> And to say nothing of the shoddy quality of their TV shows. Mickey Mouse Clubhouse's lazy CG animation and unimaginative storytelling is shocking given Mickey is supposed to be their signature character.
≤4-year-olds do not care: there's bright colours and motion, and some semblance of story. The point is not to give some kind of lesson, but to distract/entertain (and probably release dopamine). See also Paw Patrol, Spidey Amazing Friends, PJ Masks, etc. None of these seem to have made any attempt at having a 'layer' that appeals to adults.
In some ways I equate this animation style with the algorithmic social media system: meant for 'quick hits'.
> See also Paw Patrol, Spidey Amazing Friends, PJ Masks, etc.
These shows are honestly fine. They all depict kids working together as a team, solving problems, and navigating socializing with each other. (And in the case of Paw Patrol, some environmentalism. And a few terrible puns.)
It's not like the Smurfs, Rocket Robin Hood, The Mighty Hercules, He-Man, Care Bears, etc. that I watched growing up were that much better.
Meanwhile Prime Video has shows that are basically cartoon cars going through a carwash for an hour. And YouTube has much, much worse junk like rapid-fire 60 second unboxing videos, and morons fake-reacting to various colours of slime.
Bluey is just one show. Disney has an entire network and platform to fill with content. There's not a lot of producers making Bluey level content, yet the vacuum still needs to be filled. Bluey level content also costs more to create than the one step above AI slop to fill that void. Just like not every song on an album will be a banger, there will always be fluff/fill/padding.
On a foreign language scale, Bluey and Peppa Pig are around B1- or A2+.
Or in other words: a typical adult needs about one year of self study (or nearly 6 months of more focused intensive study) before they can fully understand a show like Bluey or Peppa Pig.
And maybe half that for substantial understanding. (3 months intensive, 6 months typical self study to reach A2+ / watch Bluey with substantial understanding but not complete understanding).
If I were to guess at Mickey Mouse clubhouse, it's damn near A1 or A0+, it's so repetive and slow that you can learn some words from it.
Yeah, that's a lot more boring than the 'advanced' shows like Bluey or Peppa Pig.
Also note that children are not aware of tools (ie hammers or screwdrivers) yet. So simple learning exercises to know that hammer hammers nail but not screws is the kind of thing needed at pre-school level.
I'd imagine that the appropriate age for Mickey Mouse clubhouse is under 3. Bluey/Peppa Pig are closer to 6 or 7+ year old material.
Or in foreign language levels: B1-ish / 2+ on the American scale.
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Seriously. Just switch the shows to a different language and the level gap becomes blatantly clear.
In perhaps more Techie terms: Mickey Mouse Clubhouse level of understanding is achievable with Duolingo. Peppa Pig / Bluey (and similar level shows) are so far beyond Duolingo that I bet most Duolingo users will NEVER be able to achieve Bluey-level understanding in a foreign language (and that deep textbook + 1000ish vocab study memorization needs to be done before Bluey can be understood).
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Maybe the vocab estimate is easiest to understand. Bluey feels like a show that uses 1000 words with mastery (and maybe 2000 hard words as learning exercises in the show).
Mickey Mouse clubhouse uses maybe 250 words with mastery and maybe uses the top1000 list as learning/teaching words.
How (and why??) does Mickey Mouse clubhouse make an ENTIRE song consisting of a single word? (hotdog?) Because it's written for people where 'Hot dog' is a difficult word and needs repetition.
Fluff/filler on a banger album will still be decent. And it may even be someone's favorite. The point is that quality is fairly consistent. Not that everything is "peak".
The only real bastion of hope in an ocean of slop is that demand for curwtion will be better than ever. People who want quality will tire of swimming and pay larger premiums for someone to pick out thr nuggets in the rough. Basicslly, the new HBO.
There's a certain 'critical mass' of people and thinkers, as well as decent enough communications (roads, letters) to allow for collaboration, needed to achieve a flowering/growth of knowledge, and that was cut off by (amongst other things) the Black Death:
Alphonse X "The Wise". A Castillian king basically sanctioned a book on board games, from chess to a few less known ones with dice. Enough said. There's tons of difference between the 6th century and the 12th.
This would blow out lots of Anglo-Saxon minds with a very bad depiction of Middle Ages compared to the modern era from Newton. But, IRL, it was all about a gradual modernization of thinking.
People didn't just became modern with the Enlightenment and then the Industrial Revolution. It happened tons of stuff in between.
> Couldn't you at least provide some constructive criticism why the argument falls short in your mind […]
For the flat tax, which is tax cut for the rich:
> This paper uses data from 18 OECD countries over the last five decades to estimate the causal effect of major tax cuts for the rich on income inequality, economic growth, and unemployment. First, we use a new encompassing measure of taxes on the rich to identify instances of major reduction in tax progressivity. Then, we look at the causal effect of these episodes on economic outcomes by applying a nonparametric generalization of the difference-in-differences indicator that implements Mahalanobis matching in panel data analysis. We find that major reforms reducing taxes on the rich lead to higher income inequality as measured by the top 1% share of pre-tax national income. The effect remains stable in the medium term. In contrast, such reforms do not have any significant effect on economic growth and unemployment.
