Yeah, that’s true. It amazes me how some of my team in NYC will make double what I make, but live like I lived when I was a student, and be amazed that I own a car.

*If you’re in the US.

Some interns in the US make more than experienced engineers in Europe…

I work at a FAANG company. I’ve also worked at startups and smaller national companies. They’re all morally bankrupt, just in many different ways.

Hell, I’ve worked for “tech for good” clients that have done reprehensible things that required legal intervention…

I mean, I feel absolutely horrible after hearing some of the stories from the aftermath of that show, but fucking hell they knew how to get that look…

Respectfully, I worked for Alexa AI on compositional ML, and we were largely able to do exactly this with customer utterances, so to say it is impossible is simply not true. Many companies have to have some degree of ability to remove troublesome data, and while tracing data inside a model is rather difficult (historically it would be done during the building of datasets or measured at evaluation time) it’s definitely something that most big tech companies will do.

I’m fine with that, but let’s put some rules against this.

• Any AI models should be able to determine the source of their data to a defined level of accuracy.
• There should be a well-defined way to block data from being used by AI. If one of these ways (e.g. robots.txt) has been breached, the model has to be rebuilt without the data, and reparations made to the content owners.

Oh man, the lack of a headphone jack is still a killer for me. It’s one of the reasons why I stayed on OnePlus 6 for so long, and to be blunt, I don’t see the Pixel 8 as a huge jump outside of power and bullshit like AI photos. My kingdom for a high-end phone with a headphone jack and stock-ish Android!

It’s a real shame that OnePlus just became an Oppo rebranding, because the OP1 was a phenomenal phone, and up until OP6 they were both cheap and had a relatively clean Android install. To date, features like gestures are still better than what you get on the Pixel, and most of their stuff is less invasive than Google’s.

The Android market nowadays, especially for high end, is “which manufacturer is the least shit”, and that’s a real shame.

I’m almost positive that David Beckham isn’t a citizen of the US. That’s almost definitely by choice, given that he’d meet the criteria for investment several times over.

While I appreciate the offer, I think my wife would probably not be too happy with me taking another lover. 😂

That’s absolute nonsense. Most countries have similar paths to entry. They also have paths that support specific jobs that are required by the country - something the US does not. Finally, many of them have easy and clear paths to naturalisation - again something the US doesn’t have.

Just because unskilled nationals make it into your country, it doesn’t mean that immigration in your country is easier than other countries. Every right-winger moans about the same thing in every country you’ve listed…

Haha, what do you base that on?!

My experience is the exact opposite. I’m a software engineer at a big tech company, and in this climate even they are unable to sponsor a visa to the US from the UK. Literally anywhere else? Sure, no problem at all, whether it be Europe, Singapore, China, Japan, Egypt, Australia, anywhere we have an office - except America.

Americans, welcome anywhere! We’ve got two in my team alone this year, and in 5 years they can get permanent residency. I know managers that want me on their team because I built tooling for them, but they’re not allowed to hire me because it would require a visa…

To be fair, outside of London you’ll find that the starting salary for many degree-level jobs is around that, including jobs like software developer. I’m in Bristol, and the pay disparity is hilariously bad - a senior designer will earn less than a manager at Burger King…

I think the “underpaid teacher” thing isn’t necessarily rooted in reality,. especially outside of the US. My wife is a teacher in the UK, and she’s a head of her subject. For many years her pay was similar to mine as a software engineer, but everyone often treated her as if she was poor and that I was rich.

A lot of people are giving Tesla shit here, but surely there should be regulations in place to ensure something like this isn’t allowed to be released for public use?

When I was at school, Sunny D and Vodka was a recommended mix to make you ill enough to throw up and miss school the next day. I can’t believe people willingly drink this shit…

In many ways, it is an obscene amount of control, and I don’t disagree that this degree of wealth isn’t ethical - even examples like Taylor Swift aren’t from “hard work”, but rather backroom deals, undercutting other artists, etc.

