From the article:

Microsoft’s records showed that at that exact same minute, a Windows device carrying GDID g:6755467234350028 had visited the ngrok signup page.

Why does Microsoft have a record that includes both the GDID and a web addresses? I am confused by this mechanism.

I think there are a lot of things at play here. Ultimately I don’t think you should, though.

The fact that you still want to tell them is suspicious. I think you’re not being honest with yourself. Your ulterior end game is a hope of some type of reciprocation. You haven’t moved on.

Just because (assuming it’s even true) a statistical model of a gender says “they probably would like it” is irrelevant. Would this individual like to hear it? It sounds like you don’t know. If you don’t know them well enough to anticipate how they would react, then I think it’s pretty safe to say they don’t know you well enough to receive the message “I used to love you” in a way that could ever come out as a net benefit to them.

I empathize immensely regarding your position. But as a 3rd party observer, don’t do it.

Yeah, I conceded that your call to action was correct.

Just wanted to add colour so people understand the mechanics at play. When you understand them, it lets people evaluate other things, without needing you to tell them what to do.

For example, if your comprehension of these companies is that the companies are acting with the goal of profitability l, they would see something like a fast-track onto an index post IPO as a bid for legitimacy, some kind of ego play.

If you comprehend it as a beast that can only subsist on funding with no viable product, it entirely changes how you comprehend the post IPO index listing desire.

Counterpoint:

They already are losing money. They themselves do not project that they will be profitable until 2030. The idea that “smart people with spreadsheets won’t let them lose money” is obviously wrong because they have done nothing except lose money, ever.

They get thier operating capital from funding, not sales.

Now, I agree that the gambit is wrong. So you’re right. You’re just right for the wrong reason.

Funding is just the cash value of market optimism for the future of your product. High usage props up optimism. Social media IPOs were valued very much based on active users, the idea being that more users meant more opportunity for profit.

The more people actively using these tools, even if they’re just maliciously burning tokens, just add to the “active users” metric. Which makes funding easier. And funding is the ACTUAL way these companies “make thier money”.

Privatize the profits, socialize the losses.

How does this increase dependence?

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want it. It shouldn’t be allowed. I don’t know all the details but im sure they got some absolutely darling tax break to get them to build it here.

But this isn’t like selling out potashcorp. Or a telecom. Global fertilizer disruption, china gets preferential access over Canadians. Telecoms want to fleece Canadians (even harder) and funnel the money out of country? Those would be examples of where foreign ownership can create a problem.

But what is the product here? AI? What if they give preferential access to the AI to the US if there is a shortage? What if they charge Canadians unfairly for it? Who fucking cares nobody wants it.

We aren’t selling control over a resource or service that Canadians were otherwise dependent on. I don’t want them for the same reason nobody else wants them. But as a vector for foreign control? I don’t think that specifically is at play here.

Another payment option is not tackling it at all and just “paying the interest” by having a larger engineering team to wrangle the beast than you would otherwise have needed.

I’m glad we both stayed curious. We fucking rock

Ok, I can accept what I think I just read:

“Although a drop in housing prices would provide a reprieve to those who do not own, the fundamental structure of housing as a commodity is the greater beast that must be defeated”

Now, that’s true, I’m 100% on board.

I do feel like people sometimes let perfect become the enemy of good. “The homeless guy doesn’t need a handout, he needs a job”, they mutter as they walk on by.

If you wanna think that long term, I actually don’t think you’ve gone far enough. Government supply initiatives? A start, but still a bandaid. Massive increasing tax rates on multiple ownership. Cap on residential property that can be owned by Corporations. Rent controls. Pull no punches to establish that housing is not a viable speculative investment. You build to sell to people who will live there.

What about the equity you’re about to decimate? Government needs to get back big time into the pension game. Big time. How will I live? Eat? Get medical care as I age? Needs a fix.

Until those broad changes occur, I’ll still be cheering every dip.

But then the prices go up again.

The price of anything is the balance of buyers and sellers.

The price TELLS you where the equilibrium is. It is the OUTPUT of the function.

Houses aren’t Hienz Ketchup. Head office doesn’t just decree a house price. You’re imagining the housing market works like Taylor swift tickets from ticket master.

You don’t even have to hypothesize on this because housing markets have been swinging around for decades. People on the sidelines were able to buy houses after 2008 that they’d never have been able to afford otherwise. It worked out GREAT for people who has been sidelined.

I entered the market at the brief but violent housing downturn in late 2019. I never would have been able to otherwise.

They suck for people who own a home and are depending on thier equity. It sucks for people who own a home and the banks get nervous.

Whenever I hear people saying to people without homes “be careful what you wish for” when they are wishing houses were cheaper… I just hear my old boss telling me how I shouldn’t want a raise because it’ll “bump me into a higher tax bracket”.

