Everything is Shit: Tracking the Great Enshittening

[thunderlounge 7693]

My attorney advised me to post that….

[StassneyHorn 6503]

Can any of you Generative AI wizards create a Texas registration sticker with a 09 26 expiration date? Travis county. 
 

I only need it to look real enough to fool parking fairies. 

Edited September 18 by StassneyHorn

[hornbri 1348]

Could have gone in the football thread but it goes here too. Now we are going to get Ticketmaster style extra fees 

 

 

Edited September 18 by hornbri

[HenryJames 65816]

[Parliament 14081]

How is that even possible?  Does it take that much electricity the power plant needs so much water?

[HenryJames 65816]

Used to cool the servers.

Spoiler

 

Power Grab

A bottle of water per email: the hidden environmental costs of using AI chatbots

AI bots generate a lot of heat, and keeping their computer servers running exacts a toll.

 

5 min

317

By Pranshu Verma

 and 

Shelly Tan

September 18, 2024 at 5:00 a.m. EDT

 

Roughly a quarter of Americans have used ChatGPT since the chatbot’s 2022 release, according to the Pew Research Center — and every query exacts a cost.

Chatbots use an immense amount of power to respond to user questions, and simply keeping the bot’s servers cool enough to function in data centers takes a toll on the environment. While the exact burden is nearly impossible to quantify, The Washington Post worked with researchers at the University of California, Riverside to understand how much water and power OpenAI’s ChatGPT, using the GPT-4 language model released in March 2023, consumes to write the average 100-word email.

 

Let’s look first at water.

A 100-word email generated by an AI chatbot using GPT-4

Once requires 519 milliliters of water,

a little more than 1 bottle

Once weekly for a year requires 27 liters,

about 1.43 water cooler jugs

Once weekly for a year by 1 out of 10 working Americans (roughly 16 million people)

requires 435,235,476 liters, equal to the water consumed by all Rhode Island households for 1.5 days

 

 

Each prompt on ChatGPT flows through a server that runs thousands of calculations to determine the best words to use in a response.

In completing those calculations, these servers, typically housed in data centers, generate heat. Often, water systems are used to cool the equipment and keep it functioning. Water transports the heat generated in the data centers into cooling towers to help it escape the building, similar to how the human body uses sweat to keep cool, according to Shaolei Ren, an associate professor at UC Riverside.

Where electricity is cheaper, or water comparatively scarce, electricity is often used to cool these warehouses with large units resembling air-conditioners, he said. That means the amount of water and electricity an individual query requires can depend on a data center’s location and vary widely.

Even in ideal conditions, data centers are often among the heaviest users of water in the towns where they are located, environmental advocates said. But data centers with electrical cooling systems also are raising concerns by driving up residents’ power bills and taxing the electric grid.

💻

Follow Technology

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Here is how much a query draws in electrical power.

A 100-word email generated by an AI chatbot using GPT-4

Once requires 0.14 kilowatt-hours (kWh)

of electricity, equal to powering

14 LED light bulbs for 1 hour

Once weekly for a year requires 7.5kWh,

equal to the electricity consumed by

9.3 D.C. households for 1 hour

Once weekly for a year by 1 out of 10 working Americans requires 121,517 megawatt-hours (MWh), equal to the electricity consumed by

all D.C. households for 20 days

Data centers also require massive amounts of energy to support other activities, such as cloud computing, and artificial intelligence has only increased that load, Ren said. If a data center is located in a hot region — and relies on air conditioning for cooling — it takes a lot of electricity to keep the servers at a low temperature. If data centers relying on water cooling are located in drought-prone areas, they risk depleting the area of a precious natural resource.

In Northern Virginia, home to the world’s highest concentration of data centers, citizen groups have protested construction of these buildings, saying they are not only loud energy hogs that don’t bring in enough long-term jobs, but also eyesores that kill home values. In West Des Moines, Iowa, an emerging hotbed of data centers, water department records showed that facilities run by companies like Microsoft used around 6 percent of all the district’s water. After a lengthy court battle, the Oregonian newspaper forced Google to disclose how much its data centers were using in The Dalles, about 80 miles east of Portland; it turned out to be nearly a quarter of all the water available in the town, the documents revealed.