IMO, the best alternative is going entirely the other way. Tell all billionaires in the US that they are subject to a wealth tax, and attempts to fight it will result in freezing assets, expulsion from the country, executive removal, etc. Drive all billionaires out of the country, and let them set up shop elsewhere (they won’t).

It’s a punishment, though. Perhaps they should be punished, but IMO an easier approach is to say “well done” and to tell them that as long as this money goes somewhere for societal gain it doesn’t really matter if they decide to pump tens of billions into making public roads the best roads in the country, it’s better than them just having that money in a fund somewhere.

Where this will likely get dicey is in ensuring that this money stays in home accounts, and in defining what is taxable wealth, and fighting avoidance. That’s where the system will be gamed, but ultimately it’s different to avoid tax that goes somewhere to avoiding your money being spent by you for public good.

I can’t remember who suggested it, but they framed the question differently around taxing billionaires.

Instead of making it a negative thing, they said it should be framed as a great honour to pay these “special” taxes. The billionaire tax should be kept separately from all other taxes, it should be pooled into a limited fund that they own, and should be distributed to areas where they want it to make a real impact. They should then be given additional benefits in society based on the impact generated by their fund. It notes that capitalism isn’t necessarily about accumulation of wealth, but profit, and that wealth should be taxed.

For example, if Elon Musk were taxed 50% as a wealth tax, he is personally invited to the White House to discuss his plans with the tax authorities and the president. He gets to attend specific meetings to see where his money has gone (let’s say to hospitals), and gets public praise for pumping several billion into public healthcare initiatives. Wealth is reframed into an opportunity to help society, whereas capitalism pushes profit.

While I don’t really like the idea of billionaires choosing where taxes go, if improvements are measured on societal impact it’s still better than before where they just hoard wealth.

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On one hand, Farage is a massive cunt, an enemy of the state, and the man responsible for irreparable damage to UK politics due to Brexit.

On the other, if Reform is going to run against the Tories, there’s a real opportunity his tinpot party takes the Gammon/flag-shagger vote away from Sunak’s populist run as Tory leader, and in a month we see the Tory party get absolutely annihilated.

Years ago, I said that it was quite sad to see that Conservative’s had lost their party to the populism of the Boris era, because many MP’s that wanted to see a strong union (bear in mind the full name of the Tories is the Conservative and Unionist Party) were expelled from the party and ostracised to make room for grifters under BoJo. While I’m no conservative, many voters value conservatism in their politics, and while I don’t like Starmer much either, he’s basically the closest thing to a Conservative AND a Liberal in major party politics in the UK.

My vote is probably with the Greens this year, but in many areas Labour should absolutely destroy the Tories, hopefully to the point where they become the third or fourth party in the UK.

All of big tech is really worried about this.

• Apple is worried about its own science output, with many of their office heavily employing data scientists. A lot of people slate Siri, but Apple’s scientists put out a lot of solid research.
• Amazon is plugging GenAI into practically everything to appease their execs, because it’s the only way to get funding. Moonshot ideas are dead, and all that remains is layoffs, PIP, and pumping AI into shit where it doesn’t belong to make shareholders happy. The innovation died, and AI replaced it.
• Google has let AI divisions take over both search and big parts of ads. Both are reporting worse experiences for users, but don’t worry, any engineer worth anything was laid off and there are no opportunities in other divisions for you either. If there are, they probably got offshored…
• Meta is struggling a lot less, probably because they were smart enough to lay off in one go, but they’re still plugging AI shite in places no one asked for it, with many divisions now severely down in headcount.

If the AI boom is a dud, I can see many of these companies reducing their output further. If someone comes along and competes in their primary offering, there’s a real concern that they’ll lose ground in ways that were unthinkable mere years ago. Someone could legitimately challenge Google on search right now, and someone could build a cheap shop that doesn’t sell Chinese tat and uses local suppliers to compete with Amazon. Tech really shat the bed during the last economic downturn.