Your neighbors leave dead things on your stoop?

I would call the cops.

"It's a trap!"

The quality level that you are talking about is not merely a matter of skill on the part of the developer, but also time. The formal methods used that produce that level of performance and perfection take a long time to apply, no matter how good one is.

The *primary* reason why most software doesn't perform at that level is this: time costs money. Software that is thrown together quickly, and as a result has bugs, will be available for purchase much sooner, and will cost far less (mainly because it cost far less to develop). People are willing to buy buggy software if it is going to save them a fortune.

For most applications, the level of perfection that you are talking about is simply not necessary. People don't need their software to be that perfect in order to do their jobs. Of course, too MANY bugs will be ruinous, so there is a sweet spot to find.

And that's my main point: there is a sweet spot, and for MOST (not all) software applications, it is nowhere near as high as what you are talking about. Therefore, there is no market for top quality software. Any business that tries to aim for that quality level will price themselves right out of the market and go bust before they even get their first product out the door.

So, don't blame the developers. They are simply doing what the market is paying them to do.

Life is competitive, and always has been. And nobody owes you a job.

Tech changes over time and everyone must adapt to it. That's going to put some people out of work. It's not a happy moment for them, but seriously, that's is how it has always been.

There is this nice theory that, by working together, we can all make sure everyone has enough without ever facing the horror of being put out of a job and needing to take unpleasant work to earn a living. Well, human nature doesn't really make this tenable, which is why it consistently fails when it is attempted.

For now, the essential survival strategy is the same as it has been for millions of years: adapt or die.

I am sorry if this news makes you unhappy. But that doesn't make me (or anyone else who understands this) a jackass. We are just adapting like everyone else.

Apple is not a completely closed ecosystem. You can use a Dell keyboard and a Logitech mouse with your Mac Mini, for example. There are legal battles being fought right now to make it even more open.

You have no basis whatsoever for your prediction "If Nintendo was open back in the day, they would not be the Nintendo we know now." That statement is based on nothing but pure imagination.

Open ecosystems provide consumers with more choices. That is an awesome benefit! I like the option to use Dell keyboards and Logitech mice with my Mac Mini. And I would like the option to use other-branded docks and/or converters with my Nintendo Switch 2 as well. It would sure be nice to be able to plug an XReal headset directly into a Nintendo Switch 2 for example. But thanks to this arbitrary limitation, I need a rat's nest of power cables and converters to get that to work.

Asking for this is not "crying," and there is nothing immature or entitled about it. Your penchant for insulting those who disagree with you, rather then presenting sound arguments, isn't going to win any hearts and minds.

There are clear consumer benefits to open ecosystems, so we are absolutely right to want them, and (if we choose) to use legislation to force them.

The "evil" here is blocking compatibility with third party components. Open systems are good for the economy and good for the end-user.

Whether the way Nintendo went about it is illegal isn't for me to say. I am not a lawyer and anyway I don't have all the facts. But I DO know that Nintendo is extremely successful in this market and charges a premium for their hardware and their games, so it feels injuriously greedy of them to block third party hardware as well.

They could have chosen to do right by their customers, but they took the low road.

Shame on you, Nintendo.

Do you think so? The Switch 2 is still available from Nintendo's own website, as well as Walmart, Target, Best Buy, Gamestop, and Microcenter.

I find it hard to imagine that anyone who wants a Switch 2 is going to give up when they don't find it on Amazon. Or that a lack-of-advertising on Amazon is going to be the thing that makes sales "fall off a cliff" for this product.

The IA that we have now, *such as it is* (good with the bad), took a whole lot of money to create. It's not the sort of thing that a few college grads with a kickstarter could have come up with. It is very much the production of the super-rich, and so it is natural that they are going to feel entitled to controlling it.

The notion that the rise in tech will create this utopian labor-free world where everyone is equal, is just naive. There will always be greedy people, and so long as there are always hierarchies of power, the greedy ones will claw their way to the top and ruin things for everyone else. Even if tech someday gives us our star trek utopia, it's not going to happen in a flash when the necessary tech arrives...it's going to emerge from a long slog of exploitation and suffering.

Some of the complaints I am hearing about AI are silly though. "Oh, AI addiction is harming our relationships!" Well, any addiction will harm your relationships. The answer is the same here as anywhere else: conquer your addiction. It's hard, but do-able, and done. This isn't an AI problem, it's a you problem.

"Oh, it's harming my kid's mental development!" ok well then take the phone away for a bit and make the kids play together out in the yard. Sure, they will scream and so-on but boredom will set in and their natural instinct for play will take over. You just have to put forth the effort. I am sorry that parenting is hard, I truly am, but the ask here is for "the world" to take the AI away from the kids, when that can much more easily be done by the parents. (Oh and also teach your kids how to use it responsibly).

"Oh, its harming the environment from energy use." The AI isn't doing that, the people running it on their servers are. Charge them more for the power! Use the extra money on environmental clean-up. Switch to nuclear power. The human demand for power is only going to rise over time, this is just pushing the issue as a side effect of the high level of interest in the technology. So, instead of ruining thing for everyone who gets good value out of AI, fix the energy production and pollution problems directly.

"Oh, it's putting creative people out of work". Actually, I sympathize a lot with that one. That sucks. The rampant disregard for copyright law during the production of AI sucks too. It would be nice if we could have some regulation in place that would cap AI use in creative works, give people clear options to choose human-created works, and so on. That's tricky though, because it is so easy to cheat and get away with it. The tech exists now, so the cat is out of the bag at this point. There's no making the tech go away. This one will be difficult to hash out and good people are going to get shafted in the process. I am sad about this, but don't see a clear and good solution that will actually work, at this point.