 

 

Before chatbots can even fulfill a request, a huge amount of energy is spent training them. The large language models that allow chatbots like ChatGPT to generate lifelike responses all require servers to analyze millions of pieces of data. (The Post has created a tool, Climate Answers, that asks ChatGPT to summarize Post climate coverage. Because it searches a limited universe of information, its queries are designed to be less resource-intensive.)

It can take months to train these advanced computer models, according to AI experts and research papers, and tech companies such as Google, Meta and Microsoft are scrambling to build data centers.

Each one continuously churns out heat.

100lbs

Training GPT-3 has the same water cost as producing 100 pounds of beef, nearly double the amount an average American eats in a year.

Microsoft’s data center used 700,000 liters of water while training GPT-3.

It takes about 6,992 liters of water to produce 1 pound of beef, mostly used to grow feed, clean the farm and hydrate cows.

4,439lbs

LLaMA-3’s water cost equals about 4,439 pounds of rice, about what 164 Americans consume in a year.

Meta used 22 million liters of water training its LLaMA-3 open source

AI model

It takes about 4,956 liters of water to produce 1 pound of rice, which is grown almost completely submerged under water.

Big tech companies have made numerous pledges to make their data centers greener by using new cooling methods. Those climate pledges are often not met.

In July, Google released its most recent environmental report, showing its carbon emission footprint rose by 48 percent, largely due to AI and data centers. It also replenished only 18 percent of the water it consumed — a far cry from the 120 percent it has set as a goal by 2030. “Google has a long-standing commitment to sustainability, guided by our ambitious goals—which includes achieving net-zero emissions by 2030,” said Mara Harris, a spokesperson for Google.

“AI can be energy-intensive and that’s why we are constantly working to improve efficiency,” said Kayla Wood, an OpenAI spokesperson. Ashley Settle, a Meta spokesperson, said in a statement that the company prioritizes “operating our data centers sustainably and efficiently, while ensuring that people can depend on our services.” Craig Cincotta, a general manager at Microsoft, said the company “remains committed to reducing the intensity with which we withdraw resources,” and added that Microsoft is working towards installing data center cooling methods that “will eliminate water consumption completely.”

 

 

Tech companies such as Nvidia will keep creating computer chips that generate more kilowatts of power per server to do more computations, experts said. AI is creating unprecedented demands on data centers that far outpace any in recent history, Ren said.

“The rapid rise of AI has dramatically changed this trajectory,” Ren said, “and presented new challenges the industry has never met before.”

Methodology

Water and electricity costs were calculated by Ren for ChatGPT-4 at an average American data center. A full methodology can be found in their paper “Making AI Less “Thirsty”: Uncovering and Addressing the Secret Water Footprint of AI Models.”

D.C. electricity consumption figures calculated from the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s 2023 state energy reports. Rhode Island daily water use from the National Environmental Education Foundation. Beef and rice per capita consumption numbers from U.S. Department of Agriculture food availability data and the OECD’s agricultural outlook. Water footprint estimates sourced from: Livestock Science’s “Assessing water resource use in livestock production: A review of methods” and Science’s “Reducing food’s environmental impacts through producers and consumers.”

About this story

Editing by Kate Rabinowitz, Karly Domb Sadof, Alexis Sobel-Fitts and James Graff. Project editing by KC Schaper. Copy editing by Brian French. Additional support from Jordan Melendrez, Kathleen Floyd and Victoria Rossi.

About the Power Grab series

The artificial intelligence industry is driving a nationwide data center building boom. These sprawling warehouses of computing infrastructure are creating explosive demand for power, water and other resources. Power Grab investigates the impacts effects on America and the risks AI infrastructure creates for the environment and the energy transition.

 

Edited September 18 by HenryJames

[Captainant 27239]

6 minutes ago, Parliament said:

How is that even possible?  Does it take that much electricity the power plant needs so much water?

Datacenters mainly use evaporative cooling. You go through alot of water when its sole purpose is to be heated up and change phase to carry the heat away. 

Another way to look at it is: more compute being used == more water being used to keep it cool. And large language models use a TITANIC amount of compute to train and operate at enterprise scale

Edited September 18 by Captainant

[Brisketexan 104216]

4 hours ago, Parliament said:

How is that even possible?  Does it take that much electricity the power plant needs so much water?

