On one hand this is true. On the other hand it does seem possible, in theory, that through enough post-training and other measures they could become a bit closer to human minds and not just be token guessers.
The human brain may at its fundamental level operate on the principles of predictive processing (https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/09/05/book-review-surfing-un...). It might be that it has many layers surrounding that raw predictive core which develop us into epistemological beings. The LLMs we see today may be in the very early stages of a similar sort of (artificial) evolution.
The reflexiveness with which even top models like Opus 4.5 will sometimes seamlessly confabulate things definitely does make it seem like it is a very deep problem, but I don't think it's necessarily unsolvable. I used to be among the vast majority of people who thought LLMs were not sufficient to get us to AGI/ASI, but I'm increasingly starting to feel that piling enough hacks atop LLMs might really be what gets there before anything else.
It worked out well for Europe because the country that took over its position of leadership position post-WW2 (USA) was aligned with it in all ways (politically, culturally, scientifically, economically), and so (western) European countries could still enjoy all the benefits. It will not be the case this time around, because the next generation of innovation and leadership is going to come from China.
I think that is the most likely outcome. However, if the decline starts occurring too rapidly, I do think violent far-right (and perhaps far-left) paramilitary action could become a major problem, like in 1920s/1930s Germany. Tons of time spent lurking in far-right extremist communities out of morbid curiosity, and the spread of far-right ethnosupremacist sentiment on basically every social media platform, has me concerned.
Yes, nearly all of them absolutely are. (I have talked to many of them and they really truly are.) That fact does genuinely assuage my concerns. Still, I do wonder if a future charismatic far-right politician who does not come across as a loser could do far better than previous generations ever could have predicted. The worst possible person at the worst possible time.
> England “gave up” scientific and technological leadership during the 20th century. (That’s a tongue-in-cheek take on it, don’t read too much into it.)
Was forced to give up, due to the economic devastation of WWII, might be more accurate (though of course there were other factors too).
Quite something to imagine 60 years from now history books (or thought-o-grams) may be written on Gamergate and a microblogging application and a reality TV host ushering in the chain of events that upended the biggest global power.
> I am an American and didn’t vote for this bullsh*t.
Isn't the whole principle about democracy and freedom that you all stick together no matter what political party/parties is in power? If you're just throwing your hands up in the air because your party isn't the one in control, what kind of democracy is that? The whole point is working together with opponents for common goals.
Otherwise, may I interest you in an insurrection? Pretty hot and trendy these times.
Is that hyperbole or do you have actual violent threats against you at this very moment? I'm not the US, so can't really tell what's going on on the ground, but compared to other situations (namely middle-east some years ago) where people are being told "Do this or you'll end up in that grave over there", is this what is happening in the US today?
So interesting how you omit democratic representative Hortman and democratic senator Hoffman from your list, and also fail to mention that all shooters (except the last one -- affiliation unknown) were right wing.
To be fair, it was pretty much the entire western world fucking around before. Brexit was the first shock but I don't think the world learned many lessons from that. However a lot of western nations are taking the US as a cautionary tale and will learn from US mistakes. So 2nd place might be lucky at this point (assuming we're comparing large trading blocs rather than just countries).
I think it's very likely counterfactually better than USSR (now Russian) or Chinese hegemony. Imagine if Al Gore had won 2000 - America at the helm while growing increasingly wary of violent foreign interventions seems like the least bad path for Earth. (I am not sure if such a path still remains.)
China ultra-liberalizing and becoming a democracy and then the hegemon could be an okay path but I am not too optimistic about the prospects of those first parts.
> I think it's very likely counterfactually better than USSR (now Russian) or Chinese hegemony.
Why is it either or the other? Just because the US happens to turn inwards and stop acting like the world police, doesn't mean that other countries suddenly start dreaming of world domination. China and Russian both have plenty of problems in their home fronts and surrounding areas.
> China and Russian both have plenty of problems in their home fronts and surrounding areas.
Do you know how Russia got so large? They started out small.
They solve such problems by doing the one thing they have always done: expanding. Successful conquest temporarily mitigates internal problems, injustices and inefficiencies.
> Do you know how Russia got so large? They started out small.
