whofearsthenight

Same. And the thing with Amazon is most of the shit I buy on there, I can't really buy local. Computer shit especially. Used to be, we had a Fry's that was about 2 hours away. So, far enough that it required planning and usually would wait for the weekend, which usually meant amazon would be faster anyway.

edit: just to be clear, I wish that amazon didn't have as much utility as it does because they're a shit company, but I kinda feel like this is the norm with just about every corp these days.

This week's On with Kara Swisher has back to back interviews with Yoel Roth (the guy in the TAL ep) and the new CEO of Twitter, Linda Yaccarino and it's worth a listen.

The juxtaposition of the two interviews is something. Roth comes across as a smart, serious person trying to (and admittedly sometimes failing) be a good steward of the internet and tackles the challenges using facts and data. Yaccarino follows up by literally being the definition of a stooge. Very clearly not attached to reality, doesn't know things that Musk has tweeted in spite of saying at the top of the interview they're 100% attached and in the loop with everything Elon's doing. Absolute clown show.

So yeah, expect literally everyone to have a hand in the cookie jar come the '24 election. There isn't enough competence in the company to fill a thimble at this point, and leadership at the company probably is either entirely ignorant of the problem(Yacco), or actively engaging in sabotage in tandem (Musk.)

I think SpaceX will be fine, Tesla I think you're mostly right. Tesla's valuation has been almost entirely his cult, but the shine is pretty much off that apple. There has already been some vocal outcry over his antics, and if he had a real board instead of his brother and sycophants, he'd probably already be gone. Any responsible board at this point would see that Tesla is having massive internal struggles (they ship about 60/40 cars to vaporware and have increasing issues with QA and service) and the thing it mostly had going for it was first mover advantage which they've now mostly squandered. They still have a good business with the supercharger network, and with proper leadership could still be a big player in the space, but they're about to be inundated with competition they've never really had. They've sort of already lost the cool kid premium status to Rivian and Lucid, and Model 3 is about to face competition in a way it never really has.

So all that, and the CEO is shitposting conspiracy theories on his pet project social media app that he's publicly mismanaging by basically all measures. Like I said, any real board, he'd already be out. I suspect that unless something changes, it won't be long before there will be real moves to remove him.

This. I use tiktok more than I like, and it's extremely easy to watch an hour or two. Thing is, when you get done, try to remember even like 3% of what you watched.

I watch more tiktok than I'm proud of, and YouTube is actually way worse for this. Youtube I've actually started using some private browsing for things that I think might turn to Joe Rogan or whatever because on that platform you're like 7 videos from "i'd like to check out some camping videos" to "here's how to protect yourself from the woke mob in the apocalypse which will happen next Tuesday courtesy of Ben Shapiro."

The thing that worries me about tiktok is they're too good at this. It would honestly be extremely easy for them to tip the scales.

I've seen varying levels of this general idea that Musk somehow is still playing some 4d chess and the downfall of twitter is the plan, but it's really not. Twitter was already a niche generally. I only know like 2 people IRL who were on twitter, compared to basically everyone on Facebook, for example, and you can check the stats, twitter commanded way more mindspace than it actually had.

And even if the master plan was to kill twitter - so what? This won't stop anything. There is an argument to be made that all of the journalists and what not coalesced over there, but that's just not going to stop happening. It's like if someone wanted to kill instant messaging. "HA HA ICQ, this time I've got you!" Except, it's not the platform that's important, and it's easily replaced.

Even if Elon's plan is "let's federate" it's still an inane way to do it, but this seems like a more likely outcome.

Hanlon again for the win, simplest answer is he's not nearly as smart as anyone pretends.

tbh I wish they'd charge for their OS and they would charge a little more instead of filling it with bullshit and privacy nightmares that I (and probably no one) wants. I don't main on Windows, but goddamn is it annoying when I do update having to get rid of some new bullshit every single time.

It's also a bit funny because used to be you bought a new key for each OS version. This could be a positive for Windows, but they bungled it because they decided Windows 10 was going to be the "last" version of Windows, until they didn't.

Yeah, this is the thing. Does literally anyone want to go to Walmart? No. Is it the place I can afford? Increasingly, still no. Not sure I can even afford to walk past whatever the good version of a Whole Foods is today, though.

Optimist: the glass is half full
Pessimist: the glass is half empty
realist: is this piss?

I think if there ends up actually being a version of AI that is privacy focused and isn't screwing over creators it'd be so much less controversial. Also, everyone (including me) is really, really fucking sick of hearing about it all of the time in the same way that everyone is/was sick of hearing about the blockchain. As in: "Bro your taco stand needs AI/the blockchain."

Pretty much. If you want a voice assistant right now, Siri is probably the best in terms of privacy. I bought a bunch of echos early, then they got a little shitty but I was in, and now I just want them out of my house except for one thing - music. Spotify integration makes for easy multi-room audio in a way that doesn't really work as well on the other platform that I'll consider (Apple/Siri) and basically adds sonos-like functionality for a tiny fraction of the price. The Siri balls and airplay are just not as good, and of course, don't work as well with Spotify.

But alexa is so fucking annoying that at this point I mostly just carry my phone (iPhone) and talk to that even though it's a little less convenient because I'm really goddamned tired of hearing "by the way..."

Indeed. Any problem with small business breaking in right now is mostly a function of the fact that our system for anti-trust has completely fallen off. Like the story about Microsoft and Phil Spencer wanting to buy Nintendo or Valve - in a sane world, they wouldn't even consider it because that's a clear case of consolidation that is harmful for consumers.