated layouts are not a new concept! That's what the entire Roguelike genre is, and has been for 45 years!
The people who knew who Charlie Kirk was, regardless of their political affiliation, also knew he wasn’t deserving of being lionized as “the current-day MLK” or whatever.
Well, not Ezra Klein.
The legacy of Charlie Kirk is a lot like that of Rush Limbaugh, in a way. Both men spewed hate every chance they could. Both men influenced conservative thought to some degree. And both men’s post-death cultural legacies amounted to someone farting in a bathroom, in that nothing they did in their lives mattered to culture in general and was largely forgotten about after all the obituaries were done and over with.
I never hear anybody talk about Limbaugh anymore, but I'd say his legacy is pretty secure. It's a deeply shitty legacy, but a significant one. The reason he was so insignificant by the end is that he spawned so many imitators -- every far-right asshole on AM radio or cable TV is following the trail he blazed.
Aaaaanyway, because Bari Weiss is incompetent she didn't realize she was only spiking the story in the US. It aired in Canada and it's on the Internet where anyone can check it against what she eventually chooses to run in the US. @snarkyrobot.bsky.social comments:
(the italics indicate sarcasm)
I mean the part where they didn't do it for the previous government is pretty fucking different.
And it's not just about Trump, or Republicans or Democrats. It's about powerful men (and it is almost entirely men, with a few exceptions like Ghislaine Maxwell) acting with impunity. Politicians, royals, Ivy League professors, Fortune 500 executives. Powerful men flaunting their power, their ability to do as they please without consequence. If we're going to reckon with this, really reckon with it -- and I have my doubts -- it's going to mean some very big changes.
Ministry? No. This is private business willingly acting as an arm of the government.
Maybe. But I'm not so sure this is really about the Epstein files. I think that, by and large, people are really fucking unhappy with the way things are going right now, including a whole lot of people who voted for Trump. But Trump voters won't admit, even to themselves, that this is exactly what they voted for; they have to make excuses, come up with some reason they were tricked, that Trump isn't who they thought he was or his policies aren't what they thought they were (even though they absolutely fucking are). Trump's association with Epstein has been a major outlet for those excuses, but if it weren't that I think they'd find something else. I agree with you that these people legitimately do not care that Donald Trump is a pedophile and that, with the exact same information but different circumstances, they'd be defending him. But I think that if the economy were better, most of them would be defending him even now.
Both of those posts attracted reply-guys eager to assure me that because my statements aren't true in 100% of all cases therefore I'm wrong. Like they can't tell the difference between conversational English and a mathematical proof or something.
Oh hey, one more for now: Microsoft Scales Back AI Goals Because Almost Nobody Is Using Copilot
Well, that'll make for some good evidence in court if he decides to go after Disney again.
The infuriating thing is that generative AI does have some practical uses (not fancy autocomplete or shitty image generation) and when the bubble bursts nobody's going to distinguish between the valuable uses and the stupid ones, nobody's going to want to invest in anything ML-shaped.
Here's a guide from last month that names a few: How to Disable All the AI Features in Firefox Web Browser More significantly, their new CEO announced plans to turn Firefox into an "AI browser" yesterday. Anyway yeah I've already switched my main devices to Waterfox, Librewolf, or Fennec, but I'm looking into switching over the remaining devices that I haven't.
Firefox is in a separate category because it's not a widely-used product like Windows or Google. Firefox's problem isn't that it's trying to justify AI investment by forcing it on existing customers. Firefox's problem is that management thinks its userbase is small because it doesn't imitate Chrome hard enough, instead of understanding that being different from Chrome is the only reason it has any userbase at all.
Hell, Gemini too for that matter. Two of your three examples are cases where companies with a large existing userbase have added AI to their products, turned on by default. That's not evidence that people want genAI, dude. It's evidence that the only way Big Tech can get most people to use it is to force them to.
Also, the problem isn't that AI costs too much, it's that people fucking don't want it.
Eh. Doomers are real, but Tim's pulling some rhetorical sleight-of-hand here and lumping legitimate concerns about workers being replaced by AI with TESCREAL fantasies. And then acknowledging a couple of paragraphs later that yeah okay some workers are going to be replaced with AI.