Do you know how literally any country got the size it is today? They started out small. Some of them are still small today, but they might be larger tomorrow. Some of them will be smaller tomorrow. This is how the world has function and continues to function. Not sure how this could be surprising to anyone out there, even less how you think someone wouldn't understand this very basic fact about countries.
If you are trying to make a counterpoint, try again, hopefully with an actual argument.
And maybe, maybe, you take into account that the size of Russia and its expansionism are on a whole other level and still ongoing, and that other countries are not like that at all, not even remotely.
How is that different from how US acted after 1776? Or China during Qin dynasty?
Yes, today Russia is trying to expand, which they've done before, like most countries in the world. Not sure what makes them special in that regard.
Did any country start out large? Since your main point seems to have been that Russia started out small, in contrast to some other country you're trying to reference that apparently started out large, but I'm not sure which one you're trying to reference here.
> Yes, today Russia is trying to expand, which they've done before, like most countries in the world. Not sure what makes them special in that regard
Sure. Correct. Wishing for the failure of the Pax Americana is cheering on the return of wars of conquest. First and foremost by the great powers.
Russia isn't special. It was–like every other ordinary country–previously restrained. Dissolving the rules that restrained it also dissolves the rules that restrained every other current and aspiring global or regional power.
> Sure. Correct. Wishing for the failure of the Pax Americana is cheering on the return of wars of conquest. First and foremost by the great powers.
So because someone doesn't want the US as a world police, means they want some other country as world police? Can't people just wish/want no one to be world police?
I never understood the lack of nuance in American politics and in lots of conversations with Americans. Just because you don't like A, doesn't mean you suddenly love B, no matter how much you see them as direct antonyms or whatever, what's up with trying to argue in this way? What conversation and discussions are improved by this sort of behavior? What is your goal with doing that, some sort of gotcha?
> Can't people just wish/want no one to be world police?
Yes. This is what happens. Which means various powers fight to establish spheres of influence, regionally and globally.
> Just because you don't like A, doesn't mean you suddenly love B
No. You can hate both. But sometimes, rejecting A implicitly means causing B. In this case, rejecting a world police means–ceteris paribus–incentivizing realpolitik.
(It doesn't mean the only options are America as world cop or anarchy. But rejecting the former without anything to fall back on is embracing the latter.)
> What is your goal with doing that, some sort of gotcha?
Describing reality around power vacuums. Releasing Pax Americana creates a power vacuum everywhere at the same time. (It also releases America from its rules-based obligations, though these pretty much became guidelines after each of the Iraq War, annexation of Crimea and China being China in Tibet and the South China Sea.)
> No. You can hate both. But sometimes, rejecting A implicitly means causing B. In this case, rejecting a world police means–ceteris paribus–incentivizing realpolitik.
Yeah, I think this is the core of our disagreement. Maybe my view of the world isn't US-centric enough, but I don't believe rejecting the US's Pax Americana somehow means I'm implicitly causing China or Russia to suddenly want their own version of Pax Americana played out. But I do know this is a really common view in the US, so I won't really attempt to convince you otherwise, I think it's at this point we just agree to disagree.
> I don't believe rejecting the US's Pax Americana somehow means I'm implicitly causing China or Russia to suddenly want their own version of Pax Americana played out
They don’t. The Pax is expensive to maintain. They want their spheres of influence. Same as America’s elites. Same as India’s, Iran’s, Israel’s, Turkey’s, et cetera.
There is no indication Russia or China want to be world cops. But they—and many others, including America—do want to dominate their neighbours in ways that are restricted by the rules-based international order.
> I don't believe rejecting the US's Pax Americana somehow means I'm implicitly causing
Unless you’re voting in a small handful of European countries, you probably aren’t causing or restraining much in this theatre. (I’m in a single-party state in America. I’m not influencing this through my vote either.)
It seems likely that at least for a few more centuries, humanity and Earth are going to play the typical geopolitical games they've played during the past centuries.
China and Russia are consistently led by ruthless people who like power. Plus, even if China does only just conquer Taiwan and then leaves everyone else alone as the hegemon, there's still the matter of them oppressing ~20% of the humans on the planet (their own people). Even if it's the sort of oppression that you don't necessarily ever notice so long as you always stay in line.
