Yes, I in fact do. Same mentality. "It's only 5 above that's legal", "what use is 6 miles above".
It just creeps in and next thing you know you're complaining about a ticket despite going 15 above. "But everyone else is doing it". No self-reflection, only deflection.
We used to have a factor called "work ethic" to judge people on because once upon a time we recognized that such behavior is contagious. In both good and bad ways. A hard worker will probably pick up an adjacent job quickly. A slacker who otherwise gets stuff done is less likely to. This behavior is no different.
i believe that for most people on the street, for most tasks, a Chat GPT 3.5 era LLM is sufficient enough. sprinkle in tool calling and other things, and that becomes enough. if you can prioritize that level of a model on-device (baking it in etc), then you can bifurcate AI users between those unwilling to pay and those who are willing to pay A LOT for frontier model performance.
less willing to take risks and be independent. less active and staying at home for more time. but thats almost all down to controlling parents who teach their kids to be scared of everything and dont let them go out alone, and the news channels feeding that fear.
some of it might also be social media (fear of public embarrassment) but one thing its definitely not is any kind of large scale hormonal change. culture beats biology almost every time when it comes to social behavior and there is no evidence that its different in this case.
Sure and maybe Google also subsidizes the Pixel phones because they'll make up for it with Google Play transaction fees. But what if I don't want something that's arguably illegal price dumping, and would rather pay a bit extra to actually own my hardware and be able to run what I want, even after it's discontinued? We don't get such an option.
Quickly more and more companies are adopting the model of finding ways to trap the user into continuously paying them more money after the sale, then locking down hardware and software to ensure the customer is properly trapped, and maybe price cutting their competitors a bit. The death of mobile computing is actively happening right before our eyes as Google completes the trap by restricting users ability to install apks. Ultimately customers end up paying more and having a shittier experience as a result of this.
I think it needs to be applauded when a company refuses to engage with this model and simply lets you own what you bought and paid for, and brings this idea to a market that has long been infected with lockdownitis. (Unfortunately in this case the price is not "a little bit higher", but what can you do when component prices have become crazy...)
I agree, but admitting the shallowness of the general human populace seems to be a moderate social taboo. You can get away with contextualizing it in a way that equivocates the nature of the phenomenon, but addressing it too directly seems to get pushback.
Saying
>I'm getting a hair transplant because I want to feel better about myself
Is received much more favorably that
>I'm getting a hair transplant because people are mean to bald people and I would downgraded a few points in implicit social status and general treatment if I were to exhibit male-pattern baldness.
This seems more telling on the artist who, I guess, believes that if you have taste in any field, it will manifest itself as wearing stylish clothes. I see their most recent blog post is analyzing luxury brands, so I think I'm on point here.
I don't mind when people want to spend a lot of money on clothing. But I mind when they judge other people for caring less.
(And as a pet peeve, I don't really understand why people can spend so much money on off-the-rack clothing and outfits? If you want to spend a lot of money, perhaps go to a tailor? But hey, it's their money, not mine.)
The joke is that the person "saying" this is wearing their "I'm a rational, independent thinker!" tech uniform (expensive Nordic outdoors wear, so practical, so smart, so active, Vimes' boot theory, et c, not like those clowns in business wear, I'm interested in practicality not signaling, that's why I'm spending so much money signaling so hard about how rational I am).
They are visibly displaying a complete lack of personal taste, instead wearing the SV equivalent of an outdated-cut, off-the-rack navy blue (or even black, LOL) business suit.
The joke is that the message "good taste is what matters now" is being delivered by someone apparently, in a specifically SV sort of way, with a deficit of good taste.
Thanks for explaining. We don't get much of this 'uniform' here in Singapore. It's too hot for tech people to wear long trousers and long sleeves.
I guess it makes sense of a joke. Though I don't think sense in fashion correlates much with sense in technology: the guy might just be wearing what everyone else is wearing, so that his wife doesn't bug him about it and he can concentrate on the hills he's actually prepared to die on?
I don't think any wife has ever asked for this look :-)
Someone just trying to minimally not-stand-out could do so way cheaper. The high cost is part of the point (for signaling).
The other major standard look is rich-hipster: $300 Japanese jeans ("they bought the actual looms Levi's used in the '50s! It's more authentically Levi's than Levi's is now!"), $350-400 work-, jump-, or motorcycle-pattern leather boots, $150+ shirt probably in some variety of rugged wool. Corduroy or denim trucker's jacket, also with some authenticity-story and expensive. Folks adopting this look are probably a little more self-consciously into fashion than the ones who go the "walk into an REI and buy five outfits, choosing the most expensive option for everything" route.
Turns out you can get more-rational-than-thou "screw fashion" tech dorks to spend just as much money on their cookie-cutter work-uniforms as a first-year investment bank employee in lower Manhattan with their week's-worth of HF or BB suits in sober greys and blues, you just have to take a different approach.
(I am 100% guilty myself of being a sucker for "authenticity" and heritage/old-timey-quality marketing, though I do deliberately try to avoid looking like a walking trope by branching out beyond the categories of clothes like those depicted in the original joke-image; the "standard" looks are very real though, you can spot a lot of US tech workers a mile away by knowing them)
> I don't think any wife has ever asked for this look :-)
The wife wouldn't specifically ask, it's just that she doesn't bug him, when he's wearing something 'normal'. And normal is what everyone else is wearing.
> Someone just trying to minimally not-stand-out could do so way cheaper. The high cost is part of the point (for signaling).
Yes and No. You might have to spend so much just to blend in, depending on where you are. And it might not be all that much money, if you make enough.
Here in Singapore people (thankfully!) tend to dress down a lot. It's a big difference from eg Hong Kong. Flip-flops, shorts and t-shirt seem to be the norm.
I'm indulging a bit by wearing the same, but in wool. Eg from https://woolandprince.com/ but that's mostly because it deals with my copious sweat marginally better than cotton.
Btw, looking like a trope can be beneficial. Eg at tech conference, if you look like a techie you often get better treatment than when you look like some kind of influencer or (low level) manager. In normal life, signalling that you are well-off often gets you good treatment, too.
The joke is that "taste" usually implies you have some strong personal sense of self and style, but if you walked into tech offices in the bay area everyone looks like that and acts/talks the same.
So its ironic that these same people are talking about "taste" when they ostensibly have very little.
The joke is that all of the engineers that came before AI were also just following established patterns, right down to everyone wearing the same outfit to work despite our tech workplaces usually being very business casual. Implication that taste was not something these engineers had either.
there’s no hard evidence here. the “99%” referenced in the article is someone’s personal subjective confidence it’s him. body buried under church is not particularly eventful news as it stands.
isn’t what cook is pointing out actually the most important thing?
a product created for the strategic purpose of expanding into a new clientele is doing exactly that. that is the win.
put another way, if the statement he said was “best launch week ever for Mac customers.” that does not speak to the entire reason for the existence of this product category. in essence, THAT would be the pointless statement.
Not really. An independent Mac company with 8% of Apple's sales would still be the #3 computer manufacturer behind Dell and HP, and Mac gross margins could easily support significantly larger investments in OS development if Apple chose to do so.
Relatively well-founded estimates will start to appear in a month or so. It's unfortunate they don't give exact model breakdowns, but everyone knows that the Mac is a hobby for them.
