Microsoft posted a revenue of $211.9 billion for 2023. Keeping in mind that the vast majority of the world’s population uses Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office and loads of online applications run on Microsoft Azure, the economic impact of Microsoft’s products is probably counted in trillions of dollars.

Comparing this to countries with the same ballpark energy consumption, Azerbaijan’s GDP was about $78 billion, Slovakia’s GDP was around $127 billion, and Iceland’s GDP was approximately $30 billion in 2023.

The economic output of Google and Microsoft by far exceeds these countries’ GDPs, highlighting the vast financial scale of these tech giants relative to their substantial electricity consumption.

Oh yeah, it’s crazy to think that! I don’t know where I would have gotten that idea, other than the article that OP linked that we’re all discussing.

Yes, training new AI models uses a bunch of power, so does building out any new infrastructure. Atleast Microsoft and Google use a far high percentage of renewable power than most other industries.

Don’t buy something, and a factory doesn’t need to run to produce it. It’s not privilege, it’s called following a chain of cause and effect.

I mean, companies off shore software development all the time.

18th century America:

My name’s Alex Cumming, and I’m here to stop that pipe smell.

🫤

My name’s Tom Crapper and I’m here to stop that pipe smell.

😍

It was the Stack Overflow developer survey I believe

As of last year ~70% of software developers were using copilot or a similar AI assistant. The legal field has seen a drop off in junior hires because of AI assistants. Snapchat’s AI filters and tools have long been a huge draw for that platform (and then copied by everyone else to avoid bleeding users), and Bing saw massive user growth after integrating OpenAI.

AI has problems and limitations but it’s absurd to think there’s no demand for it just because it’s pushed by annoying people. Everything with hype will get pushed by annoying people.

What the fuck do you guys think factories do? Just run for no reason? Where do you think the stuff you own, use, and consume comes from?

Use unscented, clumping, cat litter. Good unscented cat litter doesn’t really smell like much of anything.

Run your bathroom fan, it will suck clean air from your house into the bathroom and flush it out so that even as you approach the bathroom youl be smelling air from the rest of the house and bad odours won’t build up.

Scoop the soiled, clumped litter into a green bin, and then tie the bag closed between scoopings.

Avoid “light weight” litter, that just means it’s lots of fine particles that are more likely to fly around.

You also use Gmail and force Google to run their servers to power it.

Reducing your carbon footprint as much as possible is important, but it’s absurd to get mad at companies that power 90% of the world’s businesses for using a bunch of power to do so. It takes power to do those things. Get mad at the companies who are over consuming relative to their peers and those that are driving demand towards unattainable activities. Just getting mad at people for moving and using energy is absurd.

They only do that because they project it to be profitable, i.e. they project demand for it.

It’s also ridiculous to claim that people don’t want it just because you don’t.

No, it’s not.

Them making money implies that they are being paid to use power, which is true. Their absolute carbon footprint is irrelevant given that most of what the carbon they use is at the request of someone else. The metric to judge them on is their carbon footprint relevant to peers.

I.e. it’s not fair to judge a cab company for driving someone somewhere (judge the person choosing to hire a cab), but it is fair to judge them if they use gas guzzlers instead of EVs.

Think about literally every object in the universe, every person, every shoe, every table, every rock, grain of sand, grain of dust, elephant, tree, blade of grass, grape, etc…

Apples and Oranges are some of the most similar of all of them.

You weren’t, relevantly implies that there is additional context that determines their relevance. Often when people say “two things aren’t comparable”, they’re trying to use that shorthand to avoid debating the context that would make them comparable or incomparable.

No, things always have inherent context by nature of being things. Context can be used to make things incomparable, but they’re always inherently comparable without explicit context needing to be provided. This is literally the entire basis of the game 20 Questions.

these thinga are too dissimilar to be compared meaningfully. Like if some article says which is the best tool? And they give you a rake, a network router, and a nailgun. Then you meed context.

I think to OPs point though, is that all of those two things can be compared. The context of the article is what makes them incomparable. But if you asked me to compare a router to a nailgun I could talk durability, power draw, intended function, materials, relative ability to make it through TSA, etc etc.

Literally no two things are fundamentally incomparable. Things are only incomparable in specific contexts.

Absolutely fair scenario, I’m not advocating to abandon copyright with nothing to replace it.

The fundamental structure of copyright right now, is one based around granting ownership and exclusivity rights, but only the second part is flawed, the exclusivity rights part.

A copyright system that makes sense in the digital age is an ownership and attribution system, whereby in that scenario, Drake would acknowledge that it’s your song and then a certain portion of his proceeds from that song would end up going to you automatically. If he didn’t he would face a regulator / court / arbitration system that could impose massive penalties to disincentivize non acknowledgement.

It doesn’t really change any of the economics of live art, but for digital art, rather than everyone paying for different subscriptions and having all the profits go to enriching middle men with exclusive, non competitive contracts, everyone would always have free access to everything and you’d have the streaming and viewership numbers etc influence how much money the government or an arm’s length arts agency / crown corporation is paying out to artists.

Judging the relative merits of two things, and noting the differences between disparate things, is fundamentally the same thing.

You can define a car as a steering wheel and an engine and a gear box etc.

Or you can define a car as a generic object and one of the first fundamental properties of all generic objects is the list of all other features and properties that that object has.

So noting the differences between two things, is really just judging the relative merits of their collection of properties.

I would argue that @Spzi@lemm.ee is correct, and people often use “can’t be compared” incorrectly, or they intentionally use it that way to be over the top and dramatic, like saying I love you to infinity.

I’ve been on multiple teams that do and it’s so much better than the teams that don’t.

Ideal standup (cameras off):

• -2:00 - 0:00 mark: light chit chat if earlybirds want while waiting for standup to start

• 15s-45s / per person: what did you work on yesterday, what are you working on today.

  • An extra 45s if you have a blocker. The resolution during the meeting is always either:
    • ‘blocked, nothing I can do, moving onto X ticket’,
    • ‘someone tells me who to talk to to unblock’
    • ‘me and a team member agree to meet after the standup to discuss how to unblock’

• 0-2min total for offboard updates: who has a doctor’s appointment, needs to take time off, happy anniversary, etc.

Trust me, it provides value. For those of us with problems leaving everything to the last minute, having a little biweekly accountability and structure can really help prevent problems from getting too big.

Some people are so clearly a positive influence on the world around them, it’s always a little extra devastating to see them go.