It’s bullshit half-truths which sound just plausible enough to convince you to not act in your own best interests.

If you own a property, its in your own financial best interests to have the value increase. If you do not own property, but want to, you want the price to go down.

That is not what that means.

I promise I understand what you’re saying. I’m saying the fault in your logic is misunderstanding the upward pressure of cash buyers.

When prices fall, it isn’t chum in the water for corporate cash buyers. What it means is that those same buyers were ALWAYS there, and are now leaving. The absence of thier buy pressure is the cause of the prices falling.

That is how supply and demand works, though. If the prices drop, and suddenly cash buyers start pouring out of the woodwork, that will drive prices back up.

When you see prices fall, it necessarily means the cash buyers are not just swooping in and grabbing everything.

Actually when things are less expensive they are easier to buy.

I can point to examples of many civilizational collapses based on comparatively minor climate abnormalities in the last mere 7,000 years, and can say with certainty the earth has gone at least 5,000,000,000 without being bombarded by even one gamma ray burst.

I think any alien civilization with basic math would prioritize the bird-in-hand.

They’re asking us to scale back our usage.

I give it another year. The markets are souring on it, big time. Unless something big and good happens w/ spaceX (because retail investors are underwater on that) the next set of AI IPOs are going to be a disaster.

Ask yourself why all these companies are scrambling to IPO now. Thier investors see the writing on the wall: it isn’t going to happen. The breakthrough. The singularity. An army of virtual workers with the ability to actually do the job. The only thing left for investors to do is push the IPOs to get any kind of return.

They think we’re at a peak of perceived value, and a higher plateau isn’t anywhere in the foreseeable future. Judging by how quickly ALL these private companies are suddenly interested in IPOs, I actually think they think they’ve passed the peak already and are sliding.

You gotta understand, the C-Suite, even the CTO, need to collectively “paint a picture” for investors. And that is art, and art is subjective. If investors wanna hear “we are prepared to leverage a new technology so that we can remain competitive”, then you gotta paint that picture. The buy in, the double down… take it for what it’s worth.

Did you think your C-Suite has ever actually been honest with you about plans, priorities, the value proposition of your work… anything really? Don’t ever confuse what they “say” with what the actually think or believe.

You SHOULD quit, I WISH I was in a position to do so. I’d spin by we could crack a cold one. Hella jealous.

Just like… for your soul… don’t think this is the new normal. Some neat and good and useful stuff is going to come out of this… but the impact that this tech will have on the workforce is being wildly overestimated.

I’m glad they were around because they were singlehandedly posting an obscene amount which really helped lemmy not feel like a ghost town back then.

But, they clearly had mental health issues. No healthy person would post whatever he was doing… probably 1000 posts a day (did the math: 100 posts avg per day. One post every 14 minutes for 2 years straight). Considering HOW unwell they were, they were relatively good natured. But you could see thier worldview was rooted in pretty serious personal issues.

They were tedious, and frustrating, condescending, and a know it all. Absolutely couldn’t admit they were wrong… not even admit that weren’t perfectly right. But… they weren’t ok.

I was glad when they disappeared, but mostly because I was really hoping they had been intervention-d by loved ones. To go cold turkey one day must have been BRUTAL for them.

All in all I think he was the right person at the right time. Thier faults actually DROVE engagement, which was important for a blossoming platform. I don’t think anything they said or did was out of malice.

A complicated person. I really hope they’re doing better.

There was a radio station who’s whole thing was that they would never play nickleback. Then one day they accidentally played nickleback. The Playlists were coming from some head office 5000 miles away, and they missed pulling a nickleback track once it got to the local station.

I don’t want to make any assumptions about your age, but I think a lot of people in north america have forgotten or weren’t alive to experience the smoking world.

You used to just get handed an ashtray at a restaurant. You would just smoke at your desk at the office. Basically there were ashtrays and lighters within arms reach at any moment. Industrial design was to cater to the reality that everyone was smoking pretty much all the time.

If you went back in time and told someone from 1950 that you couldn’t smoke inside, what the cost adjusted price of cigarettes were, that cars don’t have ashtrays or lighters… I think they would genuinely think we had lost the cold war.

So, yes, they’re still making money. But they went from an active participant in the engineering of society to merely an industry selling a product. I think there are very compelling parallels.

I used to work for a company that did them. Your usual deliverables would be paused, including meetings.

It wasn’t “more”. They were great. Most of our internal tooling was prototyped that way, and that tooling was super awesome… because it directly solved the real issues we had in our processes.

My current company is “you can during the designated hackathon events, but you still have to do everything you usually would”. Which is absurd because it means that we don’t always have the option to work late for free.