Wait, it’ll actually let you use local LLMs?

That would legitimately help me out. I use LLMs a lot for simple data restructuring, or rewording of explanations when I’m reading through certain sources. I was worried they would just do a simple ChatGPT API integration and have that be the end of it, but maybe this will end up being something I’d actually use.

I don’t think they believe it works.

I think they just believe that shootings are bound to happen, because why else would they be happening on such a regular basis?

It’s the constant deflection of responsibility, from our choices as a society, to some indeterminate outside force.

Poverty and increasing cost of living? It’s all those darn immigrants.

Your job not paying you enough? Must be overseas industry.

They don’t think their prayers will prevent a school shooting, they just don’t think there’s other options to prevent it that will actually work without “taking away their freedom” (-to own a gun that’s more likely to harm them than protect them)

I find those kinds of chatbots useful, but those aren’t the ones I encounter 90% of the time. Most of the time, it’s a chatbot that summarizes the help articles I just read, giving faulty interpretations of the source material, that then goes on to never direct me to a real person unless I tell it multiple times that the articles it’s paraphrasing aren’t helping. (and sometimes, they have no live support at all, and only an LLM + support articles)

Oh yeah, it’s definitely useful for that!

Since LLMs are essentially just very complicated probabilistic links between words, it seems to be extremely good at picking the exact word or phrase that even a thesaurus couldn’t get me.

I primarily end up using LLMs through DuckDuckGo’s private frontend alongside a search, so if my current search doesn’t yield the correct answer to my question (i.e. I ask for something but those keywords only ever turn up search results on a different, but similar topic) then I go to the LLM and ask a more refined question, that otherwise doesn’t produce any relevant results in a traditional keyword search.

I also use integrated LLMs to format and distill my offhand notes, (and reformat arbitrary text based on specific criteria repeatedly for structured notes,) learn programming syntax more at my own pace and in my own way, and just generally get answers on more well-known topics a lot faster than I would scrolling past 5 pages of SEO-“optimized” garbage just designed to fill time for the ads to load before actually giving me a good answer.

I have never once found an “AI” feature integrated by a corporation useful.

I have only ever found “AI” useful when it’s unobtrusive, and something I chose to use manually. Sometimes an LLM is useful to use, but I don’t need it shilled to me inside a search bar or in a support chat that won’t solve my problem until I bypass the LLM.

The problem is that the Network Effect keeps people trapped in the original social media network silos.

No matter how much you want to leave, if the other options simply don’t have enough users to meaningfully engage with the topics you’re interested in, then it’s very hard (but not impossible) to switch over.

A lot of people on Twitter might be part of micro-communities that simply don’t have any presence on Lemmy or Mastodon yet, or they might be there to follow a specific person’s updates on a given project, which can’t exist on the other platforms unless that person decides to migrate themselves (which necessitates losing access to the majority of your fanbase at the start, and hoping they’ll all choose to move over solely because of you.)

I’m not saying it’s a bad idea to migrate, but it’s not as easy as a lot of people make it seem by implying people can just switch whenever they want to without major consequence. For a lot of people, switching would mean losing an entire community completely, or being wholly cut off from the people and topics they were previously following. And as much as they might not want to support a social media oligarch, if they switch, they have a lot to lose before it possibly gets better for them.

True, but these ultra-wealthy individuals aren’t taking loans out on anywhere near the majority of their portfolios.

If a billionaire has $1B, they can put $900m in the illiquid startup, and $100m in their own brokerage account.

They can get loans using $100m of collateral, only paying tax on $100m, instead of paying tax on the other $900m that they aren’t even actively using for loan collateralization.

True, but all home buyers already pay property tax for the properties they’re buying up, and these properties will be owned by someone, regardless. If an institutional home-buying group doesn’t buy a house to immediately rent out for higher than the mortgage rate, someone else will get a mortgage on it for themselves instead.

But if these wealthy investors are now not earning as much money from intangible assets with highly elastic demand, such as stocks, they might not have much of an issue switching more investment capital to a tangible asset with more inelastic demand, for a now only slightly lower rate of return: Real Estate.

The fact that real estate was excluded from taxable assets in this proposal, when the only subject of these taxes are people with over $100m income, is crazy to me. It should be included.

I was mostly thinking of this on a continuous basis.

This tax would be assessed continuously, but it would only be assessed once as an income tax for the business. Then, the business is not considered an individual anymore, and doesn’t fall under these new tax rules, meaning any investments would no longer have an ongoing tax on unrealized gains, only once realized. Any of these wealthy people could start a new, privately held LLC as a holding entity.

I’m not saying this proposal is bad in any way, I’m certainly in favor of it. I just think it has some problems that could lead to tax loophole fuckery that might reduce the income it’s expected to bring in.

It applies only to individuals with at least $100 million in wealth who do not pay at least a 25% tax rate on their income (inclusive of unrealized capital gains). Payments can be spread out over subsequent years.

