For US government contracts that secret echelon is called the lowest bidder lol

Which just also shows why this is a very anti consumer move. Its trying to artifically push people to by new hardware because there hasn’t been significant enough changes to really warrant it. This then means more people who might have swapped off of windows to keep their existing hardware might end up having to upgrade then stick with their familiar windows platform so that the ai bubble can continue. Its completely fucked up

And how many motherboards have the same amount of m.2 slots as they do sata slots? And what generation? So now I need new ram which is inflated to high hell, a new motherboard and cpu to increase storage on my gaming rig? Its not like games are small these days I like to keep most games i have installed and that takes multiple terabytes of storage that is cheaper to do via sata ssds… this is clearly anti consumer and done purely to push people to newer systems in the hope people stay with windows instead of swapping to linux. Its being done to keep the ai bubble going…

Use desktop mode on the broswer and then just use regular screen sharing. Its how I block ads on prime video since i can still use ad block on firefox and just stream to my tv instead of using the native app on the tv with ads. I assume the same thing will work with Netflix as well. Worst case if you have a samsung device use dex to stream the device to the tv open a browser with ad block and then watch the show. Or alternarively just pirate the content and forget about the shitty streaming services

We are already in 1984, if anything AI allows others to make more human music because they dont need to find bands, fund studio time just to get a song to match the lyrics they wrote.

Not really they love having the human front to the ghost writers they employ today to make you feel like you connect to the artist so when they push brand deals and marketing you buy the products they made deals with. This if anything frees those ghost writers to actually make their own music without the shackles of a corporation breathing down their neck.

This is already what people who make good AI music do today, they can then also feed in the lyrics they wrote to have the AI sing/rap. Just because some people will make uninspired music from it doesnt mean thats all it can do. Its just another tool that helps people express themselves. It literally takes effort to make AI sound good, its just in a different form than the effort needed to sing or play an instrument and allows those who might not have the ability to sing or play an outlet to still create music others enjoy and find inspiration in.

Ah yes the story written by ghost writers so the marketable front “artist” for the label can sell brand deals and ads when that “artist” goes on tour and does interviews. People using AI can still write their own lyrics and make music based on the same inspirations you say makes real music. If anything this frees the ghost writers who might not have a great voice or ability to play instruments well but has phenomenon lyricism can plan a good musical set to make their own albums and be free from the oppressive labels.

If the author does not want to spend time learning and doing, then I don’t want to spend time checking whatever they asked an AI to do.

Not everyone has the luxury to spend time learning those skill sets. Should the single parent who had a dream to make art who is getting crushed by capitalism, works 3 jobs to make ends meet and literally doesnt have time to learn there passion without starving not also deserve to be able to express themselves? What do you want only the privileged rich people who have time to dedicate large portions of their life without impact on their finances to be the only ones putting out art? How does someone like Taylor swift who’s whole career came about because her parents could spend so much money on getting her training and paying for studio time in some of the most expensive studios more deserving of getting to make art because of circumstances most people dont have the opportunity to participate in?

Lower barrier of entry for profit-seeking bullshitters

Oh no poor people might be able to make money off of art instead of only massive corporations that effectively already killed the human spirit in art already. Oh no someone who may have gone to school for art so they can express themselves may no longer be able to get a job at an ad company where their love for art gets extinguished as they have to constantly make soulless logos for mega corps based on advise from advertising psychologist who define what will tingle peoples brain more to make them want to consume more.

The problem your scared about already happens but is dressed up as human expression today by pr departments because people do it. If anything AI art would counter that because now more people will be producing things for the sole reason of expressing themselves instead of needing to take a soul crushing job eroding the expression of their craft for a corporation to make up for the years of debt they incurred by going to school to follow their passion only to find out the field they went into is a farce.

Oh, there’s also the problem of all the deepfakes that people WILL believe, whatever the intent was: revenge porn, political manipulation, trolling.

People believe anything already, people believed random hearsay in the past. The only counter for any type of manipulation like this whether being based in deep fakes or just someone spewing nonsense on a pod cast is critical thinking skills. AI doesnt change that one bit, if someone doesnt want to think critically about something they wont, they don’t need AI today to practice cognitive dissonance and blocking AI wont stop that behavior only focusing on education and critical thinking skills will.

Do you think AI music or art is just people putting random words into a prompt to get an output? AI music still allows people to feed their own lyrics into the output so there can still be plenty of layers to the lyrics, people refine the beats and rhythms to match what they are feeling so emotion still comes through. People who make good AI art use it as a base and mash it up, refine prompts and find what matches what they feel, they are just using a different brush than people in the past. It also allows more people to participate in art than we have had in the past, aside from the environmental impacts of AI which are a problem, use of AI in art is just another tool for expression. Its good which means even the slop ends uo looking and sounding better than the non ai slop counterparts but that doesnt detract from the fact people put emotion and thought into making good art even if they incorporate AI into their workflow to do so.

The machines arent making art in a vacuum they take human input and thus are still human directed art. Do you realize how many “artists” use ghost writers? All ai does is allow those ghost writers to now produce their music without needing some PR tool from a big label to pretend to write the music and sell it. All AI art really does is break the vail that any of the art for the past few decades was actually art and not just pr and marketing from big corporations. Now instead of people getting mad at the industries that caused all that enshitification they are taking it out on people who are using tools to express themselves in ways they may not have had raw the musical or artistic skills to do so in the past. Now that doesnt solve the energy consumption issues that arise with AI which is a big issue but use of AI itself is not whats eroding the human spirit in art, that was done by corporations turning art into another commodity to exploit. With the way capitalism is that erosion of human spirit has and will continue to happen with or without AI.

