Aside: folks living near bike paths where this happens are going to suffer. I don't know what the solution is, but increasing volume to defeat increasing sound-proofing seems like a recipe for noise pollution.
8 karma · joined February 23, 2016
> “These compounds are known to disrupt hormones, and that may be part of why we’re seeing a link."
Reminds me of The Plastic Detox on Netflix.
I think the title is misleading.
That said, a digital company town would be consistent for 2026.
The title says the pipeline is collapsing, but the article describes a reduction. In my workplace, hiring stopped for teams working on non-AI products because all the money went to the teams building AI products. I would guess the AI teams wouldn't describe their pipeline as collapsing. It seems companies are going all in on AI and laying off or ignoring everything else.
For example:
>A White House official, granted anonymity to discuss the potential acquisition, insisted that Rice had nothing to do with why Netflix lost the deal.
>It was “100 percent because of the bid,” the official said. “Netflix could have submitted an alternative offer and they chose not to.”
>A person familiar with the thinking said Trump promised to remain neutral “and he has.”
>Still, the episode underscores how more than 10 years after Trump came down the escalator, many of the country’s most powerful figures still sometimes misjudge or underestimate the president.
Senior folks are doing the work junior folks used to do, and getting negative performance reviews for it. Negative performance reviews are now leading to quicker dismissals. These dismissals aren't considered layoffs. There are also ongoing layoffs.
Simultaneously, promotion requirements are going up. I feel like I need to be launching entirely new products to meet expectations, but at the same time, routine bugs need fixing. My team is also being picked for parts by our parent org.
I get the impression funding is more generous on AI-specific teams, but the pressure is higher, and there's a lot of competition to join those teams.
The title makes it sound dubious, but it seems like another way of seeing it is nvidia diversifying from just selling chips to operating datacenters, via a "special purpose vehicle" (spv) entity. Instead of xai selling bonds to raise money to pay for chips, they lease usage from the spv.
Seems comparable to a new datacenter company starting up to serve xai. Since nvidia is funding the new company, though, I suppose it gives the impression there's more money in the ai market than there actually is. Xai raising debt would make it more obvious.
> Current AI capabilities map onto ["bullshit jobs"] with alarming precision. LLMs excel at generating plausible-sounding reports, drafting formulaic communications, summarizing information, and answering repetitive queries. They don't need genuine intelligence; they just need to automate the performance of administrative labor.
> In an era where Wall Street actively rewards companies for mass layoffs, AI presents a golden opportunity for cost-cutting disguised as "efficiency."
I had been thinking employers giving "AI" as a reason for layoffs were uniformly disingenuous, but they may be referring, in part, to performative roles.
It didn't mention an idea I've heard recently: passive investing blindly adds to the market, eg https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2024/02/29/a...
I found [0] helpful. It was written by the head of the administration's council of econ advisors (Stephen Miran), and appears to align with the admin's actions.
A recent, brief interview with an analyst on German public media ([1]) supports the idea that this is the guiding policy.
[0] recommends a gradual approach, to avoid a shock, which the admin doesn't seem to care about, so perhaps some understand the risks and others don't.
[0] https://www.hudsonbaycapital.com/documents/FG/hudsonbay/rese...