HyperNormalisation has its flaws (too big of a focus on a single “theory of everything”) and an argument can be made that it emphasizes style over substance, but it’s a great experience. Even if I disagree with some of the structural arguments of HyperNormalisation, it does raise a lot of good points and in a very engaging way.

I would also recommend Bitter Lake from the same director which IMO is a more intense experience.

Thank you!

I did check the site, but I missed it.

I wish there was a text transcript of this, I will check the video out after the holidays though.

The writing was on the wall when they started getting American VC money.

American VC culture is anthenema to truly user focused products.

• Better on-boarding - For non-technically inclined users, Fedi can be challenging. I personally strongly oppose the “join by selecting instance” type sites. There should be an algorithm automatically signing up users based on region, refer header and perhaps some sort of random selection
• With respect to Threadi, when a user is logged in, all links to instance/communities should automatically be transformed to the “view via your instance format” (!technology@lemmy.world).
• Movement to Piefed (I am aware I am posting from a Lemmy account, this one is used for managing !hardware@lemmy.world, I used Piefed) - tankies are a major turn off for people across the globe and across the political spectrum.
• Target users who are recognize the severe dangerous of US oligarchy. More and more people are recognizing that the American model is a dead end.
• Target open source communities. I don’t understand why r/linux or r/BSD are not making a move to directing users towards Threadi

And most importantly: post, comment, upvote.

Note, I am doing some of these thing when I can.

The corrupt oligopolists have completely given up on QA; why would they bother when they don’t feel any real competitive pressure.

AFAIK, this has been happening as far back as Windows 8. I believe they had a giant pool of physical PCs (laptops, pre-builts and various popular component combinations for desktop) that they physically tested updates on, but they scrapped all of it because they know they don’t need to worry about competition.

This is one area where I will agree with MS. 32 MB extra RAM consumption is worth it for even a moderate speed boost.

That being said, the vast majority of modern applications run like shit. You have electron apps which are comically terrible in their performance metrics, but even beyond that you often have apps takeing up 100s of MBs and eating up a stupid amount of RAM considering what they do.

Data centre capacity, they seem to be making an emphasis on access to independent power sources.

member of a group of wealthy individuals wielding sovereign power

This doesn’t seem right. Russian oligarchs do not wield sovereign power, yet they are still oligarchs.

They wield power, but the term sovereign doesn’t seem appropriate.

Believe it or not, but there are externalities to the polemics you are describing.

The ostentatious posturing (I am a tiny minority that is virtuous, everyone else just wants to punish people and doesn’t want the law to apply to everyone equally) is pretty ignorant. I’ve lived in multiple countries across North America, Europe and Asia, it’s clear that you haven’t thought about this.

It’s comically easy to find well known (locally) examples where even the non polemical version of your arguement doesn’t hold.

EDIT: I would appreciate a counter argument from people who don’t agree. I am genuinely curious, because to me this seems like common sense. And I can provide multiple example from different cultures about why this rhetoric does not sound convincing.

I don’t think the reference to “ostentatious posturing” is uncharitable. Just look at the text. This copytext is pretty standard and clearly aimed at self-aggrandization.

Sure, but he is not an oligarch.

Literally promoting phrenology.

That’s why I said this article was subpar. And I even commented on this in pretty harsh terms:

the regime members are really busy doing their best to make a new metaphorical rope

I don’t agree with a lot of what they say, but I don’t believe they are malicious, at least to the extent that many American news sources are.

The Economist is generally a pretty good news source, but I thought this article was subpar.

Irrespective of whether this facial evaluation algorithm works or not, as things stand today, it is pointless to discuss its use in the context of meritocracy. A regime founded upon the rejection of personal responsibility, corruption and criminality makes such discussions irrelevant (algorithm or no algorithm).

At the risk of sounding like an accelerationist, I can’t get rid of the feeling that the regime members are really busy doing their best to make a new metaphorical rope.

Xi is not an oligarch, to my knowledge, he has always worked in the CCP.

You’re not going to beat the Americans at their own game. It’s a society that does not respect the rule of law, does not believe in true market competition and does not believe in democracy.

If you think I am acting out, consider the following point: recently Meta was found to have directly (in a premeditated manner) promoted scams/frauds that netted them $16B in commission in a single year. We all know that nothing will be done about this even under a hypothetical centre-right US government.

How do we know that? Well was anything done about Microsoft’s anti-competitive behaviour in the 90s?

But for me, the real irony is the polemics about competition and “free market”. In a real free market, MS, Meta, Google would not have hundreds of billions of dollar to burn because competition would drive profit margins to a state of approaching zero. Zuck would not be able to burn $45 B on his weird and disgusting Metaverse Mii autosexuality fetish.

Not a fan of the leadership of China, but I genuinely do believe that one area that we can learn from them is how to deal with oligarchs.

Counter arguement: you need to do your own research/planning/applications and so on. There won’t always be an easy “all inclusive” path. But opportunities are there for those who are looking for them.

That being said, it would massively help to speak at least one other language fluently.

You’re also correct that it’s not easy from a resource perspective. But if people from much poorer countries can make it work, than so can people in the US.

It’s like we are living in some sort of satirical, absurdist play or novel about a dystopian future.

What do you mean by anti-commercial style? I am not from North America, but this seems like pretty typical PR copytext for local tech companies. Lot’s of pomp, banality, bombast and vague assertions of caring about the world. It almost reads like satire at this point, like they’re trying to take the piss.

If his intentions are literal and clear, what does he mean by “superintelligence” (please be specific) and in what way is it safe?

This honestly looks like a grift to get a nice salary for a few years on VC money. These are not random sales goons peddling shit they don’t understand. They don’t even bother to define “superintelligence”, let alone what they mean by “safe superintelligence” .

I find it hard to believe this wasn’t written with malicious intent. But maybe I am too cynical and they are so used to people kissing their asses, that they think their shit doesn’t smell. But money definitely plays some role in this, they would be stupid to not cash in while the AI hype is hot.