Then why the layoffs???

Partially a contracting real economy following overhiring early in the decade, partially trying to discipline labor, partially a pretty profound disconnect from both market pressures and concrete metrics that comes from a business model more centered around stock value and funding raises than revenue per se

We've been moving to faith-based markets for decades - markets where belief and hope almost entirely replace quantifiable economic activity.

Outsourcing to India and the Philippines

There’s alway a bit of that going on, but ironically if AI does result in mass labor replacement India and the Philippines are likely going to be ground zero where workforces get wiped out first. They’re ripe with the kind of things that AI is, in theory, getting very good at.

I've always held the view that successfully using AI requires more knowledge and skill, as the burst radius of poor engineering decisions or lack of domain knowledge is way larger.

I just cannot see WITCH doing this without exponentiating the usual problems with outsourcing. I've seen some horrors. Can't wait for contractors wielding unprecedented chaos.

Because there was bloat and AI was a good scape goat.

Reducing opex to invest more into capex (at least for companies that can like MSFT etc)?

Trend following - everyone's jumping. And bad economy.

Typical bad management decisions that came home to roost. It’s a lot easier to say “AI productivity improvements” than for the CEO to say “I’m cleaning up terrible performance on my part and a lot of bad business decisions.”

To juice the next quarter. Extreme short-term thinking has become the norm at every business I've worked at and every business I'm aware of, so upper management has no issue cutting teams right down to the bone.

It's why software has become far more unstable. There's nobody around to actually maintain it.

The economy is shit. They make the layoffs but instead of saying we're scaling down, they present it as AI related productivity gains.

Just spin for not exactly bright small time stock holders.

I think it might be partially cultural, American buffets have a lot of leftover food, and people tend to take a lot of food and throw away a lot of food. There's a variety of reasons why it has to be thrown away, but it is.

I've noticed that the cheaper the hotel, the more free things they give you. Such as breakfast buffets.

Rather than a buffet, they could give out a meal ticket. If you want extras, you can pay a small fee for those, meant to cover the cost of the food more than any profit motive. Or is it really more profitable to just throw away the food?

> I've noticed that the cheaper the hotel, the more free things they give you. Such as breakfast buffets.

Good. I'm cheap. I'm attracted to freebies. And I like being able to get up, get around to start my day, grab some food on my way out the door, and then get on with whatever it is that to me staying in a hotel to begin with.

I don't want to be at a hotel. That's not my destination; it's a means to an end that is necessary because hygiene and food are necessary even if I have to be away from home.

The buffet is fast. Fast is important to me.

> Rather than a buffet, they could give out a meal ticket. If you want extras, you can pay a small fee for those, meant to cover the cost of the food more than any profit motive.

A meal ticket? Like, for a restaurant with a menu?

The hotels I stay at don't have the facilities to do that. The free breakfast buffets I'm familiar with have stuff that is purchased in bulk, and served in bulk. It's meant to use as little labor as possible at every stage.

> Or is it really more profitable to just throw away the food?

Compared to keeping track of people, and their orders, and delivering that food? Yes, it is more profitable. People don't work for free.

With a meal ticket, when someone orders scrambled eggs or whatever and finds that they don't suit their taste, then they're still throwing them away. Similarly: If they get more food than they can eat? It still goes into the trash.

But now there's a customer service problem, too: When the person who didn't like the eggs is still hungry but their meal ticket is expended, they're going to be complaining about it. That's yet more labor.

Adding this complexity doesn't solve the food waste "problem" (it may actually make it worse), and it adds labor and facilities expense.

It's almost as if these things have all been tried before, and buffets came out on top in profitability.

And since it's a competitive market, customers have options. Fast is important to me so I don't want to wait around for food when there are alternatives that don't require me to do that. I'll just stay at the other cheap place across the road, instead.

It's more profitable for them when I give them my money than it is when I give their competitor my money instead.

(Breakfast buffets didn't appear from thin air. They evolved to be how they are because they're more profitable than other things that were tried before.)

I think it would take a mighty sensitive ear to tell the difference between someone who is in Charleston, versus Savannah.

Nope. Southern Drawl is very distinct from Appalachian Hillbilly. To me it’s as clear as Boston versus Long Island.

and then if you click the back button again it just reloads the page, trapped in a vicious loop!

You guys updated your Kindle? From the first ad that I saw on my old Kindle, I just stopped updating it. It's an e-book reader. I reason that if I never update it, it will never update the ads.

"arriving from the United States"

I'm just glad they made it back alive.. Now let's build a moon base!

Then Clinton would've never been president, and where would the fun have been in that ??

Every time I see one of these articles about "unmasking" Nakamoto, I always wonder the same thing: why? I don't really see a compelling reason to unmask this person. Surely there are other more important things a journalist can spend their time looking into. It's the same with Banksy: why?

People love a mystery. And people love to solve mysteries. Don't look for any deeper motivation than that.

I agree about Banksy. But in this case Satoshi controls a huge about of bitcoin. If, whoever they are, they did something with it, it would absolutely move markets.

I can see that, but would that not also apply to other people who hold large amounts? And to play devils advocate for a moment, isn't one of the points of a decentralized currency is the inability to be tracked ?