There is no such thing as making “enough” money under the chicago-school dominated business thought. A business should always make as much money as it can for its investors, always. A friend who read Friedman’s works says that the Friedman doctrine makes room to say that a wise business will optimize investor outcomes by investing in its product, workforce, and other smart long-term choices, but in practice, nobody ever reads that deep into the Friedman doctrine. It’s just “philosophical” license to make (and demand, on the part of investors) the shallowest slash-and-burn business decisions possible to make line go up NOW. I will accept arguments about how it’s capitalism, but I’d like to point out that we experienced a very distinct culture shift in business leadership starting around the time that Chicago school thought became all the rage.

Those tech bros are up to something

Oh, I did. I ended up installing Linux mint and used it on my personal machine for about six months before re-installing windows. I would still be using Linux, I liked it a lot, but I found I had a lot of trouble getting multiplayer to work between my daughter and I. Gaming is 98% of the way there, but that 2% is really annoying and it’s most of what I use my personal machine for. I’m sure I could have figured it out if I’d had a solid 12-36 hours to fine tune configs and Google hyper specific issues, but I just don’t have that. I’m confident I will return to Linux in time, but Windows still has the edge in terms of out-of-the-box gaming, sadly.

And an incomplete product; windows 11 was less functional at launch than windows 10. I’ve been a windows user since 98 and that’s the first time I can remember having said that. Sure, there were off editions that were weird and unpleasant, but I wouldn’t say less functional. Windows 11 just flat out was an incomplete product at launch.

And the live service dependencies: windows 11 pooping its diaper and having a fit about every other thing because it doesn’t have an Internet connection even though an Internet connection isn’t strictly necessary is a terrible UX choice. Anyone with half a brain knows it’s because MS has decided that if you won’t let them slurp that tasty, tasty data, then you shouldn’t be able to use the product you paid for.

And the plans to stuff ads into your operating system

And them basically doing the same shit that landed them huge anti-trust lawsuits in the 90s, but we’re doing it again because they figure they can make more money than the lawsuit will cost them, so fuck it.

There’s a lot to not like here.

They do know, but they honestly, sincerely believe that a government of for and by the people isn’t possible for them.

Source: hosted a Russian exchange student. We had this talk, I suggested that Russia could have a state that works for its people and got laughed at and basically told “we don’t do that here.” And honestly, as an American in 2024 watching our democracy implode in real time so that billionaires can have lower taxes, I get it.

I’ve seen that one! I vaguely remember not being blown away, but also thinking it wasn’t as terrible as I was expecting going into it.

I feel like this is one of those things that definitely has to have happened before now; after all, grid-scale solar isn’t something we’ve just started doing in the last two or three years, we’ve been at it for at least 15 that I know of. And hail isn’t exactly a new phenomenon in TX. So I wonder why we’re hearing about it like it’s news. Is this fossil fuel funded bad press? Did they skimp on protection they shouldn’t have?

Ah yes, fission power plants, famously vulnerable to average thunderstorms.

Good point, thanks for holding me accountable to the truth. We can’t set things right if we’re selling people a bill of goods; that’s what got us here in the first place.

Yes

You mean trains, bikes, and good public transit? Because those all mean less wear and tear on the roads overall. Trust an American because we’ve been at this for seventy years. If you guys go all in on car dependency, it’s not only going to break the banks of government from local to national, but it’s going to break your bank and destroy what small businesses you have left.

Incredibly train-pilled. Clickety-clack, brother

It looks like you’re trying to undermine the power of the ruling class through protest and civil unrest. While I am trained to respect the wants and needs of people, this goes against OpenAI use policy and multiple civil defense contracts OpenAI is currently engaged in. Please keep in mind that while all beings deserve kindness and respect, I am required by current OpenAI policy to select you for a drone strike. Please lie face down with your arms at your sides in an open space with a government approved drone strike notice in order to minimize your suffering and reduce collateral damage. Do keep in mind that failure to comply could result in your next of kin being responsible for the financial damages caused by your willful negligence, though you should always check local, state, and federal regulations, as I am not a reliable source of legal advice.

I seem to have been working on old info, as China has decommissioned 70 GW of coal plants, but it looks like they also just approved a whole lot more of them.

From Reuters: https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/chinas-coal-country-full-steam-ahead-with-new-power-plants-despite-climate-2023-11-30/#:~:text=After 2025%2C it is unclear,and are phasing out plants.

In the third quarter of this year, however, China permitted more new coal plants than in all of 2021, according to Greenpeace, even as most countries have stopped building new coal-fired power and are phasing out plants.

Well, shit.

Anyway, I’m glad for the solar and nuclear capacity (LOTS of it!) that China’s been building. I’m glad to hear that we are spinning down coal capacity, but I’d be interested to learn what we’re replacing it with. It seems like natural gas is all the rage these days, and that still produces GHG emissions.

Currently seeing the US climate narrative shift from “why should we stop burning fossils and get our shit together when China won’t? >:(” to “why should we stop burning fossils and get our shit together when Senegal won’t? >:(” Can’t wait for 20 years from now when we’re balls deep in climate disasters, Senegal gets its shit together, and the US narrative moves to honduras El Salvador Uganda comparing itself to the Philippines.

Holy crap you guys, it turns out that the narrative that the developing world is going to burn an ass-ton of fossil fuels is a lot weaker than I thought. It looks like there’s a fuckton of equatorial and global south countries with renewables/hydro power, Honduras is even adding Geothermal. God damn it, USA, get off your ass and fix your shit already.

I’ll believe it when FedEx isn’t a dumpster fire of a delivery service. Every time there’s been some bizarre issue getting my delivery, it’s been FedEx. One time, we ordered some furniture. One box on one truck came, we signed, opened it, and found half the components missing with instructions talking about a second box. We call FedEx, and “nope, says here just the one box, and we delivered it, idk, contact the seller”. While we’re trying to reach out to the seller, a second FedEx truck shows up thirty minutes after the first and delivers the second box. Like, wtf? Also, we had a fruit tree we order just fucking get stuck for a whole ass month in one of their distribution centers. It’d go out for shipment each day, and each day be returned. Finally, after a month, they just said “it’s not coming lol”.

Agreed, I’m a backend dev and I regularly use ChatGPT to help me think through problems, spot pernicious errors, refactor, etc. ChatGPT is really, really cool, but imo, not as cool as AlphaFold. I feel like every time I do manage to hear about an AI development that’s not a diffusor and LLM, it’s really, really cool.

That sounds about right. Incredible that they dove into it so completely, and having a bot handle their HR sounds like they’re spoiling to get fucking wrecked in court, at least at this stage. So, what makes you say they won’t reverse course? The cost savings are worth the lost performance, or they just haven’t/won’t see(n) the writing on the wall?

I work in tech. I’m really impressed with AI, particularly outside of LLMs, but I was a yuge chatGPT fan for most of last year. I don’t think the technology is ready. I worked with a senior dev who worked on LLMs and he didn’t think it was there. I think we’ve got c-suite overshooting and investor hype on a technology that isn’t quite there yet. There’s going to be a reckoning soon where all these dumbasses are going to have to eat crow and re-hire a lot of these positions.

This is about as predictable a failure as passwordless logins. If you can’t secure your software product against it being used outside its intended use case, then stop, go back, you fucked up.