How much water does it take to generate a realistic deepfake sex clip featuring Sela Ward, Susanna Hoffs, and a generic middle-aged dad-bod type, where Sela keeps her stockings on and Susanna is wearing a 1986 vintage headband?

Asking for a friend.

[HenryJames 65816]

19 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

and a generic middle-aged dad-bod type

I think that's where most of the water would go.

[Brisketexan 104216]

1 minute ago, HenryJames said:

I think that's where most of the water would go.

[Deej 76371]

20 hours ago, Brisketexan said:

How much water does it take to generate a realistic deepfake sex clip featuring Sela Ward, Susanna Hoffs, and a generic middle-aged dad-bod type, where Sela keeps her stockings on and Susanna is wearing a 1986 vintage headband?

Asking for a friend.

[TwiceHorn 31026]

On 9/18/2024 at 10:49 AM, Captainant said:

Datacenters mainly use evaporative cooling. You go through alot of water when its sole purpose is to be heated up and change phase to carry the heat away. 

Another way to look at it is: more compute being used == more water being used to keep it cool. And large language models use a TITANIC amount of compute to train and operate at enterprise scale

If it's a closed system, the water "loss" would be relatively negligible.  If it uses open-air chilling towers, though, I guess less so.

Nonetheless, a shit ton of water is taken out of the water system for these purposes.  At some point, most of it would be returned, seemingly.

[Captainant 27239]

Been banging this drum for a while, but here's some reporting and a full report on how deeply and constantly tracked we are online across websites, wether we like it or not. Lotta kids knowingly being used as test subjects by adtech

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/social-media-companies-engaged-vast-surveillance-ftc-finds-calling-sta-rcna171814

https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/Social-Media-6b-Report-9-11-2024.pdf

The report, which stretches more than 100 pages, details the data, advertising and recommendation-system efforts by these companies, and how they rely on information about users to sell ads. Users also “lacked any meaningful control over how personal information was used for AI-fueled systems” on the companies’ platforms, according to the report.

 

“While lucrative for the companies, these surveillance practices can endanger people’s privacy, threaten their freedoms, and expose them to a host of harms, from identify theft to stalking,” FTC Chair Lina Khan said in a press release.

The report includes staff recommendations calling for federal privacy legislation, as well as more efforts from companies to prioritize privacy in their data collection and recommendation systems. It also said parents should have more control over what information is collected from children and teenagers.

"Protecting users – especially children and teens – requires clear baseline protections that apply across the board," the FTC said in the report.

[Deej 76371]

The best paid CEO's have the worst paid employees.

I'm shocked, I tell you. 

https://pluralistic.net/2024/09/09/low-wage-100/#executive-excess

[HenryJames 65816]

Comedian John Mulaney brutally roasts SF techies at Dreamforce

Spoiler

Comedian John Mulaney brutally roasts SF techies at Dreamforce

John Mulaney has Dreamforce and its attendees firmly in his sights during his set Thursday. | Source: Amanda Andrade-Rhoades/The Standard

Share

By Kevin V. NguyenPublished Sep. 19, 2024 • 6:14pm

“Let me get this straight,” John Mulaney said. “You’re hosting a ‘future of AI’ event in a city that has failed humanity so miserably?” 

Everyone inside the auditorium at the Moscone Center groaned. Any notion that the award-winning comedian would play the corporate gig safe (and clean) were thrown out the window Thursday, when Mulaney, closing the Dreamforce festivities, started roasting his host, Salesforce, and the audience sitting right in front of him.

“You look like a group who looked at the self-checkout counters at CVS and thought, ‘This is the future,’” Mulaney said.

“If AI is truly smarter than us and tells us that [humans] should die, then I think we should die,” he said, looking out to the crowd from center stage. “So many of you feel imminently replaceable.”

He added, “Can AI sit there in a fleece vest? Can AI not go to events and spend all day at a bar?”

Related

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Roasting Silicon Valley: A comedy show where techies pay to be ridiculed

San Francisco supervisor jokes about being fired in stand-up comedy debut

In a wide-ranging, 45-minute set, Mulaney did not hold back when it came to joking about the cartoonish conference, which aspired to be the “largest AI event in the world.”

