Not a good take. It wasn't work that was invented recently, but ability to sustain yourself by performing some repetitive (and not always meaningful or productive) actions at pre-defined time periods (like 5 days a week x 8 hours a day). Which does go back to Industrial Revolution and even more recently to Ford Motors and similar enterprises and business models. If you were to ask a hunter-gatherer or a nomad or a slave or even a trade laborer (ie a shoemaker) in pre-industrial times, they'd tell you it's a pretty sweet deal.
No worrying where the next meal will come from, if there's going to be enough crops for the next few months, or if you'll be able to find an animal to kill large enough to feed you but but not large enough to kill you, if you can protect yourself against predators, or aggressive neighboring tribes, if you will be able to find/maintain a shelter good enough to protect you from the elements, esp in extreme cold or hot climates. If you'll be able to make enough shoes to earn enough to sustain yourself and the family, while competing with other shoemakers for a limited demand and limited materials, and million other things.
> In fact, quantitative studies revealed that the average adult hunter-gatherer spent about 20 hours a week at hunting and gathering, and a few hours more at other subsistence-related tasks such as making tools and preparing meals (for references, see Gray, 2009). Some of the rest of their waking time was spent resting, but most of it was spent at playful, enjoyable activities, such as making music, creating art, dancing, playing games, telling stories, chatting and joking with friends, and visiting friends and relatives in neighboring bands.
I'm surprised the author didn't add that they also didn't suffer from obesity or dental cavities or cancer (which is mostly because living past 30 wasn't invented until like 14th century).
Even if you were a "point" (an endpoint assigned to the node) you still had to set up the software and (in the mid-to-late 90s at least) set up a modem to call your node to upload/download. And sometimes you had to set up repeated dialing until you got through because the node could be busy (some nodes doubled as BBSs), or connection could be bad and it'd had to retry etc. Wasn't an easy task, so it served as a sort of a filter so that most people on there were geeks.
Later on of course some nodes started distributing over the Internet so setting up a node became much easier (and I think there was a way for the node to allow multiple users read/write without even setting up a node/point at all).
>We have covered this math before. The $725 billion that Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet, and Meta are spending on AI infrastructure in 2026 has to come from somewhere. For many companies, the somewhere is headcount. Not because AI replaced the work. Because the budget line got moved to a different row on a spreadsheet.
So "headcount" (because that's what we call people) is being cut because of crazy spending on genAI infrastructure (part of which btw goes to Mr Hwang's company). Or, if you're not a hyperscaler, crazy spending on tools/tokens. But no, you should NOT tie reductions in "headcount" to genAI. That's "irresponsible" and "lazy".
I've lived through both 2000 and 2008. They do happen. And typically not when everybody says there will be a recession, but when almost everybody finally agrees there won't be one.
Not that us plebs can do anything about it anyway... :(
"Enshitification" is not a new concept. A business should always be willing to make their product cheaper, even at the cost of quality, until the customers start turning away. Of course you need to be able to catch that moment early enough so that you don't lose too much market share to competition. But that will give you increased profits. The same with increasing prices.
On a side note, I'm curious as to how "600% increase in AI usage" is measured. Are their agentic workflows' bills skyrocketed 600% in the last 3 months? That would be in line with what other people using agents are seeing (costs are way higher than they expect/used to be). In that case, that would mean that LLM/agents are no longer necessarily cheaper than human labor, no?
Labor market data this week came out stronger than expected, even as large layoffs in IT continue to happen and IT job market continues to be very slow.
Canvas is back up as of Friday US morning for me (HS student's parent). My kid got a few panicked emails yesterday from the teachers but it looks like Instructure got it resolved quickly.
Canvas does provide a lot of value (all courses, teachers', students', and parents' contact information, all learning plans, schedules, room numbers, all grades, a lot of tests and assignments themselves, all upcoming assignments and deadlines, a lot of other coursework is in there, as are the final grades) but it shows that with external SaaS you might be one attack away from not only losing all that convenience but also in a world of hurt 'cause you lost all the data and now have to figure out how to proceed without the data and the system.
