Isn't a bubble bursting almost certainly a correction in general? What would you have expected to see in a bubble bursting?

The 401k will just become 401.

In another company, the employee could *apply* for the voluntary exit, but management reserved the right to decline to accept in 'special circumstances'.

There was a lot of pressure to accept of course, but they did cover the scenario of making sure they can keep someone if they thought they could not afford it.

The key is that either way, the severance is the same. When my company last did a voluntary buyout, it was more than the standard severance to sweeten the pot. If it is equal to severance, then people would be inclined to stick it out unless they *really* were looking to leave anyway.

If you stick it out, you get normal pay until the layoffs actually happen, and if you are so unlucky to be out of work for over 39 weeks, then you can start the UI checks to get that once the severance 'runs out'.

I'll broadly agree that self-hosting even when easy is skipped by most people, but funny to use email as the shining example of a relatively easy thing to self-host, that's one of the messiest things to try to self-host. But it is easy to point out that the vast bulk of AWS/Azure business is 'stuff people don't bother to self-host' and I know a lot of folks that would rather open a web hosted paint application than just start an already installed paint application.

I do think that the 'pure AI' companies are vulnerable to being rolled over in the long term by the likes of Microsoft, Apple, and Google. The companies that in various ways control the 'onramps' to this sort of tech (e.g. my company exclusively gives money to Microsoft for access to the models, because that's what they are used to doing for so much other spend).

So the private investors will fuel profit taking with IPO sell-off and the debt load may result in the company going bankrupt and the pieces being picked up by an older tech company.

The solution to that is AI. Finally, one-on-one tutoring becomes feasible.

AI to me is kind of like a self driving car... it would be one thing if the car actually drove itself and didn't require a licensed driver to sit behind the wheel and dedicate their full undivided attention to making sure the car doesn't do something stupid... yet no such thing at present exists.

You can take an Waymo in any of these cities:

• Phoenix metro, Arizona
• San Francisco Bay Area, California
• Los Angeles, California
• San Diego, California
• Denver, Colorado
• Las Vegas, Nevada
• Dallas, Texas
• Houston, Texas
• San Antonio, Texas
• Austin, Texas
• Atlanta, Georgia
• Miami, Florida
• Orlando, Florida
• Tampa, Florida
• Nashville, Tennessee

I wonder if it's 50% larger or 12kb flat overhead.

The data from a single component 2 orders of magnitude smaller than typical isn't so useful.

"may be AI slop" is a nonsensical statement, because if it's slop it doesn't matter who wrote it. Whether AI did the coding is not really relevant, although it is a more objective claim.

AI though, it really took a surprising and discontinuous leap in capability with Chat GPT 3, with application across soo many (most?) recognition and prediction tasks.

Including self-driving. What besides driving consumes so many hours and lives, and potentially remediable? I think it's probably the biggest AI application of the 21st century. Looking back the transition will seem faster.

Can you point at the place where you believe it says they had a permit to clear the forest?

They halted work promptly when notified the government was taking exception.

Anyway the whole story is almost devoid of the concept of legality, for whatever reason. Certain people are just sure it shouldn't have been allowed and want to see USA Big Tech heads roll.

Not 'no grades,' just grading of homework.

We shall see. I think not. Unless it turns out google had their legal ducks in a row, I think they will be paying an astouding, and record-setting, fine... maybe even if they did. For google, it's a terrible narrative at a very very bad time.

"in a few years, there'll be nothing human mathematicians can do that AI can't do better," Borcherds said. " Oh, that's sad. If history serves as a guide, it means we'll have to re-define math as "not intellience (TM)" and rationalize that AI is just brute-forcing it since DNN's are incapable of making novel generalizations (even though they do exactly that, constantly).

Yeah academic studies and surveys have a long and consistent record of failing to find any befit from IT in general:

- AI-generated answer (with direct quotes and cites)

1. Ng, Pan & Wilson (1998) Ã" Most businesses saw no revenue benefit ÃoeA majority (56%) indicated that their presence on the World Wide Web did not produce any noticeable change in their turnoverà The study also found that approximately 31% reported increased turnover, while 13% could not identify an effect. Citation: Ng, H.-I., Pan, Y. J., & Wilson, T. D. (1998). Business Use of the World Wide Web: A Report on Further Investigations. International Journal of Information Management, 18(5), 291Ã"314, p. 310. Information Research Full paper (PDF)

2. Hitt & Brynjolfsson (1996) Ã" IT investments did not necessarily increase profitability ÃoeHowever, we do not find evidence that these benefits have resulted in supranormal business profitability.Ã The researchers examined IT investments at 370 large firms. They found productivity gains and benefits to consumers, but no evidence of above-normal profits attributable to IT investments. Citation: Hitt, L. M., & Brynjolfsson, E. (1996). Productivity, Business Profitability, and Consumer Surplus: Three Different Measures of Information Technology Value. MIS Quarterly, 20(2), 121Ã"142. Iecon Paper and abstract

3. Subramani & Walden (2001) Ã" Internet initiatives increased stock market valuations ÃoeThe results suggest that e-commerce initiatives do indeed lead to significant positive CARs for firms' shareholders.Ã Studying 251 e-commerce announcements from late 1998, the researchers found positive abnormal stock returns ranging from 4.9% to 23.4% across different subsamples. However, these were stock market gains reflecting expectations of future profitability, not demonstrated increases in operating profits. Citation: Subramani, M., & Walden, E. (2001). The Impact of E-Commerce Announcements on the Market Value of Firms. Information Systems Research, 12(2), 135Ã"154. PubsOnLine Full paper (PDF)

Bottom line The findings illustrate three different aspects of the late-1990s Internet economy:

- 1996: IT investments improved productivity without demonstrably generating above-normal corporate profits.
- 1998: Most surveyed businesses reported no measurable increase in revenue from their websites.
  - 1998 data, published 2001: Investors nevertheless rewarded companies announcing Internet initiatives with substantial increases in stock market valuation.

The important limitation: None of these studies established whether the average company earned a positive or negative net return on adopting the Internet. The 1998 survey comes closest to measuring actual business results specifically attributable to Internet adoption.

- end of AI
Studies in the social sciences invariably prove what is popular. Watch, you'll see, and they consistently lean luddite. They resent new capabilities changing the world more than their 'insights' ever do. New capabilities are what change the world, but why should technologists have all the power to determine the future? (As if innovation, innovation, and history worked that way at all - particularly since inventors (individuals or nations) usually have a slim window of exclusivity.