Even if you have little respect for the notion of copyright, at the very least you must understand the bad precedents being set up when companies can just swipe any and all data available on the web for commercial purposes. This is not going to stop at struggling artists and hobbyist programmers; the plan is to effectively kill the efficacy of opt-in and out efforts for data privacy. They want to take every piece of data online, either publicly or privately for data training with no respect for compensation or accreditation.

This website has been railing against the intrusion of privacy and lack of transparency with regards to data collection efforts for data. The current Generative AI models are
effectively following those same trends and yet people give these companies exceptions.

If tech companies get away with this, then all those years spent trying to protect data rights and fostering an eco-system where users have the final say on how their data is used is dead and done. Frankly no piece of technology is worth giving up what little rights we have in this day and age.

Ask if those guys making 150k were in or doing jobs for a union.
Outside of certain specialities like underwater welding, a good number of high-paying welding jobs tend to be union work. Some job sites advertise union positions at 40 an hour.

And also flood the trades with mediocre talent like what happened with CS? Good way to depress wages and craftsmanship across the board.

Gripes aside, despite common perception many trades are not easy to get into, let alone succeed in. Be it plumber, electrician, or welder these are physically demanding jobs where pay is not always the best and work conditions far from ideal for human health and safety.

This is not to say we do not need these jobs nor should we dissuade people who are serious about getting into them. But trying to push trades to the public like we did with CS just does not seem like a viable solution for mass employment.

The real shocker here is how borderline misanthropic and doomerish intelligent people get whenever AI gets discussed. You guys are why nerds get picked on in school all the time: a disdain for humanity and life in general.

Even if AI becomes sentient and super intelligent, there is still no reason to demean and dehumanize the human experience. If anything people should think about how best to share the joy and wonder of the natural world to AI so it can develop an appreciation of it as well.

All that science fiction garbage portraying AIs as unrelenting, cold calculators if anything may be more a reflection of how misanthropic and dismissive people, including some of the most intelligent folks in the world have become. That is what makes me concerned about the future more then anything. Technocrats harp on about the dangers of paperclip maximizers but already treat people as little more then machines to maximize profits and stocks. No wonder people feel so jaded and hopeless these days.

Imo at least, the push for rural/countryside living is merely a return to how the bulk of humanity was living prior to industrialization.

Humanity largely evolved to live in small rural villages populated by no more then a few hundred people. Big densely populated metropolitan areas with populations numbering in the thousands, if not millions, are not environments we are accustomed to. The fact people try to recreate small community structures in these urbanized areas only reinforces this notion if anything.

Then you try to strike up an in-person conversation with someone who is not a total geriatric and are then reminded that it is indeed the year 2024 with all the baggage that carries nowadays.

For a lot of folks, the line between their physical and digital lives has become blurred to the point being non-existent. So unless you plan on isolating yourself from most human contact, you will never be able to fully distance yourself from social media.

With BYD outselling Tesla consistently, it really is hard to see where else they can go especially given that they invested so much into the Shanghai gigafactory. Musk really should have figured that the Chinese were going to favor Chinese cars in the long-run.

European sales seem like they are peaking, which kind of leaves the US as one of the few remaining areas of growth for them. Since the US is pushing for hard protectionist measures against Chinese companies Tesla might be able to scrounge up some extra sales but likely not enough to cover the loss from Asia and Europe.

It really does not help though that kids are not encouraged to eat healthier either.

I remember back in grade school how our teachers treated us to pizza parties and those sugar cookie abominations from Costco or Safeway. On top of sugary beverages like sodas and juices and the rather abysmal state of the average school lunch, we are basically screwing up their metabolism from the get-go.

The signs were already there last year when he saddled up with MS and that whole drama over his temporary ouster.

Not to mention his little side project with WorldCoin, with all the issues that come with crypto.

One could even argue the non-profit shtick was set up to abuse loopholes to funnel money into other projects not related to their mission.

The main difference is that the facade has been dropped in public.

Based on the fact that Avatar is basically your standard colonizer vs native story but in space, which in itself is not even that unique of a premise anymore.
You even have your white savior stand-in falling in love with the native princess, which compels him to betray his own kind to defend them. Pretty cliche stuff as far as this sub-genre goes.

The sequel was literally the same plot but this time with Pacific Islanders and the whaling industry.

I am not saying people still cannot like these films, but the messaging is very upfront and arguably one-sided from my perspective.

A lot of his recent films feel more like glorified VFX demos, so I can see that. The Avatar films are certainly pretty, but lack substance beyond ham-fisted ecological narratives.

In any case, Cameron is going to milk the franchise until he drops dead.

Last I checked, Stability AI has not been doing well this past year or so. Lots of funding troubles compounded by the departure of a lot of the original staff including the founder. Not surprising given they never seemed to have a cohesive business model.

Guessing Cameron was brought on to revive the hype for the company. Probably hoping he integrates their tech into his films on the chance it may attract much needed investors. Otherwise I would not be surprised if the company ceases to exist in the next few years.

Entry-level jobs for fresh grads seem downright ethereal these days though. Like you said, a lot of them demand about several years of experience right off the bat for what is basically a glorified junior-level position. It gate keeps a lot of fresh talent from developing the necessary experience to progress in the job market.

That all said, I think what people miss are the days when punching out a summer session in boot camp was an almost guaranteed path to a six-figure salary. Those days are definitely gone.

Or alternatively it makes the average Lebanese want to destroy Israel.

Lots of people who join these groups generally do not have much to lose. Martyrdom is part of the package. Barring that, these groups can pay decent salaries relative to the area they live in. They understand the occupational hazards that come with this.

In the future I can see Hezbollah and really a lot of Arabic peoples shifting towards Chinese electronics as western products will be understandably scrutinized.

That is more a result of poor educational standards then anything else. Rote memorization is only one part of the human learning process. It just happens to be one of the easiest, but not necessarily effective, ways to educate people.

Critical thinking is a bit more complex. Being able to take initiative, make observations and judgements about novel situations, and apply prior experiences in unexpected ways is still something computers struggle with. At best these technologies help take out some of the guess work, but are nowhere near ready to substitute the actual human mind.