China is the alternative. How many countries has China waged war against, toppled democratic governments, established puppet março-states and invaded since 1949?
There are literally thousands of years of sino-korean wars, so its hard to pin that blame on a specific government. Tibet is a more straightforward case of imperial expansionism from China, although it is also a centuries-old one, dating from Qing dynasty (1700s). The border skirmishes with India stem from mutual dissatisfaction with old British imperial border lines, which both governments disagree with.
Now compare that with the USA list. China's list is, to say the least, much more lightweight, straightforward and understandable. I'd go with that list any day, and most of the world would too.
It could be the case that they become the hegemon and don't ever conquer anyone besides Taiwan and it still sucks due to how they treat ~20% of the Earth's population (their own citizens).
A liberal, democratic China becoming the hegemon is very possibly better than the status quo (especially under Trump and with the surge of far-right mainstreaming in the US), but China as it is now cannot be trusted to be a good steward of a hypothetical Pax Sinica, just as Trumpist America cannot be trusted.
The greatest timeline for Europe in its history? Post WW2 to now.
The greatest timeline for Latin America overall? Post WW2 to now.
The greatest timeline for Oceania overall? Post WW2 to now.
The greatest timeline for India? Post WW2 to now.
The greatest timeline for the rest of Asia overall? Post WW2 to now.
Coming up on 80 years. Here's a short list, please tell me which prior ~80 year period in history these nations had it better overall for their people.
Britain, Ireland, Germany, France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Romania, Poland, Switzerland, Denmark, the Netherlands, Sweden, Belgium, Norway, Finland, Iceland, Greece, Slovakia, Austria, Slovenia, Hungary, Croatia, Bulgaria. Russia, Turkey, Kazakhstan. Australia, New Zealand, Canada. China, Japan, Indonesia, India, Taiwan, South Korea, Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand. Mexico, Colombia, Brazil, Peru, Chile, Uruguay, Costa Rica, Panama. Israel, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, Bahrain.
Just most of the world population in that little list.
Even Russia - the people of Russia have far higher standards of living at the median today than they have at any other point in their history. It's not even remotely close.
'But but but the world isn't perfect.' No kidding.
You have a gigantic confounder of general progress, much of it technological.
Just recently I made a post here in some thread to point out that even wein backwards East Germany made huge gains - my grandfather, born early 20th century, lived much, much better even by the end of the GDR compared to when he was born in the Weimar Republic.
Especially food became a non-issue in the modern world, productivity increases were gigantic. The Haber-Bosch process, very important at the start of that development, was not a US invention, nor contingent on anything US related.
It would be hard to disentangle US influence, but one can assume even if the US had not become so dominant, much of those developments would still have taken place, lifting up much of the entire world.
Right, because counterfactuals aren’t provable. It doesn’t seem to stop people from confidently stating that American hegemony was worse than the alternatives.
We know it worked well, that the entire world seems to be better off now than before ww2.
We know that west Germany did far better than east Germany. We know Japan did far better than the Asian states under the USSR’s influence. We know that things went pretty damned well overall for the whole NATOsphere after ww2.
We know WW3 didn’t happen.
We don’t know how it would have gone if it were another country “in charge” or how it would have gone if nobody was “in charge” to the degree the US was.
So just saying “Pax Americana was a pox on the world” is such an utterly asinine statement I don’t even know how to begin to address it, other than to file it under “trolls gonna troll.”
Correlation is not causation. At the same time, the industrial and technological revolutions happened, which are the main drivers of the "greatest timeline".
It's popular to hate the US but I'd like to know what country you think would be better at the role of global hegemon. What country would you suggest would do a better job? Be specific.
> The concept that living in a hegemony is acceptable is incoherent
Wishing upon a star that humans were better is not a solution.
Revoking the Pax Americana frees America to pursue more wars of conquest. Not fewer. It's a revocation of the rules-based international order that America (and the former Soviet Union) put in place following WWII.
It similarly frees every other wannabe global and regional hegemony to assert their spheres of influence.
I'm American. Why would the largest military on the planet not be ready for rule by might? Revoking Pax Americana (and the rules-based international order it was built on, aspirational as it may have often been) just means our elites can go back to 19th-century rules.
