shads

Ha... Hahaha... Mwuaghahahahahahaha... He he.... Bahahahahahahaha

Just need to crack $12 billion, no challenge there right. For a product people don't really seem as taken by as they hoped.i keep seeing them anticipate breaking even in 2030. If they have sufficiently damaged people's cognitive abilities by 2030, then sure why not. I think the bubble will burst before that becomes even remotely possible.

Wow I wish the media would remember that a strong independent media that is willing to hold the government to account actually makes for a stronger democracy.

Somehow Jonathon Haidt is being discussed as the ultimate authority on this topic because he wrote a book that some pollies read. Not seeing Candice Odgers being brought up, just to grab a name at random. Her take seems a bit more nuanced but we can't do nuance these days.

And meanwhile the truly catastrophic damage is already being done, how many young people handed over their biometric data today? Yes there is a lot of noise in that data, but the politicians are categorically stating that the systems will improve over time, if the scope of data collection is solely for the purpose of performing verification and no data is being retained... How exactly are these systems expecting to improve over time... And the mask is off, "Won't somebody think of the kids?!?!" Is actually, "Won't somebody provide categorised biometric data to the scumbag AI companies?".

Citizens need to start demanding that the eSafety Commissioner investigate these AI companies for misappropriation of data starting today, if the demands are concerted and consistent enough maybe we can keep the government tied up investigating these companies and help them avoid shooting any more toes off in the process.

I genuinely don't think I have anything to add to that. It's all just so petty and tawdry.

On a related note I think it's worth mentioning that this is all accelerated by a 24 hour news cycle and the amount of right-wingers who insist on dragging American culture wars and politics over to Australia, I'm guessing because our own politics aren't dramatic enough for them, which then platforms the worst sort of people.

Maybe that's reaping what we sewed considering we exported Rupert. Now we are importing hate & radicalism on-top of our own domestic stock.

I want to preface this by saying that I don't believe anything could serve as recompense for what those women and girls went through.

But it's a bit telling that they had been caught, tried, found guilty and were actively serving their sentences, yet the mob (or at least elements of it) still clung to that pretence as a way of being able to attack and traumatize an entire community.

I sincerely doubt that this was the first flirtation with racism for many of these people. Violent race based attacks maybe, but not racism on the extreme end of the spectrum.

Slightly off topic anecdote:

I talked with a refugee from sub Saharan Africa once, he was pretty cooked and not super lucid. Talking to a friend later she revealed that she had dealt with him before doing community outreach.

She explained that his parents had got him out of Africa ahead of a little ethnic cleansing and brought him to Australia as a young child. He had then spent the next decade plus dealing with racism, ranging from casual to overt and targeted. Started on drugs at 13 and looked like he was in his late 30s before he turned 20.

I'm certain he was no angel, but I feel like he was forced down a pathway in life by the environment he lived in through no choice of his own. How different could his life have turned out if he had landed in the right community?

I despair that we are really terrible at just living with people from different places and cultures, especially when they make up a minority in our communities.

My MP started off giving this topic a simple once over and agreed with it. Then listened to a bunch of constituents, experts and just the rhetoric from other politicians. He has since changed his stance on it. Also he happens to be an Independent.

Strange how much of the inequity in our current system is related to people who are motivated to vote along party lines instead of listening to the people who put them in their position isn't it?

Not a Sydney-sider or from NSW, was the racial tension that was stoked up to the riots really caused or significantly contributed to by that horrible series of rapes?

For the outside I get the feeling it's a brick in the wall kind of thing. Along with lots of racism, culture clash, opportunistic politicians and grifter shock jocks.

But I understand it's hard to gauge the vibe of a culture from a half a continent away. Even more so doing it 20 years later.

It's so frustrating seeing the government fiddling in the margins to grab headlines rather than, doing something constructive. This is going to devolve into a game of whack-a-mole trying to make it look like it is achieving something other than what it is (normalising the idea of having to dox yourself to access the internet). Meanwhile I have just lost all the passive ability to monitor what my teens watch on YouTube, and the easy ability to check in on their conversations on Snapchat. They have thrown my kids out into the wild west of barely moderated YouTube and dubious chat apps.

If they had implemented strong laws around algorithmic outputs, human moderation, and online harassment then we would have been applauding them for holding the social media companies to account. Instead what they have done is laid another part of the foundation of a surveillance state.

In essence the governments desire to be seen to be doing something is dovetailing neatly with the shit heads that want everything we do online to be monitored, recorded and as a byproduct more heavily monetised.

Also since they are doing this to protect the children, is there a number of children they are willing to sacrifice to achieve their goals. How many marginalised kids have to self harm before they start to ask the question "Are we the baddies?" We already know that social media has had Perverse Incentives at play that have shaped it, so while it sounds hyperbolic I don't imagine it's beyond the pale that the LGBTQI+ kid who lives in a rural area with 0 local support is going to be affected by their online support networks disappearing. The kid suffering from domestic violence suddenly becomes voiceless and can't work out who they trust enough to reach out to. The bullying goes to the all new special app all the kids on the playground are using that is hosted out of another country that doesn't give a shit about Australian laws and becomes impossible to take down as we have just taught our kids to work around the tissue paper blocks the government keeps relying on.

On top of all this, we don't have comprehensive data privacy laws, and while the government says it will levy massive fines against companies that don't take reasonable steps to secure our data, the reality is that they will not, and if they tried to what's to stop the companies deciding that Australia is not an economically sound country to operate in and just up stumps and leave rather than paying the $85,000,000 fine?

This is all just the surface level thoughts I have of this debacle.

Discussing the best way to diversify your portfolio to realise safe and sustainable yields?

With charts?

Why do they do that to themselves? She effectively has 2 medicine balls strapped to her chest. I doubt they feel good at all.

Hard disagree, at some point investors are going to start asking these AI companies when they will be done burning cash and when the profits will start rolling in. Arguably OpenAI is already starting to see these concerns. If the US gets a new government at some stage there might be enough political will to draw a line in the sand with NVidia and tell them to stop manipulating markets. Finally there may be some pushback against datacenters literally killing the areas they are built in. What we are seeing is a fraud against the world originating from a group of hyper rich arseholes that may last a surprisingly long time, but eventually they will need to pay the piper.

I did have someone tell me this has all the hallmarks of the space race. We are going to see enormous amounts of efforts and resources thrown into AI only for these pioneers to realise there is no clear way to monetise at which point all that energy will be redirected, until then China keeps on egging the US on to make them increasingly commit more and more of their economy to a concept that is going to be a lead anchor on the country left holding the bag.

Oh I don't mean to diminish the harms of the movement. We have a disappointingly long history to show what happens when this sort of group is weaponised by the wrong type (I was going to write right type, but that feels wrong) of leader/funder. But on an individual level, can you imagine one of these stains trying to explain their viewpoints to an honest questioner on a one on one basis?

I used to know a powerlifter who looked like what these guys fetishise, but he is their polar opposite ideologically. I would love for him to sit down and in his oh so calm voice ask one of these goons why they think the way they do. Trust me when I say it would never leave their mind that this guy could tear their arms off and beat them with the bloody ends, so if they were stuck next to him on a flight or train ride I think they would be sitting in a couple of different puddles by the end without having made a single valid point, meanwhile my old mate would likely continue his trend of intimidating people before they realise he wouldn't hurt a fly.