1,368 karma · joined December 16, 2014
Getting to the end product so much faster with so little friction really pushes the boundaries of what you can actually build. It's exciting (Also kind of ominous for obvious reasons)
Telling the AI to go, say... sort out all the IAM stuff for some new feature you're building is actually incredible.
In some cases, it seems that lowering resolution and graphics actually produces better DLSS5 output (but it varies)
It's really good at making older gen games look remade/remastered.
Fiscal Year | Device Searches | Travelers at POEs | Rate | Equivalent
------------|-----------------|--------------------|------------|------------
2012 | 5,085 | 351.6M | 0.00145% | 1 in 69,200
2013 | 5,709 | 362.3M | 0.00158% | 1 in 63,500
2014 | 6,029 | 375.0M | 0.00161% | 1 in 62,200
2015 | 8,503 | 383.2M | 0.00222% | 1 in 45,100
2016 | 19,033 | 390.6M | 0.00487% | 1 in 20,500
2017 | 30,200 | 397.4M | 0.00760% | 1 in 13,200
2018 | 33,296 | 413.9M | 0.00804% | 1 in 12,400
2019 | 40,913 | 410.3M | 0.00997% | 1 in 10,000
2020 | 32,038 | ~238M | 0.0135% | 1 in 7,420
2021 | 37,450 | ~179M | 0.0209% | 1 in 4,780
2022 | 45,499 | ~316.7M | 0.0144% | 1 in 6,960
2023 | 41,767 | >394M | ~0.0106% | ~1 in 9,440
2024 | 47,047 | >420M | ~0.0112% | ~1 in 8,940
2025 | 55,318 | >419M | ~0.0132% | ~1 in 7,570
These stats aren't also capturing who gets stopped and why, which is pretty important, especially given the current government.
Indeed, and it's hard to disentangle exactly how much sentiment is driven by one vs the other.
If we remember back to recent elections and the Russian influence campaigns to boost Trump, the same people were either denying that they happened or denying that they actually influenced anything. Interesting reversal now.
Maybe they shouldn't have dismantled all the task forces and teams meant to study and combat disinformation.
I noticed this too. I was a chain smoker. I became a chain vaper, managing to quit tobacco in the process.
Eventually, I was able to cold turkey vaping in a way I could never manage with tobacco.
It took being sick for about 2 weeks so I couldn't vape. Once I was better, I just didn't do it again, and it was... actually kind of easy.
Similar situations have happened to me over the years when I was on tobacco, but I could never just walk away like I did with vaping.
Maybe part of it was that, with tobacco, you really organize a lot of your day around it. Going to the store, going outside for breaks, driving a little extra so you can fit in a smoke in the car, etc - vaping can really scramble all that up so you have fewer situational triggers.
Eh ...
I didn't know many smokers who smoke < 1 pack per day. For those < 1 pack per day, it's mostly b/c they just haven't gotten there yet, but that's where they're headed.
Smokers aren't really going to change their smoking rituals either, just b/c their throat is a little sore or they're short of breath. They just switch to lights and/or menthol, or otherwise find a brand that doesn't punch them in the throat like Marlboro Reds do.
Going longer than usual without a smoke, generally means chain smoking 2 or more to catch up
Once addicted, it really takes a lot of hurt to self-limit. That means being literally sick, realistically.
Personally, I found vaping far easier to quit than cigarettes.
So who's going to buy the low-end stuff at high-end prices?
You can try tariffs and the like (as we're foolishly doing right now) - that usually ends up having the opposite intended effect. You make everything more expensive domestically, including manufacturing (b/c your inputs got more expensive), and hurt our ability to export, even the things we did well.
Meanwhile, the rest of the world unencumbered with protectionism reaps the benefits of free trade and out competes us.
All this eventually leads to a loss of manufacturing jobs and output and manufacturers that can only sell to the domestic market (instead of the whole world). The whole sector starts to shrink. So that's no good.
We're not the largest in absolute output, but we are literally the best manufacturer in the world, and we are the 2nd largest.
We manufacture lots of stuff, often the most state of the art and difficult things to manufacture. We're very good at it.
And we've sat around close to full employment for so long, the only way to convert more of the economy to manufacturing is to either import workers, cannibalize other sectors of the economy, or automate even more.
Yes, a larger share of the economy is services, but is there some objective optimal ratio of services to manufacturing we should be shooting for? If so, what is it? No one ever says.
The sort of global instability that is being created by all this is bad for everyone. It generally isn't good for business either.
We're so unstable and capricious now, countries are actually trying to decouple from American tech services like AWS and Amazon. That ain't great for Bezos.
Maybe inertia kicks in after Trump and things revert to the mean, but restoring confidence in the US again as a friendly, stable nation is going to be tough if we're always 4 years away from another Trump-type figure running the show.
Putin is launching and provoking wars, not the EU.
> you will probably still blame America
No, we would blame Putin, because he's the blameworthy party.
As for Iran, Trump (and Trump voters by extension) is the blameworthy party. I don't even think any other R would have been dumb enough to go at Iran like this.
You should have used your considerable resources to fight. If only billionaires would oppose aspiring tyrants with the same zeal with which they oppose even minor tax increases.
Now imagine how intense that will become with even more realism. It could be actually seriously traumatic.
In this case, it reads like their way of stroking their benefactors egos a bit, but without promising them anything real in return.