> where small groups of well armed people can compete with state on a more equal footing
Yes. This is happening in Sudan, the DRC, Burma, Yemen, Nicaragua, et cetera. It entertains some people from afar, but is generally a miserable state of affairs for the people on the ground.
> I'm American. Why would the largest military on the planet not be ready for rule by might?
Two years ago, I would have agreed.
Today? Given what Trump is doing? Kicking out military personal for being trans, his poor choice for (not only but in this topic specifically) Defence Secretary, his demand to redesign stealth warships because he won't accept the un-"aesthetic" look is driven by functional requirements, demanding a return of battleships this time with a railgun (to go with the lasers)?
I think there's a very real risk of the USA military rapidly following the same path as post-soviet Russian military.
Well, I say "risk": I'm European, so for me it's a good thing if the person who is trying to break up my home is more interested in flashy demos than functional weapons.
> there's a very real risk of the USA military rapidly following the same path as post-soviet Russian military
Totally agree. That said, Russia's military is a joke. It's still more than capable of making messes. Messes which were once constrained by the rules-based international order.
The greatest era of prosperity expansion and peace in world history courtesy of pax Americana. The best decades - measurably - for humanity overall have taken place since the US assumed that role post WW2.
Depends on where you were during those decades. If you're in one of the unlucky countries that didn't do what the US wanted you likely suffered enormously.
Part of it is ideas and ideals. America represents ideas of liberty, liberalism, democracy, and individualism. The USSR/Russia and China represent the exact opposite.
America has failed to live up to those ideals (slavery, plunder, toppling democratically elected leaders to install military dictatorships, unnecessary wars with mass civilian casualties) on multiple occasions, but if you at least look at things on paper, America is selling a better product. And with the (now gutted) aid we provided to the world, and the economic boons of American consumer demand helping to speed up industrialization of poorer countries, benefits weren't just lofty principles.
One nice thing about American ideals is that, domestically, Americans who respect them can fight for them and fight for their preservation and expansion. There exists a noble thing to fight for which can in fact be fought for, and that thing encompasses the principle of not ever permitting people in other countries to suffer so that the United States may gain. Good luck doing any of that in Russia or China in 2025, and likely also in 2050.
“ Part of it is ideas and ideals. America represents ideas of liberty, liberalism, democracy, and individualism. The USSR/Russia and China represent the exact opposite.”
This is just pure John Birch society propaganda and at no point has the US actually ever attempted in any real way to realize this
This just seems pretty wrong. Obviously there were also lots of bad things the Americans did, but that doesn’t mean they weren’t attempting to realize those ideals. The US was quite influential in ending colonialism by Britain and France across much of the world after WWII for example. The US also helped to set up west Germany and Japan as liberal democracies after the war (they certainly weren’t before or during it, and Britain and France were not so fond of helping Germany recover), as well as helping German reunification (again opposed by France and Britain) and post-Soviet states with their recovery (sure, in all these cases the thing that was good for realizing these values was also good in the long run for the US (especially its Cold War political goals) and the affected countries but I don’t think that’s a very good argument that the US doesn’t care about these values).
I think there’s a lot of nuance here, and you have not expressed nuanced or detailed opinions in this thread, so I’m a bit curious about what your actual claims are, but I’m also not particularly interested in debating them.
> The US was quite influential in ending colonialism by Britain and France across much of the world after WWII for example.
The colonized people were a lot more influential there, though the US did exert some force in that direction (as well as plenty in the other direction) depending on its perception of the value of the particular colonial arrangement on its own geopolitical interests.
America has often stomped on the ideas it claims to fight for but to say it has never attempted to realize it is very silly and itself just reflexive anti-America propaganda. Look at FDR's words and actions during and after WWII, look at Eisenhower, look at Carter, look at JFK, imagine a future trajectory where Al Gore won that election.
America has sometimes done the exact opposite of helping other countries become healthy democracies - but they also very obviously have sometimes in fact helped other countries become healthy democracies. America's staunch pro-liberty pro-democracy stance is a big part of why the immediate aftermath of WWII led to Europe becoming a mostly democratic, stable quasi-union.
I am saying it's a gray area but that at least on paper America says nice words. You're just saying it's all bad.
