Sounds like neither of you watched the video. Fortunately, I did so here’s a quick summary. The thesis is that music is getting worse, for a few reasons. Author argues:

• Auto tune and other modern digital sound production tools are overused to correct pitch and timing, making music too synthetic. Real music has imperfections that makes music just sound more artificial. Basically, taking the human element out of it.
• Streaming has cheapened the value of a single song because of how easy it is to skip to another song. So arguably it is not technically just worse music, it’s our appreciation for it.

The first point has been touched on by many other people. It’s a common trend in a lot of places outside of music too. People are replaced with machines and processes in a lot of settings especially in corporations and commerce, and while that’s great for efficiency and predictability, it creates a sterile landscape devoid of human expression. This is not to say all music has this. But mass market music is a chief culprit.

The other point really resonates with me with videogames and videogame sales. You can get a dozen great steam games for the same price as a single Nintendo title, yet I probably put 10x the time into that one Nintendo title than all the other steam games combined. Had to get every bit of value out of that expensive Nintendo purchase. YMMV on this point though. I don’t stream music so I can’t say how it has affected me personally.

Terminals are powerful and flexible, but still slower than a dedicated UI to see states at a glance, issue routine commands, or do text editing.

Terminal absolutists are as insufferable as GUI purists. There is a place and time for both.

Are they? As the article OP shares suggests, these films quietly make us compare our lives to what is portrayed on screen. This is advertisement 101: display people in enviable positions to portray a sense of longing for a lifestyle that one would not normally seek. A food commercial isn’t selling you a product, it’s trying to make you hungry.

If all you wanted out of these rom coms is the portrayal of a carefree life, you could just watch pharmaceutical, banking, or insurance ads.

Don’t forget the cost of lower and higher education in your “need for living” calculation!

Also, you’ll still need a system to determine what products and services are valuable for society.

The average human considers the Pythagorean theorem “sophistication”. Let’s not take our education for granted.

The benefit of AI is overblown for a majority of product tiers. Remember how everything was supposed to be block chain? And metaverse? And web 3.0? And dot.com? This is just the next tech trend for dumb VCs to throw money at.

The educated and the well-travelled may have a broader set of view points to see how many different ideas and values work (or don’t work) in practice.

I don’t disagree on some just lacking empathy. But I also think not all education creates exposure to a wide range of ideas and values that stick (or the education is just too narrow), so you’ll still find plenty of people who are educated on paper, but not cognizant of a broad set of world views. I also think we are too quick to label foreign ideas==bad ourselves. Empathy is a two way street. The key in navigating this may be in identifying when an idea comes in good faith or if it is hostile.

Other than making sure to be wearing your glasses if you are near sighted enough that your local licence requires it, glasses are an irrelevant factor. It’s not like you are going into active combat duty…

“Conservative”, “right”, “left”, are meaningless, political relevative terms we should stop using. Instead, we should just describe our values on a select major view points, including power, economy, and social structure.

We’ve got these things called “social media” that are built expressly for the purpose of influencing people to buy more stuff (literally in the name: influencers). And if it can get people to part with their money, you can be sure the same tools can be used to get people to vote against their own interests.

We thought the internet was a tool to spread democracy. We were wrong. The Internet is a tool used to undermine democracy, so long as people using the Internet are not strongly inoculated against organized interests, foreign, and domestic.

Just wait till the advertisers find out the eyeballs they are paying for are also just AI sock puppets. Enshitification strikes again.

If you could buy one, would you?

The wording of the article implies an apples to apples comparison. So 1 Google search == 1 question successfully answered by an LLM. Remember a Google Search in layspeak is not the act of clicking on the search button, rather it’s the act of going to Google to find a website that has information you want. The equivalent with ChatGPT would be to start a “conversation” and getting information you want on a particular topic.

How many search engine queries, or LLM prompts that involves, or how broad the topic, is a level of technical detail that one assumes the source for the number x25 has already controlled for (Feel free to ask the author for the source and share with us though!)

Anyone who’s remotely used any kind of deep learning will know right away that deep learning uses an order of magnitude or two more power (and an order of magnitude or two more performance!) compared to algorithmic and rules based software, and a number like x25 for a similar effective outcome would not at all be surprising, if the approach used is unnecessarily complex.

For example, I could write a neural network to compute 2+2, or I could use an arithmetic calculator. One requires a 500$ GPU consuming 300 watts, the other a 2$ pocket calculator running on 5 watts, returning the answer before the neural network is even done booting.

To be fair, most tools are pretty bad at all other jobs besides the one it was made for. Same goes for an OS. If Ubuntu is made to off ramp people more comfortable with Windows, then that’s just a fine purpose for aln OS.

I wouldn’t describe Microsoft as a walled garden (and Canonical even less). But maybe that term comes with degrees, and different perspectives of what’s tolerable.

You correctly answered OP’s question. But the question was irrelevant to begin with. The ban on TikTok has nothing to do with data collection. It’s about controlling potential sources of foreign interference: controlling what is said or how platforms (pick and choose what to) broadcast what people are saying.

Article summary: Japan’s system is not interchangable with systems outside Japan, which is a friction point for export.

The Design of Everyday Things

I’m pretty sure Windows is a key part of their “cloud stuff” strategy. You are right that consumers are not the direct focus of Windows, since they are not the direct paying audience, and that shows in the direction Windows is going, but getting consumers to use Windows is a big part of creating corporate buy in for Microsoft cloud services. Corporate environments will shun Microsoft cloud services if employees can’t use Windows, or Windows features run afoul of corporate policies (like blanket LLM bans).

Lemmy lacks niche interest communities, beyond stuff like Linux.