“You’re an account executive at Top Low?” Mulaney asked an audience member, who clarified that she works at Tableau, a data visualization company. “You know in your goddamn bones that a bunch of you are working on products that are just OK, but you have to vamp and make up terms to make it sound more awesome than it is.”

“You’re a VP of customer success?” he asked another attendee. “Congratulations on your position that did not exist five years ago!”

Between anecdotes about his aging parents, his stint in rehab, and fatherhood, Mulaney worked the crowd, poking fun at tech workers and their buzzwords.

“What’s important here is that we’re looking for solutions,” he said sarcastically. “And in looking for solutions, what we’re really after is insights, which then lead to success. Now, start prepping the humans for robots.

“Some of the vaguest language ever devised has been used here in the last three days,” he continued. “The fact that there are 45,000 ‘trailblazers’ here couldn’t devalue the title any more.”

Since 2020, Mulaney has married actress Olivia Munn, had a son, and released a Netflix special called “Baby J,” detailing his struggles with drug addiction, and a limited series, “Everybody’s in LA.”

In addition to the Dreamforce set, Mulaney is headlining a show Thursday evening at the Golden Gate Theatre. 

The comedian rounded out his Dreamforce appearance by thanking attendees “for the world you’re creating for my son … where he will never talk to an actual human again. Instead, a little cartoon Einstein will pop up and give him a sort of good answer and probably refer him to another chatbot.”

Mulaney then shared an anecdote about how he and his son, who is nearly 3, like to play baseball in their front yard.

“We’re just two guys hitting Wiffle balls badly and yelling ‘Good job’ at each other,” he said. “It’s sort of the same energy here at Dreamforce.”

 

[thunderlounge 7693]

He’s not wrong. Not in the slightest. 

[Parliament 14081]

Dude moved way up my power rankings.

[Deej 76371]

And not a single person there will give any thought to what he said. 

[Captainant 27239]

Hope yall don't like deli meats

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/boars-head-plants-nationwide-now-part-of-law-enforcement-investigation-usda-says/

Boar's Head processing plants nationwide are now part of an ongoing law enforcement investigation, the U.S. Department of Agriculture disclosed Thursday, in the wake of a deadly outbreak blamed on some of the company's now-recalled deli meats. 

At least 59 hospitalizations and 10 deaths have been linked to a listeria strain traced back to Boar's Head products distributed from a now-shuttered plant the company ran in Virginia. 

That Boar's Head plant in Virginia had been written up dozens of times by inspectors over violations, CBS News first reported in August, based on records obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request. Violations flagged at the plant by agriculture officials included mold and insects found throughout the site. 

[Brisketexan 104216]

30 minutes ago, Captainant said:

Hope yall don't like deli meats

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/boars-head-plants-nationwide-now-part-of-law-enforcement-investigation-usda-says/

Boar's Head processing plants nationwide are now part of an ongoing law enforcement investigation, the U.S. Department of Agriculture disclosed Thursday, in the wake of a deadly outbreak blamed on some of the company's now-recalled deli meats. 

At least 59 hospitalizations and 10 deaths have been linked to a listeria strain traced back to Boar's Head products distributed from a now-shuttered plant the company ran in Virginia. 

That Boar's Head plant in Virginia had been written up dozens of times by inspectors over violations, CBS News first reported in August, based on records obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request. Violations flagged at the plant by agriculture officials included mold and insects found throughout the site. 

None of this will matter until executives in $5,000 suits go to fucking prison for homicide.  Fines don't matter, bankruptcy doesn't matter (they all got paid.  A lot.  They don't give a fuck anymore).  SEND.  CRIMINALS.  TO PRISON.  THEY FUCKING KILLED PEOPLE, AND THEY KNEW THAT IT WAS CERTAIN TO HAPPEN.

[thunderlounge 7693]

That stock ain't going up now, is it? Dumb fuckers.

[Deej 76371]

58 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

None of this will matter until executives in $5,000 suits go to fucking prison for homicide.  Fines don't matter, bankruptcy doesn't matter (they all got paid.  A lot.  They don't give a fuck anymore).  SEND.  CRIMINALS.  TO PRISON.  THEY FUCKING KILLED PEOPLE, AND THEY KNEW THAT IT WAS CERTAIN TO HAPPEN.

