I just finished _Culture In Nazi Germany_ by Michael H. Kater. [0]
Near the end it goes into percentages of which counties Jews moved to and why during their immigration. A good portion of the UK was antisemitic, along with a number of other countries, and didn't want them moving to their country.
UK colonized part of Palestine at the time and pushed Jews to move there. Only the most devoted that wanted to be closer to their religious holy land went because the only work at the time was farming. Ones that wanted to maintain living off their crafts; acting, music, writing moved else where.
UK's antisemitic view actually help create Israel and push for the Zionist movement.
One of the most surprising aspects is that a number of Jewish immigrants actually supported fascism and told themself that it just was not implemented right. It wasn't until the 1960s when the views changed to fascism is bad.
Warning, the book is very dry and goes into detail of what happened to famous actors, writers, and musicians.
UK did colonize Palestine and rejected the indigenous populous. They didn't take over by direct conquer like others. [0]
1939 was during the War period not before. Immigrating out of German started in the early 1930s. Nazis were in power in the 1920s, not fully. It was around 1928 they started the Culture Wars against ideas and works they deemed Modern, like Jazz. As the book states, the UK was pushing for them to immigrate there instead of their main Island because of antisemitic views. [1] [2]
The author actually traveled and talked to number of celebrities that lived during that time period. Even asking the Nazi era actors if they thought their careers would of took off if fascism never took hold and removed their competition.
uk liberated middle east from ottomans who actually colonized it. in palestine there was mandate given to them by league of nations
jewish immigration to mandatory palestine was always severely restricted by british. british were capturing illegal new immigrants and were shipping them off to cyprus or something like this. on the other side arab immigration through syria/trans-jordan/sinai was unrestricted
jews are the indigenous population. at least from all existing people, jews have the oldest and most substantial historical rights to the modern-day Israel.
They never took photo evidence of the scene and the only captured content was from a 3rd party showing the Subway sandwich wrapped up, lying on the street.
I would say Gregory Lairmore is a po' boy full of shit.
Anyone else see AI as nothing more than a logging system for citing real world experience and expertise?
In order for any AI/ML content to have value it must cite where the accumulation of information came from. By not doing so it nothing more than a custom Wikipedia-esque with a motto _Trust Me Bro_.
Citations and lack there of should be a simple key factor in evaluating trust. What are your sources for this idea / answer?
Didn't Microsoft officially state to the EU any information stored on their servers is subject to US government access upon request because they are an American company?
In the meanwhile...Portugal just appointed its former top Microsoft Portugal executive, Manuel Dias, as the new “State CTO.”
It’s another reminder of how deeply Redmond has embedded itself into government IT. Ever since Bill Gates cozy meetings with José Sócrates, one of Portugal’s most notoriously corrupt prime ministers, Microsoft has maintained confidential contacts and influence over national tech strategy.
The result? A state increasingly dependent on substandard, closed software. sold through world-class lobbying.
I disagree that Microsoft benefits the end user. Their IoT which took over the Embedded version of Windows is completely bloated in 10 and higher. Version 7 allowed for only installing necessities where their successors force XBox and other built in forced features. Windows 11 IoT is also forcing the creation of a Microsoft account instead of allowing an local account. IoT / Embedded does not mean it is connect and often air gaped. They are also often used to host products and should not have a Microsoft account assigned.
Microsoft's standards for quality keep going down hill. Windows 11 does not even allow the moving of the task bar from the bottom of the screen. Microsoft is end user hostile just like Google.
Niche distribution has nothing to do with quality of distribution. The user base are passive users versus active users like daily office and game users.
The quality has gone done hill. Windows Embedded / IoT is often used to run your ATMs or some form of industrial automation. Windows actually has a real-time OS (RTOS) mode for just this.
The company I work has planned to replace Windows with Linux for future products and even moving active products to support both Windows and Linux during the transition. Only products that will stay on Windows will be legacy that are near EOL.
Personally, I would never use Windows OS for future products and solutions in these environments. Nor would I use it for network / server based solutions.
