Newmark's Door

The crisis du jour.

Generative AI as a technology exists in this lineage. That it can create adequate texts and images is an astonishing leap forward in machine learning, but the texts and images are still only adequate, “good enough” and cheap enough for people to thumb past on their phones. Slop is the most appropriate word for what it produces because, as disgusting and unappetizing as it may seem, we still eat it. It’s what’s right there in the trough.

"A visit to a Japanese onshore wind farm".

The immediate cause was the CrowdStrike's software had access to the Windows kernel. (Which was why Apple and Linux were unaffected--they deny kernel access to 3rd party software.)

But why did CrowdStrike's software have access to the kernel? Guess. Go ahead, guess. (The answer is in the last couple of paragraphs to this piece beginning with "Ben Thompson writes".

"Explore [1999 to 2023] the history of Google searches".

"Exponentially" as in "In the last 70 years, the price for a unit of storage has fallen by almost ten orders of magnitude."

I like Wikipedia, but I won't contribute. They have a quarter billion in assets and their web hosting expense is less than 3% of their expenditures. 

Tim Harford:

Sometimes the AI is better than you, and sometimes you are better than the AI. Good luck guessing which is which.

(In my opinion, that's kinda like advice from political and economic "experts".)

From the usually interesting Scott Galloway:

If you want to understand how AI is reshaping business, picture it as the other massive innovation of our time: GLP-1 drugs. Both shed weight by suppressing cravings; both exacerbate existing inequities (aka the rich get richer) before generating wider prosperity; and both are having a greater impact than projected as early adopters are hesitant to admit they’re using.

Related: "Klarna AI assistant handles two-thirds of customer service chats in its first month".

xkcd made me laugh. (But sound advice: Google is your friend.)

Douglas Holtz-Eaken, formerly Chief Economist of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers:

There is no problem to fix, so there is no reason to classify broadband for regulation under Title II. Nevertheless, the FCC is going ahead. But this is more than a simply pointless action.