you know what’s funny to me, that when large organizations manipulate the apparent consensus on Reddit about a topic, that’s “clever marketing” and “innovative campaign techniques”.

When a bunch of random people collectively organize to do it suddenly it’s a “dangerous”

public companies do not necessarily have a Fiduciary duty to the shareholders, let alone one to increase value. Any that they did have (based on the laws and how they are incorporated in a given jurisdiction) would also be applicable to a private company. Private companies also have shareholders, the shares are just not traded publicly.

You’re probably thinking of the theory of “Shareholder Primacy” but that is a theory not a legal reality, although some insist it is based on a questionable interpretation of the precedent set by dodge vs ford motor company.

Public companies can be run in what ever way the board/shareholders see fit.

Plenty of privately owned companies do the same things so I don’t think it can be chalked up to an issue with publicly traded companies.

Because then tech would have to admit they’re moving in to a period of stability rather than a period of constant growth.

The big companies and start ups need to prove they’ve still got “revolutionary” potential otherwise the stock values start to drop. And lower stock values means less bonuses for leadership.

I love the flying car example because it reveals a huge issue with the whole “tech will get better” idea. People are still trying to make flying cars happen but it’s running in to the same fundamental issues; large things that are mechanically complex, energy intensive, and moving at high speeds in a crowded urban environments are just too expensive and dangerous.

There is no way around the physical realities, no clever trick or efficiency that will push it over some threshold of practicality.

How much will it affect ranking in the search algorithm? When will they announce the asking price? What about legitimate sites that cannot pony up that inevitable price?

Call me conspiratorial but this seems like a way to further subjugate civil society to cooperate society. . “Oh well, they couldn’t make a profit to pay for the blue check, so they’re not legitimate”

I mean there are huge issues with tech, but like, they’re in no way limited to kids… nor does it seem to affect them particularly strongly.

Shocker, self driving “taxi” service is a nuisance.

Almost like the solution to car based issues isn’t “more advanced cars”, but “less cars”.

I could definitely see how cotton could be used in some pretty heinous ways, maybe not by definition slurrs, but still. Given the historical context of the United States In particular.

Ugh, this is all so pathetic.

Bending over backwards to accommodate the loudest idiots in the room because they complain when they face consequences for their actions.

I had an idea recently of describing these chatbots as holograms.

Complex ideas and concepts are being flattened. Depth, a dimension if you will, in the form of context and conception, is being removed.

Like how a 3D object gets flattened on to a 2D plane, a hologram.

I think the easiest solution to this is just not to have all the ”smart” features in the first place.

In regards to reducing emissions, I get that these smart features can increase efficiency, but, does that offset the emissions of manufacturing the additional hardware needed? most people won’t set up things like load shifting, or live in areas where variable priced power just isn’t a thing, so that efficiency is only really realized by a fraction of the units.

Things like heat pump heaters are incredibly efficient systems, even without the smart features. I think we would be better served by focusing on getting these made as efficiently, repairably, and cheaply as possible. And then getting them in to as many hands as possible. Packing them full of smart features will just diminish the longevity of the equipment, increase the cost per unit, and make them less accessible to the average person.

The problem is, this isn’t really up to consumers or even companies, as alluded to in blog post. Investors push for the inclusion of such features because they’re ether convinced it’s what must be done to compete, opens avenues for future subscription fees, or just because they’re invested in the company that makes the parts that enable the features.

It’s a structural issue in how investment and funding is done, and regulation will only do so much to counter the natural tendencies of the business world. We need different ways to get investment in to the production of these kinds of products.

“The Death of Stalin” is perhaps similar to what you’re thinking of, basically about the shenanigans with in the Kremlin fallowing Stalin’s death.

I mean, I guess the term might just be “historical comedy”

I see a lot of potential for electric aircraft for short haul flights between regional airports, or for distribution of cargo between hubs, but not in any sort of dispersed capacity. Hub to warehouse cargo? Sure! Delivery to doorsteps or air taxi? hell no.

Anything that isn’t flying along a designate air route between already establish large volume facilities is just fundamentally impractical due to the safety issues with aircraft. No amount of new tech will solve how fundamentally dangerous a 4 ton hunk of metal going at 160MPH going anywhere but a designated route away from populated areas is.

Flying cars exist, you just need a pilot license to operate one, that is not something that will go away any time soon, and for good reason.

Everyone driving at 60MPH in 2D is dangerous enough as it is, 160MPH in 3D is way more dangerous. It’s not an issue of technology, it is an issue of the fundamental impracticality of the concept.

While riding in American trucks, flying planes with American fuel, marching in American boots, and eating American canned food.

“The most important things in this war are the machines… The United States is a country of machines. Without the machines we received through Lend-Lease, we would have lost the war.” -Stalin

“If the United States had not helped us, we would not have won the war” -Khrushchev

He was sued for miss use of company profits, not for failing to maximize profits.

He took profits and was reinvesting in new plants and cutting car prices, while also ending dividend payments to do so. That was the crux of the case, ending dividend payments despite having money to continue paying them. This case is routinely held up as an example of shareholder primacy but has been dismissed as an example of such by most modern thinkers In the field, in large part because the court also ruled that he had final say on how to proceed with company operation. Increasing worker pay was not the issue, ending dividends to make capital investment was.

Edit: also, I should clarify, he was the majority share holder, and the minority shareholders could thus not replace him with someone willing to pay dividends. He was not being sued for failing to seek profits, he was being sued for holding those profits hostage from other shareholders.

This is a common misconception based on an argument put forward my Milton Friedman. It’s based on legal cases where CEOs were taken to court for knowingly defrauding shareholders for their own personal gain (say, selling all of a companies assets of the company to a different company the ceo owns privately for a single dollar).

Friedman argued that these cases set precedent that meant all CEO were legally obligated to maximize shareholder value and could be held legally accountable for not doing so. Friedman was wrong about this, like many other things he said, as he was not a lawyer, nor a particularly good economist. No CEO has even been successfully sued for “failing to maximize shareholder value” despite some people taking Friedman’s work to heart and trying to do so.

This is definitely realistic and not an over valuation based on AI-hype investor brain rot. Like, they’re a fucking graphics card company. Like, sure graphics cards can do some cool linear algebra, and linear algebra can do some cool things… but I’m sorry, they’re not going to be earning as much as Apple or Microsoft, companies that sell the whole rest of the computer to people and/or the plurality of software that runs on it.

Reminder than most other browsers are based on chromium, and Google can probably break ad blockers on them if they want to.