Tumgik
bbqfish · 26 days
Text
If anyone wants to know why every tech company in the world right now is clamoring for AI like drowned rats scrabbling to board a ship, I decided to make a post to explain what's happening.
(Disclaimer to start: I'm a software engineer who's been employed full time since 2018. I am not a historian nor an overconfident Youtube essayist, so this post is my working knowledge of what I see around me and the logical bridges between pieces.)
Okay anyway. The explanation starts further back than what's going on now. I'm gonna start with the year 2000. The Dot Com Bubble just spectacularly burst. The model of "we get the users first, we learn how to profit off them later" went out in a no-money-having bang (remember this, it will be relevant later). A lot of money was lost. A lot of people ended up out of a job. A lot of startup companies went under. Investors left with a sour taste in their mouth and, in general, investment in the internet stayed pretty cooled for that decade. This was, in my opinion, very good for the internet as it was an era not suffocating under the grip of mega-corporation oligarchs and was, instead, filled with Club Penguin and I Can Haz Cheezburger websites.
Then around the 2010-2012 years, a few things happened. Interest rates got low, and then lower. Facebook got huge. The iPhone took off. And suddenly there was a huge new potential market of internet users and phone-havers, and the cheap money was available to start backing new tech startup companies trying to hop on this opportunity. Companies like Uber, Netflix, and Amazon either started in this time, or hit their ramp-up in these years by shifting focus to the internet and apps.
Now, every start-up tech company dreaming of being the next big thing has one thing in common: they need to start off by getting themselves massively in debt. Because before you can turn a profit you need to first spend money on employees and spend money on equipment and spend money on data centers and spend money on advertising and spend money on scale and and and
But also, everyone wants to be on the ship for The Next Big Thing that takes off to the moon.
So there is a mutual interest between new tech companies, and venture capitalists who are willing to invest $$$ into said new tech companies. Because if the venture capitalists can identify a prize pig and get in early, that money could come back to them 100-fold or 1,000-fold. In fact it hardly matters if they invest in 10 or 20 total bust projects along the way to find that unicorn.
But also, becoming profitable takes time. And that might mean being in debt for a long long time before that rocket ship takes off to make everyone onboard a gazzilionaire.
But luckily, for tech startup bros and venture capitalists, being in debt in the 2010's was cheap, and it only got cheaper between 2010 and 2020. If people could secure loans for ~3% or 4% annual interest, well then a $100,000 loan only really costs $3,000 of interest a year to keep afloat. And if inflation is higher than that or at least similar, you're still beating the system.
So from 2010 through early 2022, times were good for tech companies. Startups could take off with massive growth, showing massive potential for something, and venture capitalists would throw infinite money at them in the hopes of pegging just one winner who will take off. And supporting the struggling investments or the long-haulers remained pretty cheap to keep funding.
You hear constantly about "Such and such app has 10-bazillion users gained over the last 10 years and has never once been profitable", yet the thing keeps chugging along because the investors backing it aren't stressed about the immediate future, and are still banking on that "eventually" when it learns how to really monetize its users and turn that profit.
The pandemic in 2020 took a magnifying-glass-in-the-sun effect to this, as EVERYTHING was forcibly turned online which pumped a ton of money and workers into tech investment. Simultaneously, money got really REALLY cheap, bottoming out with historic lows for interest rates.
Then the tide changed with the massive inflation that struck late 2021. Because this all-gas no-brakes state of things was also contributing to off-the-rails inflation (along with your standard-fare greedflation and price gouging, given the extremely convenient excuses of pandemic hardships and supply chain issues). The federal reserve whipped out interest rate hikes to try to curb this huge inflation, which is like a fire extinguisher dousing and suffocating your really-cool, actively-on-fire party where everyone else is burning but you're in the pool. And then they did this more, and then more. And the financial climate followed suit. And suddenly money was not cheap anymore, and new loans became expensive, because loans that used to compound at 2% a year are now compounding at 7 or 8% which, in the language of compounding, is a HUGE difference. A $100,000 loan at a 2% interest rate, if not repaid a single cent in 10 years, accrues to $121,899. A $100,000 loan at an 8% interest rate, if not repaid a single cent in 10 years, more than doubles to $215,892.
Now it is scary and risky to throw money at "could eventually be profitable" tech companies. Now investors are watching companies burn through their current funding and, when the companies come back asking for more, investors are tightening their coin purses instead. The bill is coming due. The free money is drying up and companies are under compounding pressure to produce a profit for their waiting investors who are now done waiting.
