morry040

It’s estimated that Tidal pays $0.013 per stream, Spotify pays $0.003 - $0.005, and Apple pays $0.01 per stream.
https://dittomusic.com/en/blog/how-much-does-tidal-pay-per-stream/

The number of reported issues seems to be about the same with WinRAR: https://www.cvedetails.com/vulnerability-list/vendor_id-1914/product_id-3768/Rarlab-Winrar.html

The article by Wait But Why has always been my favourite reference guide for explaining the future of AI to friends and family: https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/artificial-intelligence-revolution-1.html

I’m not sure that they ever had any data because the data would probably suggest that management had the lowest productivity out of any employee. Middle management is filled with too many meetings, they’re all promoted to a level of incompetency, and have delusions that they contribute more towards the success of the business than the skilled people below them.

Great article, thanks! The last few sections really make it seem like a dumpster fire.

So, in simple terms, the value proposition is that the retinal scan will generate a unique ID of a person in the system and ensure that a person cannot be registered more than once. This will then allow the system to be used for tasks like authentication or ensuring fair distribution of tokens. Another potential use case mentioned is something like the administration of Universal Basic Income (UBI), whereby the system would verify that people receive UBI and cannot claim duplicate payments. You could also extend that idea to things like government ID.

The privacy concerns would probably prevent a roll-out in most Western markets, so it will be interesting to see if they can generate enough business in other markets.

I’m more interested in learning about who is paying the 25 WLD, how they have funded that, and how they plan to generate a return on the investment. There is already an upfront investment involved in developing the token, the “orb”, and the uses of the data, so what is the business model that generates revenue for them?

Agreed. As soon as a web service decides to prioritise revenue growth above the user experience, it’s over. This is usually in the form of an IPO, so if you happen to be a fan of a particular service, as soon as they start talking about going public, start looking for a free / open-source alternative.

Love it. AI incest is the perfect term for it haha.

There are plenty of alternatives (e.g. Vietnam or Mexico), but China still offers enough advantages to make it the preferred option. This article explains it well: https://www.china-briefing.com/news/reshoring-from-china-to-mexico-how-prevalent-is-it-really/

If you look at various economic indicators, it seems likely that we have reached the peak of China’s production.
Exports peaked in Dec '21: https://www.ceicdata.com/en/indicator/china/total-exports
Population - declining: https://www.ceicdata.com/en/indicator/china/population
Labour force participation rate - declining: https://www.ceicdata.com/en/indicator/china/labour-force-participation-rate
Employed persons - declining: https://www.ceicdata.com/en/indicator/china/employed-persons
Manufacturing wages - doubled in the past 10 years: https://tradingeconomics.com/china/wages-in-manufacturing

A lot of the tech companies were slammed by investors over the last two years for missing their earnings and many of them are still struggling to go back to 2021 optimistic growth rates. The layoffs last year have also cost them a lot of their best talent, so the quality of innovation, decision making, and execution has suffered. You are now left with a bunch of older executives who never really understood that it was their younger talent that was the core of their company’s success, so they fall back on older methods like increasing prices and cutting costs to try and lead the board / shareholders into thinking that their ridiculous executive salary packages are somehow justified.

Stephen Wolfram’s article on how ChatGPT works was enlightening: https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2023/02/what-is-chatgpt-doing-and-why-does-it-work/

Like you said, it’s just text prediction, using online content as the training ground.