Pretty sure that’s why they invented the stock market in the first place… Faustian deal where innovators and disruptors trade their future potential for a leg up today. In exchange the wealthy slowly seize whatever new technology or IP is created, guaranteeing their position into the future.
Big tech wonder boys like Zuckerberg and others coming out of Y Combinator aren’t miracle stories - they are the chosen few handpicked by yesterdays elite to help them close the circle from others.
It scares me that generations before and after millennials are not as proficient with technology. Before makes perfect sense, but younger people being unable to use a computer or tell if they’re being scammed really disheartens me. I blame the excesses of capitalism and ignorance of our lawmakers.
The way the web and services are structured is extremely unfair to the consumer. We pay for access to the internet, then we pay for access to premium content sources and to stop ads for showing. So many middle men… where is the benefit exactly? How is a podcast better than my community radio?
The ownership of digital goods is the worst part of all. Games, music, tv shows… stuff that is a formative part of your life you should be able to pass onto your kids isn’t yours. You own a “license” which is just a record in some database that can be revoked between company acquisitions.
What is the charge? Biting a breast? A succulent Chinese breast?
Ah, I see one of the toxic family members is with us.
Anyone else see the MALP from Stargate?
I was quoting Doctor Who ;)
Don’t you think he looks tired?
I like the idea social media is for kids only and adults are banned. If that applies to advertisers and bots too then it could be a winner!
Check out the Mistborn and Wheel of Time series for books that are waaay better than Harry Potter. Anything by Brandon Sanderson and Neil Gaiman is a good time.
Also highly recommend any comics by Moebius and/or Alejandro Jodorowsky, and Neil Gaiman. Some incredible mind altering works to enjoy there like The Incal and Sandman.
I think the games industry will start to use open source tools like Blender and Godot more and more. These options have really matured over the years and compete on features and productivity with commercial options.
From a business POV - open source makes a lot of sense when you need a guarantee your investment won’t evaporate because a vendor has cancelled a feature or API your game uses. With open source, if you don’t like a path the upstream code is taking you can fork off and make your own!
Part of the dynamic is also how people are inspired and learning skills. You can learn how to do very advanced stuff in Blender for free on Youtube - why would you pay some private college thousands of dollars to learn an expensive program like Maya to do the same thing?
Here are the number of hours I’ve spent on indie games VS AAA titles, according to my Steam library:
If we’re talking about value - the amount of playtime I’ve gotten out of games with simpler graphics and unique ideas blows the billions spent by the industry out of the water.
My biggest gripe with big tech is how governments of the world encourage their worst behaviours. Governments and businesses have failed to maintain their own level of expertise and understanding of technology.
Today everything relies on tech but all the solutions are outsourced and rely on “guidance” and free hand outs from vendors like Microsoft. This has caused situations where billions are poured into digital transformation efforts with fuck all to show for it but administrative headaches, ballooning costs and security breaches.
I’m so tired of silicon valley frat boys being the leaders of our industry. We need to go back to an engineer and ideas led industry. Focused on solving problems and making lives better. Not making bullshit unsustainable business monopolies with a huge pile of money. Right now big tech is the embodiment of all of capitalisms worst qualities.
P.s. apologies if my comment is a bit simplistic and vague. didn’t want to write a 10 page rant but still wanted to say my 2c about the state of things.
Ah yes, the original unviable silicon valley businesses! I love how they used their VC money to undercut and kill small businesses all over the world.
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All that matters is the sponsorship tier - will you be flying the judge out to a vacation? Buying their mother a house? The outcome is solely dependent on your investment in the court. Justice.
No sane court? So it has a real chance of being decided by The Supreme Court…
Its the alien vents that lead back to the Primary Containment Facility.
I reckon it’s hard to attach blame to Microsoft because of the culture of corporate governance and how decisions are made (without experts).
Tech has become a bunch of walled gardens with absolute secrecy over minor nothings. After 1-2 decades of that, we have a generation of professionals who have no idea how anything works and need to sign up for $5 a month phone app / cloud services just to do basic stuff they could normally do on their own on a PC - they just don’t know how or how to put the pieces together due to inexperience / lack of exposure.
Whether it’s corporate or government leadership, the lack of understanding of basics in tech is now a liability. It’s allowed corporations like Microsoft to set their own quality standards without any outside regulation while they are entrusted with vital infrastructure and to provide technical advisory, even though they have a clear vested interest there.
OK, but people aren’t running Crowdstrike OS. They’re running Microsoft Windows.
I think that some responsibility should lie with Microsoft - to create an OS that
I get that there can be unforeseeable bugs, I’m a programmer of over two decades myself. But there are also steps you can take to strengthen your code, and as a Windows user it feels more like their resources are focused on random new shit no one wants instead of on the core stability and reliability of the system.
It seems to be like third party updates have a lot of control/influence over the OS and that’s all well and good, but the equivalent of a “Try and Catch” is what they needed here and yet nothing seems to be in place. The OS just boot loops.
This is something that I hope society learns to comprehend and act on more effectively in the future.
A lot of today’s huge problems we’ve known about since I was a kid 30 years ago - climate change, corporate greed, housing crisis, immigration, etc. I spent most of my times growing up arguing with adults, having my lived experience questioned. I thought there would be a tipping point when I started working, or paying my own way through life, where the condescension would stop but it never did.
The current older generation has lived longer than any other in history, and they’ve clung to control for as long as possible. Even when younger leaders come in, they’re still trapped in these outdated values—Victorian at best—that keep pulling us backwards. Somehow, they’ve convinced themselves that investors deserve their returns more than people deserve to live. It’s soul crushing.