They won't. 

 

[hayden_horn 11350]

1 hour ago, Brisketexan said:

None of this will matter until executives in $5,000 suits go to fucking prison for homicide.  Fines don't matter, bankruptcy doesn't matter (they all got paid.  A lot.  They don't give a fuck anymore).  SEND.  CRIMINALS.  TO PRISON.  THEY FUCKING KILLED PEOPLE, AND THEY KNEW THAT IT WAS CERTAIN TO HAPPEN.

 

[HenryJames 65816]

On 6/22/2024 at 11:26 AM, HenryJames said:

1. lol

2. would

Spoiler

OpenAI Executives Exit as C.E.O. Works to Make the Company For-Profit

Mira Murati, the chief technology officer, and two others are leaving as leaders including Sam Altman work to transform the start-up.

Sept. 25, 2024

Mira Murati said she was stepping away from OpenAI to “create the time and space to do my own exploration.”Jim Wilson/The New York Times

Mira Murati, the chief technology officer at OpenAI, the influential artificial intelligence start-up, said on Wednesday that she would leave the company after working there for more than six years.

In a memo she sent to employees and later shared on X, Ms. Murati said she was stepping away to “create the time and space to do my own exploration,” though she did not elaborate on what those next steps would be. “For now, my primary focus is doing everything in my power to ensure a smooth transition, maintaining the momentum we’ve built,” she said.

Hours later, OpenAI’s chief research officer, Bob McGrew, and a vice president of research, Barret Zoph, announced their plans to leave as well. Mr. Zoph said in a post on X that he was “exploring new opportunities,” while Mr. McGrew said in a separate post that it was “time for me to take a break.”

The OpenAI executives are exiting the start-up as its chief executive, Sam Altman, and others are working to transform it into a traditional for-profit company, according to two people familiar with the talks. OpenAI is now controlled by the board of a nonprofit organization that Mr. Altman and his co-founders created in late 2015 to oversee the start-up’s technologies.

While becoming a for-profit company is not expected to happen until next year, OpenAI is in talks for a new round of investment that could value the company at as much as $150 billion, a huge leap from its last round at $80 billion. The United Arab Emirates’ technology investment firm, MGX, is among the potential investors, which also include Microsoft, Nvidia, Apple and Tiger Global, three people familiar with the conversations said.

OpenAI is seeking cash because its costs far outpace its revenue, the three people said. It annually collects more than $3 billion in sales while spending about $7 billion.

After years of public conflict between management and some of its top researchers, OpenAI is trying to look more like a more traditional tech company that can be a leader in the industry’s drive toward artificial intelligence.

But Wednesday’s executive departures followed months of similar exits by other OpenAI leaders. And they bookend a turbulent year for the company, which included the surprise ouster of Mr. Altman as chief executive and his reinstatementfive days later.

Ms. Murati, who had joined OpenAI in 2018, was appointed to lead the company after Mr. Altman’s removal, but rejected the role just two days later. She has remained one of the public faces of the start-up, making frequent public appearances to discuss its technology.

A spokeswoman for OpenAI declined to comment beyond what the executives posted online.

In a reply to Ms. Murati on X, Mr. Altman thanked her for her years at the company and said he would provide more information on the leadership transition in the coming days.

“It’s hard to overstate how much Mira has meant to OpenAI, our mission, and to us all personally,” he wrote.

Late Wednesday, Mr. Altman said on social media that the departures of Mr. McGrew and Mr. Zoph were unrelated to the resignation of Ms. Murati but that “it made sense to now do this all at once, so that we can work together for a smooth handover to the next generation of leadership.”

(The New York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft in December for copyright infringement of news content related to A.I. systems.)

In recent months, OpenAI has added a number of seasoned executives, including new heads of product, a new chief financial officer and a head of global policy to handle relationships in Washington and across the world. Over the past nine months, OpenAI has more than doubled in size, with over 1,700 employees, while publicly stressing that it was focused on making its technology safe for widespread use.

But as new executives have come in, a number of longtime OpenAI managers and researchers have headed out the door. Of the 13 people who helped found OpenAI in 2015 with a mission to create artificial general intelligence, or A.G.I. — a machine that can do anything the human brain can do — only three remain.

