Those two ideas don't clash
Energy use is outpacing renewables so we're still emitting more carbon than ever. When we manage to transition away from fossil fuels, the prices will drop and make that harder
The coherent message is: we can't save ourselves by letting the economics slowly play out
The problem with health insurance as a metaphor is they have real costs... The insurance company does pay out real money every time you use your policy, and that makes it easy to muddy the issue
Let's take the coffee metaphor further. They say "you can drink up to 400ml of coffee, past that we'll add an extra fee. But don't worry, no one does that". Then they refill your coffee without saying a word, they won't tell you how much you've used unless you ask, and they won't stop refilling it unless you tell them not to
The reason the coffee metaphor is great is because, while it's a real thing, it costs them basically nothing. Just like the extra electricity to send your data costs basically nothing
The cost is the number of coffee pots, the labor, the restaurant - all things that don't change in cost no matter how much coffee you drink
Coffee works because the nature of the transaction is the same
Cyberpunk is basically futuristic GTA in a first person view, saints row 4 was basically GTA with superpowers, spiderman is basically GTA as Spider-Man
Even in this one format, there's endless room for creativity and innovation. It's a formula for a fun game...
But where I loved cyberpunk, watchdogs was similar in many ways and I just couldn't get into it
The problem is that they want to shove slop in proven molds and get a winning game. It's still slop
Mismanagement. They keep trying to make 9 women deliver a baby in 1 month, and switching out mothers mid pregnancy - some of these games have 20 formerly independent studios churning out content for the same game. That creates a need for a ton of oversight and coordination, and leads to a ton of wasted effort
I believe them when they say their costs have ballooned...I also know the tools have become extremely powerful, and that far smaller studios are creating far better games for a fraction of the cost
Ironically, he picked a metaphor that doesn't support his point at all
If you go to a Starbucks, it's like you're buying a set amount of data. You don't expect unlimited refills, because that's not how the transaction works - you buy the coffee by volume. It's yours with no strings attached
If you go to a restaurant, you buy access to coffee. I do expect unlimited coffee, I would be livid if they charged by the cup. However, you do not get to expect to take any coffee with you - you're using their "infrastructure" to hold your coffee, and you don't get to walk out with the cup. You don't get to share it with the restaurant or the table - you're burying a personal "subscription" to coffee for the duration of your stay
Coffee, like data, is effectively free at a restaurant. They must pay for the infrastructure, but after that each additional pot only costs a few cents. They must make at least 1 pot a day, and a human can't safely drink more than a couple pots in a day (which is an obscene amount only the heaviest caffeine addicts could tolerate). You get it one small cup at a time, if you bought a second cup you could double the rate of coffee delivery... They might even just give it to you for free, because it costs them so little and they want you to come back
You purchase access to coffee for a time, or you purchase coffee by volume. They shouldn't be allowed to charge for both - maybe if you've drank 14 cups and others want coffee, they should be given priority during lunch rush as the rate of coffee production is limited by infrastructure
It's actually a pretty decent metaphor, it just doesn't support his argument at all
Well Google was basically that - it revolutionized search, which made the Internet accessible for casual users
And it worked - Google put more into R&D moon shots than anyone... Except the economic META has changed, and everything innovative just ended up in the Google graveyard before it had a chance to mature
Bell Labs worked because they threw excess piles of money at the best people they could find, and they gave them autonomy. They gave them time, and let them build things with no clear application for their company
Today, that money goes into stock buybacks, executive bonuses, and buying out promising startups. Stock prices this quarter are all that matters, and R&D only raises stock prices when it promises insane growth or quick monetization
Systematic problems require systematic solutions
Because hashes are deterministic one way functions - they're generally one way only
Let's say I hash a picture. It could go from 14MB to 128 digits of base 64 - there's orders of magnitude less information in the hash than in the source data
Now - with that hash can you rebuild the picture? You've lost a great deal of information, you don't necessarily even know the size or the format of the input.
Let's set up an equation - x is the input (the photo), so hash_func(x) = hashx
There are multiple, maybe infinite (depending on the hashing function) values of x that will solve our equation. In the case of the photo, most of it will be random combinations of pixels that mean nothing to a human. There could also randomly be things that appear meaningful, but without knowing more about the original you could never be sure if you have the correct answer
Now, passwords might actually be shorter than the resulting hash, but we salt them so each password hash function works differently, and can still destroy information from the original password. Part of the password and the salt are then used as basically the seed for a deterministic random function to generate this extra information
Again, you have the dual problem of a huge problem space as well as an inability to be sure you have the original input or just another solution
Ultimately, everything is defeatable, and if you can narrow down the problem space (say, by knowing the length of a password, having enough known before and after data, or finding a bias in the algorithm), you can reduce the needed computations by orders of magnitude and make it feasible. Quantum computers also grow exponentially with chained qbits, so I expect someone clever will figure it out sooner or later
...Do you not think corn can be turned into a carcinogen?
... So a short form video platform is more dangerous than a dubitably secure group chat app?
That's comparing apricots to ocelots
There's different types of hacking. Finding and coding up an exploit? That takes skill
Then, they post it in a corner of the Internet somewhere to get appreciation for their achievement, or maybe even sell it on the dark web (or someone else sees it and packages it up in a state to sell/share)
Now, using the exploit? That's pretty easy. It requires some technical ability, but not much. It's just installing and configuring stuff, then using an app
So here's what I think happened. Someone found the exploit, and posted about it in a hacker community off the beaten path. One thing led to another, and somehow a group of edgelords get a hold of it. As a group, they manage to get it working, and act like edgelords
The original hacker might have been related, but real hackers are cautious or quickly caught - they probably solved the puzzle, maybe played with it a bit, then posted their findings and moved on to the next puzzle
Infrastructure costs. Their costs don't change with how much data you use, they change with how much data they can throughput