You get enshittification. You get quality going down and price going up. You get "now that you're a captive audience here, we're forcing ads or we're forcing subscriptions on you." Don't get me wrong, the plan was ALWAYS to monetize the users. It's just that it's come earlier than expected, with way more feet-to-the-fire than these companies were expecting. ESPECIALLY with Wall Street as the other factor in funding (public) companies, where Wall Street exhibits roughly the same temperament as a baby screaming crying upset that it's soiled its own diaper (maybe that's too mean a comparison to babies), and now companies are being put through the wringer for anything LESS than infinite growth that Wall Street demands of them.
Internal to the tech industry, you get MASSIVE wide-spread layoffs. You get an industry that used to be easy to land multiple job offers shriveling up and leaving recent graduates in a desperately awful situation where no company is hiring and the market is flooded with laid-off workers trying to get back on their feet.
Because those coin-purse-clutching investors DO love virtue-signaling efforts from companies that say "See! We're not being frivolous with your money! We only spend on the essentials." And this is true even for MASSIVE, PROFITABLE companies, because those companies' value is based on the Rich Person Feeling Graph (their stock) rather than the literal profit money. A company making a genuine gazillion dollars a year still tears through layoffs and freezes hiring and removes the free batteries from the printer room (totally not speaking from experience, surely) because the investors LOVE when you cut costs and take away employee perks. The "beer on tap, ping pong table in the common area" era of tech is drying up. And we're still unionless.
Never mind that last part.
And then in early 2023, AI (more specifically, Chat-GPT which is OpenAI's Large Language Model creation) tears its way into the tech scene with a meteor's amount of momentum. Here's Microsoft's prize pig, which it invested heavily in and is galivanting around the pig-show with, to the desperate jealousy and rapture of every other tech company and investor wishing it had that pig. And for the first time since the interest rate hikes, investors have dollar signs in their eyes, both venture capital and Wall Street alike. They're willing to restart the hose of money (even with the new risk) because this feels big enough for them to take the risk.
Now all these companies, who were in varying stages of sweating as their bill came due, or wringing their hands as their stock prices tanked, see a single glorious gold-plated rocket up out of here, the likes of which haven't been seen since the free money days. It's their ticket to buy time, and buy investors, and say "see THIS is what will wring money forth, finally, we promise, just let us show you."
To be clear, AI is NOT profitable yet. It's a money-sink. Perhaps a money-black-hole. But everyone in the space is so wowed by it that there is a wide-spread and powerful conviction that it will become profitable and earn its keep. (Let's be real, half of that profit "potential" is the promise of automating away jobs of pesky employees who peskily cost money.) It's a tech-space industrial revolution that will automate away skilled jobs, and getting in on the ground floor is the absolute best thing you can do to get your pie slice's worth.
It's the thing that will win investors back. It's the thing that will get the investment money coming in again (or, get it second-hand if the company can be the PROVIDER of something needed for AI, which other companies with venture-back will pay handsomely for). It's the thing companies are terrified of missing out on, lest it leave them utterly irrelevant in a future where not having AI-integration is like not having a mobile phone app for your company or not having a website.
So I guess to reiterate on my earlier point:
Drowned rats. Swimming to the one ship in sight.
33K notes · View notes
bbqfish · 30 days
Text
Hi, Tumblr. It’s Tumblr. We’re working on some things that we want to share with you. 
AI companies are acquiring content across the internet for a variety of purposes in all sorts of ways. There are currently very few regulations giving individuals control over how their content is used by AI platforms. Proposed regulations around the world, like the European Union’s AI Act, would give individuals more control over whether and how their content is utilized by this emerging technology. We support this right regardless of geographic location, so we’re releasing a toggle to opt out of sharing content from your public blogs with third parties, including AI platforms that use this content for model training. We’re also working with partners to ensure you have as much control as possible regarding what content is used.
Here are the important details:
We already discourage AI crawlers from gathering content from Tumblr and will continue to do so, save for those with which we partner. 
We want to represent all of you on Tumblr and ensure that protections are in place for how your content is used. We are committed to making sure our partners respect those decisions.
To opt out of sharing your public blogs’ content with third parties, visit each of your public blogs’ blog settings via the web interface and toggle on the “Prevent third-party sharing” option. 
For instructions on how to opt out using the latest version of the app, please visit this Help Center doc. 
Please note: If you’ve already chosen to discourage search crawling of your blog in your settings, we’ve automatically enabled the “Prevent third-party sharing” option.
If you have concerns, please read through the Help Center doc linked above and contact us via Support if you still have questions.
