1. Innovate, create, and offer it all at sweetheart prices to the public while you rack up debt.
2. Shovel in more money and either buy out or outlast the competition. Become dominant. Lock in your users any which way you can.
3. Enshittify and cash in.
The deals Anthropic, OpenAI, etc. offer won't stay this good much longer. Don't let them lock you in. Failing that, you should budget more for the same service. You're going to need it. Having an open alternative running on your own hardware offers non-negligible peace of mind.
Reddit sold it's data to AI companies for training[1]. They could have refused, but companies like OpenAI likely would have harvested that data anyways. As such, it should not be surprising that AI models are pretty good at generating reddit posts. They were specifically trained to do that.
This is sad, because Reddit remained one of the final bastions of human content on the internet. For several years, appending "site:reddit.com" to a google search was a valid way to get something usable out of a google search. Doing that is still an improvement over raw-dogging Google's ranking algorithms with an unfettered search, but AI slop increasingly is the result.
This is one of my great disappointments in the current rise of AI. LLM's can give good search results when dealing with a topic they've been specifically trained on by human experts, but they're not good at separating human-produced signal from AI slop noise. We've done nothing to prevent a sea of AI slop from being dumped on top all the human signal that's out there. When AI companies enter their enshittification phase and stop investing in expert human trainers, the search results LLM's produce are going to fall off a cliff. Search is a bigger problem than ever.
"Despite this drop in sales, these companies aren’t exactly struggling. Asus, Gigabyte, and ASRock have pivoted some of their production towards AI servers, allowing them to capture some of the investments that hyperscalers are generously pouring into their data centers. But if you’re planning to build a completely new PC from scratch, you might be able to find good deals on motherboard combos, especially as retailers are keen on getting their inventories moving. "
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1. Within a few months, these manufacturers will likely raise desktop mobo and CPU prices with the justification that "volumes are too low".
2. If you're upgrading from an older machine, it likely has a format of RAM that's not compatible with newer boards. Upgrading the cheap parts now and waiting for the expensive bits to come down is simply not an option. It's all or nothing.
Game and application developers should be paying close attention to this. You're used to the average user's system spec going up every year. That's stopped for now. The average memory in new systems may actually retreat!
Nobody is going to come to your funeral and tearfully wail that you had fabulous taste in handbags.
Brands may serve as camouflage when you're trying to conform, but conforming is not an identity. Your identity is based on what you create, not what you consume.
I've absolutely heard eulogies that talk about stylish grandma was up to the very end. The could go on about how she never left the house without looking like she could have been ready for a photo shoot. How she brightened every gathering she was a part of, and even had this marvelous ability to pick the perfect accessories, including -- yes -- handbags.
You seem to be conflating two things that are different -- "fabulous taste", and "conforming/consuming". Putting together and accessorizing an outfit is an act of creation. Looking sharp is usually quite the opposite of conforming.
Remember that when you dress with style, you're brightening the day of the people who look at you, like a walking work of art. Some people look at it as vain, but other people understand it's making the world a more pleasant place, just like good manners or a helping attitude. If you can appreciate the way a tasteful statue adorns a park, you can appreciate the way a tasteful outfit -- handbag included -- does the same.
But, I won't be there to see how they feel about me at my funeral. I'm here now, to see how they treat me. So yes, doing things to conform / be one of the crowd may not be what people remember you for... but it may be what impacts your daily life.
Just an observation. My computer bag is older than most of my coworkers.
This is more likely about sales than customer service.
Canadians get a lot of scam calls from Indian call centres. Whether it's furnace cleaners or somebody calling about a fraudulent amazon package you supposedly ordered, it's usually somebody with an Indian accent. It's reached the point where many people simply hang up if they hear an Indian accent on the line. If you're trying to do telemarketing, possibly using the very same call centres that run these scams, that's a huge barrier.
Telus, for its part, is absolutely shameless in its use of aggressive telemarketing. I'm not surprised that they're one of the first companies to employ this sort of innovation. Unfortunately, this tech will likely spread to the scammers almost immediately, assuming it didn't originate with them.
As an aside, here's one of my favourite games to play with telescammers: Pick one word to say over and over again, but attempt to give it a variety of natural inflections, ambiguities, etc. so that it sounds like you're not just saying one word. Then see how long you can keep the scammer on the line. Start your stopwatch the moment you start talking to a human. I once managed over three minutes with the word, "Fuzzy-cuffs". Every minute of their time you waste could be a minute somebody's Grandma isn't being scammed.
I get a ton of calls from "Telus" and "Rogers" and just hang up on all of them - I have no idea how I'd be supposed to tell which are and which aren't scams.
1. There is a strong anti-QKD bias on HN or, at least, a very vocal few who reliably heckle anyone who discusses it. I get shouted at if I even mention it, and will likely get shouted at for saying this.
2. Should you trust the NSA's recommendations? This is a valid question, now more than ever.
there is a strong anti-QKD bias among experts who understand QKD. It is fun academic concept, but does not solve a real world problem, and does not use techniques available at remotely comparable costs to classical cryptography in the real world, and even if you pay the enormous costs for it, it is trivial for an attacker to completely disrupt your communication in a way that cannot be recovered from (without out-of-band communication, e.g. either sending a courier, or using computational cryptography).