Anything the US does that is beneficial is 1. Incidental to th goal 2. Will eventually benefit them US interest if only because it’s used as further propaganda
Ever since some non-native-English-speaking people within my company started using LLMs, I've found it much easier to interact and communicate with them in Jira tickets. The LLM conveys what they intend to say more clearly and comprehensively. It's obviously an LLM that's writing but I'm overall more productive and satisfied by talking to the LLM.
If it's fiction writing or otherwise an attempt at somewhat artful prose, having an LLM write for you isn't cool (both due to stolen valor and the lame, trite style all current LLMs output), but for relatively low-stakes white collar job tasks I think it's often fine or even an upgrade. Definitely not always, and even when it's "fine" the slopstyle can be grating, but overall it's not that bad. As the LLMs get smarter it'll be less and less of an issue.
I will admit to being an LLM workslopper. I don't ever send anything written by an LLM (because anyone who's seen enough LLM writing will recognize it's an LLM) without rewriting it by hand first - with exceptions for parts of READMEs - but for any other task it's pretty much 100% LLM.
I look at the output and ask it to re-re-verify its results, but at the end of the day the LLM is doing the work and I am handing that off to others.
Maybe there are licensing restrictions or other things that prevent it, but wouldn't it make more sense to combine HBO Max and Netflix into a single app? Or at least make all HBO Max content also available in Netflix (and then eventually sunset HBO Max). That would make a Netflix subscription a much more compelling purchase for a ton of people.
Not attacking you in particular, but I've always hated how we talk about "licensing restrictions" as if they're some kind of vague law of nature, like gravity. Oh, Studio X can't do Y... Because Licensing. "Licenses" are entirely conjured up by humans, and if there was an actual desire by the people who make decisions to change something, those people would find a way to make the "licensing restrictions" disappear. Reality is, the people making these decisions don't want to change things, at least not enough to go through the effort of changing and renegotiating the licenses. It's not "licensing restrictions" that is stopping them.
Same always comes up when we talk about why doesn't Company X open source their 20 year old video game software? Someone always chimes in to say "Well they don't because of 'licensing issues' with the source code." as if they were being stopped by a law of physics.
Speaking as someone who once worked at a company where these were real issues that came up - it's very often the case that intermediate parties in the contracts have dissolved.
Renegotiating the contracts would require lengthy and expensive processes of discovering the proper parties to actually negotiate with in the first place.
Although the contracts that were already executed can be relied upon, it truly is a can of worms to open, because it's not "Renegotiate with Studio X", it's "Renegotiate with the parent company of the defunct parent company of the company who merged with Y and created a new subsidiary Z" and so on and so forth, and then you have to relicense music, and, if need be, translations.
Then repeat that for each different region you need to relicense in because the licenses can be different for different regions.
The cost of negotiation would be greater than the losses to piracy tbh.
Copyright has never been about benefitting consumers. Or artists, for that matter.
It was invented to protect publishers (printing press operators). That continues to be who benefits from copyright. It's why Disney is behind all the massive expansion of copyright terms in the last hundred years.
Yes, thank you, not enough people know this. Though, it should be inferable from the name. “Copy right” to mean “I/we retain the right to make copies”. Certainly sounds like a publisher right to me.
I'm with you in spirit, but I think you are underestimating how wide and complex the dependency trees can be in content licensing. And simplifying those licensing structures often mean removing control from individual artists, which we tend to consider a Bad Thing.
Much like local control of zoning, that is an principle that many folks take on faith as being "good" despite all the actual outcomes.
In collaborative productions it is almost never the "individual" artist anyway: it's whatever giant conglomerate bought whatever giant conglomerate that paid everyone involves as little as the union would let them get away with.
> Reality is, the people making these decisions don't want to change things, at least not enough to go through the effort of changing and renegotiating the licenses.
Which is a perfectly sensible reason for a business decision.
> "Well they don't because of 'licensing issues' with the source code." as if they were being stopped by a law of physics.
So laws should just be ignored? Issues created by human social constructs are very real.
We can change the laws. Radio stations don't have "licensing issues" with playing songs.
From another angle, if copyright were more like it was originally in the US, every single show I watched as a kid would be in the public domain, since I haven't been a kid for 28 years.
Radio is a lot simpler. Used to work in that realm back in the Napster and Kazaa days.