92K notes · View notes
bbqfish · 1 month
Note
Helllooooo and happy hemlock death day soon we hope. 😂 Your sketch of wet hair Hunter and the full image of him in the Bacta tank live absolutely rent free in my head. Just stunning and gorgeous and lovely and I thank you for gracing the internet with them! Hope you enjoy the season! 💕
Aww thank you for your kind words🥰 Yeah I like this season so far, good thrilled. I'm looking forward to seeing Hemlock get his karma!
6 notes · View notes
bbqfish · 1 month
Text
Can someone please end Hemlock? I don't know how many episodes I can bear with him. 🤮
4 notes · View notes
bbqfish · 1 month
Text
Hugo Award Follow Up:
I think it's fair to say that the astonishing thing is how enthusiastically the American, Canadian (and British?) people involved in the Hugos took to censorship. I'm proud of the whistleblower, and am still puzzled by the removal of Sandman Episode 6. But this appears to have been what was going on:
12K notes · View notes
bbqfish · 5 months
Photo
Tumblr media
https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-profits/irs-complaint-process-tax-exempt-organizations
3. Nature of violation
Directors/Officers/Persons are using income/assets for personal gain
Organization is engaged in commercial, for-profit business activities
Income/Assets are being used to support illegal or terrorist activities
Organization is involved in a political campaign
Organization is engaged in excessive lobbying activities
Organization refused to disclose or provide a copy of Form 990
Organization failed to report employment, income or excise tax liability properly
Organization failed to file required federal tax returns and forms
Organization engaged in deceptive or improper fundraising practices
Other (describe)
124K notes · View notes
bbqfish · 5 months
Text
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
Weight of a Feather, Assassin's Creed: Origins fanart, watercolour and acrylic gouache on hot press paper, 17.8 x 25.4 cm
This is one of those that I don't care if no one likes it, or if there are obvious mistakes/things that don't make sense, I'm proud of myself for managing to do it traditionally and that's that. It's for no one but me, I'm just sharing it with you :)
I started it in 2021, even began to paint it, but burnout is a bitch and I couldn't finish it then. Recently I decided to see if I could complete it traditionally and this is the result! It was inspired by a screenshot I took where Bayek's face is entirely in shadow. I then added elements that relate to Ma'at, the goddess of truth and justice, and the ceremony of the Weighing of the Heart, where she'd weigh a dead person's heart against her ostrich feather, to see if they were worthy of going on to the Field of Reeds (a sort of paradise). (Egyptologists don't @ me 😭)
5K notes · View notes
bbqfish · 5 months
Text
Tumblr media
Old abandoned grocery store repurposed as a library
40K notes · View notes
bbqfish · 6 months
Text
fun fact!! it turns out that now when u make a new blog, tumblr forces you to follow 3-4 people before you can change your icon or modify your blog in any way!! this, of course, means that, yes, some of the "potential bots" many of us have been automatically blocking could have possibly been genuine new users who were only just seconds in to having an account!!! tumblr is literally screwing new users over!!!!
172K notes · View notes
bbqfish · 7 months
Text
I have to reblog this for my LOA fellas!😭
Tumblr media
I think Ali should be allowed to have a pet hawk. As a treat.
233 notes · View notes
bbqfish · 7 months
Text
"Why are there so many female archers in fiction?"
Please forgive the clickbait-y title! This is a super complex and interesting topic that I barely scratch the surface of here, but I hopefully will be able to do more justice to things like this in the future!
Also, it's not the point of the video, but I had fun with the outfits in this- do you have any faves?
As always, please consider supporting me on Patreon if you can, or watching on youtube if not!
67K notes · View notes
bbqfish · 7 months
Text
114K notes · View notes
bbqfish · 8 months
Text
Tumblr media Tumblr media
For drawing references 
[@/ALEXbutalsoK on Twitter]
53K notes · View notes
bbqfish · 8 months
Text
Tumblr media
33 notes · View notes
bbqfish · 8 months
Text
Here's some notes on some of the upper body muscles so you, artist, don't need to look them up
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
They are not medically accurate, just enough for artists to know the necessary muscles and how they work together
I 100% recommend doing the last exercise I did to be able to actually place the muscles
35K notes · View notes
bbqfish · 9 months
Text
Tumblr media
jesus fucking christ
84K notes · View notes
bbqfish · 10 months
Text
btw I’ve found these stretches from the WAK blog very helpful when knitting a lot:
Tumblr media
Plus make sure to take breaks regularly - and stop if anything starts to hurt!
especially with gift knitting I know it can be tempting to push through it for a deadline, but it’s really not worth causing long term injury. (And anyone knit-worthy should be understanding of that, imho.) Stay well :)
73K notes · View notes