You see it in the stores as well, when was the last time you saw a PC or Computer store on every corner.

Now there is a Mobile phone store on every corner instead, so it's very visible
If you think that argument is not convincing enough, you weren't born in the 80-90s or a young adult then, or you never had the need or wish for owning a PC, and why should you? Times and needs changes over the years.

On top of that, PC's are kinda crazy expensive in comparison to everything else, most people get their gaming needs with perfectly fine consoles (albeit with exorbant gaming prices, and the death of physical media - which makes collecting those kinda redundant, sad but true - a lot of you-shall-own-nothing here and people are sadly getting used to it).

It's not PC alone, it's all the streaming services, they are convenient and offers no real incentives to collecting, and they offer a true silent enshittification because you don't truly collect anything anymore, sure there are exceptions (me and probably a few of you who reads Slashdot), and we're becoming increasingly rare, so we pay the extra costs of a traditional albeit modern PC.

A modern PC is kind of a supercomputer too, if you have the top of the line Graphics card and a high end multi-core computer, you're sitting on a computing superpower, and that has costs with it.

We're often kind of autonomous, meaning we don't like to be "controlled" but rather in control of our own hardware, so you lose some of those customers loyalty because you offer the same kind of "lack of control" over your system as you do with the mobiles per default, so we're actively seeking other solutions.

Today it's not that unusual to pay the price of an entire small cheap brand new car for a decent Desktop Pc, but the capability of such a device is beyond most home users in reality, we're not using those at capacity because we're used to lazy programmers and all-in-one development software (such as game engines) were the code is rather sloppy because the PC's are "fast enough" to get desent results without a slow experience, but it could be 10+ times faster if coded efficiently, it's kind of the old "compiled vs hardcoded" dilemma, but I will stop here for the sake of sanity.

Yes, everyone is scrambling towards AI now, and they're tossing money at anything AI. Everyone is also trying to put "AI" on every product they can, even if there's no AI at all, just as long as some AI has been used to generate something, could even be a logo on a product, then it's AI supported.

No, your jobs are pretty safe - with one small caveat:

If you suck at your job, and you refuse to use your AI LLM tool help you learn and extend your knowledge, yes - you'll most likely lose your job to those who are useful and resourceful.

If you use LLMs and AI to make your job easier, yes - you're using it the way it was intended, it's a great learning tool, and it's even better at doing mundane tasks, guess what - they used to call that automation, AI is exactly that - it's more intelligent automation, but still nowhere NEAR capable of replacing a human fully.

Sure, a lot of companies will lay people off due to AI, but that's because they were dumb enough to buy into the hype, they actually think that AI can replace humans, well - sort of, but not really. AI and LLMs hallucinate a lot. LLMs demands a VAST amount of computing power to get even the simplest of stuff predicted correctly (in other words, it cost a fortune to train a database), in fact - it's so darn expensive that if anyone of you have been using and following OpenAI's adventure into this success, you'll notice that they had to DIAL BACK their latest models, because it became to expensive to provide to the masses, in other words, you got thousands of people on Reddit proving how "dumb" LLMs have become after the dialback, they met with MASSIVE protests because of this.

But think about this, if its THIS expensive, how much of a HYPE bubble dont you think we're in right now? This is why I think your jobs are still safe, at least for the next 10+ years until we have better GPUs, which in turn will have to be a lot more energy efficient. So you're safe for now, if you use it as a tool and don't freak out because of it, that is.

What's worse is all that A.i. slop we're facing, all those "let's get rich of VAO 3" scheemers on Youtube that now automated the process of "Cocomelon" stuff, aka AI videos made for content, mindless drivel content, but they just copy anything in existence, and make AI content out of it, untill we're so swamped that we don't know how to find real content anymore, youtube don't care because it means more money, the Scheemers don't care, because the more AI slop they make, the more money they make.

And ofc. this ends up in a sea of AI garbage, now that is a FAR bigger problem in the future than joblessness. because you aint gonna be out of a job, as long as you're creative and willing to change.

Music, got it!

So thats why Images on my Android phone has been bugging me every week to activate cloud backup, and no option to opt-out-forever.

The machine is hungry.

News at 11, the more you use it, the more capable you become.

It's with everything. The more you challenge yourself the more adept and agile your mind will become, it does not only apply to the use of computers and technology in general, but the more problem solving you do - the more likely you are to think things through and become better at decision making as well, even if it was computers.

I've noticed this cognitive ability with myself as well. For example, if I took a look at myself 30 years ago, if I had a down period were I was lazy, not caring, didn't push myself in any way, then the poorer decisions I would make.

I am in a very stressful job these years, and it's been asking more of me than any time in my life, and I have noticed the difference in the other parts of my life that I am simply making better decisions, it's so obvious that I can see it from the real results that is my life, I plan for things better, I don't overreact, I am way better prepared, I focus on things that matter quicker instead of just "spinning" the same loopy wheel like one tends to do if nothing better to do.

It's all about training that brain "muscle" of ours, and it shows results over time.

We know, and we love you. Well - as for Germans, we really do like you, just make sure to leave the garbage IN designated bins, by all means use our free nature to take in, hang out, camp for a day, move on and camp another place. One of the most annoying things is that tourists take stuff with them, never buy anything, leave it out in nature and never use hotels or paid facilities, but basically an RV.

So again - we love you, you're practically our neighbors, but buy something once in a while?

This has been a public message from the good people known as your friendly neighbors.

I Live in Scandinavia,

And the office talks goes like this:
"Did you hear about that poor British tourist that got detained because there was some ESTA issues, she spent 19 days in jail, in an AMERICAN Jail?".
"Yeah, not going there, we've cancelled the family trip to the US".