You have a broadcast station. You know that estimated 30k people are listening. You sell those numbers to advertisers. Now you play a song 1x, you record that fact. At the end of the month, you tally up 30k users for that artist and you cut a check to ASCAP or BMI. Thats it. You just keep track of how many plays and your audience size, and send checks monthly itemized.
They were downloading pirate Britney Spears over Napster and playing it on air. And since 100% royalties are paid for, was actually legal. Not a lawyer, but they evidently checked and was fine.
I'd like something similar for video. Grab shows however, and put together the biggest streaming library of EVERYTHING, and cut royalty checks for rights holders. But nope, can't do that. Companies are too greedy.
That shows how tech monopolies are bad for content creators.
Like Spotify monopolizing music streaming, and now creators have the choice of getting virtually nothing from Spotify or literally nothing by avoiding Spotify (unless you're already Taylor Swift).
With radio stations, no single radio station could really hold you over a barrel, because there were still a lot of other radio stations to work with.
Disobeying unjust laws is a moral imperative. Working around laws that hurt society is good for society. Changing laws that aren't benefiting society is the sign of a functioning government.
Yea, what I mean by "people who make decisions" is everybody involved: studios, distributors, rights holders, and the maze of middlemen who have inserted themselves into the business: If all of them decided that more money could be made, if not for those pesky licenses, the "licensing problems" would immediately disappear.
Licensing is really complicated and requires lot of paper work. The best example is the music soundtracks of old TV series. They even get substituted if they don't get the proper license to stream them. So some old show get new soundtrack or background music and they don't feel the same.
That would be amazing if we could watch both Netflix and HBO Max content at the price of one subscription. At least for me, these two platforms covers 95% of my video content needs.
"The price of one subscription" being the price of Netflix plus the price of HBO. Streaming is turning back into cable where everything is trapped in one bill, no matter how expensive and uninteresting some part of that bill is.
Having Discovery's awful content push out quality HBO content was already a major blow.
I imagine major HBO resellers / direct Netflix competitors Amazon and Hulu (Disney) will insist on HBO remaining an extra-cost option, assuming these relationships survive the merger at all.
The cable thing in US is something Im struggling to wrap my mind around. I can’t imagine someone deliberately paying so much money for such a bad content.
The only explanation I can think of is that most of the subscribers are elderly folks who signed up long time ago and didn’t bother to look into current bills.
Internet/TV bills can be negotiated, but it is usually something you have to do annually and most people, rightly so, hate it. The companies make it hard to do, so most people would rather pay an extra $5-10 rather than spending an hour or two on the phone. After 5-10 years, those fee bumps really add up.
The only way to keep Internet/TV costs low is to threaten to cancel or switch every year, and actually be willing to do it. For some that isn't an option because there is only 1 provider, and others I've talked to hate that idea because you have to learn a new channel lineup. It's amazing how much people will pay to not be slightly inconvenienced.
Live sports and public television was kind of the last bastion in my mind, but the former is piecemeal being acquired by streaming the platforms and the latter is largely being put on the internet for free.
Your last point is the stronger one. Live events, including sports, are a heavy driver of these subscriptions.
Another is broadband deployment. Choice is low in many parts of the country, and bundled service offerings are frequently priced near the "internet only" offerings to nudge customers into a "might as well" posture.
Hulu and Disney Plus have taken centuries in this endeavor. There's a lot of content licensed to Hulu that is not necessarily licensed to Disney Plus, though Disney Plus seems to be showing more Hulu content, but I assume it has to do with licensing.
I assume it has as much to do with the fact that Disney and Comcast didn't settle on terms of sale for Comcast's minority stake in Hulu until June of this year.
> wouldn't it make more sense to combine HBO Max and Netflix into a single app
I currently pay $20 something for Netflix every month and $10 for HBO Max a couple of months through the year when I’m binging a show from HBO. I as a consumer would prefer to keep it that way. I absolutely do not have the appetite to pay $30+ a month if the two are combined.
Everything about these big moves in the streaming space is basically to re-create the "good old days" of cable subscriptions and pay-per-view.
I think we can expect HBO streaming to continue as a premium subscription for movies and high-production-value shows. That would let everything else to land on Netflix with no conflict.