US high schools are in the middle of the finals, and seniors are getting ready for college (the transcripts to be finalized and sent out in a few weeks) so that was a scary timing.
Before the resume ends up in the hiring manager's inbox it needs to be picked by the recruiter from literally hundreds of others. The recruiter uses HR software to determine the match (usually the percentage), and then picks top 5% or top 20 or whatever highest ranked resumes.
That's what people on both side have been doing for at least couple years already.
Recruiters scan resumes for the best match with LLMs, candidates use the same LLMs (there's only like 3 of them) to tweak their resume for better match. I don't know what research you need to see why that makes sense.
This indicates that resumes created by the same model may have an advantage over those created by other model, so I suppose technically you may have a small advantage if an insider tells you the resume parsing tool is powered by Gemini as opposed to the other models.
My broader discomfort is that we are still learning about model biases while human biases are arguably better understood, and I don't like the ethics of rejecting a person based on criteria I don't fully understand.
I wasn't saying that this is the optimal solution (it clearly is not). I was saying that it makes perfect sense for both sides - HR has their work automated and candidates have better chance to be noticed - and therefore became a common practice in many places.
The well has been already poisoned, to survive you have to get in on the action.
Don't want to play this game? Make connections, set up the network, and use it to get/stay employed.
Total Boomer cohort doesn't reach at least 65 until 2029-2030 per the US Census. One does not qualify for Medicare until 65. It matters because 55+ working age population cohort is load bearing in the US labor force at the moment.
> There are now 20 million more 55+ employed than there were in 2000, an equivalent of the entire workforce of Spain. This unprecedented demographic / employment transition is worth a closer look. As the second chart shows, some of this increase is due to the rising population of Americans over 55 years of age - an increase of 42 million. In 2000, 30% of those 55 and older were employed. Today, over 37% are employed - a significant increase in the percentage of 55+ people who are working. In 2000, only 17.6% of the 55 and older populace had a job. Now the percentage is 37.5% A 20% increase in the percentage of 55+ who are employed in a 20-year span is unprecedented. If the percentage of employed 55+ had stayed the same, there would only be 17 million 55+ workers today. Instead, there are over 37 million. This raises a question: why are so many older workers continuing to work longer than they did in 1990 and 2000?
(obviously, older workers are continuing to work because they cannot afford not to, although I'm sure there is some amount of folks who continue to work despite not financially needing to)
Even if you define Gen X birth years starting at 1965 (and not 1961 as some do), their oldest are already 61. So anybody between 55 and 61 is a Gen X, not a boomer. And for the 55+ group employment participation rate has been decreasing. Which does not mean that "boomers are retiring", it's Gen X's turn now.
No worrying where the next meal will come from, if there's going to be enough crops for the next few months, or if you'll be able to find an animal to kill large enough to feed you but but not large enough to kill you, if you can protect yourself against predators, or aggressive neighboring tribes, if you will be able to find/maintain a shelter good enough to protect you from the elements, esp in extreme cold or hot climates. If you'll be able to make enough shoes to earn enough to sustain yourself and the family, while competing with other shoemakers for a limited demand and limited materials, and million other things.
> In fact, quantitative studies revealed that the average adult hunter-gatherer spent about 20 hours a week at hunting and gathering, and a few hours more at other subsistence-related tasks such as making tools and preparing meals (for references, see Gray, 2009). Some of the rest of their waking time was spent resting, but most of it was spent at playful, enjoyable activities, such as making music, creating art, dancing, playing games, telling stories, chatting and joking with friends, and visiting friends and relatives in neighboring bands.
I'm surprised the author didn't add that they also didn't suffer from obesity or dental cavities or cancer (which is mostly because living past 30 wasn't invented until like 14th century).