> It’s core argument is simple: in a world where talent and capital move easily […]
I'm not sure about the talent part: unless you're strictly talking about remote work, going to a new country is not what I would think of as "easy".
> Doug explained why a staged path to a 20% flat tax […]
It seems to me that flat taxes ignore the marginal utility of every new dollar of income.
What exactly is having the top income earners keep more money gotten society? It seems like not much besides more inequality (which has probably helped fuel political dissatisfaction):
> This paper uses data from 18 OECD countries over the last five decades to estimate the causal effect of major tax cuts for the rich on income inequality, economic growth, and unemployment. First, we use a new encompassing measure of taxes on the rich to identify instances of major reduction in tax progressivity. Then, we look at the causal effect of these episodes on economic outcomes by applying a nonparametric generalization of the difference-in-differences indicator that implements Mahalanobis matching in panel data analysis. We find that major reforms reducing taxes on the rich lead to higher income inequality as measured by the top 1% share of pre-tax national income. The effect remains stable in the medium term. In contrast, such reforms do not have any significant effect on economic growth and unemployment.
I'm pretty sure that wealth accumulated by the very rich at the expense of the poor is bad for total economic development because we drastically under-estimate the value of properly developing human beings.
We see enormous flourishing in society whenever labor is given more power for whatever reason (usually mass deaths) because this increases the amount of resources which flow towards raising children, who then become productive members of society. In times of weak labor power, average people are squeezed tight and less resources flow to children, which fucks shit up.
I think we are seeing that right now in the U.S. - education is nickle and dimed to shit, wages aren't enough to support children, let alone let them flourish, and the general "vibe" is so bad that people don't even want to have kids.
It isn't a zero sum game, but people still get rich at the expense of the poor, sometimes. There are different ways to accumulate wealth and some are better for society than others.
I object to the observation "wealth isn't zero sum" being used to sop up every possible objection to the way the system currently works.
> This leads to the erroneous assumption that making the rich less rich will make the poor less poor. That's obviously not the case.
Taking more money from the poor makes them more poor.
Taking more from the rich 'harms' them less because of the margin utility of money: taking $1k from someone making $160k is qualitatively different from someone making $60k. Taking 20% from someone making $160k ($32k) is qualitatively different than taking 20% from someone making $60k ($12k).
So if you want to have X revenues for funding government, you can take it from those who have more marginal need of it, or those who have less.
You'll note you've not rebuked what you've quoted from my previous comment, you've argued something different altogether, and used tautologies and fallacies, too.
It not even related to the original comment I replied to about becoming rich the exoense of the poor...
I've argued that, given the need to fund government, the point of marginal tax rates is to not to make the rick less rich, but to not make the poor any more poor, but rather to take the money from those who can better afford to have it taken from.
I.e., to take money from those who have (more) money.
Beware of having too-small fingerprint hashes though, or not checking enough of the digits.
$ echo -n retr0id_662d970782071aa7a038dce6 | sha256sum
307e0e71a409d2bf67e76c676d81bd0ff87ee228cd8f991714589d0564e6ea9a -
$ echo -n retr0id_430d19a6c51814d895666635 | sha256sum
307e0e71a4098e7fb7d72c86cd041a006181c6d8e29882b581d69d0564e6ea9a -
Beyond Hacker News, I haven't seen anyone actively asking for AI features. People have been complaining about Siri for over a decade but it's not like users are turning against Apple because it isn't using an LLM (yet). Rather, it seems like users are increasingly wary of AI features being shoehorned into products they were already using.
Apple originally planned to power Siri with ChatGPT under the hood. They quickly saw that other models, including open-source ones, were closing the gap fast.
A few months ago, MCP-style tool calling seemed like the clear standard. Now even Anthropic is shifting toward "code-mode" and reusable skills.
For Apple, reliable tool calling is critical because their AI needs to control apps and the whole device. My bet: Apple's AI will be able to create its own Shortcuts on the fly and call them as needed, with OSA Script support on Mac.
One of the reasons I'm heavily biased towards actual Mac native apps is that supporting callback URLs and Shortcuts unlocks so much of what I might ask of an AI tool already. Ironically I often ask AI assistants for line by line steps to create Shortcuts when I need them because actual Shortcut naming and properties can be quite obtuse.
Sadly, much as I love AppleScript, I think Apple giving it any love at this point in time is likely to be a pipe dream. Much more likely they're just going to try to beef up Shortcuts support across the board.
Users aren't really asking for AI features, but they may be asking for features that require AI.
As Google integrates Gemini into their Google Assistant and Google Home products, if it starts to become leaps and bounds better than Siri, customers are going to start wondering why Apple is falling behind. If Apple can't achieve those things without AI and that could cause problems. Customers aren't saying "I want AI features", but they are indirectly asking for them because the features they want require AI to do what they expect.
(I realize Google and Apple have a deal happening to have Gemini integrated into Siri so this isn't the best example, but I think it illustrates the point I'm trying to make)
I'm in that boat - I'm basically fine without AI features. I can think of a couple of hypothetical things that would be nice though - a smart and functional Siri - I never use it at the moment, and maybe a locally hosted LLM that could look through my documents so I can ask where's that spreadsheet with the housing costs etc.
