Missing the key point though… your general concept is absolutely right… it’s failed over and over again because it can’t keep up with the fact that it’s cheaper and better performance with what you can buy locally, on top of bandwidth access etc… But there’s 2 ways to make one product a more common option, option A, try to make the one you want them to use better, but with AI they’ve done something different, they are working towards making local systems worse.

Key point is, the direction of attack. Instead of making remote compute better, cheaper, faster etc… what if the attack is make local hardware, more expensive, harder to get, less reliable, or even illegal.

Right now, all of that is happening, on top of course of windows being more bloated, hardware costs are multiplying at a rate never seen before, even for outdated hardware. Netflix and spotify have already adapted the public into no longer buying physical medium for movies and music, and as people are also noting, governments making more and more regulations come in place on say OS’s needing age gates, 3d printers needing to report to the government etc… It’s literally an orchestrated perfect storm to be pushing people away from owning computers.

The point is they aren’t trying to “catch up” to local hardware, they are trying to hinder the ability to obtain local hardware.

I don’t think they said they were “better”, if I recall they did “almost as much with far less resources”. and really the bigger thing was they were releasing a lot as open source.

IMO I think that’s what the real tech giants are worried about. Honestly I think I’m actually seeing the real goal of AI… and the worse part of it is, AI is the secondary feature.

Sam Altmen made a comment on wanting to see basically compute sold as like a utility to people. Crucial is getting out of selling hardware to people. I’m leaning towards the idea that the ballooning hardware costs isn’t a side effect, it’s the primary intention. The idea of it is basically to move all of computing to a model more like Netflix, or say what Googles stadia gaming console was etc…

The goal is a future where personal PCs are a rare luxury like power generators. For normal use we get crappy thin clients to connect to cloud services with our software. Super government and corporate friendly. Everything super accessible by government and scannable for AI training etc… Encryption can basically become meaningless because they can log straight into the machines.

China’s a big threat because… they could encourage in house models. IE an agent that runs in your house, or companies run them in their server rooms, and most importantly they can be trained individually with your personal data and company data, without creating the privacy and security nightmares of wondering if chatgpt could share all of your personal information with a random dude or competing company. Plus if we are talking individual hardware, that hurts the actual overall goal of shifting all focus of all hardware manufacturers towards data center modules that consumers and even medium sized businesses can only rent.

I’m sure some it’s just limited time etc… i do agree with the gist of it though, wouldn’t be the worse idea for creators to just crosspost everything they upload to tiktok or youtube shorts to loops as well, but I guess it’s more just out of their field of view to begin with anyway. Problem I suppose is, a second part of the linux/windows problem we ran into.

not only are there less users on linux, but the overwhelming majority of them, at the bare minimum have a windows machine or a dual boot system to run software they really need or want to run windows things if they need to. Likewise even people dabbling in loops, still view youtube shorts and tiktok. Meaning they don’t even count as additional users.

Kind of sad but that’s really the challange of getting the fediverse going. Problem is creative creators just want to get their stuff out to as many people as possible. It’s the same stupid catch 22 problem that we had with windows and gaming and software before proton (IE it’s hard to build up consumer/user bases without the creators, and hard to convince creators to upload for a smaller userbase).

Well I guess it’s true that AI tells us what we want to hear…

Also did Duck Duck Go go stupid AI… I thought that literally was the search engine for people who are sick of googles BS.

Can’t say I’ve seen much discussion on steam boxes, but generally speaking when hearing non techie people talk about phones etc… when people see a less expensive option with marginally comparable features, they tend to conclude the expensive one is just charging more to squeeze the most out of them… unless it’s apple.

I mean, selling codes in a box is such a silly concept to me to begin with. I want to know it’s marked up a bit to deal with the cost of keeping employees, be unable to trade it in or give it to a friend after I’m done playing it and have to wait to download it, but I’d also like to drive and wait in line to get it.

Most of the business models that enable subsidized pricing for consumer products, on the other hand rely on artificially restricting how people can use those products, which is shitty and abusive.

Which they agree with, that’s kind of the point though, unfortunately the customer see’s the PS5 for 600, and the steam machine for 1000+, and assume steam is the one doing something unethical, when the reality is valve is literally selling a PC. that you are allowed to install windows or a different linux distro on… play games from GOG or whatever on etc… which means valve has to make a bit of profit or at least break even in order not to be bankrupted by people buying a bunch of steam machines and no games.

so first the DOW was over 50,000, and now, we’re on DOS.