I got in trouble at a BigCo because I said "we all do this for the money", and they claimed that I had a "bad attitude".
But I don't think I was wrong. Work is fundamentally a business transaction; I sell my time and expertise and they give me money and benefits. Ultimately for any job I've had, even jobs that I really loved, if they stopped paying me I'd stop showing up [1]. It's nothing personal, that's just the transaction that I agreed to.
If I had some bloviating wannabe-demagogue telling me that I should keep working and to not expect backpay, I am quite confident that I would quit, or at least keep calling in sick. I am not going to blame anyone who would do the same. I have no fucking idea why half the country voted for this.
>But I don't think I was wrong. Work is fundamentally a business transaction; I sell my time and expertise and they give me money and benefits.
On the one hand, I've been saying this for two decades, in small and large cos. I've never been promoted in title, but I've also never been fired and generally been given more and more people to manage. I'm too direct and honest, but as I got older I learned to own it and do it smoothly without disrupting too much.
But the 'consultant mentality' helps me maintain my sanity, sleep a little better at night and never get married to a company. I wish I put my money where my mouth is, though, because peers who move every 2-3 years make significantly more than me despite being more junior.
On the one hand, the FounderSpeak about internalizing the job, loving what you do, and work life balance being bad business nauseates me... On the other hand, some of my high performing workaholic friends are not only richer than me, they seem like they're more purpose driven in their lives as their corporate jobs give meaning it doesn't give me.
It seems then that, for me, self-honesty and work life separation achieve less satisfaction and a lot less pay (and perhaps delayed early retirement).
It's not just wrong, if a company is registered as "commercial" (as opposed to non-profit or public-benefit), then "for the money" is a legal obligation.
Shareholders can literally sue the management if they don't pursue the obligation.
> Shareholders can literally sue the management if they don't pursue the obligation.
Anyone can sue anyone for anything. It’s not remarkable.
Now cite even a single case where shareholders sued and won. In reality, the “obligation” you are referencing has basically only ever been relevant in situations where the board or management is taking bribes. I’m not aware of any cases where shareholders won because the company was too nice to customers, the environment, or whatever.
For whatever reason, “shareholders” live rent free in the heads of Internet commentators, but it’s hard to understate their actual influence.
The “suing” part of a law suit comes before the part where dismissal can happen.
For latest example of a stupid lawsuit where this has happened, see Justin Baldoni v. Blake Lively. Baldoni sued Lively and others. After a lot of legal maneuvering, a judge dismissed the case.
But even if it was dismissed, it’s still a fact that Baldoni did sue Lively. You can sue anyone for anything. Doesn’t mean you will get any relief, but you can do it anyway, and in our age of dumb performative lawsuits, many do.
> While it is certainly true that a central objective of for-profit corporations is to make money, modern corporate law does not require for-profit corporations to pursue profit at the expense of everything else, and many do not do so. For-profit corporations, with ownership approval, support a wide variety of charitable causes, and it is not at all uncommon for such corporations to further humanitarian and other altruistic objectives. Many examples come readily to mind. So long as its owners agree, a for-profit corporation may take costly pollution-control and energy-conservation measures that go beyond what the law requires. A for-profit corporation that operates facilities in other countries may exceed the requirements of local law regarding working conditions and benefits.
Some of the law professor quotes in Wikipedia's "Significance" section may be of interest as far as "Known For" vs "Means":
> Among non-experts, conventional wisdom holds that corporate law requires boards of directors to maximize shareholder wealth. This common but mistaken belief is almost invariably supported by reference to the Michigan Supreme Court's 1919 opinion in Dodge v. Ford Motor Co.
Or
> Dodge is often misread or mistaught as setting a legal rule of shareholder wealth maximization. This was not and is not the law. Shareholder wealth maximization is a standard of conduct for officers and directors, not a legal mandate.
Fair, this case fits the bill, but it’s interesting we have to go back more than 100 years to find one. Also worth noting that a major fact in this case is that Ford explicitly said and maintained that shareholder value was not his priority.
