EnderMB

Lots of these people exist. They're small business owners that aren't chasing huge profits, but have built something both profitable and sustainable without compromising their free time.

Sadly, we normalise the "founder" as someone chasing after Google and Amazon, rather than the person that didn't want to work for someone, built something that people like, and are able to live off of what they make from it. I've watched people build tools for fewer than five clients, stick a retainer on lifetime support, and live off of a modest salary that lets them work fewer hours than a normal job, with a good enough salary that they are protected if business goes south and they need to find a salaried job.

It's probably as good as it is in the UK. It would cost me roughly £20k+ a year to travel 90 mins to work if I were to stay at my job in London. On the bright side, the trains are so unreliable that I would claw some of that back through delay repay...

I'm the same, and had paid for it during the Reddit days of the app. I'm hesitant to pay a subscription this time around, though, since the creator has always left for months and come back with a flurry of updates - which is entirely up to them, but a turn-off for something I'll pay for periodically.

Sync is still my daily driver, and IMO few Lemmy clients come close.

I mentioned this elsewhere, but I wonder if this will drive Europe towards aligning with China.

With the Russian economy struggling, many of its oligarchs can either share their insane wealth to prop up the war effort, or they can ask China for help. If Europe were to broker closer ties with China over the US, would they favour growth with Europe over propping up a failed war? Losing its biggest ally might be enough to make Putin decide that it's simply not worth it, to declare victory, and retreat back.

Those looking to succeed Putin are also likely looking at how easy it might be to oust an ageing leader, and to do basic shit like revoking a war to rebuild a global economy. I'm not saying that the Kremlin are likely going to rejoin the fold any time soon, but unfucking everything couldn't be easier.

I think that ultimately it's a war of attrition on both sides.

The west believes that the war is for as long as Putin is alive/coherent. While it's likely some other KGB cunt will take over and do the same shit, it's also possible that someone steps in and reverses course, pulling Russia out of potential economic collapse.

Russia believes that their might will topple Ukraine because the west will only back to a certain point, and because Ukraine will likely give up control of specific areas before seeing unsustainable bloodshed. Putin will claim victory and book his place alongside the Russian elite.

Those that are suffering are the Ukrainians, watching their country get torn apart.

IMO there's potentially a third side, and that could occur thanks to Trump. If Trump alienates the rest of the west AND China, we could potentially see China align itself with Europe and Ukraine, resulting in total isolation for Russia. This is just conjecture, but if the Russian economy is close to collapse, China may view it as beneficial to align with European markets, rather than prop up a failing market.

For many, they seek the easiest option.

They oppose what they're told is "wrong". However, tell that person that you could escalate a war that'll last a generation, or let your friend surrender and die to shut Russia up, they'll take the option that turns the sad Ukraine news off and puts the attention back on them.

To the average Trump voter, the government should stfu about Ukraine and Palestine, and focus on the very important fact that things cost too much.

Preface: I work in AI, and on LLM's and compositional models.

None, frankly. Where AI will be helpful to the general public is in providing tooling to make annoying tasks (somewhat) easier. They'll be an assisting technology, rather than one that can replace people. Sadly, many CEO's, including the one where I work, either outright lie or are misled into believing that AI is solving many real-world problems, when in reality there is very little or zero tangible involvement.

There are two areas where (I think) AI will actually be really useful:

• Healthcare, particularly in diagnostics. There is some cool research here, and while I am far removed from this, I've worked with some interns that moved on to do really cool stuff in this space. The benefit is that hallucinations can actually fill in gaps, or potentially push towards checking other symptoms in a conversational way.

• Assisting those with additional needs. IMO, this is where LLM's could be really useful. They can summarize huge sums of text into braille/speech, they can provide social cues for someone that struggles to focus/interact, and one surprising area where they've been considered to be great (in a sad but also happy way) is in making people that rely on voice assistants feel less lonely.

In both of these areas you could argue that a LLM might replace a role, although maybe not a job. Sadly, the other side to this is in the American executive mindset of "increasing productivity". AI isn't a push towards removing jobs entirely, but squeezing more productivity out of workers to enable the reduction of labor. It's why many technological advancements are both praised and feared, because we've long reached a point where productivity is as high as it has ever been, but with jobs getting harder, pay becoming worse and worse, and execs becoming more and more powerful.

For now, I work in AI.

IMO, using AI to remove jobs is the business equivalent of the Darwin Award. No sane executive will look at AI and see job replacement. A dumb executive will look at AI and see more productivity gains. A smart executive will see AI as a way to improve tooling for workers that explicitly want to use AI.

Sadly, as with most tech improvements, we'll see lots of companies run by stupid people try to do stupid things with it. The best we can hope for is that there are opportunities for people to bail and find better job opportunities when their employer says "let's fire HR and replace with GPT", only to get absolutely brutalized by legal fees when their AI HR decides to fire someone for a protected reason, or refuses to fire a thief because they have a disability, or something that requires human intervention that doesn't exist, or one of the hundreds of ways that it could go hilariously wrong.

It happens all the time. I remember watching solid profitable tech companies pivoting to delivering large apps on the new iPhone app store because "it's the future", only to realise that spending two years to develop an office suite for the iPhone 4 was a fucking stupid idea in hindsight. I remember people firing web developers because WYSIWYG editors would mean that you could design and build a website in the same way you create a Word doc. Stupid execs will always do stupid shit, and the world will move on.

Maybe they want small government...so they can fight the government with their union?

It's a bit like saying that you want to fight Mike Tyson, but only if you remove his arms and vision.

It's in Bristol (Kinda? It's actually in South Gloucestershire, but that part is debatable).

Not to be confused with the University of Bristol, which is actually quite a nice university. I'm lucky enough to have attended both.

I work in big tech, and in the US there is a lot of money being thrown at knowledge workers. IMO it's not a bad thing, but I do wish that other workers also got their fair share.

Regardless, the dirty secret of these companies is that a big part of your compensation is usually restricted stock units, and when you relocate through work to a different country you usually get to keep the same amount of stock. You'll get a good base pay, but your stock once vested will usually put you leaps and bounds above the average pay.

So, work for one of these companies that pays stock, and move to the UK, France, Germany, somewhere with a MUCH cheaper cost of living and better social net. At a high enough level, you could arguably quit your job and prop up your future salary from interest.

Sister Calderón: We’ve all lived bad lives, Mr. Morgan. We all sin… but I know you.

Arthur: You don’t know me.

Sister Calderón: Forgive me, but… that’s the problem. You don’t know you.

Arthur: What do you mean?

Sister Calderón: I don’t know… whenever we happen to meet, you’re always helping people and smiling.

Arthur: I had a son… he passed away. I had a girl who loved me… I threw that away. My momma died when I was a kid, and my daddy… well, I watched him die. And it weren’t soon enough.

Sister Calderón: My husband died a long time ago. Life is full of pain. But there is also love, and beauty.

Arthur: What am I gonna do now?

Sister Calderón: Be grateful that for the first time, you see your life clearly. Perhaps you could help somebody? Helping makes you really happy.

Arthur: But… I still don’t believe in nothin’.

Sister Calderón: Often, neither do I. But then, I meet someone like you, and everything makes sense

Arthur: Heh… You’re too smart for me, Sister. I guess I… I’m afraid.

Sister Calderón: There is nothing to be afraid of. Take a gamble that love exists, and do a loving act.