Well actually that’s probably not a great thing to call, I’d say probably about equal to MS on it, but data rights etc… I certainly don’t trust amazon strongly. Honestly though the outages make me very nervous on it, as the US east 1 was more or less reported to have to do with the increase in AI usage, and realistically both azure and AWS are leaning in that direction, which is pretty likely to result in a huge security flaw down the line.

Kind of typical Microsoft, to fail their main service and have to use someone else who’s slightly less bad at the same job, but also equally bad on security user rights etc… Kind of like how their browsers run on chrome now.

I mean, going to be straight I’ve never used twitter or bluesky, and made a mastadon account like 5 minutes ago to test. Looks to me like the homepage is just things you follow, but there’s trending page to view top posts, hashtags etc… Which to my knowledge is kind of what twitter was supposed to do (minus Elon pushing all his posts onto your home feed no matter how many times you try to stop it).

I keep seeing the echo chamber thing but at this point most social media sites are. Bluesky is just a left leaning one, which is the only thing that really sets it apart.

I mean honestly I think left leaning is basically being neutral and accepting scientific consensus. To me the non federated part of bluesky is kind of what makes me consider it a time bomb. Even if it were good now, we already know one owner switch, hostile takeover, threats from the government etc… can flip a network around faster than you can blink. It’s why I literally see federation as the only way forward for the internet, and find it so ridiculous that everyone bolted to bluesky to escape twitters crash instead of mastadon. It’s the same key problem. it can go down in moments.

I mean, it could just get sold to a massive advertising tracking and data pushing company. Or at this rate the FCC will find some BS statute to accuse it for and find a way to give it to Musk or Elison.

and as if this isn’t something that flags with the historical trends

https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/

In short, up till the 1970s worker pay and productivity moved nearly in perfect sync with each-other, more stuff happens, people get paid more, then, it stopped, company profits shot up, while worker pay barely went up at all (could be argued it went down due to inflation), Point is fixing that part first is kind of what matters. Then we can look into expecting the average person to care about “productivity” going up, THEN we can start finding out if AI is even being directed in a way that accomplishes that.

Staff is also usually instructed to make you buy more as well.

Anyway my key point isn’t that kiosks are flawless, my point is, there is a tangible benefit, a reason why a decent portion of people may actually get a benefit to them from a kiosk. (IE less factors for order mistakes, potentially easier time finding what they want, some people don’t want to have to use their voice and talk to someone at all).

My point is, in the fast food restraunts in my area, the ones that have kiosks, mostly also have human casheers as well, and even when the restraunt is slow and there’s no line for either one, it’s close to 50/50 of where people go to. While if an AI voice bot were added, I would be shocked if 1% of people would chose that over a human or a kiosk.

Kiosks, by definition reduce the points of failure in making an order. If I order through a human.

I might mis-speak, Employee might mishear me, Employee might hit the wrong button.

When I use the kiosk… I might hit the wrong button.

That’s a clear defined advantage of the system on the fundimental level

an AI drive through window

I might mispeak, AI might mishear me, AI might do something unexpected even with the correct data. All the flaws of humans and kiosks.

and I’m sure it won’t turn itself back on anyway every software update… with 15 promtps “hey are you really sure you don’t want to use this, we’ve improved it, why don’t you try it again before you disable it again”.

I mean the problem with drive throughs is that’s like the most painful way to order anything. Doesn’t matter if it’s a human or an AI. Lets talk on a garbage speaker 6 feet away with traffic, wind and everything else inbetween. Without being able to see the face of the person. Know when or if the feed has been cut off, also the added fun of the speed being terrible and of course the ability to get stuck because even if you realize it’s not worth the time… a car can pull up behind you and force you to wait it out as long as it takes.

I’m meaning picking the items and what I want on my food. Point is when I hit “extra pickles” the computer doesn’t go “no pickles?” or possibly ignore me. Point is voice communication is… well rife with mishearing and miscommunication, whether the recipient is an AI or a human.

Just as when I’m communicating with humans… if not having mistakes is important, I send a text.

The only complaint I disagree with is

We hate the kiosks at McDonald’s, Wendy’s, and Taco Bell that we are asked to use instead of talking to a person

Personally I love the kiosks. I love being able to select exactly what I want, and not go through a communication layer with a person, who may mishear or misinterpret what I say, and adding that while still having humans there for people who don’t like using screens or actually have questions is a good thing IMO.

But yes, AI is all the flaws of human workers, plus some because they always have and always will be significantly worse than humans at spotting mistakes giving you what you don’t want etc…