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How tech’s defiance of economic gravity came to an abrupt end

economist.com

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Re: How tech’s defiance of economic gravity came to an abrupt end

#181

Post by CoreyFieldens »

FormerBandmate wrote: post #180
alar44 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First try: The second largest country in South America is Argentina. It has a land area of about 2.8 million square kilometers (1.1 million square miles). Argentina is located in the southern part of South America and is bordered by Chile to the west, Bolivia and Paraguay to the north, Brazil to the northeast, Uruguay and the South Atlantic Ocean to the east, and the Drake Passage to the south. The country has a dive…

By population it’s Colombia, by land it’s Peru

From google, the total area of South American countries:

1. Brazil: 3,287,957 sq miles

2. Argentina: 1,073,518 sq miles

3. Peru: 496,225 sq miles

Re: How tech’s defiance of economic gravity came to an abrupt end

#182

Post by forgotusername6 »

FormerBandmate wrote: post #142
birdymcbird wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Overly rosy take on big tech. I’ll use Google as example. Their execs are in full panic right now over OpenGPT. What was last major innovation at Google.. chrome? 20% of company drives profits while 80% is a decorated R&D lab chock full of benefits, upset about cutbacks in their free oatmilk lattes, even though they’re not coming to office anyway. these guys will double their attrition targets if not have full blown…

What is ChatGPT’s actual competitive advantage over search? It can’t tell you the second largest country in South America correctly, it’s an extremely cool demo but I can’t think of anything it could replace Google for. The underlying technology is extremely powerful, but it’s been powering Google for years

I asked it: "What is ChatGPT’s actual competitive advantage over search?

ChatGPT is a variant of the GPT (Generative Pre-training Transformer) language model that has been specifically designed to generate human-like text in a chatbot-like fashion. One of the main advantages of ChatGPT is its ability to generate natural and coherent responses to user inputs in real-time. This makes it well-suited for use in chatbots and other interactive applications where users expect a quick and personalized response.

In contrast, search engines like Google rely on pre-existing content and do not generate responses in real-time. While search engines can be very useful for finding information that already exists on the internet, they are not designed to generate original responses to user queries.

Overall, ChatGPT's main advantage is its ability to generate human-like text in real-time, which makes it well-suited for use in interactive applications such as chatbots."

There are many Google searches that are low effort queries for advice. ChatGPT can provide realistic answers to those in a way Google never could. I've received compelling advice on how to have a telephone conversation with an awkward relative and how to handle a complaint in customer service. Each response seems genuine and well thought out. In contrast Google might spit out a few lines extracted from a possibly relevant website but then I'd have to trawl through a million ads and back story to know if it actually was relevant. Even if the chat bot returned an irrelevant response I could clarify my question and it would remember the context.

Re: How tech’s defiance of economic gravity came to an abrupt end

#183

Post by kolinko »

lumb63 wrote: post #123
screye wrote: post #86

I believe the doom-n-gloom around all of tech is rather overblown. There are sectors of tech that will absolutely struggle. Gig-economy companies won't ever meet their valuation. Negative PE ratio startups are realizing that hyper-scaling is not as infinite as they believed, and that means their earnings might never catch up to their price. Social media companies are finally facing stiff non-American competition (Tik…

I agree that those companies are in “a healthy position”, but there are massive risks to their operations: AMZN: IIRC, AWS is the majority of their profit. This is web infrastructure; all the negative PE ratio startups and gig economy companies going under will hurt AWS. They have similar risks to GOOG (see below). MSFT: Does anyone have a clue how MSFT is making money? The last few Windows updates have been free, an…

As for iPhone not innovating - people keep repeating that phrase since iPhone 3GS.

Re: How tech’s defiance of economic gravity came to an abrupt end

#184

Post by kolinko »

fallingknife wrote: post #115
Apocryphon wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wonder how it’d go if the DoJ actually practiced antitrust towards tech again. The EU Commission does, at least.

Both of those acquisitions were tiny $1 billion buys. They only grew into massive entities under their new corporate parents. Antitrust doesn't apply to such a situation. They could only be seen as critical acquisitions in hindsight.

Youtube felt like a major new platform even at the time of acquisition, and google tried to compete by launching google videos - but failed.

Re: How tech’s defiance of economic gravity came to an abrupt end

#185

Post by spamizbad »

mjr00 wrote: post #121
birdymcbird wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Overly rosy take on big tech. I’ll use Google as example. Their execs are in full panic right now over OpenGPT. What was last major innovation at Google.. chrome? 20% of company drives profits while 80% is a decorated R&D lab chock full of benefits, upset about cutbacks in their free oatmilk lattes, even though they’re not coming to office anyway. these guys will double their attrition targets if not have full blown…

> What was last major innovation at Google.. chrome? 20% of company drives profits while 80% is a decorated R&D lab chock full of benefits, upset about cutbacks in their free oatmilk lattes, even though they’re not coming to office anyway. This has been a major part of the FAANG strategy: crush competition by giving people who might work for or become potential competitors an offer they can't refuse. 80% of the compa…

I wonder, once talent hoarding ends, if we’re going to see a bunch of new companies hit the scene in 5 years?

Re: How tech’s defiance of economic gravity came to an abrupt end

#186

Post by fragmede »

UncleEntity wrote: post #42
fragmede wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the Internet, the cost of labor for distribution of digital goods over that is cheap as all hell when compared to the cost of labor to distribute any sort of physical good because first you have make copies of this physical good, which starts off by requiring additional raw material input. Say we've got this mp4 file that everyone wants. Let's use bittorrent for our digital distribution. So we need to: create a…

Your cost analysis totally overlooks the cost of producing the “mp4 file that everyone wants”.