If you hate the NSA that's fine. Nobody in the EU cried foul over the NSA's recommendations though (and the NIST-winning schemes are European). Chinese scholars submitted some fundamentally similar schemes, the Chinese Academy of Sciences have formally recommended lattice-based schemes. While the Chinese (government-run) standardization is only starting, it is a very good bet that they will use a lattice-based scheme.
So, unless you think all of the world's governments (again, including China) are in a massive cabal to allow the NSA specifically to spy on the entire world, #2 is not a particularly valid question.
You don’t have to trust the recommendations, you can analyze the reasoning behind their decisions and argue that. In this case the risk being at the engineering and hardware side and also denial of service. In addition to the trusted relays. Those are valid disputes.
You can argue these exhaustively. They have not done that here. Some of their arguments are complete bunk.
e.g. "Quantum key distribution requires special purpose equipment"
Yes, it requires special equipment. That hasn't deterred some from using it where the added expense is warranted. Commercial QKD systems have been in use for decades. The technology is not currently useful for credit card transactions from your living room, but that doesn't mean it has no applications.
"Since QKD is hardware-based it also lacks flexibility for upgrades or security patches."
This is like arguing that, because your internet connection runs on hardware, nothing can be done to upgrade it or fix security vulnerabilities. If your last-mile connection is copper, as it is for many, there have likely been massive upgrades to its bandwidth and security over the years in the form of changes to what's on either end of the copper. Fiber is the same way. A huge part of QKD protocols is software as well.
When I see points like these, I question the source. They appear to have an agenda, and they certainly have motive. Remember, this is an organization whose business has been spying on its own citizens for decades.
The big hardware issue is that QKD requires point-to-point links between the endpoints that authenticate to one another. That doesn't scale well to more than a handful of endpoints. Even if the endpoint hardware is free.
The big logical issue is that QKD requires a classically-authenticated channel, so you either need a post-quantum signature scheme (at which point why bother with QKD since you can usually use the same computational hardness assumptions to construct a post-quantum key exchange scheme & use AES-GCM or ChaCha20-Poly1305), or you need pre-shared symmetric key material & a Wegman-Carter MAC a la Poly1305 (at which point why bother since you can just use AES-GCM or ChaCha20-Poly1305).
How much time you spend on something has become a metric of success in both gaming and social media.
I occasionally play a perpetually-in-alpha AAA+ game (I won't name it to avoid the flames) that recently asked users to fill out a questionnaire. At no point did it ask how they could make my time spent in the game more fun or awesome. They did explicitly ask, "What can we do to make you spend more time in game?". The focus was clearly on quantity, not quality. This made me realize that, perhaps, I should stop playing this game.
Social media and games use all sorts of dark patterns and engagement bait to keep you clicking, but no concern is given to giving back. There is a complete absence of awareness that the best forms of entertainment enrich and then end. If they were to provide an amazing but brief experience that changes regularly, people would come back again and again. They don't need to spend hours on it every single day to feel they're getting value and justify opening their wallets. Doom-scrolling and spending excessive time grinding in games will only make you feel stressed out and unfulfilled. Customers need to realize this and start voting with their wallets for experiences that end.
We need to turn things around and say, "The light that burns half as long burns twice as bright!"
This is a rather easy fix - we all just need to start leaving games open, save a game, leave it on, go to work, come back load the save and play, or just alt-f4.
I watch a lot of Asian content that used to be practically impossible to watch legally. I actually intentionally used a site that would constantly be "visiting websites" in the background, thousands of sites would be visited in a short time - I don't really see ads on the Internet but when I did, they no longer made any sense - my actual internet activity was a small percentage of my the activity that was tracked.
I have spent hundreds of hours in games I've literally never played.
I learned that lesson nearly two decades ago when I first started as a game dev straight out of school. I had much less free time and began appreciating shorter games with focused experiences that ended relatively quickly (6-8 hrs). This allowed me to experience more variety.
Unfortunately, games keep getting longer and longer with more and more filler. The problem is that many gamers complain loudly when games are short. There are comparatively few games that buck the trend. Now, I play very few games as a result.
But you're right comparatively few games give you "more game" vs "more filler"
For example, I liked factorio because I was always struggling with the "current paradigm" and trying to get to the "next paradigm". For example, coal powered furnaces vs electric furnaces. Or conveyor belts vs trains.
But some games just make themselves longer by just turning the knobs on grinding.
I guess this is like novels vs short stories. And we are seeing the same sorts of things where the story arc is stretched over a long series of books and content is fluffed up a bit.
I try to explain to my young teenage son what he misses by playing a near-perpetual game like Fortnite. In the years that he might spend in that, my equivalent time was put into dozens of games across various categories, and memorable levels, stories and moments.
I miss those days where the measure of success was having someone play the game at all and enjoy it, not how long they might be locked into your product to the detriment of anything else in life.