One of the remaining founders, Greg Brockman, the company’s president, has taken a leave of absence through the end of the year, citing the need for time off after nearly a decade of work.

The two executives who announced their departures after Ms. Murati’s resignation were among those who formed the core of OpenAI’s research team over the past several months.

While Mr. Zoph was a key hands-on researcher, Mr. McGrew was more of a project manager who helped map out strategy and oversaw other employees. He was closely aligned with Ms. Murati.

Mr. Zoph was closely aligned with John Schulman, a founder who left OpenAI this summer.

The company has also added key researchers, most notably Noam Brown, a former Meta researcher who specializes in the “reasoning” techniques that help drive OpenAI’s latest technology, called OpenAI o1.

Designed to reason through tasks involving math, science and computer programming, the new technology can in some cases reduce the mistakes and “hallucinations,” or made-up information, produced by the company’s ChatGPT chatbot.

 

[Parliament 14081]

22 hours ago, Captainant said:

Hope yall don't like deli meats

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/boars-head-plants-nationwide-now-part-of-law-enforcement-investigation-usda-says/

Boar's Head processing plants nationwide are now part of an ongoing law enforcement investigation, the U.S. Department of Agriculture disclosed Thursday, in the wake of a deadly outbreak blamed on some of the company's now-recalled deli meats. 

At least 59 hospitalizations and 10 deaths have been linked to a listeria strain traced back to Boar's Head products distributed from a now-shuttered plant the company ran in Virginia. 

That Boar's Head plant in Virginia had been written up dozens of times by inspectors over violations, CBS News first reported in August, based on records obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request. Violations flagged at the plant by agriculture officials included mold and insects found throughout the site. 

Maybe it's just me, but buying processed lunch meat from a brand called "Boar's Head," should be a warning.

[Braff Zacklin 13356]

2 minutes ago, Parliament said:

Maybe it's just me, but buying processed lunch meat from a brand called "Boar's Head," should be a warning.

There's an obvious assumption of risk for anyone bold/foolish enough to eat liverwurst.

[HenryJames 65816]

38 minutes ago, Parliament said:

Maybe it's just me, but buying processed lunch meat from a brand called "Boar's Head," should be a warning.

[Homercles 10205]

I probably griped about it at least once in this thread, but the website tracking brought up my rage again…websites are so unbelievably full of embedded ads + video ads + banner ads + pop up ads + ad links that my phone gets hot while I watch my battery drain just trying to read the content.  
 

[elfenix 34161]

Maybe connected cars are just a bad idea:

Quote

Hackers remotely unlocked Kia cars with just a license plate scan

Four security researchers managed to get near-total control of cars using the Kia Connect system

https://www.pcworld.com/article/2471499/hackers-remotely-unlocked-kia-cars-with-just-a-license-plate-scan.html

[956 Worldwide 34225]

On 9/18/2024 at 9:25 AM, hornbri said:

Could have gone in the football thread but it goes here too. Now we are going to get Ticketmaster style extra fees 

 

 

I remember when NIL was all about “let the kids do some local car dealership commercials” and now it’s “better give $200 directly to that nickelback or he’ll find someone else who will.” 

[Captainant 27239]

3 minutes ago, 956 Worldwide said:

I remember when NIL was all about “let the kids do some local car dealership commercials” and now it’s “better give $200 directly to that nickelback or he’ll find someone else who will.” 

Just ask the UNLV quarterback how that can backfire on ya lol

[aggie08 21278]

On 9/28/2024 at 1:43 PM, Homercles said:

I probably griped about it at least once in this thread, but the website tracking brought up my rage again…websites are so unbelievably full of embedded ads + video ads + banner ads + pop up ads + ad links that my phone gets hot while I watch my battery drain just trying to read the content.  
 

Which animal did Katy find to be most delicious?

[HenryJames 65816]

[huge 3787]

I think I speak for most of America when I say, “who???”

[Captainant 27239]

52 minutes ago, huge said:

I think I speak for most of America when I say, “who???”

Ycombinator is one of the first big startup incubators. You may have heard of some of their more successful "unicorn" startups like: Reddit, Stripe, Airbnb, Dropbox, Docker, Twitch, and on and on

[huge 3787]

I don’t use Reddit properly.

All they do is email me their advice column section.