We will never be ready for tech that disrupts the market. That's kinda the goal, and the reason why we call it "disruptive." We can't foresee the particulars, all we can do is have the rug pulled right out from under us and then scramble to adapt to the new world.

According to the singularity hypothesis, changes like this are going to start coming at us faster than they have in history. We will be even less ready than prior generations were, with even less time to adapt between major shifts. And the pace is going to keep accelerating.

If we can't adapt fast enough the chaos will destroy us. If we can, or at least if some of us can, then they will experience an entirely new concept of what it even means to be human.

2045. See you on the flip side!

As I said in a prior post, you are looking at the net profit margin. That number is reduced by the enormous salaries that these companies pay themselves. Gross profit margins (which are profits beyond the costs of goods sold) are above 20% for grocery store chains. Nice and fat, if you ask me.

Incidentally, the existence of unpleasant work is not in-and-of-itself justification for allowing illegal immigration. The whole "can't afford to eat" thing is supposed to motivate Americans to do those jobs. And, further, if Americans still refuse, there is also the option of raising salaries for those jobs. That's how the market is supposed to work, after all.

employers simply will not hire at those higher wages

Many of the jobs, in this context, are union jobs. Unions can ensure that employers must hire at higher wages. Further, they are waged positions, which means forcing people to work longer requires paying them more (time and a half). Also, market conditions can force the issue. Employers need the work done and a collective refusal to do it for too low a salary will force the issue. Again, it's how the market is supposed to work.

Also, your proposal to raise taxes for the rich falls flat in an environment where the rich have a large list of tax loopholes that allow them to escape paying them. I DO agree that there is a taxation problem here too, but it's not that taxes for the rich are too low. It's that the loopholes need to be taken away. That is also easier said than done...MUCH easier said than done...given the disproportionate amount of political influence that the wealthy hold.

You are looking at net profit margin. That is the profit they list AFTER they have paid their top execs huge salaries (and other book-cooking that goes into "operating costs.").

Gross profit margins tell a different story, and it varies by company. This is not gross income, it is still gross profit, which means its the money made beyond the cost of goods sold. This is what they are paying their amazing salaries with.

Kroger, for example, is reporting a huge 22% gross profit margin.

The discussion is a bit academic, however. It's a simple matter of economics. There are two and only two forces that prevent companies from fleecing the market: competition and government regulation. Where neither of these two forces are strong, there is and will always be anti competitive behavior and market fleecing. Book-cooking is just a way to make it appear like they are barely scraping by, when in fact they are riding the gravy train.

The logic here seems to be: exporting the illegal immigrants will reduce the supply of cheap labor, thus increasing the cost of labor, thus motivating businesses to pass those increased costs along in the form of higher prices, thus costing legal (non-illegal-immigrant) families more than they can afford.

On the flip side, the exportation of workers will increase the demand for labor, which will in turn create more jobs that regular citizens can have and also increase wage competition to drive wages up, thus increasing household income, thus making the higher prices affordable.

Most of our markets for common everyday items like groceries and such are cartel-controlled at this point. These cartels already have nice fat profit margins due to the lack of bona fide competition. That makes this problem worse, as they absolutely will punish the country with higher prices in retaliation for a policy like this. Their ability to do so would be reduced if we focused our trust-busting laws on them and allowed real competition to pull prices back down to realistic levels. This is, of course, easier said than done.

We deserved a 4 day workweek long, long ago. Since the 5 day workweek was established, other technological innovations have greatly enhanced worker productivity across the board. We should have a two-day workweek already, and that's still splitting the difference.

Legislation is the only way we will get a shorter workweek. And we don't need "AI" to justify it.

A major consequence, though, will be even more interest in offshoring and outsourcing. Employers will naturally prefer to utilize workforces that they can maximally exploit.

Further, the quality of computer science education has dropped enormously in the past decade or two. Colleges responded to high interest by watering-down the curriculum so they could cash in on it. I have seen evidence of this in the entry-level candidates I have interviewed throughout my career.

Other posters on this article have been modded troll for referring to colleges as an "old form of education" and suggesting that they may not be valuable anymore. So, at the risk of being modded troll myself, I will assert that this dim view of college makes sense for people who are interested in vocational training. By and large, colleges are cashing in on naive dreams, encouraging people to study whatever crazy thing makes them happy whether or not the degree brings any real job market cred. It's great business for the colleges because it maximizes the number of students (with the amount they can pay significantly increased by the ubiquitous availability of financial aid). Not so great for the graduates that wind up completely unable to work in their field.

This is bad news, so nobody wants to hear it. Much easier to mod the messenger troll than accept that the situation here isn't exactly as promised.

The world has changed. It's time to adapt.

The CEO of a dating app stating that they want to improve human relationships is like a mob boss saying they want to improve law and order.

Dating apps are then #1 enabler of social trends that are ruining human relationships. No amount of AI resistance is going to change that.

I also notice the irony of him saying that taking risks is an important part of friendship, despite his unwillingness to take risks with an AI relationship. He doesn't actually know that it is bad for mental health...none of us do. We don't have enough data yet and the tech is still evolving rapidly.

So anyway, I don't expect much to come of his statements or intentions. He won't be coming up with some revolutionary thing that significantly changes our current cultural trajectory. It may not be clear where this river is headed, but we are all riding along it at full speed.