Indirectly as we offload our brains to the machine and we end up worshipping it because those who cared to understand it or be responsible were buried by capitalism of ages passed.
I find it bizarre that this blogger can make sweeping claims of someone being wrong, quoting specific values that are admittedly speculative, and then just using them as gotchas for being wrong. The then ignore the conclusion that those "wrong" yet close values mean in the grand scheme of Zitron's point, even when the margin of error was inconsequential.
For example, one of his first big criticisms of Ed is Ed's claim that Meta has a dying product and its a dying company. Do I really need to look at the numbers here? Or should we look at the companies actions and history WITH the numbers included?:
- Metaverse was a complete and total disaster and forced upon the company by a CEO who is clearly completely out of touch but infallible within the company.
- Facebook is a bot riddled, AI slop haven, used only for special cases and is basically unanimously hated by the next couple generation of users. Users who are critical for revenue if the serving ads to bots scam ever implodes.
- Meta's successes seem to be solely on knowing who to buy and have failed for a decade to innovate anything.
"Dying" is not the same as "dead". As someone else has said, but I have forgotten who it was, Meta is a "mature" company trying to be young and sexy again when they should focus on their existing products.
How does anyone come away from all this with a business, where we hear all of the horrible things about their internal culture, that an AI pivot to be anything but a trend following desperation move? Then the author addresses but shrugs off entirely the fact that they now hide their Monthly Active Users. I think all of this context is pretty fucking important to think about with the numbers, especially since Meta is trending down when we get the totals for the year. Zitron's point, again, still tracks because you can list a portion of "profit" but it is too early for 2026 since they intentionally use misleading numbers. I would be very interested to see what the first half of 2024 and 2025 profit numbers were before the total year calculation. Either way, Meta's dump into AI is a huge gamble from the company that must pay off.
I don't know. I think this guy does not like Ed Zitron, which is fair. I see a man pointing fingers at someone while doing the same things he is criticising: Taking the speculative and sensational as literal and using it as some sort of gotcha to be speculative and sensational themselves.
This is another case of missing the forest for the trees. In the scope of what Zitron is talking about, the difference of >$2 billion of revenue doesn't make a difference of his overall point of it not being close to enough to cover their spending.
I follow Zitron but the way he talks has been grating and it is even more obvious how biased he is when he has guests on. As if he's trying to lead them into agreeing with his more extreme claims.
That being said, why does this blogger get a pass at this criticism of just being blanket "wrong" when the point of the quote is still very much valid in context? It seems to be the same in the next article, quoted from Ed's blog with the same point. Is this more evidence of being "wrong" or did he correct a previously wrong value and came to the same conclusion (which seems reasonable to me in context)?
It seems like this blogger is guilty of the same criticisms he has against Zitron. They seem eager to find where Zitron is wrong, exaggerating the value of when he misses the mark and without looking at big picture. Then they make sensationalist claims based on those findings.
Kernel level anti-cheat seems to be ultimately ineffective. I've seen this with my own eyes with backend data when I worked for a company with a moderately successful shooter. Kernel level anti-cheat is serving a similar function to something like EAC these days, which basically just keeps the lazy people out. With any decently sufficient backend data analysis, you catch these folks just as easy.
I am of the belief that if you cannot completely control the environment, like a user's physical hardware, you're fighting a losing battle. Forcing them to install spyware is, in my opinion, just marketing for your competitive shooter and too invasive for the perceived gain.
> With any decently sufficient backend data analysis, you catch these folks just as easy.
No you can't. Using server side analysis of behaviour will always get false positives, especially as ML networks are getting better and better at reproducing normal player behaviour.
Your server side logic can't detect wall hacks, ESPs etc.
> which basically just keeps the lazy people out
That's better than nothing. Cheating will always be possible (see DMA devices), but as long as you make it reasonably hard to put most people off it, that's a success.
> cannot completely control the environment
But applications should be able to attest the environment is not modified, which is what desktop Linux lacks. Windows, macOS and Android do have methods to do this.