I don’t care that your sister called you a whore on your wedding day!

Also no one cares about incubators outside of techbros and dilettantes.

[Deej 76371]

7 hours ago, huge said:

I don’t use Reddit properly.

All they do is email me their advice column section.

I don’t care that your sister called you a whore on your wedding day!

Also no one cares about incubators outside of techbros and dilettantes.

[Captainant 27239]

8 hours ago, huge said:

Also no one cares about incubators outside of techbros and dilettantes.

And that's fair. You asked, I answered lol. They're quite at home in the enshittification thread

Edited October 2 by Captainant

[immamac 42364]

8 hours ago, Captainant said:

Ycombinator is one of the first big startup incubators. You may have heard of some of their more successful "unicorn" startups like: Reddit, Stripe, Airbnb, Dropbox, Docker, Twitch, and on and on

Reddit has never made a profit and loses tens of millions a quarter. Stripes numbers aren't good enough to IPO and their growth is completely stalled. They are having to get liquidity from PE firms to keep going but are at least operating in the black. Airbnb is a dumpster fire, but somehow they have been making money the last year or so, not enough to pay back all the capital they spent getting there though. Dropbox only became successful when it repatriated and then got shit on for being too boring and one trick so they flushed all profit down the tubes to try to appease the shareholder gods. Docker fucked up so bad they have become effectively irrelevant like blackberry. Twitch bleeds cash for amazon and wouldn't be able to survive on its own or without its camwhore streamers. 

Y combinator is a place for circular investment to spawn and for investors to make eachother rich with the power of hype. Most founders from there have horrible business acumen and even worse product focus. 

Airbnb is a predatory and out of control business that operates in a legal grey area and is nearly impossible to enforce against. If they actually banned illegal listings or were held accountable in any way as a platform they would cease to exist overnight. 

[Captainant 27239]

21 minutes ago, immamac said:

Reddit has never made a profit and loses tens of millions a quarter. Stripes numbers aren't good enough to IPO and their growth is completely stalled. They are having to get liquidity from PE firms to keep going but are at least operating in the black. Airbnb is a dumpster fire, but somehow they have been making money the last year or so, not enough to pay back all the capital they spent getting there though. Dropbox only became successful when it repatriated and then got shit on for being too boring and one trick so they flushed all profit down the tubes to try to appease the shareholder gods. Docker fucked up so bad they have become effectively irrelevant like blackberry. Twitch bleeds cash for amazon and wouldn't be able to survive on its own or without its camwhore streamers. 

Y combinator is a place for circular investment to spawn and for investors to make eachother rich with the power of hype. Most founders from there have horrible business acumen and even worse product focus. 

Airbnb is a predatory and out of control business that operates in a legal grey area and is nearly impossible to enforce against. If they actually banned illegal listings or were held accountable in any way as a platform they would cease to exist overnight. 

You're 100% right that those are all dogshit businesses that are completely unsustainable with their operating model. However

This is the enshittification thread! Those businesses have all made a shitton of money for their investors, and by stock market definitions were completely viable businesses. And they've all exercised a HUGE impact on their respective markets, typically negative for their customers. 

Like I said, they're right at home in the enshittification thread lol

[immamac 42364]

Yeah, I was just elaborating for those who want to know what YCombinator is all about. 

[huge 3787]

The more I know!!!

Thanks internet friends!!!!!!!!

[tbone_ 14016]

Reddit has never made a profit and loses tens of millions a quarter. Stripes numbers aren't good enough to IPO and their growth is completely stalled. They are having to get liquidity from PE firms to keep going but are at least operating in the black. Airbnb is a dumpster fire, but somehow they have been making money the last year or so, not enough to pay back all the capital they spent getting there though. Dropbox only became successful when it repatriated and then got shit on for being too boring and one trick so they flushed all profit down the tubes to try to appease the shareholder gods. Docker fucked up so bad they have become effectively irrelevant like blackberry. Twitch bleeds cash for amazon and wouldn't be able to survive on its own or without its camwhore streamers. 
Y combinator is a place for circular investment to spawn and for investors to make eachother rich with the power of hype. Most founders from there have horrible business acumen and even worse product focus. 
Airbnb is a predatory and out of control business that operates in a legal grey area and is nearly impossible to enforce against. If they actually banned illegal listings or were held accountable in any way as a platform they would cease to exist overnight. 