That’s a mistake that business leaders have long since learned from. Wanna drop a billion dollars to add legs to your metaverse characters? Do whatever you want and just present a plausible argument that it serves shareholders. You don’t need evidence, any rationale is fine as long as you don’t explicitly state that you don’t care about shareholder value.
Another similar case might by something like eBay v Newmark, in that to the extent shareholders got relief it was because of things the business leaders said about shareholder primacy, rather than any actual actions taken by the company.
I guess that’s the real influence of shareholders: boards and executives can do whatever they want as long as when they talk, they don’t speak ill of shareholder primacy.
Profit is not the only obligation. We all exist in a society. Poisoning the water can be very profitable, and yet shareholders cannot sue to force management to do it.
Management is often shareholders themselves and you can bet that if the fine is lower than the money saved they'll poison the water for 1000 years.
We've had rivers catch fire because poisoning the water is profitable.
We all exist in a society. However, the people most likely to own businesses and be successful at it seem to have no moral qualms about harming society so long as it personally enriches themselves.
To Investors : We are in it for money. We will earn you money. It is money we dream, covet and will go to any lengths for. Ethics, Integrity, Truth, all those don't matter in the long term.
To Society : We do CSR, we are a good for society, we are ethical, we have integrity, we value society, we care much more than just money.
To Employees : We are family, if one of us is hurt everyone is hurt, we believe in work-life balance, we believe in fairness, equality, openness, transparency.
I'm very bad at that kind of dishonesty. It's not like I'm some hyper-ethical straight-edge nerd, I'm just really bad at the corporate propaganda stuff.
I have worked and done well at BigCos where they were a little less intellectually dishonest, so I don't actually think it's intrinsic to big companies.
It was one of those things, I didn't even consider that it would upset people. Like, maybe it's something on the spectrum for me, but when I said it I assumed it was effectively a truism and I didn't think I'd get any pushback because everyone already knew and agreed with it.
It didn't occur to me that people would say I had a bad attitude because I did think that literally everyone I was talking to would agree and I didn't see why they'd be bothered.
I mean, if I heard you say that, I would probably think you had a "bad attitude" as well. Yes, getting paid is an important part of your job, but presumably you could get paid at many different places, and you choose the one you work at because it has additional benefits on top of a purely transactional relationship.
It's like telling your girlfriend you're dating her because she's really hot. I'm sure that factored in, but she might get annoyed if that's the only reason you can come up with.
I have a friend who's a few years younger than me, and he was a coworker with me at a previous job. He was fresh out of his masters and this was his first job out of school. We became friends fairly quickly, and during lunch one day I mentioned the above "business transaction" stuff, and mentioning that corporations are not your family. It's fine if you like your job, that's a good thing, but just keep in mind that love you show the job will not be reciprocated.
He thought I was being extremely cynical (and I suppose I kind of was) and he disagreed with me.
About a year later, he felt screwed over by the company, and admitted that maybe I was right. I mentioned it is just a conclusion that nearly anyone comes to when working for the corporate world long enough.
And so will a SO if they're needs are not being met anymore. Family has to be family by definition if you're using blood lines. But families can often be MUCH worse than a company.
Try talking to a kid who used to be beat by their parents, at least the company is up front (usually).
I didn't say it was the only reason to take a job, and I clarified that even at the time. It's perfectly fine to factor in other benefits to the job, (e.g. how much you like the work, how much you like your coworkers, etc.). I actually quit that BigCo and took a paycut to work at a different company because it was soul-draining. When I say "we all do this for the money", I'm saying that this is a necessary component for the job, and ultimately if they stopped paying me then I would not work there anymore, even if I otherwise love the work and environment.
Again, to be clear, I said all this at the time.
I don't think the hot girlfriend analogy applies in this case; if I had a hot girlfriend and she stops being hot, if I liked her I probably wouldn't up and leave her. If a company stops paying, I will absolutely leave.