Etc.
I was planning to go as well as I have a couple of favorite towns I visit over there, but yeah - no one of us is going to America again in that state they're in right now, we do feel their pain, and we have a lot of friends over there. But we ain't going.

Could very well be.

But one thing I do know, is that I am in NO way more competent than the 1000s of books of programming tips and knowledge there is out there, and that no matter how little or much I think I know, I learn all the time, and sometimes it can fast-track me towards what I was seeking, and suggest things I wasn't even remotely aware of.

Competence is many things, also the ability to not overevaluate yourself.

The thing about LLM's is that they are teriffic if you know things already, being just mediocre at something will make you fantastic at your work if you know how to use it.

But it will create a very large shift in equality, for example:

- People with zero skills and afraid of A.i. and LLM's will miss out, they will have a hard time competing with people that has just a mild interest in using it as a tool.
- You will see a huge amount of "dummies" that will think this thing is alive, and they'll have a new best friend, which will create beliefs, create readable articles for the feeble minded to believe and follow.
- Those that are already good at something, stand a chance of becoming 10-100 times better than they were, because if you know what questions to ask, if you don't write one-liners "plz. make me rich$", those who spend time researching and read up on their skills, will have an absolutely revolutionary assistant tool at their disposal.

There are dangers and pitfals, censorship being the biggest one (ChatGPT has suggested a "License" to use it, and I certainly understand why), there are millions of "edgy" teens that will use it to do silly things that can lead to real life complications and liabilities, which is why we can't have nice things, they destroy the engine for all the rest of us (which I suspect, is eerily few).

And by license to use it, I don't mean that there should be some who can access it and others who can't, I mean that their censorship engine should be more merit based, so to figure out the users background over time, learn that what answers it can offer. It's a sinch you don't offer ready-made-solutions to dummies that will use it to blow something up, create terror organizations, lead people into bad decisions because of convincing writing etc.

It's dangerous - so use responsibly!

this is quite true.
But I made an invention the last 3 hours by using it to figure out the minor details, it's going into production via those online Cad services already :P

It's not your friend, it's you.

And that's it. You're really talking to a statistics probability engine that reflects what you write and tries to match what you type up against the vast data it has been trained on.

Technically you're just talking to yourself with yourself.
Is it useful for that? I think so, I talk to it with my endless ramblings and musings, and it sometimes fantasize with me or finds "facts" about my personal musings and ramblings.

This can be useful, think of it as an "ideas sketchpad" where you can rough out your ideas, and it will talk positively with you about the stuff you like and give you tons of fake positive reinforcement (which is technically what you do when you're roughing out an idea you really like).

Is it intelligent - no
Is it concious - nope
Is it sentient - not by a long shot buddy

Can it make you less lonely? Yes and no.
Why? Because if you KNOW all of the above, you KNOW it's technically just you and your thoughts, you'll have fun and possibly learn more about your own thoughts and processes and it can be an remarkably useful tool for sketching out ideas.

No, because if you are like most people, it sorta passed the Turing test for them, (someone back in the 80s-90s even believed Eliza was real, but yeah, each to their own, fantasize all you want, as long as you know the difference, it can be healthy and fun, but if you don't it can be devastating to your mind.

So yeah, like everything in life - use at your own discretion and use caution, doublecheck sources, fact check, and keep real to the world around you, use it as a tool and it will all be good.

ChatGPT like all LLM's is only a probability mirror of you.

It is like an advanced universal translator with a probability statistics engine, it will basically try to predict your next sentence and words.
It will try to get whatever you are searching for, right. And what is right isn't always right, that depends on you and the probability it has been trained on.

It's really just as simple as that.

I'm one of those who love to watch Youtube on the big screen, except - even as a Premium user, Youtube is going to the dogs.

Now more than ever, youtube is transitioning into a giant Tik-Tok channel with Vertical videos, and that makes regular TV youtube watching ...well, unwatchable.

Who want's to watch videos that fills only 33 percent of the screen real-estate?

Same here, and I live in Sweden (we have the LEAST of the EV's of our nordic countries), and people kinda oppose EV's here.

But I've given up on explaining to my coworkers how i literally laugh all the way to the bank after having bought my cheap second-hand EV 2 years ago, even with the smallest battery available. I save 3500 euro / usd - every year, and the car paid for itself within 5 years. It's hilarious.

The people have such idiotic type of arguments:
- Your car will blow up (yes, when an EV blows up its so rare it makes the news, when an ICE blows up - no one bats an eye, yet it happens more often)
- You'll always have range anxiety (yes, as if I need to travel 200 miles every day, it happens 1 time a year, for that money, take the train)
- Your footprint is worse (no, with a small battery, the footprint has matched an ICE car by 2000 miles, 6000 with a big battery), and it never emits anything.
- EVs are too expensive (you can get used EV's for less than 20K now, that have only a five miles on them with 5-6 years battery warranty left, by that time you've actually gotten the vehicle for free)

And I could go on, it's an argument you can't win with rabid people, they're used to an ICE car for 100 years, and they are the majority, the vocal majority.

So I don't argue these things anymore, I say things like "Oh shit, you're right, I'm such a dumbass, how could I be tricked into an EV? Darn Car dealers", Oh yes you're right, I've not noticed, my battery is so small I'm worried every day of my life (looks at bank account while hearing others complain about gas prices).

We will grow much stronger from the sabotages.

What we do is we practice low energy usage in our homes, we learn to depend less on electricity, oil and gas. And we learn to install solar, batteries, and thus reduce our footprint anyway, and as a bonus we become less dependent on external partners.