One tactic against Fortnite has been to say "Yes, you can play on the console this evening, but not Fortnite and instead choose from one of these games." That at least encouraged him to play through Horizon Zero Dawn, as an example.
The game he’s playing is different from what you expect, speaking as a former LoL addict. Fortnite is barely interesting when compared to most other games, but the skill progression and fast pace make it hard to put down.
I think that’s where League gets you as well. New champions. New items. Oops, just redid the skill tree. Oh hey, balance changes. All while you’re trying to go up in rank. It feels like work — and has in fact become a job for some —, but can be incredibly fun and addictive.
I’m glad I’m out of it, and instead get to play my good ol’ Steam collection.
I have ~13,000 hours in DotA (and several thousand in other strategy games, and an erstwhile career in game development).
I'm a noob, the depth of the game is still unfathomable to me.
Every time I sit down to play, the game feels richer, more nuanced. The minds I encounter striving for the same joy of mastery come alive and reveal themselves - you'd be amazed how much personality can come through mouse clicks.
I take better care of myself because if I'm in a bad mood or mindset, I won't be able to play good dota. It's a litmus test for my current mental and emotional state.
Oh, and it keeps my ego in check: If you're playing for yourself, you will lose. It's better to work together on a suboptimal plan than announce you're correct and sabotage the team. Humility complements skill.
I find most other games boring - I don't play for story, I play for depth and nuance of mechanics, for connoisseurship and mastery. Most video games are on-rails; may as well watch netflix for all it demands of you. Having a wide variety of colored candies does not make a diet.
You get out of games what you put in, in my opinion.
> You get out of games what you put in, in my opinion.
Fair, although what you get out of League is a lot of stress and abusive teammates. Of course you also get tons of fun and challenging matches that make it worth it. But…
I have about 8k hours on Factorio, and about half that in Terraria. Another 5k in Civilization V. Now: are they more enjoyable and enriching than a MOBA? Do they have better mechanics and provide more happy memories? Yes on all counts.
Of course we all enjoy different things :) And hey, in DotA you have a really cool sniper!
I've played it with him and can appreciate a lot of things about it. But what he finds exciting (new gimmicks, mostly), I find annoying. I liked my usual guns and favourite haunts!
The most important thing to realize about cryptography is that, for most methods short of a Vernam cipher or quantum key distribution, coded messages need to be treated as published with delay. Cipher text can be archived today and attacked years from now with currently undeveloped, unknown, or unpredicted resources/algorithms. Sure, perhaps nobody archived the cipher text and you're fine. You don't know that for sure. Your methods may be very strong but, if they're not provably immune to attack, you also don't know what the delay before publication truly is. It might be a very long time. It might not.
If you're transmitting credit card info that changes every few years and can be changed on demand, that's no big deal. If you're transmitting information that will remain sensitive for decades, the time to look for methods that would stand up to quantum computing was years ago. However, today is still better than years in the future. At the very least, you can choose what to send in encrypted form over public networks and what not to send.
There are people who will scoff at the notion of quantum computing ever developing to the point where it can make an impact. There are people who scoff at the effort and expense of QKD or good ol' spooks carrying briefcases full of one-time PADs. You might be right to listen to them. You might not be. It's a risk. Whether you, or your organization, can tolerate that risk is entirely dependent on you and yours.
Logs of location data on people are already worth real money. The FBI has admitted to buying it. The companies that do age verification will absolutely be selling that data unless there are severe penalties for doing so, and what are the odds that the U.S. government passes a law making it illegal for the FBI to buy data?
That's bad enough if you're a U.S. citizen. If you're a non-U.S. citizen, now you're in the situation where all these U.S. social media sites are collecting personal information from you and reselling it, but you have no legal protection unless your government risks tariffs and invasion threats to pass legislation against it, which the U.S. will probably ignore anyways.
This might just be the impetus that finally drives enough users to non-U.S. social media platforms to get the snowball rolling downhill.
> This might just be the impetus that finally drives enough users to non-U.S. social media platforms to get the snowball rolling downhill.
I guess, but like, who? During the time TikTok was not available on an app store (even though the service wasn't stopped), people were trying some of the other Chinese apps, and they were not very compelling as the exodus never happened.
It's a chicken and egg problem. Without users, a new social platform lacks content, so it can't attract users. Unless something decidedly new and compelling comes along, users will probably stick with what they know... unless something happens that really pisses them off.
If I'm being honest though, I don't think privacy concerns will be what does it. The TikTok generation doesn't give a fig about privacy. You can build a panopticon around them and they won't even notice.
It might be better to shoot for terms that have more positive associations. e.g. Someone might claim to be a fan of "soul code" (i.e. Code made by people with souls and not LLM's). Soul food is pretty tasty after all.
1. Innovate, create, and offer it all at sweetheart prices to the public while you rack up debt.
2. Shovel in more money and either buy out or outlast the competition. Become dominant. Lock in your users any which way you can.
3. Enshittify and cash in.
The deals Anthropic, OpenAI, etc. offer won't stay this good much longer. Don't let them lock you in. Failing that, you should budget more for the same service. You're going to need it. Having an open alternative running on your own hardware offers non-negligible peace of mind.
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