Yeah, I can easily see something like 2 separate at $20/month vs 1 super at $35/month (make-believe figures).
Assuming all WB and Netflix customers move to the super platform, that's a loss for Netflix (assuming the super platform doesn't significantly reduce their costs).
And the $35 might be more than some set of current Netflix subscribers want to pay, so they drop the service, so an even bigger potential loss.
Certainly, I have no desire to subsidize sports fans via a higher Netflix super package.
The irony is that a lot of people complained loudly about the cable bundle then complained loudly about streaming service fragmentation even when it at least offered a choice to cut their monthly bill.
There was a brief happy period where you could ditch cable ($100/month or whatever), subscribe to ~2-3 streaming services (~2-3x $20/month), save a decent amount and still have a good selection of content. And bonus, you didn't have any ads.
Then the fragmentation got worse, as all the legacy media companies rolled out their own platforms, and it suddenly became ~5x$20/month to get the same content. And ads got added back into the mix, even after subscription fees.
These days, I actively switch platforms every few months. It's a bit annoying, but beats the old cable days.
My biggest complaint today is the fragmentation across some sports. Take pro cycling (TDf, etc) - it's split across 3-4 platforms in the US. So, I need to get FloSports, Peacock, and a few others. I wish I could either get individual events OR a bundle that included everything. Oh well, I'll pay for a few and pirate the Sky or continental feeds for the rest.
We briefly had a reasonably priced, all pro cycling coverage streaming service called GCN plus.
Swallowed by Discovery and then (in the UK) bundled into a 30 GBP a month sports package called TNT that comes with a little bit of premier league football.
Prohibitive and has led many to piracy this year. I only hope whoever eventually wins the race to buy Warner Bros eventually undoes this madness, it could not be worse as a cycling fan.
When Netflix started losing shows did they lower their price to allow users to sign up for competing services? The price just went up for everyone in reality.
No but there's very little I deeply care about watching, including live TV. I definitely pay less for video content than I was paying 5 years or so ago. Netflix has been on my bubble for a while. We'll see what happens with this news.
And I already have Amazon Prime and Apple TV+ through other bundles I have for other reasons. We'll see.
I don’t see how this is ironic at all. Doesn’t this just make sense that people are complaining about the same business model? Or are you saying people should be more grateful we don’t have to watch ads anymore?
Still, the real issue is one that both cable and streaming services don't solve.
People don't want to pay for what they don't watch. Both streaming and cable have the price of everything they own and produce built into the price. When you subscribe to either, you're subsidizing a bunch of stuff you don't care about.
People don't want to pay $20 a month to watch stranger things in oreer to subsidize a bunch of stuff they don't watch. It was the same with cable. Netflix is just one giant cable bundle, it always has been.
I'm regularly a bit surprised at how many people don't even consider purchasing a la carte content or Blu Rays. For films it's often a pretty reasonable option for occasional viewing.
And their service is trash, technically speaking. I sometimes sit down with a burrito and pick a show and wonder if I’m going to finish the burrito before the show actually starts playing. It’s embarrassing. There’s a lot to hate about Netflix but they are highly competent when it comes to the perf of the UI and the streaming.
I'm thankful I was "grandfathered in" by starting a remote role pre-COVID. Honestly I wouldn't be shocked if I'm more productive in an office (due to pressure to seem busy, which correlates somewhat with amount of time actually being busy) but I overwhelmingly prefer remote work.
I'm one of the rare remote in an office where most are full time there and I'm there one day a week.
I have no idea how they get anything done in there. I feel they only can focus before and after business hours.
So don't be so sure. Home has distraction when the mind is distracted. But once working I feel we are much more productive and capable due to long uninterrupted stints.
It does take discipline but that's what deadlines are for.
>Honestly I wouldn't be shocked if I'm more productive in an office (due to pressure to seem busy, which correlates somewhat with amount of time actually being busy)
As a hiring manager, I appreciate the honesty and nuance. There is so much bullshit about remote work from the people doing it that it’s a little too much “doth protest”.
“I get so much more work done and I cracked the code to productivity, and surely no one would abuse this system, especially not you ultra worker 5000. Anyone who disagrees with me is a threat to the oversightless system I have an I must try and protect this by attacking them.”
