AI products will be speed running the last few decades of tech - make a compelling product, then add ads based on the prompt, then store prompts from each user and build psychological profiles, and finally manipulate AI output to maximize user susceptibility to part with their hard earned money. Bonus points if they can get the user addicted to their product.
The article times bubble sort, which is just nested loops. And python is dead slow. Granted nobody uses bubble sort, but loops show up in all kinds of places in programming. With python, you always have to make a decision on whether to use python loops or let something like numpy or torch or pandas do the loop.
I use python because I have to, but not because I want to. I have to think twice about using something as basic as a loop, whereas in another language I don't have to.
The history of disability rights, or any rights for that matter, has been more of raising the cost of ignoring them rather than just being "nice". If they were "nice", nothing would have ever changed.
The problem is deeper than that. Software has completely eroded property rights. I believe someone has coined the term "techno feudalism". Corporations own the software and us serfs merely lease it.
The framing around productivity misses a huge area - productivity of life. The less time that is wasted in office, the more time is available to do things that make life worth living. Any argument for return to office should justify why people are expected to waste away their lives.
The primary "innovation" of Uber is political, not technological. They've managed to circumvent labor protections and at the same time position themselves as the middleman between drivers and riders.
In another Universe, a technology company would develop software that taxi companies can use to provide the same services that Uber does. But that wouldn't be as profitable as there wouldn't be scope for labor exploitation.
A good rule of thumb for shopping an Amazon - avoid anything that you can ingest, apply on your skin, and anything electrical.
These are better to buy in a brick and mortar store where a human verifies that the product has indeed come from supplier who is verified in some way. Of course this doesn't make brick and mortar products automatically safe, but they are far better than Amazon where quality control is offloaded onto the customers.
Sure, they are children and said children do a lot of things at school that they hide from parents. This isn't new. As long as the children are not hurting others, why should the schools care?
Musk is presumably is speaking for SpaceX families and moving to Texas can endanger their lives. If Musk said this wasn't about families, but only about his political ideology, it would be different.
If a student wants to come out as gay and doesn't want to tell their parents, do schools inform the parents? Why should there be separate rules for identifying as transgender?
Also, given Texas's draconian laws around reproductive health, how is moving to Texas any better?
It's interesting to see Thiel and Zuckerberg be so oblivious to the problems of millennials. Boomers are a problem because they control capital and have lobbying power. The same kind of capital and political power now rests with the tech billionaires. People like Thiel are the new boomers who are destroying the younger generation.
The tech world does not give you the choice of letting you pay for privacy or pay by invading your privacy. Now, you can nitpick that you can build your own service or host your service, but then the question becomes why is programming/sysadmin knowledge a prerequisite for using your phone?
I can let in a contractor in my house and also ask them not to smoke. They of course have the right to refuse that request and decline my money, but in the real world, contractors usually comply with such requests as smoking is known to harm health. I don't see why the digital world has to be any different. Just because laws and awareness are lagging behind, tech world's toxic practices don't need to get a pass.
We need to think bigger. Having an app on your phone is like having a stranger in your house. The same legal protections that apply to property should apply inside the software that runs on your phone. An app should be at the mercy of the user and should provide easy (and automated) ways to turn off manipulative and surveillance features.
Technology cannot solve privacy invasion. A face is only one data point. Skin tone, clothes, your gait etc... all can give away who you are.
What we need is a political framework that will go after privacy thieves. The thieves should face the same kind of consequences as someone who breaks into a billionaire's home.
If all the kids in the peer group have no cell phones, solving the mental health crisis would be easy. As long as some kids have access, the others will feel like they are being deprived of something fundamental, will resent their parents and will look for any opportunity to get on social media.
A technological solution is to have complete control over the computing devices we "own". But that goes against the interests of trillion dollar corporations and so we can't have that.
Like I was figuring out if there is a way to let my kid use Youtube with a select set of channels, but no. Youtube needs to keep showing suggestions on what to watch next. I would gladly pay for the ability to control what content my kid sees, but Youtube stands to make more profit by getting the kid addicted to their app.