?? Both normies and tech people seem to have been clued in that AI is a shoehorned in feature that companies focus on instead of fixing existing functionality, and that comes with a siphon that exfiltrates all your data for AI companies to train on.
The people I know in real life, besides those that work in tech and use it for code assistance or for generating never-reviewed archival transcripts of meetings, mostly just laugh at AI foibles and faults and casually echo doomer-media worries about job replacement as a topic for small talk.
But admittedly, most of those people are established adults who've figured out an effective rhythm to their home and work life and aren't longing for some magic remedy or disruption. They're not necessarily weary, and they were curious at first, but it seems like they're mostly just waiting for either the buzz to burn off or for some "it just works" product to finally emerge.
I imagine there are younger people wowed by the apparent magic of what we have now and excited that they might use it punch up the homework assignments or emails or texts that make them anxious, or that might enjoy toying with it as a novel tool for entertainment and creative idling. Maybe these are some of the people in your "real life"
There are a lot of people out there in "real life", bringing different perspectives and needs.
Nah, LLMs and stable diffusion are being used everywhere by everyone hardcore.
I work at a coworking space. Most of the folks I've worked alongside had active chats in ChatGPT for all sorts of stuff. I've also seen devs use AI copilots, like Copilot and Codex. I feel big old when I drop into fullscreen vim on my Mac.
AI art is also used everywhere. Especially by bars and restaurants. So many AI happy hour/event promo posters now, complete with text (AI art font is kind-of samey for some reason). I've even seen (what look like) AI generated logos on work trucks.
People are getting use out of LLMs, 100%. Yet the anti-AI sentiment is through the roof. Maybe it's like social media where the most vocal opponents are secretly some of its most active users. Idk.
What I meant specifically was that I don't remember anyone complaining about AI features getting in the way or being shoehorned. That particular complaint seems popular only on Reddit or HN.
Most of the people I've talked IRL to aren't against AI as a rule, but have grown tired of poorly implemented AI features, especially if they're used as marketing fodder. In my experience, shoehorned AI features have landed themselves in a category similar to that of bundled crapware and useless single-app hotkeys on cheap laptops.
Those of this group who use AI mostly ignore poor rebadges and integrations like MS Copilot and just use ChatGPT and Claude directly. They prefer it to remain intentional and contained within a box that they control the bounds of.
I talk to tons of people in real life who are deeply troubled by the AI-pocalypse. I was at a dinner party just the other day where out of the blue (wasn't me, I swear!), the conversation turned to the horrors of genAI and its negative effect on our society.
Gmail search has been excellent for 20 years. Outlook search is still terrible even with copilot. LLM isn’t the killer feature, a search that works is.
Copilot can search even in PowerPoints. Being able to search your organisation's documents is kind of a killer feature, provided they make it work reliably.
I can't think of a single reason why you would need an LLM to search through PowerPoint files. We have traditional search technology which would be excellent for that!
> can't think of a single reason why you would need an LLM to search through PowerPoint files
Kati’s Research AI is genuinely great at search. It tries to answer your question, but also directly cites resources. This can help you when you’re not sure where the answer to a question lies, and it winds up being in multiple places.
Unless your query is super simple and of low consequence, you still need to open the files. But LLM-powered search is like the one domain (apart from coding) where these fuckers work.
Disagree. It's a win win. As an example, Windows and Microsoft would benefit users if they focused less on injecting useless Copilot everywhere, and more on maintenance and improvement of the core functionality of the OS while not squandering the human resource of their development teams by forcing them to work on these things; bad opportunity cost.
Not to say Apple isn't also degrading their OS with bad design changes, but "more AI" is not something users are clamoring for.
From a financial market perspective, AAPL is the second highest valuation for a publicly traded company and #1 is in first place because of the AI bubble.
I'm happily running some Proxmox now, and wouldn't want to got more than a dozen hypervisor or so. At least not in one cluster: that's partially what PDM 1.0 is probably about.
I have run OpenStack with many dozens of hypervisors (plus dedicated, non-hyperconverged Ceph servers) though.
> Heck, I work at a much smaller particle accelerator (https://ifmif.org) and have met the CERN guys, and they were the first to say that for our needs, OpenStack is absolutely overkill.
I currently work in AI/ML HPC, and we use Proxmox for our non-compute infrastructure (LDAP, SMTP, SSH jump boxes). I used to work in cancer with HPC, and we used OpenStack for several dozen hypervisors to run a lot of infra/services instances/VM.
I think that there are two things determine which system should be looked at first: scale and (multi-)tenancy. More than one (maybe two) dozen hypervisors, I could really see scaling/management issues with Proxmox; I personally wouldn't want to do it (though I'm sure many have). Next, if you have a number internal groups that need allocated/limited resource assignments, then OpenStack tenants are a good way to do this (especially if there are chargebacks, or just general tracking/accounting).
The people who aren't willing to sign up for an account and pay a monthly/annual/per-article fee asked for this.
People have bills to pay after all.
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