FTA: "AP often needs to educate funders upon first approach, explaining the company’s worldwide reach and mission to report independently. AP accepts money to cover certain areas but without strings attached; the funders have no influence on the stories that are done, Carovillano said."
WSJ and Fox News have the same owners but WSJ still has one of the best and most credible newsrooms in the business (their opinion section is another matter).
Meanwhile Fox News is a lie factory that only tells it's large (but niche) audience what it wants to hear. And now they have rival networks eating away at the pie by being more sensational and even more shamelessly obsequies. They're stuck in a radicalization doom loop.
> The problem with the "philanthropic" funding is not only is there no firewall, but it's explicitly pay-to-play agenda pushing
> if you go to the AP website today and look at some random article paid for by these grants
Why do you say there is no firewall? Is that really true? The AP has their guidelines here and I don't see it as substantially different than what a publication might do for advertisers and other stakeholders who may be tempted to exert editorial control:
- https://www.ap.org/the-definitive-source/behind-the-news/how...
If you have specific instances where these arrangements have clearly compromised their journalism, that would be good to see.
In the meantime, I think we can do two things at the same time here: resist overdosing on maximal cynicism, but also be clear eyed about the ways money can tempt institutions to throw integrity out the window.
> The right wing are saying things like, journalism is fake because they're just pushing a left wing agenda for money.
> But it turns out that the rightists are correct and that's exactly what journalists are doing, so it's hardly their fault that mistrust was created and cultivated.
Generally speaking, no they are not correct, and most of them are just outright cynically lying, while engaging in the very behaviors of which they accuse others.
I'm sure non-profit sponsorship has it's own issues, but I don't think those issues are particularly new or unique or transformative.
The demand side is arguably the more intractable issue with journalism, since loads of people don't select for truth or importance in their news - or at least not very carefully. The institutions that seem to hold up the best are the ones with the broadest audiences.
On the issue of public trust in journalism, I don't think it's actually a function of the quality or trustworthiness of journalism. I think it has more to do with the rise of radical right-wing propaganda infotainment, a core pillar of which was (and is) delegitimizing mainstream media (and academic) institutions. The mistrust was created and cultivated. Consequently, there's not much they can do to regain trust, except to work harder at discrediting the radical right-wing propaganda that has been flooding all the zones for the past several decades.
All these big tech capitulations are their bets that the rule of law will not protect them, but kissing the ring will
It's a bad bet, ultimately - b/c the benefits and protections of kissing the ring are a mirage - their weakness is an invitation
No - the less real exposure a person has to immigrants and their communities, the more dehumanizing anti-immigrant rhetoric has a chance to substitute for real experience.
> Southern border states are a lot more concerned with illegal crossings than anywhere else
Southern border states are also generally filled with a lot of people who actually know, from experience, that illegal border crossings and immigration are not the same thing.
> the southern border states having dual spanish language signs everywhere
The humanity! There will always be cultural diffusion along borders, no immigration policy is ever going to change that reality. The lives of people on either side are integrated in real tangible ways despite the lines on maps.
And the reverse is also true, of course. Mexico is filled with English speakers and it's quite easy to get around there without speaking a lick of Spanish. It's a great place to visit.
> Pretending that importing millions of foreigners will not affect the culture whatsoever is just a dumb or disingenuous argument
The argument is more that any predictions about the future of culture or efforts to steer it one way or another are mostly futile, and likely more inspired by ones prejudices and irrational fears.
Whatever it is that you are afraid of losing - you probably won't - or if you do, the immigrants probably weren't the ones who took it from you.
(It's actually way more likely that some piece of technology, maybe built by some people on this very site, will be the thing that kills your culture)
That's because adding people to the economy creates more demand
In times of recession, things might be different - but immigration tends to take care of itself in that regard. When a country has unfilled labor demand, immigration goes up. When it has no labor demand, immigration goes down.
Presuming to have any real agency over the evolution of human culture also seems misguided. Culture is like a river, in that "no man ever steps into the same one twice". It's constantly changing in unpredictable ways, from generation to generation or even within generations, with or without immigration. That goes for the cultures of immigrants also.
I'm not going to say this has never happened, but in general I don't think it's common or widespread. Generally, businesses going to the trouble of bringing in foreign labor through the various programs are trying to fulfill labor shortages.
You should be able to see evidence of it happening in jobs and unemployment numbers. You'd see it higher unemployment among American citizens than the workforce as a whole
Towards the end of the Biden admin, there was a great jobs report, but right-wing media and MAGA pundits spun it by saying the vast majority of all the new jobs were taken by immigrants.
That wasn't a lie, but it wasn't because immigrants were taking jobs that would have otherwise been filled with Americans as they tried to portray. If you looked at the employment numbers by citizenship status, citizens were sitting about as close to full employment as we could ever be. The only way to fill those jobs was to expand the labor pool.
This idea that we have lost manufacturing and we need some push to onshore it all again is... well... another manufactured problem that isn't.
Buying and selling don't need to be equal between buyers and sellers, and it's really just an incoherent idea.
Trump is taxing Americans when he imposes tariffs. Canada is taxing Canadians when they impose retaliatory tariffs.
And FWIW, most economists think retaliatory tariffs are stupid - on net they cause more harm to the retaliating country than if there were no retaliation. But the politics around tariffs are stupid too. It's all stupid.