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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 15th, 2023

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  • I think Weee probably already imported the Ramen and it’s in a warehouse, not being made to order. But it’s ok. I can probably afford the tax on ramen noodles. I’m partial to the spicy kimchi ones anyway so they’re probably South Korean. I also love the cheapest, finest shrimp flavored packets that are like $1 each. (I ate them as a kid so they’re a comfort food.) Those might even be made in America.

    Also, Master P has a gumbo-flavored Ramen product and there’s always yaka mein. I live in New Orleans and those could be made here for all I know. (Yaka mein is definitely made here. It’s basically ramen noodles but with Creole New Orleans broth and seasoning. The legend is that Chinese laborers building the railroads introduced the concept of ramen to black laborers in New Orleans and a new, cheap dish was born. It was eventually marketed as a hangover cure and called “Old Sober” but it’s called yaka mein now.)







  • I don’t know if this counts as a conspiracy theory but I kind of suspect the story of the Vision Pro was that it was originally a real project focused as much on patents as anything. If they wanted a viable consumer product line, they’d have sold the 1st generation(s) at a loss to help an app ecosystem flourish and compete with other XR products (even if an Apple’s XR headset would still cost $500 more because Apple).

    The US military was calling for XR headsets and even evaluated HoloLens. Companies were obviously exploring too. That’s when Vision Pro was under development. Apple isn’t really a military contractor — I’m not sure if they do any — but having patents to license to future XR headsets could potentially be very valuable and subsidize Vision Pro consumer pricing until the component prices fell.

    Then, HoloLens shit the bed. It made soldiers nauseous and the military (and companies) pretty much lost interest in XR. The entire HoloLens team got laid off. By then, the Vision Pro was probably in early production but the potential revenue from having the most advanced XR’s patents became essentially nil. So, they just sold them at the actual cost and gave up on the product line.

    In that scenario, the Vision Pro lead (and team) delivered exactly what Tim Apple wanted but the revenue potential disappeared. Meanwhile, “A.I. Siri” continued to suck (except the new animation; props to that team). So, the Vision Pro management was rewarded even if the Vision Pro failed in the market.


  • I don’t really get what selling Chrome and Android would accomplish. I’m all for breaking up tech monopolies but both of those projects are mostly open source that get proprietary Google crap and (for Android, at least, some monopolistic behavior like requiring what’s preinstalled, which is fine to ban).

    I don’t work on ad-supported projects so I may be out of my element but it seems like what would actually help end the monopolistic behavior is requiring Google (and Facebook) to spin off their ad network businesses. The monopoly problem isn’t Chromium or AOSP or that Google runs ad-supported search. It’s that if [insert random site] wants ads, they typically use AdSense. If Facebook and Google want to run ad-supported services, fine. But they shouldn’t also also be the middlemen for advertisers who want to run ads on third party sites. That’s a recipe for monopolistic behavior.

    In my ideal world, there would be no targeted ads at all and advertisers had to sponsor — and were so partly responsible for — the specific content they want to be associated with. But that probably isn’t going to happen since every politician is an advertiser that wants to launder their sponsorships through a middleman.


  • Just because he’s a clueless fool with connections who hasn’t invented anything (except maybe a truck where the sides fall off) doesn’t mean he’s not a “technologist.” He’s just as smart as smart as every other “effective altruist” or “networked state” moron.

    You may be too young but remember when AOL had a highly paid “Digital Prophet” who was about as close to an actual clown as you could get without floppy clown shoes?

    For the record, the network state movement means “seceding from the union.” And it won’t go any better for them than when Seasteading enthusiasts found out pirates exist.




  • Others have pointed out plausible reasons specific to Google but they also laid off a fuckton of people and that never really works out long term unless the company has a good reason to lay people off (like if they lose a huge client or find one or a product line fails).

    But the recent tech company layoffs seemed pretty arbitrary, especially the stealth layoffs (like the “return to office” demands that just made people with options go elsewhere). I wouldn’t be shocked if the Google Assistant team lost some talented people who either left, were foolishly laid off, or were shifted to Gemini (which, like all consumer generative A.I., is still in beta and hemorrhaging money).

    I just say “consumer” there because it seems like highly focused A.I. projects could be legit businesses. Like the protein folding project at Google and things like that. But the chatbots and image generators might never be useful and profitable.