In your OP, your primary argument, as I read it, was that business is fundamentally a business transaction. When I pointed this out, you changed your argument to how there are other benefits to a job.
My point is that if you go around and tell everyone at work that you're doing it because of the money, you're... not coming off particularly well? A statement like that comes off a bit odd and socially tone-deaf? And yes, I understand that it's true that you would quit your job if they stopped paying you, but things can be true and still not a great idea to say out loud. It can be an objective fact that my manager is ugly; it's not a good idea to say this during a meeting.
I said “they give me money and benefits”, and I didn’t define what those benefits were. As I said, I hated working at that BigCo and took a pay cut to work with people I liked more to do work I thought would be more fun. To me the benefit was being able to do work I enjoyed more. I apologize if that wasn’t clear, obviously there are more categories to choosing a job than net pay; if there weren’t we wouldn’t have any teachers.
It wasn’t like I just blurted it out when people were deciding which database to use, it was relevant to the discussion. I can’t remember the exact conversation but IIRC we were having trouble hiring someone for a role and the topic of compensation came up. I felt my comment was relevant, and I genuinely didn’t even consider that people would have issue with it because I thought it was borderline tautological.
No? But there's a difference between knowing that (which is an obvious fact that anyone would agree with) and walking into your job one day and reminding them you're only there to get paid.
It is a failed state, and we have seemingly overnight given Russia and China the biggest beautiful gift they could have asked for.
Our military is over extended, science has been flipped over and defunded, and that alone will settle it.
Now add unreasonable volatility from tariffs, and wait, give it time, wait some more until it’s impossible to unwind, then if we’re not in a major war, economy crashes, chaos ensues.
Mix in telling people the news is the enemy of the state and everything bad is because of their neighbors and you have quite a lot of opportunity for chaos.
We almost certainly could have floated through this had Reagan not gutted the ATC union (while firing a huge amount of staff) with congress neutering their negotiation power.
We never really fully recovered from that. We took away the power of employees in a high stress job to voice their concerns and needs which, as a result, made the job extra hard to hire for.
That time period was during my IT consultant days.
We were installing on site Windows Small Business server for them. Issues were rare and one offs with self hosted email. The only issue of delayed messages was during changing IP addresses and DNS records, waiting for the updates to replicate to root servers.
Companies would often have a server just for email hosting running Linux on low power hardware. [0]
Are low birth rates a problem? The job market keeps being published about lack of employment. Recent was this UK having a 1,200,000 plus college graduates and less than 100,000 job placements. The USA market is also bad with very limited economic mobility based on years past.
Is the job market too restrictive with maximize profit over maximum knowledge transfer and upkeep? Not properly balancing older and newer labor. That is the reason for "low birth rate problem"?
ML is being pushed to condense the labor market even more. Along with growth of larger and more powerful businesses. Number of businesses are pushing to be an oligopoly and more to a duopoly or monopoly.
The current and future labor market with modern business ideology does not seem to match the statement _low birth rate problem_. The problem seems to be elsewhere.
Based on my understanding, that’s still the case. I think the problems you mentioned are currently beyond what any government can handle, even one with extremely strong control like China. China is now facing both rising unemployment and a low birth rate. In the past, when China’s birth rate was higher, unemployment was not this high. The fundamental problem is not that there are too many people, but that the economy lacks vitality. Moreover, a declining birth rate will cause systems like pensions and healthcare—which rely on the next generation to support the previous one—to collapse.
> Recent was this UK having a 1,200,000 plus college graduates and less than 100,000 job placements
The UK is producing too many graduates, often doing low quality courses at low quality universities, who then cannot get the graduate level jobs they aspire to.
The UK does not have enough people to work in many other areas - tradespeople, care workers, doctors and nurses, archeologists, chefs....
The relationship between the job market and employment is not so straightforward as you presume. After all, fewer people means less demand for labor as much as it means more supply. In general a falling population is considered an economic risk.
