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Toronto Will @torontowill.bsky.social · 2h

But we're comparing vs. crypto, right. Coins do less than a rock. It *was* pure potential that they'd become a useful currency (for people other than criminals). LLMs are being advertised and sold to consumers on stuff they actually do (which is why the commercials are laughable and sales are poor).

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Toronto Will @torontowill.bsky.social · 2h

It's a little more complicated than that. The tech *does* have purposes here and now. I detest it, but some people find it useful for search replacement (question answering), generating summaries, cheating on homework, etc. But how many people, what will they pay, what does it cost.

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Toronto Will @torontowill.bsky.social · 3h

Very true, it’s the excuses that are (deliberately) convoluted and hard to follow, the reality is incredibly simple. Like, expenses > revenue, that’s not good! If you are announcing yourself as a half trillion dollar company while losing cash, I’m not the one who has some difficult explaining to do.

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Toronto Will @torontowill.bsky.social · 3h

a group of soldiers are standing in a row wearing helmets and armor .

Alt: Starship Troopers, commercial to join the army and fight the bugs, a soldier standing in formation at attention turns to camera: “I’m doing my part”

media.tenor.com

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Toronto Will @torontowill.bsky.social · 3h

Reading what financials? OpenAI doesn’t release them. Even public companies like Microsoft intermingle reporting and don’t break AI out. It’s predominantly just a spray of selective disclosures and leaks, some of which are outright lies. Ed does a very good job piecing that together.

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Toronto Will @torontowill.bsky.social · 22h

This aligns with my suspicion that the teams having the #1 overall pick were not very good.

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Toronto Will @torontowill.bsky.social · 1d

Forget the device, it's also the *app*. And "+" is a meaningful distinction within the app, to separate their subscription content from the store, your library of purchases, and paid add-on "channels".

Just calling it "+" was weak differentiation, but to go from that to *nothing*? I don't get it.

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Toronto Will @torontowill.bsky.social · 1d

I was gonna say, "LaCenzo" sure sounds like a caricature of a Long Island Italian, but my understanding of the Long Island stereotypes is quite limited (Cher in "Moonlight" is maybe my closest proxy). I have no idea what would make that character specifically Jewish.

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Toronto Will @torontowill.bsky.social · 1d

I think it’s based on Amityville (1979, three years earlier), which Poltergeist references in dialog with a joke about the house *wasn’t* built on ancient tribal grounds. It became a bit of a trope, though, and Poltergeist is remembered by more people.

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Toronto Will @torontowill.bsky.social · 2d

Gonna give you credit for calling out in training camp that Maye’s pocket movement was improved. It’s really starting to show up in games, and I thought he was downright Brady-like on that drive.

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Toronto Will @torontowill.bsky.social · 2d

I’m fascinated with what happens to Vance if DJT croaks, because not a soul alive likes him. Oh the “constitution” says you’re next in line JD? Good thing you’re surrounded by people with such deep reverence for law. If the sociopaths in his orbit don’t knife him figuratively, they might literally.

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Toronto Will @torontowill.bsky.social · 2d

I’ll never click the article to find out, but I do wonder who he thinks the “gatekeepers” were or are. The internet has steadily gotten *more* gatekeeping over its history. Google can single handedly vanish a company out of existence—it’s basically the *default* if they don’t pay for ads.

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Toronto Will @torontowill.bsky.social · 2d

“Blood sweat and tears”, lol, every penny they (thought) they had was at the expense of someone else losing money at the same roulette table.

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Toronto Will @torontowill.bsky.social · 2d

Make sure you don’t have an “eco” mode power conservation setting enabled. I figured this out watching an episode of Silo, there was an opening 10 minutes in torch light where I genuinely couldn’t see anything. Max power settings helped.

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Toronto Will @torontowill.bsky.social · 2d

Oh great, a word paste extruded from the internet on how to talk to women, surely it’s a fount of good advice.

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Toronto Will @torontowill.bsky.social · 2d

Also, when Apple split out their password manager into a separate app (free and crossplatform), there was a lot of rumbling that 1P was totally toast. I was not one of them (I still use it) but I don’t know what’s changed. It’s a competitive market with alternatives that are cheap or free.

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Toronto Will @torontowill.bsky.social · 3d

Inertia is a bitch. You can start out trying to save the world and just caught in the wave of Everything Else. A fate that has befallen pretty much the entire environmental movement (even though the threat they’re tackling actually exists).

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Reposted by Toronto Will

The Pleasure Vice Principle (he/him/his) @hannibaltabu.bsky.social · 3d

I saw the dot coms crash from a front row seat. AI is running out of money way faster.

The evangelism is insecurity from people who made the wrong bet. I’ve seen it before. futurism.com/future-socie...

AI Data Centers Are an Even Bigger Disaster Than Previously Thought

An investment manager realized he made a crucial mistake — and that his grim prediction about AI investments may not have been cynical enough.

futurism.com

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Toronto Will @torontowill.bsky.social · 3d

I’ve grown disdainful of laptops just as a concept. They have their place in specific contexts (like the classroom), but I hope to never buy one again. Small screens, touchpads (yuk), awkward keyboards, underpowered for the price. Fix these things and pay a fortune or it’s not portable anymore.

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Toronto Will @torontowill.bsky.social · 3d

But in a Ponzi the guy holding the money fakes a profit, to induce more investment. Sam is openly just shovelling cash straight into the furnace, and for some inexplicable reason the investors are tripping over each other to get closer to the flames. A “moth“ scheme, maybe?

Toronto Will @torontowill.bsky.social · 3d

Kiting a trillion dollar cheque and crossing your fingers the money shows up in your bank account before it’s cashed, what could go wrong.

Toronto Will @torontowill.bsky.social · 3d

The easiest answer is that the money drives them insane (eg with the “all your ideas are brilliant” sycophancy of everyone around them, grovelling for a share of their wealth). But I posit that the insanity is a significant contributing factor to how they got rich in the first place. Could be both.

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Toronto Will @torontowill.bsky.social · 3d

I was thinking the same thing, your corrective statement of truth cannot be sourced to the same damn article you’re complaining is defamatory.

Toronto Will @torontowill.bsky.social · 3d

He really is. If you (or anyone else seeing this) haven't read his book, you absolutely should, it's incredibly well written. I wondered if maybe Paul had a heavy helping hand from an editor or even a ghost writer, but this Substack removes all doubt: Paul really is that good of a writer.

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Toronto Will @torontowill.bsky.social · 3d

Great piece.

Sometimes studios try to manufacture blockbuster hype into existence, through sheer force of advertising spend. The hook of a star actor used to be enough (e.g. Independence Day). Now, it's too much of a gamble without familiar IP. "Tron" has name recognition, it's not a "John Carter"