Midnight Pub

disproportionate tech, over-valued co's, and avoiding the ecosystem trap (soon a void)

~tffb

Tech companies. This post will be about that. Click away if you like, but also, thank you for clicking to begin with :) They (tech co's/monopolies) are less than they were. But may appear more than they are (to some).

Take the Google/Reddit deal, for example: $50 mil. Big money. Google having exclusive rights over showing results with links to Reddit (other search engines can show them, too - w/o a link description) is a thing that Google would have paid double/triple for under a decade ago. I am sure it was proposed, Reddit likely told them to take a walk. Reddit needs money more these days, though. As do all tech co's. Facebook (RIP "Horizon Worlds" (or whatever), and RIP turning any/all services under the Meta umbrella into a fun-sounding monopoly (Metaverse)). Amazon skirts having a small profit come quarters end by paying their employees less. Apple is attempting a Hail Mary with Vision Pro, a quiet failure (for now, it will be silently shelved and (eventually) removed from their offerings, making the product an "official" failure). All of these things can be explored and discussed at-length, but the point is:

Tech companies are on a huge downturn.

A Billionaire Boys Club of: X amount of earnings/valuation in such and such quarter, X amount of advertising agencies and marketing firms flocking to that company. Then, the next quarter, Xb gets the ad goodies, because they turned a better quarter.

Now, TikTok laps it up. Advertising and marketing are going there now, and when THOSE dollars leave the room, they aren't ever cycled back to the FAANG co's.

Now, this is a good thing. Co's going "down" is always a thing I have appreciation for - or co's that have made it overwhelmingly clear that they abandoned moral and legal practices for profit. TikTok, idgaf. They have been, and will likely continue to profit from US (and elsewhere) sourced marketing/ad dollars. If/when a ban (of TikTok) goes through in its entirety in the US, then that is what that is. I have never used TikTok, and don't run ads, so...

Back to the point I am at here: ecosystems, of the big co's that are fledgling and shrinking (perhaps failing) are a thing to avoid. In fact, *any* ecosystem is wise to avoid (as I see it), as diversifying one's hardware/software stack gives me (or anyone) a leg-up on what to do about a failed service/product if and when those failures take place.

So I suppose that's all. That IS all because I am out of words :D

Coffee, Smudge, cigs, smoke and sunshine - may the breeze blow strong!


kebabmaster

Interesting... Well, I guess you already know that you are not the first one to say that "the crisis/collapse of some stuff is coming". My comment on the tech world is that someday these corporate Fortune 500 like jobs will be asked again if they are really necessary to operate... thus some optimization and improvements may take place... The word "layoff" occurs more frequently these days so... (https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&geo=US&q=layoff).

However, while some folks can prepare their "shorts"/tin-foil hats/money to quickly adjust to the reality after such a "collapse"(process or a point on a timeline), some other folks can tell you that there are some quite interesting alternatives emerging. For example: Less burnable solar panels, Running AI on your own,... and yeah my mind here either refuses to say more or is limited to that.

When it comes to the good old owners of these potentially "dead" companies, they will continue to either squeeze as much money as they can or will try to "polish their stone/sculpture" to generate as much money as they can (optimization, etc... programmers no longer needed). But after all, "after every collapse of a tower of Babel, some buildings will remain untouched"(so they might serve in other projects).

To those who work in this sector: Steal as much as you can, until it is too late. (We all are clever after the event takes place)

reply

tffb

in the end (welcome) it is a soliloquy for what most things are, and have been: collapsing.

Advancements, yes. Advancements in tech, yes. Are humans "tech"? No. Are humans "advancing" (should this be a thing)? No. Evolving? No. We are densely populated on a planet which doesn't have (enough) sustained resources for us. This being the reality, it's claw and keep what one can/will - keep those closest dearest, and if no one is closest, hold oneself dearest.

reply

inquiry

Corporations are legally defined unnatural disasters of greed, which itself is an unavoidable consequence of individuality, i.e. the conceptual "let's pretend to be free-willed agents separate from all else" game, inasmuch as that seeming separation generates a sense of a void in voracious need of filling.

reply

detritus

You're speaking gibberish to me: Reddit, Google, X?? What is all that, do you eat it? I know what an Apple is, that much I understand.

By the way, I just saw a video yesterday, apparently the new generative AI is taking a toll on the energy infrastructure, turns out all the computations needed to run those egregores takes quite a bit of power. So much for the great future that AI was supposed to bring. People are using it to generate the stupidest kind of stuff, too, making videos of Trump playing minecraft with Biden.

reply

inquiry

You're hinting at why I wound up concluding there was little sillier than agonizing over best "systems" government/society/economy/etc. when the creators/participants thereof are broke. Such systems *necessarily* are - or soon become - broke, because they merely reflect the creators/participants.

reply

detritus

It has been interesting to see how the theory of market economy has resulted in, well, just look at the trending page in youtube.

reply

inquiry

I wouldn't be able to live with myself for accepting as real/true something a company like Google would allow appearing on YouTube.

reply