This is obviously dishonest fearmongering, but I kinda support it if it helps non-tech people develop a sense of the type of private information tech companies are trying to collect.
> Feels like vibe-coders are the real target market for something like this,
I think this is a potentially giant market: incurious people who don't know what they're doing, lack experience and wisdom, and are highly susceptible to empty marketing fluff. Selling junk to these people can't be very difficult, especially if they rely on an LLM (funded by many of the same investors) to explain it to them.
I have a 165hz display that I use at 60hz. Running it at max speed while all I'm doing is writing code or browsing the web feels like a waste of electricity, and might even be bad for the display's longevity.
But for gaming, it really is hard to go back to 60.
Mine supports variable refresh rate, which means for most desktops tasks (I.e when nothing is moving), it runs at 48Hz.
Incredibly, Linux has better support than windows for it on the desktop: DWM runs full blast, while sway supports VRR on the desktop. Windows will only enable it for games (and games that support it). Disclaimer: Wayland compositor required.
It’s not enabled by default on e.g. sway because on some GPU and monitor combos, it can make the display flicker. But if you can, give it a try!
Windows 11 idles at around 60 Hz in 120 Hz modes on my VRR ("G-SYNC Compatible") display when the "Dynamic refresh rate" option is enabled, and supports VRR for applications other than games (e.g., fullscreen 24 FPS video playback runs at 48 Hz* via VRR rather than mode switching, even with "Dynamic refresh rate" disabled).
* The minimum variable refresh rate my display (LG C4) supports is 40 Hz.
Its also kind of weird, as the article is basically just an executive summary. Did they really need AI to come up with that? Its hardly in the weeds of the details.
Come on, don't hand wave over the obvious. Think about how much it would actually cost to run a social media website that competes with the big social media on the core product of sharing and communicating with friends. It would be extremely realistic to build something that's both free and sustainable with just regular ads, as was done decades before.
(EDIT: to clarify, I don't mean to build an alternative monopoly, I mean to build alternatives that are big enough to survive as a business, and big enough to be useful; A few million users as opposed to the few billions Facebook and Youtube (allegedly) have)
The reason it's hard to imagine such a thing today is because the tech giants have illegally suppressed competition for so long. If Google or Meta were ordered to break up, and Facebook/Youtube forced to try and survive as standalone businesses, all the weaknesses in their products would manifest as actual market consequences, creating opportunity for competitors to win market share. Anybody with basic coding skills or money to invest would be tripping over themselves to build competing products which actually focus on the things people want or need, because consumers will be able to choose the ones they like.
> Think about how much it would actually cost to run a social media website that competes with the big social media on the core product of sharing and communicating with friends.
It would cost tons man. You don't understand the scale these apps operate on at all. Meta has their own data center footprint that rivals AWS or any other cloud company and they had that before AI, and it's not just all to run ads on. On demand photo and video streaming and storage for free for all of humanity is incredibly expensive.
Social media with only millions of users is basically worthless because it won't capture enough of an average person's circle to be useful to them
> On demand photo and video streaming and storage for free for all of humanity is incredibly expensive.
Maybe you missed my edit? I specifically said not a clone of the monopolies, but a competitor big enough to be a sustainable business. The economics of a monopolist's empire are irrelevant.
> Social media with only millions of users is basically worthless because it won't capture enough of an average person's circle to be useful to them
There's so much wrong with this statement. First of all, I will never meet anywhere near a million people in my lifetime. A regular human being's real social connections won't be anywhere near that big.
But even if it is (or users want to discover/follow random people), it doesn't take a computer science genius to discover how to interoperate between social networking apps. Meta and Google would never do this, but that's because they're anti-competitive monopolists; if you're a startup trying to gain marketshare and win on your product's quality, interop with other networks is a no brainer. We probably don't even need regulation to require interop, as the market will see it as a useful thing to develop on its own.
If you mean ban all crypto currencies, then you're correct.
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