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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 1st, 2023

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  • They’ve invested way too much to admit it’s almost totally useless, and only useful in niche app, using sketchy conditions (training material IP…) and under tight control.

    So they engage into heavy marketing and comms ops to convince the world that “AI” (very vague term BTW, what they offer right now should rather be called systems resulting from stochastic learning, credit for that naming suggestion is not on me) was a revolution and whoever doesn’t get on board will be left behind in the dust.

    It worked really well: corporate world is embracing the “AI everywhere” idea.

    So now, everyone is competing to provide “the best AI assistant”. And believe it or not: some people do ask for it!


  • It’s not just the funding, it’s the business overall. Public companies need to show growing revenues year to year, and worse: growing revenues with a minimum yield. A product can grow by attracting more users up to a certain point. Then the only way to grow is by making more money out of the same users base. If the revenue is based on ads:

    • Extend the product so that the user’s engagement increases (channels/others kind).
    • Add paying features (freemium approach, that includes blue stars or whatever the hell you want it to look like…)
    • Serve them ads

    Freemium is not always working well and Meta never used it. They have no new great idea to extend the product without eating their other products users bases. So the only one left is more ads.

    Funding is not the issue, for-profit companies are. Non-profit is the way to go. Federation is even better as individuals/families/small organizations can run their own servers.-









  • Summary: China is not a friend country. It’s a hostile country. Yes, we know.

    But the news is… so is the USA to Canada now. A hostile country threatening to annex Canada and trying to cripple the economy as a way to achieve the goal. So either we slap 100% tariffs on US made cars, which would hurt Canadians, or we apply the same tariffs on Chinese cars, so reduce them from where they are at the moment.



  • matlag@sh.itjust.workstoTechnology@lemmy.world*Permanently Deleted*
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    4 months ago

    Because that’s not about privacy, that’s about the trade war. Retaliatory tariffs on US cars increase cost of cars for Canadians, as there are almost no car assembled in Canada. Reducing or eliminating tariffs on cars from China would lower cost of new cars for Canadians while keeping the tariffs up.

    For privacy and security, not a single new car on the market is decent right now. That should be regulated, but that’s no concern for any politician at the moment.



  • Prices capped have nothing to do with nuclear energy and everything to do with stupid EU price policy.

    France used to have a monopoly by a state owned company on electrIcity: EDF. But everyone knows that’s terrible, and private market is the way to go. At the time, electricity in France was the cheapest across Europe, but it’s still terrible because… well that HAD to change!

    In order to introduce some competition, generation, network and “distribution” (billing…) activities were separated.

    Then private distributors (again: billing companies with 0 generation capabilites and 0 grid network) were allocated some quota of electricity from the nuclear electricity generated by EDF at low cost.

    In addition, and that’s the European policy: electricity price on the market would be set at the cost of the most expensive generator at a given time. Example: 100% nuclear today: cost is set at cost of nuclear. 95% of electricity from nuclear, 5% from gas: 100% of the electricity that day is billed at cost of gas! 80% nuclear, 15% gas, 5% coal: 100% of the electricity billed at cost of coal!

    Why? So that the priate newcomer would get huge benefits and be able to invest in electricity generation. But: there was 0 constrain in doing so, so they just rack up benefits at the expense of EDF and clients! Even better: since they get such low prices from their quota, they’re cheaper than the EDF split distributor company. So at some point, their quota was insufficient for their client’s demand. Time to invest… hahaha! No I’m kidding: time to ask for a bigger quota, of course granted by Macron and his team.

    Then came Ukraine invasion. Uh oooh! Gas price exploses, even the “distributors” start to feel the pain. What to do? Well, kick out their clients! Refure to renew contracts, or ask for such a ridicuously high price to make sure they just go! EDF’s hisorical distribution company is legally obligated to take them back. And that’s where the 2nd joke kicks in: EDF gave s much quota of nuclear electricity that they no longer have enough for these clients they have to take. No worries: the “distributors” sold back the electricity quota… at market price, ie mostly gas price!

    With the price of gas multiplied n times determining the cost of the whole production, it became unbearable for clients. That’s where genius Macron and Lemaire (Minister of Economy) set a “shield” (cap) on the bills. It’s no shield nor cap. It’s actually the state of France paying the difference in the bills between the actual bill and the cap they set. That’s public money!

    And again, that money didn’t go to resources. It went straight to “distributors” (rather call them parasites).

    For sure, the heavy maintenance work on the nuclear power plant done at the time didn’t help. They decided to do it on all plants at once (another bad call) and it lasted longer than planned.

    But the price issue has nothing to do with nuclear and everything to do with stupid policies.

    And now, lesson learned (not): Spain and Portugal got out of that absurd elecricity market. Germany and France (and many other countries) made a few changes and keep going. Because competition with multiple private actors in electricity is good. Can’t you see it??



  • In these companies, does anyone check the licenses in details to make sure using them is ok for the company?

    Meta will get at least the metadata: meaning they will record who was in which call connecting from where.

    For example, if one member is visiting a client, Meta may be able to infer the relation between the 2 companies.

    If any of the people in the room click “report”, then the discussion is sent for review without the encryption protection

    I’m pretty sure their user agreement translates to “you agree to let us do whatever the f*ck we want with the data you’re purposely disclosing to us”.

    And last but not least: if Meta decides to wipe the archives, any info get lost?

    There a reasons large companies ban unauthorized apps to talk about work.