Do Uber and Lyft make money? I’ve always figured they would be out of business if the drivers ever understood economics enough to realize they weren’t getting paid for the depreciation on their cars and were essentially funding Uber/Lyft’s capital requirements with their personal debt.

[Incredulity 11404]

28 minutes ago, tbone_ said:

Do Uber and Lyft make money? I’ve always figured they would be out of business if the drivers ever understood economics enough to realize they weren’t getting paid for the depreciation on their cars and were essentially funding Uber/Lyft’s capital requirements with their personal debt.

Uber has reported net profit each quarter for the last year.  Lyft had its 1st profitable quarter in Q2 24.(most recent report)

I believe Uber and Lyft have had some sort of vehicle subsidy at certain points in time(i'm basing that on chit chat with Uber drivers), not sure on the value of those programs.

The value proposition for Uber drivers is drive as much as you want when you want.  I would say in my interactions with Uber drivers about 50% are happy with the deal and 50% are bitter/hate it.   

[HenryJames 65816]

3 hours ago, immamac said:

Reddit has never made a profit and loses tens of millions a quarter. Stripes numbers aren't good enough to IPO and their growth is completely stalled. They are having to get liquidity from PE firms to keep going but are at least operating in the black. Airbnb is a dumpster fire, but somehow they have been making money the last year or so, not enough to pay back all the capital they spent getting there though. Dropbox only became successful when it repatriated and then got shit on for being too boring and one trick so they flushed all profit down the tubes to try to appease the shareholder gods. Docker fucked up so bad they have become effectively irrelevant like blackberry. Twitch bleeds cash for amazon and wouldn't be able to survive on its own or without its camwhore streamers. 

Y combinator is a place for circular investment to spawn and for investors to make eachother rich with the power of hype. Most founders from there have horrible business acumen and even worse product focus. 

Airbnb is a predatory and out of control business that operates in a legal grey area and is nearly impossible to enforce against. If they actually banned illegal listings or were held accountable in any way as a platform they would cease to exist overnight. 

[immamac 42364]

1 hour ago, tbone_ said:

Do Uber and Lyft make money? I’ve always figured they would be out of business if the drivers ever understood economics enough to realize they weren’t getting paid for the depreciation on their cars and were essentially funding Uber/Lyft’s capital requirements with their personal debt.

Uber is now posting profits, but they would have to remain or improve over the next 10 years to be profitable overall on how much they've lost over the last decade+ of bleeding billions per quarter. There's definitely some accounting magic going on too with their profit numbers and I'm pretty sure a large chunk of it comes from their side bets and not their main rideshare platform. 

1 hour ago, Incredulity said:

Uber has reported net profit each quarter for the last year.  Lyft had its 1st profitable quarter in Q2 24.(most recent report)

I believe Uber and Lyft have had some sort of vehicle subsidy at certain points in time(i'm basing that on chit chat with Uber drivers), not sure on the value of those programs.

The value proposition for Uber drivers is drive as much as you want when you want.  I would say in my interactions with Uber drivers about 50% are happy with the deal and 50% are bitter/hate it.   

Their businesses are really strange compared to what they were in the past. In the past they were worth burning billions to try to keep alive, because if drivers went away they become the most profitable businesses on the planet. The reality is that drivers will never go away and they have to figure out ways to make additional revenue from a base product that can't really improve beyond where they have it today due to constraints that have nothing to do with the technology. (mainly infrastructure, safety, policy etc)

[tbone_ 14016]

Thanks. Still amazes me no one talks about the fact that they get free capital.

[Incredulity 11404]

20 hours ago, tbone_ said:

Thanks. Still amazes me no one talks about the fact that they get free capital.

So do fast food franchisors.

[hayden_horn 11350]

20 hours ago, tbone_ said:

Thanks. Still amazes me no one talks about the fact that they get free capital.

tons of "free" capital or there these days. shit is broken

[immamac 42364]

American GDP in general is a scam. I wonder if all credit derived payments were removed from GDP how actually fucked it would be. 

Like where is all the actual cash that is in the money supply vs all the debt that is treated as cash. I think most revenue is all based on literally made up money.