... might just give the IC industry the kick in the butt it needs, just like with spacecraft and electric vehicles. He recently stated that the whole IC-Fab thing is done wrong these days and that he might just end up eating a hamburger and smoking a cigar right next to a microfab with higher cleanroom efficiency to prove his point once the first Terafab is up and running.

I'm no engineer, but the "copy-exactly" and "clearroom design" of the late 70ies sure has become long in the tooth and my intuition says Musk might actually be on to something (once again). It's going to be fun to watch how this Terafab thing plays out.

While I agree that many in the industry want the cheapest and the fastest to build regardless of quality, my question is about the demand side.

Who wants these apps? What is is that they do that someone is willing to pay for? How does that address the cost of the other inputs that make apps worth enough money or other rewards that someone wants to maintain them?

We are 18 years out from the launch of iPhone App store, and even though humans are far slower than AI in building apps, after nearly two decades I don't think there are massive parts of human activity that are un-apped. In pharmaceutical development, the dearth of "undrugged diseases" has led pharma companies to focus on rare and orphan diseases - bringing VERY high cost drugs to market to serve small numbers of people.

Where are the "orphan applications" that these apps are there to serve?

Vibecoding a delivery app stack will not make DoorDash obsolete - somebody still has to recruit drivers and food sellers and offer something to each of those parties that makes them want to drop DoorDash. DoorDash may be able to automate away some labor (though I suspect it will be less than they think).

In the enterprise, the theoretical "un-automated work" seems to be in two main buckets:
1- making presentations, dashboards, documents automatically, and
2 - building software automatically

Both of these clearly have some value, but I think the AI boffins and investors are wildly overlooking all of the human stuff that goes along with those tasks.

Also, it's obvious that AI makes that kind of stuff a commodity, meaning that its value goes down as its volume increases. So yeah, AI can make a lot of slop, but it's not obvious how that makes there be more valuable stuff.

I happen to know Germanys most popular fantasy author Bernard Hennen a bit. He is mentally preparing for AI to take his job and has been for a few years. He says it's likely that he'll just be managing and steering the world and it's characters and that AI will do most of the writing and come up with new ideas that he then decides on.

That sounds very plausible and AFAICT as someone who GMs table-top RPGs and does quite a lot of writing as a naked ape this is basically where we are at right now already.

... Did they really phrase it that way? If so, that would be the most *sshole move I've seen by corporate douchebags in a long time. And if so I can't wait for the bots to replace those folks too.

Yeah, agreed. I actually am really struggling to understand how they think there is demand for this kind of thing. Is there market research where someone says "sure, I don't care who's talking, just as long as the content is a topic that I am plausibly interested in and the _conversation_ is not too jarring".
It's true that people will watch AI slop on YouTube; my guess is that is the demand signal they are responding to.

I have once watched an AI generated YouTube video (really it was weird graphics over an audio that sounded like Richard Feynman reading) and I found the explainer vaguely interesting enough to continue watching in the background for 20 min while I worked. I guess that channel got a few ad impressions off my eyeballs for that.

So I can see notionally how this kind of slop might win over some other slop in a transactional zero-sum way, but I really can't see how any of the typical marketing stuff - audience building, brand development, downstream sales conversions, fits in with AI-generated, undifferentiated commodity content. Isn't the whole idea of an influencer that the audience wants a person to connect them to content?

Maybe it will work, but my guess is it will just result in a lot more content that one has to wade through. I'm sure someone will have an AI solution to that. Turn that Hamster wheel up to ludicrous speed!

Obviously AI is taking most of the whitecollar jobs. This isn't really news anymore IMHO.

I can't tell you how relieved I am right now that I took a breadless diploma in performing arts mostly just based on personal interest, with zero concrete career aspirations in mind. The arts helped me with every aspect of life, personal, private, public and job, even though it was completely breadless.

That my days making money by developing software are numbered is obvious to me too. I got incredibly lucky with my current gig but since have morphed into an entire team of software experts with me as the lead basically telling AI what to program. Never been this productive. It's only a matter of time that AI will take my current position too.

Here's the harsh reality: AI doesn't work.

Looking at AI doing the job I just did a year ago I'd say AI is working pretty good. Better than me in fact. And waaaay faster. Basically replacing an entire team of developers. ... Perhaps you should look into the newest models?

Curiously enough, what won't be working for long anymore is Facebook itself, when it's just AI talking to each other. I never got why FB had a business case in the first place. But then again, I'm a computer expert that isn't to bedazzled about the ability to upload text, images and video to the internet.

If Ebola catches on and goes viral globally it will be a very serious problem. A true pandemic. The current death toll for Ebola infections is around 50%. We're talking Resident Evil/28 days later/I am Legend type shit.

I never quite got all the noise and hysteria about vaccinations going during CoViD 19 on either side and I always said we should - either way - be glad that it's just CoViD 19 and not Ebola 19.

If we now actually have global Ebola 26/27 on the menu, the fecal matter is going to hit the rotary air impeller at levels that will make SARS v2 / CoViD 19 look like a laid-back undressed rehersal during a beach vacation. I sure do effing hope this does _not_ happen.

Either way, I already got my Goggles, professional filter masks, water-filter, cooking gear and gas, etc. when the last reports about a SARS variant came around last Winter. I'm sure as eff not getting caught in some apocalyptic level pandemic without being (somewhat) prepared. That much I learned from CoViD. And everyone else should've too. It would be quite dumb to die an unpreventable death just because you where to cheap to drop 150 Euros on some basic survival gear.

... that this sort of problem you're describing is one where having a monotheic revelation cult like Christianity, Judaeism or Islam as a your cultural foundation can actually make sense and come with quite a few benefits. Having the universe humbling you does seem easier if you humanize it with a stern god that punishes hedonism and misbehavior in a world of abundance. One of the countless benefits such a cult does bring along.

... throughout the developed world. Especially for college grads. Same thing here in Germany too. The rate of unemployed academics has surpassed that of trades people, just like in the US. It's AI. Mostly.

The nicest solution is geothermal.

Right now I'm in Denmark where wood firing is fairly common.
The village of around 2200 is heated through a district heating system firing the straw from surrounding farms. In Denmark this is typical for villages of this size.
So the first question is, would this also emit lead?
Realize straw is a seasonal product, wood grows over many decades.

At night we love the nice radiation of our wood stove, here wood is bought by the m^3 and per year we use around 2.5 m^3 (Is around 0.7 cord and we pay around DKK 2200 for it (CND 460, USD 240).

So what about geothermal, wind and solar or even nuclear, fusion or fission?

Over the past years I've mainly used Zoom for video calls and was happy with it.
These days the company is more and more 'forcing' Teams for these calls (I work via the Brave browser on Linux).
The problem with Teams is I can't get the video on a separate window or screen, Zoom is by itself separate.
WebEx works for video but is hardly ever used.

... he sure is effing serious about getting us back into space. Good stuff, like it!