I think they are trying to say trickle down can work at lower levels of class, i.e. giving money to the middle class will filter a little bit down to the lower classes. But I still doubt that in our current world, like maybe IF there were more small business and IF those businesses would pay their employees more given more profit coming then maybe but one there is a lack of small businesses for common commodities in a lot of regions, and two those small business owners tend to act like corpos now and my assumption is they would hoard that increased profit especially with how shit the economy has gotten. With a lack of stability in todays economy even the most well intentioned small business owners operating costs could swing way too high at a whim. So even for them saving extra profit as a rainy day fund to keep their business alive in those economic down swings would be crucial to staying afloat. Which again just kinda negates the premise of trickle down working at any level even more.

All of this just further points out the only solution is trickle up as giving a poor person money will always circulate upwards. With that, now they can afford more of life’s necessities and even some luxuries once they can become comfortable. All of which will filter into profits for businesses and spur the economy, create more jobs, etc. Its ridiculous that such common sense seems devoid from policy, like all these companies could do so much better without all this greed. I bet in the long run the savings from not needing to fund bunkers, private protection, bullet proof vehicles, enhanced security, etc. in addition to the economic boom of people being able to actually afford to buy things if the uber wealthy just didnt try to act like parasites would pale in comparison to what they get by from a 8-10% break on these taxes in the short term before the economy slowly grinds to a halt and any profit they got starts slowly dissipating more and more as no one can afford to buy anything.

No country is publicizing what checks they do for a high level security clearance check unless they want to give bad actors and easy way to beat their checks. What country is this and whats the exact law you are referencing? If you can provide me direct evidence for that I’ll eat my words but I think you are misunderstanding something if im honest.

I mean maybe if they have an investigation and they want to use that information as evidence sure that would be illegal to use but for background checks any of that information is fair game if they are able to get it. Like if your terms of service specifically say they wont give any information out for any reason, maybe you can sue them if you can prove they got the information with your name attached directly instead of it being sold after being anonymized in aggregate then another company/data broker aggregating other data on you to infer who’s data belongs to who with device footprints then selling that to the government as a service which i mean good luck. But most likely the terms you sign say they will hand over data for criminal investigations or matters of national security to government entities which they can state background checks for high level clearance positions is a matter of national security.

I mean, technically, you could containerize all the elements you need. Firewall, load balancers, identity management, etc. but at that point, you are creating your companies own version of the cloud services that are generally one of the big draws to the cloud already since you aren’t directly developing and maintaining those systems anymore. Once you have made “aws lite” in container form, you can then deploy that directly to the compute instances on any cloud provider. But now you need to maintain everything like you were running on prem (i.e. more developers and network engineers again) all while paying a pretty penny to multiple cloud providers and now that your infrastructure containers need to run 24/7 instead of only having your compute resources being ran on demand your costs will skyrocket so at that point why not just move back to on prem hosting.

I mean I love linux but the biggest hurdle is that certain software/games just aren’t compatible. I use my pc for sim racing in vr a lot. With no ability to use iracing or my vr in linux I’m stuck. While I hate Windows and would prefer to use linux, I’m not going to abandon my hobby and all the equipment I have for it just to use an os I prefer. Throughout many different domains of use for a computer their are many different variations of stories like mine. Until the software and games people use can be supported in the linux ecosystem ‘good enough’ never happens. Like for basic computer use linux is already better than good enough its fantastic, it just works has intuitive user interfaces the bones of the OS are there. The problem is that many companies and software providers just aren’t filling the gap that is the needs beyond basic web browsing, media playback and, playing older/indie games without anticheat. Without the substance people expect it doesnt matter how good the bones of the system are they are gonna be trapped in windows and linux will be stuck as the outcast programmers and enthusiasts use while knowing they have to still use windows for the niche use cases they have. And time and time again, eventually running 2 systems gets tiring and linix use/adoption slows back down again.

Out of curiosity, what’s the electricity cost per month with your server running 24/7 now? Or do you schedule down time when its not in use. With all the datacenters poping up, electricity rates have gone through the roof, so looking at that, do you end up saving more still through this route?

The banks can also technically short the stock as well once the buyout was public, knowing how shit the deal was they can make money on the downside at the expense of all the pensions, 401ks etc that had initially bought the stock. There also isnt a limit that prevents shorting the stock more than shares are in existence. Hence why the gamestop situation was close to breaking the whole stock market a few years back when they started turning everything around for the companies bottom line. With the stock now able to make it think a bout a billion more shares over time the out for the short side has been sort of given without completely nuking the market. But as when the shares are diluted is up to the board it allows gamestop to take advantage of the short side to create more cash on hand for themselves threw timing their market offerings to coincide with when swaps that are housing those shorts come due. In the toys r us case the executives and board were happy to take their golden parachute from the buyout and let ordinary people’s pensions and 401ks carry the bag for them in the form of the stock going to zero and eventually being delisted from the market.

Yeah and first it was most of the views were definitely going down because of restricted mode despite that it was a feature used by a like a fraction of a percent of users and was over a decade old. None of the specific information getting parroted around has actually made any sense. Less people watching on desktop can also track with less people actually owning desktops or using them to watch YouTube, couple that with the fact they just got a drop of viewership and now they cant accept the common demonanator being that their videos are just getting less views

Damn I guess someone has a transparent browser window and didnt realize their desktop could be seen in the screen shot lol good eyes