> like a user's physical hardware, you're fighting a losing battle
If you think there aren't hackers on console, you're deluded.
> Your server side logic can't detect wall hacks, ESPs etc.
Correct, neither do the invasive tools. You can get these things without modifying memory or the game, which is the majority of what the kernel level stuff keeps on eye on.
> especially as ML networks are getting better and better at reproducing normal player behaviour.
True, there is no answer here. Again, if the provider is this sophisticated, then EAC isn't helping here. Then it is just the usual cat and mouse, and the kernel level is moot.
> But applications should be able to attest the environment is not modified, which is what desktop Linux lacks. Windows, macOS and Android do have methods to do this.
Also true, but they are frequently circumvented anyway, so ultimately you're at the same level of Linux from a functional standpoint.
I know you're probably thinking that we should just hit all vectors, and I agree to an extent. The problem is that those who charge for cheats easily circumvent (yes, easily, they are literally within 24hrs sometimes of adjusting to modifications by anti-cheat software) the methods you're claiming help. While the data you get from users on the server end doesn't paint a whole picture, it is the source of truth of what the game decided happened, so it becomes the only thing you can rely on. I know folks who specialize in this area who basically believe that online competitive shooters are basically lost and it isn't worth the investment to fight it.
I am of the opinion we should just go back to dedicated servers and have self moderation. Sure, you get false positives if the owner or their mods suck at the game, but at least the players can do something about it. CS2 is a fucking nightmare at the moment.
Honestly, this is close to my experience within my org. It is not 0%, but it is very close. It seems like you're just uncomfortable with the author's experience conflicting with yours.
Perhaps it is the wording. For my org, I think people are getting value out of AI use supplementally, but what I would see as "AI projects" are definitely dead in the water.
I get what you are saying, and while I'll say it is definitely not 0%, I have seen very little in the way of useful software that is primarily generated. The vast majority just does not go the distance for whatever reason. I could explain many reasons, but I am getting really tired of explaining myself. If the tools were as great as everyone says, we'd be going through a software Renaissance, but we're not. I would argue a software dark ages since it feels like things are getting worse and I find bugs in what was historically very long running and stable applications. But, whatever. I think the author is clearly talking about modern AI, I don't think they need to be explicit about models.
I think folks ITT are trivializing the issue here. Many keep drawing parallels to LLMs being akin to the loom or calculator. That seems intellectually dishonest to me. Those tools were not anthropomorphized interfaces, nor were they instant gratification. To do significant things with a calculator, you still had to know maths, order of operations, formulas, etc. We didn't lose mathematicians as a result of the calculator, nor did the calculator play with our emotions.
I have linked this elsewhere in this thread, but the studies on this matter suggest a worse outcome than just losing hand crafted or "artisanal" software: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2604.04721
> These findings are particularly concerning because persistence is foundational to skill acquisition and is one of the strongest predictors of long-term learning.
> We posit that persistence is reduced because AI conditions people to expect immediate answers, thereby denying them the experience of working through challenges on their own.
This issue is not that we are losing the ability to write good software by hand. It is possible we are losing our internal tools to learn new things by circumventing a necessary part of the process required by our biology.
It seems to me this here is the dangerous 'force multiplier' for destructive outcomes.
It's one thing for a kid to become obsessed with a fictional character. It's a whole different playing field when that character can talk back, remember things, and potentially surface all kinds of subject matter which cannot be predicted and could at times be harmful.
Not even remotely the same level of impact. I think we're almost at the point where LLM education (as in, teaching awareness of the basic tech and its shortcomings) needs to start in Kindergarten.
LLM's are replacing your 'brain' i.e. the deepest most amazing part of you. The potential value of this to business is astronomical!
No there won't be an explosion of new software, a minor blip perhaps and even this one of diminishing returns (each cycle of LLM improvements requiring less and less human input).
If there are 25 million software developers today then the ROI by OpenAI, Anthropic et al pays off if in a few years time only 15 million developers are needed. That 10 million is the ROI and that is likely to be you.
