In the US debit card fees are capped (https://www.federalreserve.gov/paymentsystems/regii-average-...). The cap is low enough that there isn't enough to fund rewards like we see on credit cards. IIRC there were debit card rewards when they first came out but those went away with the fee caps.
Perhaps far too optimistic, but if AI search gets pushed heavily and traditional search becomes less relevant, could we see SEO fade for traditional search and it become less polluted over time? Or will search engines just stop caring about traditional search and it will become an even worse cesspool over time?
SEO is definitely a relevant component still, AI mode does a traditional search under the hood. Gaming the system to rank high on the index is still going to matter. But it'll be less about tricking people into clicking and more about tricking LLMs into considering the information relevant and authoritative. For someone using traditional search, I'd wager that would actually improve the results a bit over time.
Then again, SEO gaming got a whole lot cheaper with LLMs, spammers spam even if there's not a great return, as long as it's cheap for them.
Total side note, it's interesting seeing "Move fast and break things" become the dominant phrase vs what I remember initially as the "MIT vs New Jersey methods". Both describe the same thing where fast and sloppy wins vs slow and clean.
I agree. Super excited to see what people are going to be able to make as the number of people/resources needed per piece of work keeps going down. Are we about to hit a printing press/word processor moment for TV/film? Going to be wild to see a feature level piece of media with one author/credit.
WAN 2.2 FFLF2V (first-frame last-frame to video) could get you close to the tweening between key-frames today.
Looking back on history I think this will lead to meaningful art (and tons and tons of absolute garbage!).
The printing press led to publishing works being reachable by more people so we got tons of garbage but we also got those few individual geniuses that previously wouldn't have been able to get their works out.
I see similarities in indie video/PC games recently too. Once the tech got to the point that an individual or small group could create a game, we got tons of absolute garbage but also games like Cave Story and Stardew Valley (both single creators IIRC).
Anything that pushes the bar down on the money and effort needed to make something will result in way more of it being made. It also hopefully makes it possible for those rare geniuses to give us their output without the dilution of having to go through bigger groups first.
I'm also excited from the perspective that this decouples skills in the creative process. There have to be people out there with tremendous story telling and movie making skills who don't have the resources/connections to produce what they're capable of.
The printing press enabled the artistic visions of single individuals (the writers) to find a wide audience.
To do something similar, this has to allow the director (or whomever is prompting the AI) to control all meaningful choices so that they get more or less the movie the intend. That seems far away from what is demonstrated.
Homeowners are typically going to be leveraged with a mortgage on their homes. This amplifies prices going up or down.
IE: I buy a house for 100 by using 20 of my own money and 80 of the bank's with a mortgage. If the house prices goes up to 120 and I sell, I now have 40 (doubled what I initially put in) after paying off the mortgage. If the price goes down to 50, I now owe the bank 30 (wiped out my initial 20 first then another 10 I'd have to come up with) if I want to sell.
At the classical 20% down 80% mortgage ratio you're in that 5x leveraged bucket for a long time (longer than you think due to amortization).
Bit of a tangent, but you might have better luck with hardwood vs. plywood. The glue in plywood makes it more difficult for CO2 lasers to cut through. I was super surprised when someone at work mentioned they were able to blow through some hardwood in a single pass but had a struggle to get through plywood.
My understanding is as interest rates go up prices need to come down as people only have $X/month to allocate towards housing. EX: If you have $100 to put towards housing per month you can put $90 towards the house itself and $10 towards interest on the loan in low interest environments, but only $80 towards the house and $20 in high interest environments. If people can only put $80 per month towards the house you're selling that ultimately means the house price can't be as high as when people are able to put $90 per month towards the house.
For the renter with a lot of cash this means you can come out ahead if you're able to minimize the loan or outright purchase in cash a house. The renter with a lot of cash gets to benefit from the lower prices from higher interest rates while minimizing the downsides of higher interest rates.
How much does the cost of labor really factor into a 20B factory? Assume 200k fully loaded at 3000 people is 600M a year on labor. That's not nothing but it seems pretty insignificant if you can save enough on the actual buildout of the fab(s).
