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Joined 1 month ago
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Cake day: February 18th, 2026

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  • Upvoted for a different perspective, but I suspect it ends in the same place.

    OpenAI is kept solvent by investor capital, and capital is kept flowing by the perception of OpenAI being the market leader. Seedance being a better model, enough to cause OpenAI to exit the market, still ruptures the perception of value. In a market with no clear profitability path, that’s ground falling away.

    It also can’t be simply commoditized because generations (I’m sure even Seedance) are expensive and still not good enough for production use, even if 50% of their consumer base might boycott if a major studio even did use it in production. Commoditization can’t occur when there’s still no economically self-sustaining, market-acceptable “good enough” product. Without that, even if the leader changes, it’s a race between lemmings (sorry) off the cliff.


  • I don’t know if the headline on the site changed or OP changed it, but to be clear, Delta is not targeting only congressmembers who are voting against the current funding proposal (i.e., this is not a “punish Democrats” targeted action, despite the headline saying those who won’t get special treatment are “members refusing to fund TSA”).

    This is the current headline which is clearer: “Delta axes special treatment for Congress members over ‘inexcusable’ refusal to fund TSA”.


  • OpenAI said it will discontinue Sora, the generative-AI video creation platform it launched in late 2024, without providing a reason for the decision.

    That is the strongest indication this is the beginning of the end for the AI bubble. Sora burned a ton of processing power, with no clear value proposition, just to keep the hype cycle going a little longer. Shutting down without explanation leaves the most likely one: they are out of helium to pump into the balloon. And if that balloon isn’t inflating, it’s deflating.




  • Why do some people like vinyl? Why did the iPod’s scroll wheel evoke joy when used? Why is the OG PSP’s UMD drive clicking open and closed enjoyable?

    If you’re looking to abstractly optimize consumption and sharing efficiency, it’s worse. But if you’re looking to optimize personal connection to the art and to other people, having some tactile interaction and giving a physical object that embodies the music arguably does that better.

    I’d even bet that if you scanned brain activity of someone opening an MP3 versus someone putting in a disc and hitting a play button, the disc’s physical interaction very likely creates stronger neural pathways that trigger more chemical rewards.


  • The Trump administration is considering a new strategy for throttling the country’s offshore wind industry, after federal judges blocked its five previous attempts to stop wind farms under construction off the East Coast.

    Senior administration officials are drafting settlement agreements that would pay nearly $1 billion to TotalEnergies, the French energy company behind two wind farms off New York State and North Carolina, according to documents reviewed by The New York Times, including copies of the agreements.

    Under the terms of the proposed settlements, the Interior Department would cancel the leases in federal waters for the two projects, known as Attentive Energy and Carolina Long Bay, the documents show. The Justice Department would then pay more than $928 million to TotalEnergies, reimbursing the company for its winning bids in lease sales during the Biden administration.

    In exchange, TotalEnergies would abandon its plans to begin building the wind farms. It would also commit to investing in natural gas infrastructure in Texas, as the Trump administration prioritizes the production of fossil fuels over renewables like wind and solar power.

    This is one where I had to click through to the article solely because the headline was too stupid to make sense. We are paying $1 billion of taxpayer dollars in order to undo green energy that was already in process? What reason could there possibly be for not only making our energy policy worse, but paying through the nose to do it?

    Mr. Trump has disparaged offshore wind power since 2012, when he tried unsuccessfully to stop a wind farm visible from one of his golf courses in Scotland. He has often called the projects ugly and inefficient, and he has claimed without evidence that they are “driving whales crazy.”

    Oh, right. We are a country whose every action must curry approval from a narcissistic sociopath with the prefrontal cortex of a 2-year-old.



  • You’re right to feel insulted. LLMs are verbose and unreliable often enough that you have to check any work that comes out (or be negligent).

    So what’s usually happening is someone is saving their time by spending yours. They saved the time normally needed to write a thoughtful reply by shifting the time and cognitive cost of reading and verifying to you, with AI as an excuse (often not without condescension, which is a type of “virtue signaling” driven by c-suite AI boosting). The slop output looks like “work product,” but is neither - it took no work and is a facade of a “product” because it’s unverified.

    They are being selfish, and it is objectively an insulting act.