Comments

1

Chase - Hope your sinuses are better!
Have a great new year!

2

I have been battling a stubborn cold over the last few weeks. I hope you're feeling better soon, Chase. All the best in 2020 and may Trumpty Dumpty, Dencey Pencey ad nauseum get the pig roasting they richly deserve.

3

Happy New Year everyone! Feel better, Chase. There will be lots more NYE celebrations for you to enjoy in years to come. Heck, my 48 year old ass got on to the dance floor last night and didn’t get in till 3:30.

The Swisher piece sounds waaay overly optimistic to me. Automation for good? Sorry, but what is the incentive to not exploit the working classes to within an inch of their lives or more? Business in depolarization? She actually thinks that there’s an ad-based model that doesn’t rape our privacy? How cute. Bonus points for thinking that the non-rapey version of this will come from China, the absolute worst perpetrators. Funniest of all: that tech has ANY incentive to reduce the addictive quality. Even assuming they aren’t selling our attention to advertisers, they have every incentive to keep their devices and apps front and center in our minds.

I should say that all of these things are possible. However they are only possible if we offload the expense of providing all this content and apps from advertisers to consumers. Then consumers can indeed call the shots. But only if we’re prepared to pay a lot more than we are now (and you can see this happening with all the paywalls going up).

Which suggests that the internet generally is heading to even more of a digital divide between rich and poor, with the teeming masses getting an ever crappier experience based on showing nothing but ads, while the rich get the internet that actually works.

5

Happy New Year. It was kind of disappointing that there were no fireworks in Seattle but maybe that was befitting of such a shitty year.

The stock market's "surge" is less impressive when you take into account its precipitous fall in December 2018.

6

Especially don't believe your lying eyes, everything is normal in Australia. It's just a coincidence that all parts of the globe with and without fire suppression history burn like we have never seen before.

Australia fires: tens of thousands stranded while attempting to flee
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/jan/02/australia-bushfires-tens-of-thousands-stranded-while-attempting-to-flee

7

Yep, pretty good year for the rich. Elon figured out that its not always a good idea to build your Gigifactory in a small corrupt county with no infrastructure. Apparently if all your employees have to live in the next county over you cant call the sheriff and have him kill union organizers. Now he's going to build some "Man camps" for the workers then if the employees get any ideas he can have them killed.

8

First of all, sinus infection plus oysters is... really something.

@7 wrote: Elon figured out that its not always a good idea to build your Gigifactory in a small corrupt county with no infrastructure

Awm c'mon, Reno my not be what it used to be, but it still has its charms.

In other Awkwafina news, I very much hope this project gets completed:
https://deadline.com/2019/12/awkwafina-topic-studios-feature-chinatown-restaurants-punk-music-1202811249/

9

@7 Considering all the recent corruption at the U.A.W., I can see why Musk doesn't want the mob in the his factories.


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