This is the only comment allowed.

Eh, IMO it's more than hand wavy conspiracy theory claims. People who work in certain sectors are presented with paths. And Google has chosen a path. We'll see what comes of it.

While I love all the Musk-hate, why is Zuckerberg not catching the same if not more heat?

Zuckerberg stole all our medical data; all of it.

Zuckerberg has sold our data to China and Russia; often. There's verified records of it.

Zuckerberg sold our data to a company (Cambridge Analytica) and funded a multi-year campaign in order to sway US presidential elections to better fit his business use case.

Zuckerberg maintains an ads platform known to repeatedly manufacture disinformation campaigns targeting innocent users-- older and younger people that don't know better and are susceptible to manipulation.

LaMDA + Google Conversations was "it." They quite literally had developed the cutting edge tech already. It's really astonishing to see that Conversations team was unilaterally fired. Same with Robotics.

My only thought is that the US Government gave them an ultimatum, e.g., either you develop AGI robots for us to use as military merchants, or you shut it down. And Google chose to shut it down. This is the only way I can see this happening. (Similar to Microsoft suddenly ditching VR).

Truly a WTF moment in history.

Reminds me of the Mac Miller song "So It Goes" -

"You could have the world in the palm of your hands You still might drop it."

Google had every opportunity, some of the smartest people in the world, developing cutting-edge models, for at least 6 years. What really happened? Dude fumbled so hard. It's still shocking for me to see.

I agree.

For some, they've restructured to no longer pay for child care (upwards of $40K/year) and commute (upwards of $2000/year). It's not just "work in the office." It's "you've priced us out of the city and you don't pay us enough to support the commute and the cost of childcare."

For some, they've restructured to become more productive at home > office. Less distractions, and better work/life balance (e.g., working out, preparing food at home). Back-to-office brings up anxiety, and disrupts that new healthy flow-state.

For me, I like working in the office. I like the 20-30 min. commute time to prepare for work and wind down from work mentally. I also value the separation of work and home. I tend to overwork at home because it's always there. I also believe it's safer to work on certain projects in-office rather than at-home, for various reasons. I also understand I am in the minority.

So when companies say and do things like "we're not giving you raises/cost-of-living salary adjustments, and you need to come in to work or you're fired," it's hard to make sense of it. Because we know it's more about the company keeping its real estate than us being productive workers.

There are notable exceptions, for sure. This is a gross simplification of the work climate.

City/State subsidies. Occupied buildings mean surrounding stores/eateries have business. Vacant buildings is not part of that agreement. Time is up for the COVID-induced pause on the contractual agreements.

We've purchased all these buildings with borrowed money. We need X% of you to occupy them, or else we have to sell them.

Sell them.

> climate change is everywhere

Humans are everywhere, right now. It is that our physical bodies can't survive too much fluctuation. We'll see reduction in food supply as well. We are actually no longer trending for overpopulation. Many countries report a rapid decline. We are not producing offspring like before. And our mortality rate is declining. So, as less places become inhabitable, with less people able and willing to procreate, we're actually going to experience a sudden drop off in human population. This true-human population decline will be accelerated as human-ai hybridization increases.

Our physical bodies can't withstand effects of climate change. Capitalism signals it will be "immortality for some." AGI could take out humans before we improve on this. Efforts to mine the moon may start a war in space, which could result in Earth being destroyed.

It's not that simple to say "humans achieve immortality" when existential threats loom heavy.

Nobody called you anything other than "troll." I can see you like the attention though so I'll stop engaging, troll.

Dump the blue-check already. Pretty sure Dr. Seuss wrote about this in "The Sneetches."

(It's also on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdLPe7XjdKc)

A generous take on a series of bad decisions by CEOs at all these companies. Stop giving these people more credit by saying things like "on purpose" and "to appease investors." These corporations are out of touch and made huge amounts of risky investments that didn't pan out. They deserve to fail.