The human elements are being stripped away along with consumer protections. So services are becoming more and more like the tech sector (like YouTube, WhatsApp blocking) where for a long time, the situation has been that decisions get made by an algorithm and there is literally no one to appeal to about them.

Take banking as an example - with brick and mortar locations shrinking, it’s already so hard to get simple things done unless you download their app, agree to an unnecessarily long list of terms and conditions which can be changed unilaterally at any time, and your rights to sue are waived in favor of arbitration.

We as consumers are doing more of the work that was previously being done by employees and without getting paid for it. Think self checkouts - when it started, I was very happy that I didn’t have to talk to a person if I didn’t feel like it, but now I am essentially forced to use it because there are few to no cashiers. And I’m not getting paid to do the work for which an employee was previously getting paid, nor am I paying less for my groceries as a result of doing the work myself.

Not only is it perfectly legal but the executives would argue that they are bound by their fiduciary duty to their shareholders. Layoffs increase stock price => shareholders make money => shareholders approve bonus for executives.

Depending on the state you live in, and whether the lease specifically mentioned taking special care of the hardwood floors, this could very well be considered regular wear and tear. There does not appear to be intentional damage here.

The landlord will also need to provide documentation prior to getting work done if they want you to cover the bill, at which point you’ll have the option to contest it.

Check out tenant rights for your state to verify. Hopefully, you’ll also be more careful with hardwood floors in the future. Couches on wheels are no-bueno.

The article only mentions US patent. Hopefully that is mainly to preserve their IP in the US and later perhaps few other high income countries.

Many in the global south will come up with diy knockoffs in an eye blink if WBR tries to make it too expensive to manufacture locally.

Because a lot of CEOs these days only care about quarterly reports. When interest rates went up, companies cost to do business also went up, so to keep the red profit line going up, they had to cut costs somewhere. Labor makes up most of the expenses so layoffs and forced RTO happened.

These CEOs don’t care that they lose years of experience when employees leave. And by the time the lack of experience catches up to the companies shitting themselves, the CEOs hope to have moved on to something else with their massive stock rewards for “increasing shareholder value”. Even the Boeing CEO who wasn’t lucky enough to leave before shit hit the fan is going to get a golden parachute. So really no downside for them.

FMLA. I start reading it as fuck my life before realizing it’s the family and medical leave allowance. So much hinges on that extra A.

If the Democrats had voted to keep McCarthy as the speaker despite McCarthy’s previous record of uncooperation and reneging, it would have signaled to him and the republicans that the democrats can be pushed back further. It would have been a disastrous move politically for the democrats. Remember, McCarthy voted against certifying the election results so he did not have a great record of upholding democratic values and could not be trusted to negotiate in good faith.

The GitHub copilot example seems to indicate it’s a pricing problem. In fact this situation might indicate that users are finding it so useful that they are using it more than MS expected when they set up their monthly subscriptions. Over time, models are going to be optimized and costs will reduce.

Expecting AI to take over all human intensive tasks is not realistic but eventually it’s going to become part of a lot of repetitive tasks. Though I hope that we see more open source base models instead of the current situation with 3-4 major companies providing the base models behind most of the AI applications.