I'm not overlooking it, it's the brokenness of digital distribution that I'm trying to underscore. If I spend four hours baking a cake, I can sell that cake and make some money. But then I don't have that cake any more so I have to bake another one in order to make more money. If I spend four hours baking an mp4, I can sell infinity cakes. In the pre-Internet analog age, we invented the copyright system so someone else couldn't come along and steal money from the original baker, err writer. But back then, it still took quite a lot of effort to make and distribute those copies. Digital distribution over the Internet makes it so dramatically easier that copyright and its corner of capitalism is broken and we need a new system to properly handle this relatively new invention we have on our hands.

Because what is the point of the whole system? We have one system for two different types of goods. One type is limited in supply because it's physical in nature. The other type isn't really limited in supply because it's digital. Why then should the same kind of money be used to pay for them? How about having two parallel money systems, one of physical goods and one for digital goods. How about for digital goods we eliminate copyright and replace it with a system where we grant every person 864.00 digital dollars (DD) each day, and track what eve check person spends their time watching, then distribute the DDs accordingly. So if I spend 2 hours watching a Disney movie, they get DD 72.00 and they further redistribute those DDs to everyone who played a part in its creation.

Then, the government sets up a system where it will buy DDs for $s, so people will still want to make digital goods, but it becomes a distinct system. This lets us ease into a post-scarcity world - because we absolutely already are there for digital goods - but without having to solve some of the issues that UBI faces.

Re: How tech’s defiance of economic gravity came to an abrupt end

#187

Post by amanaplanacanal »

birdymcbird wrote: post #136
throwaway_75369 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The more desserts they get more likely they are to use a thermonuclear weapon in Ukraine. I'm still confused when people assert there's any chance Putin will use a nuke in Ukraine. I'm far from an expert on Russian politics, so I imagine I'm missing something in terms of reputation or intimidation or face saving, but I always figured that Russia wanted to own/control Ukraine, since it's a fertile, resource-rich par…

> I always figured that Russia wanted to own/control Ukraine, since it's a fertile, resource-rich part of the former USSR (it's a huge grain exporter; consider all the famine warnings since the war began?) This isn’t the motivation. Putin has been saying since 2007 that NATO expansion is an existential threat to Russia. Now whether we agree with that or not is besides point. They view it that way. They warned in 2007…

These sounds like the same old Russian talking points. Ukraine is not allowed to choose who it allies with. It obviously shouldn’t fear Russia invading and taking over the country. Even after it has already happened.

Re: How tech’s defiance of economic gravity came to an abrupt end

#188

Post by mempko »

mopsi wrote: post #166
birdymcbird wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Russia isn’t Nazi Germany. > "Give me your land and I won't kill you all" isn't much of a negotiation, is it. And Russia isn’t trying to conquer Ukraine. Russia doesn’t want neighboring countries, particularly Ukraine to join NATO. They’ve been repeatedly vocal and warning about this for over a decade. NATO kept that door open and said last year Ukraine entering NATO was a certainty hence the war. Certainly, it’s eas…

> it’s easier to ignore the past two decades of context Your so-called context is a strange kind of provincialism that makes everything a result of US actions (and thus sets a blame on them), and ignores history and recent developments in Russia and Eastern Europe in general. Neutrality was tried in 1930s, didn' work, countries got picked off one by one. It wasn't an option anymore in 1990s, EE countries weren't goin…

One thing you forgot to mention. The guy who said those horrible things about drowning Ukrainian children was suspended from RT because of the huge backlash within Russia. That kind of speech is not acceptable to Russian people. Simply isn't mainstream.

Re: How tech’s defiance of economic gravity came to an abrupt end

#189

Post by alar44 »

FormerBandmate wrote: post #180
alar44 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First try: The second largest country in South America is Argentina. It has a land area of about 2.8 million square kilometers (1.1 million square miles). Argentina is located in the southern part of South America and is bordered by Chile to the west, Bolivia and Paraguay to the north, Brazil to the northeast, Uruguay and the South Atlantic Ocean to the east, and the Drake Passage to the south. The country has a dive…

By population it’s Colombia, by land it’s Peru

Lol. The irony is delicious. Largest is size, populous is population.

"On two occasions I have been asked, 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." "

Re: How tech’s defiance of economic gravity came to an abrupt end

#190

Post by lucasyvas »

I'm pessimistic long term on tech, but specifically our current flavor of tech. Most of us work for companies that deliver or indirectly deliver economic value to other office workers (or promote gig economy crap that undermines worker rights - the list goes on).

The current machine is a totally broken model though. We have optimized to sell software to each other thats sole purpose is to just make more money on what already exists.

We haven't invented anything to the betterment of mankind in quite a while. I'm sorry, but making software (for example) that makes someone else's mundane job easier is not revolutionary - it's a low effort cash grab.

There is so much potential for tech growth in things the world needs, like energy, climate technology, feeding people, battery efficiency, sustainability. That stuff offers real value.

For example, if you're building another ad delivery platform or PaaS, give your head a shake. It might be a great idea, but we do not need your intellect to solve this problem. We need you to put your entrepreneurial gifts to solving real problems that the world has.

There is room for both - but what I'm trying to say is that if you have the means, please try to solve the hard problems instead. Because we really need someone to step up and 99% of what I see is missing the mark.

Tesla and its CEO is a dumpster fire right now, but EVs are a good example of a hard problem that is valuable.

If technology itself were like a stock portfolio (to a degree it is), what we are building is heavily skewed to junk status. Most of the money is in garbage reinventions of the wheel that are just padding the pockets of people that already have too much.

The web services era needs to die in a fire for now - we need better physical technology / hardware solutions for the next chapter.

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