Whether a private company can get a loan however depends more on whether it is in a sector that Beijing wants to encourage than on the company's expected profit margin or expected return on investment--according to Shih.
OK, but I think the banks do most of the Chinese economy's investing (and Beijing exerts a lot of influence on the nature of that investing by the banks).
1) Look for spelling, grammar, and incorrect word usage; such as where vs were, typing out where our should be used.
2) Ask asinine questions that have no answers; _Why does the sun ravel around my finger in low quality gravity while dancing in the rain?_
ML likes to always come up with an answers no matter what. Human will shorten the conversation. It also is programmed to respond with _I understand_, _I hear what you are saying_, and make heavy use of your name if it has access to it. This fake interpersonal communication is key.
Conventional LLM chatbots behave the way you describe because their goal during training is to as much as possible impersonate an intelligent assistant.
Do you think this goal during training cannot be changed to impersonate someone normal such that you cannot detect you are chatting with an LLM?
Before flight was understood some thought "magic" was involved. Do you think minds operate using "magic"? Are minds not machines? Their operation can not be duplicated?
> Do you think this goal during training cannot be changed to impersonate someone normal such that you cannot detect you are chatting with an LLM?
I don't think so, because LLMs hallucinate by design, which will always produce oddities.
> Before flight was understood some thought "magic" was involved. Do you think minds operate using "magic"? Are minds not machines? Their operation can not be duplicated?
Might involve something we don't grasp, but despite that: only because something moves through air it's not flying and will never be, just like a thrown stone.
Maybe current LLMs can do that. But none are, so it hasn't passed. Whether that's because of economic or marketing reasons as opposed to technical does not matter. You still have to pass the test before we can definitely say you've passed the test.
Overall I'd say the easiest is just overall that the models always just follow what you say and transform it into a response. They won't have personal opinions or experiences or anything, although they can fake it. it's all just a median expected response to whatever you say.
And the "agreeability" is not a hallucination, it's simply the path of least resistance, as in, the model can just take information that you said and use that to make a response, not to actually "think" and consider I'd what you even made sense or I'd it's weird or etc.
They almost never say "what do you mean?" to try to seek truth.
This is why I don't understand why some here claim that AGI being already here is some kind of coherent argument. I guess redefining AGI is how we'll reach it
I agree with your points in general but also, when I plugged in the parent comment's nonsense question, both Claude 4.5 Sonnet and GPT-5 asked me what I meant, and pointed out that it made no sense but might be some kind of metaphor, poem, or dream.
If it wasn't structured as a coherent conversation, it will ask because it seems off, especially if you're early in the context window where I'm sure they've RLd it to push back, at least in the past year or so
And if it's going against common knowledge or etc which is prevalent in the training data, it will also push back which makes sense
The city I live in has number of locally owned restaurants that easily compete against McDonalds and Wendys price point. I find the quality of food to be better.
Lack of communication to outsiders and visitors about those that compete against such establishments is key. The larger organizations have more capital to advertise and help capture that economic arena.
Personally, when I travel, I go out of my way to find local establishments over large franchises because the former slowly siphons out the local economy to some CEO that gets paid millions. The latter helps keep the competition local economy health. I haven't given Starbucks a penny in over 7 years and plan to never fund their organization ever again.
Near the end it goes into percentages of which counties Jews moved to and why during their immigration. A good portion of the UK was antisemitic, along with a number of other countries, and didn't want them moving to their country.
UK colonized part of Palestine at the time and pushed Jews to move there. Only the most devoted that wanted to be closer to their religious holy land went because the only work at the time was farming. Ones that wanted to maintain living off their crafts; acting, music, writing moved else where.
UK's antisemitic view actually help create Israel and push for the Zionist movement.
One of the most surprising aspects is that a number of Jewish immigrants actually supported fascism and told themself that it just was not implemented right. It wasn't until the 1960s when the views changed to fascism is bad.
Warning, the book is very dry and goes into detail of what happened to famous actors, writers, and musicians.
[0] https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300253375/culture-in-naz...