Depends what you see as “abusing” the system. By working from home, I can take a walk in the garden when I find it hard to think, it energises me. At my office I can (and do) take a walk in the car park, but inevitably I leave the office with a headache caused by constant noise and fluorescent lighting
At home, I can put my family first if needed. When I’m at the office and something comes up at the kids’ school that I need to deal with, it’s a mad dash to get away soon enough that I almost have to drop everything and run
The times working in the office has been good as a software engineer: when we are prototyping on physical hardware I do not have at home. That’s it
It’s great if people love to go to the office. That’s fine. It’s managers that enforce it who are the problem — the people who work for you aren’t children and if you feel like you can’t trust them to make the decision to work from home, why on earth would you trust them in your office?
You seriously think this clown cares about any of this? I don’t know a single person living comfortable life who woud speak like that, only some miserable sod living in a shoebox who hates everyone around them.
That’s a fancy “no u” but it doesn’t make any sense.
I have remote employees, and I have people I would never allow WFH because they can’t handle it.
I don’t care what you do. I’m explaining from the position of someone responsible for a team that MANY people who are strictest about WFH being absolute are the people abusing it. This shouldn’t even be remotely controversial… yet… all I see is more protest and digital foot stomping.
You're a hiring manager, obviously your perspective is warped. Naturally you want good little code monkeys who will sit at a desk and pump out code.
Nobody steps back and asks - wait, is that good? Is there a point where "productivity" becomes negative because we're pumping out shitty half-baked code from a workforce who despises everything the company stands for? Nobody asks, is it possible that employees who contemplate suicide every day might not make the best product.
?
No. They don't. It's work, work, work and the end result is a piece of software so unbelievably shitty and barely functional that you require a commission-based Salesforce of sleezebags to sell it to some poor soul who doesn't know the difference between Git and GitHub.
Ultimately, and I know this is very old-fashioned, your company IS your workforce. Keeping them happy makes a good product and keeps the profits flowing. Every company in the Golden Age of the American economy knew that. Few remember it.
Right, but if you didn't want code monkeys, you wouldn't be talking about productivity and getting your 8 hours worth.
The only people who think that engineers are actually doing a straight 8 hours of work are so delusional they're not worth mine, or anyone else's, breath.
Most of the time is spent thinking anyway. Coding is, like, 5% typing in a chair and 95% thinking about what to type. You don't need to optimize for the chair.
What's the fear with WFH? Your employees might not despise you? Your company might accidently create a culture that doesn't suck donkey dick? People might actually agree with your mission statement for once?
Is that really so bad? And all it takes is not intentionally fucking people up the ass. It's so easy, so accessible.
Yeah, people differ, and there are different forces that can increase and decrease productivity in an office and at home. If I'm honest with myself, being remote gives me more opportunity to slack off and do whatever I want, which often is not really working. But if I'm in an office I also am less able to get in a flow state.
An ideal working environment for me would probably be working from home, alone, perhaps with some stimulants (I have severe ADHD, or at least am diagnosed as having it and perceive myself as having), a close deadline, a lot of intrinsic motivation and interest in a task, and no distractions. In practice, most of the time I find working on a laptop at a library or cafe or on a laptop/desktop in an office does push me to do more work-related stuff more frequently on an average day, since I know people near me may notice I'm spending ages on Twitter or HN or whatever and that somewhat discourages me from doing non-work things.
I don't think you deserve to have been downvoted. I love having a work-from-home job and love that I was able to get one pre-pandemic, but I also don't necessarily blame higher-ups for wanting more people to work in an office. It's complicated.
The human brain may at its fundamental level operate on the principles of predictive processing (https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/09/05/book-review-surfing-un...). It might be that it has many layers surrounding that raw predictive core which develop us into epistemological beings. The LLMs we see today may be in the very early stages of a similar sort of (artificial) evolution.
The reflexiveness with which even top models like Opus 4.5 will sometimes seamlessly confabulate things definitely does make it seem like it is a very deep problem, but I don't think it's necessarily unsolvable. I used to be among the vast majority of people who thought LLMs were not sufficient to get us to AGI/ASI, but I'm increasingly starting to feel that piling enough hacks atop LLMs might really be what gets there before anything else.
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