Within that $100 million club, you’d only pay taxes on unrealized capital gains if at least 80% of your wealth is in tradeable assets (i.e., not shares of private startups or real estate). One caveat for this illiquid group is that there would be a deferred tax of up to 10% on unrealized capital gains upon exit.

Without any changes, this would push investors towards the non-included class of real estate, which would exacerbate the housing crisis.

And on top of that, I can think of a million ways they could skirt this regulation with some clever accounting.

Create private startup as a personal asset holding fund > Transfer shares of publicly-traded liquid investments to private startup > Give yourself illiquid shares of the startup that have a time-bound restriction before they are allowed to become liquid (but don’t have to become liquid, and can stay illiquid for any longer period of time chosen)

Result: You, the individual, don’t hold all the liquid investments. You hold an illiquid asset that’s backed by all of the liquid investments. Illiquid assets are not fully taxed under this proposal.

They need to fix this sort of loophole, otherwise it would just be an invitation for the ultra-wealthy to posture about how they’re “already being subjected to so many harsh tax laws,” while not actually paying the relevant taxes.

I love this approach, balances user freedom & privacy with moderation & voting pattern analysis by the public.

ActivityPub might mean some data is slightly less private, but that doesn’t mean it has to be.

The network effect is one hell of a drug.

If you’ve got the money, and just want to reduce clutter, get some adapters for existing standards like USB-C cables instead.

I have multiple Micro USB, Micro-B, Audio Jack, and Lightning cable adapters that take up less space than one single USB-C cable.

I feel like this says more about these students’ schools, rather than the students themselves.

I completely get that.

I mostly have just thought of housing as a different kind of beast, since unlike working a job, I don’t have to invest in real estate to save for a house or retirement, but doing so might make it easier to accomplish that.

The biggest problem is definitely going to be full on landlords and private corporate investors, but I don’t want to add any more to that problem, no matter how small my impact might be.

TLDR; I want to protect against systemic risk factors, as most of my net worth will be in the market, unable to support me during a financial emergency. It could also carry possible tax benefits, and make it easier to sustain mortgage payments on a home.

I’m mostly trying to ensure that if, for instance, my entire emergency fund is drained from a major medical emergency (or something similar) during that time, I have something I can rely on that is generally more stable to sell during that time, which will overall carry lower tax implications on sale than stocks that have already appreciated significantly more.

Plus, once I get to the point of being close to owning a home, I want to ensure no major financial event could potentially significantly impact my ability to afford mortgage payments.

I plan on investing as much of my income as I can to retire as early as possible, which means the majority of my liquid cash net worth will just be in my emergency fund, with a smaller additional amount in savings. I would prefer some level of extended, more stable assets, that will still grow at least a bit over time to meet my financial goals, but won’t be subject to as large drops as the whole market.

I don’t plan on investing much of my portfolio into real estate if I do decide to go that route, only 5-10% total, more as a hedge than as a primary strategy. Most of my investing is still in comparatively high-growth index funds.

I appreciate that take.

I just don’t want to be yet another contributor of many to a problem, y’know? Like how even though corporations are by far the largest contributors to climate change, I still try to reduce the excess emissions I possibly produce whenever I can just to help a tiny bit more.

I’m still investing in the stock market regardless, I just want to make sure that diversifying my portfolio won’t have an outsized negative impact on others since, well, that would suck. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Not sure if it adds any more clarity, but to be fair, this question was about morals, which is entirely subjective based on personal opinion.

Thanks for your addition to the conversation though, I appreciate it!

To be clear, I wasn’t talking about liquidations, I was talking about actual market performance. Housing is necessary, even during a financial crisis, whereas unnecessary purchases of goods from corporations become secondary. Thus, housing can stay more stable while stocks crash.

While the market does always go back up, to some degree, I want to be at least slightly more resistant to the possibility of a major failure, (i.e. multiple major tech companies going under from some highly unforseen event) that could lead to entire stocks not existing to go back up again in the future.

I would also theoretically be investing via publicly-traded REIT funds, which could be liquidated in the same manner as stocks.

Wouldn’t that then mean that there would be no rental apartments available and everyone would be forced to take a loan and buy a home?

Not exactly, first off, I mostly mean real estate that is required for survival. Housing, not including the types of places you’d use for a quick vacation stay like hotels, corporate office real estate, etc.

If there weren’t landlords, there would be a significant decrease in housing prices, due to a few factors, namely banks now offering lower-rate loans (since the higher-paying institutional investors are out of the picture), higher supply availability (instead of investor hoarding of empty rentals for property value over use by humans), and generally larger amounts of capital available to spend on new homes, rather than rent payments going to alternative asset classes in wealthy investor portfolios.

It also doesn’t mean no rentals would exist at all, but that properties wouldn’t exist solely for the purpose of being rented. (think someone renting a portion of their existing house, or adding an ADU, instead of buying an entire single-family home solely for the purpose of renting it as an investment.)

Landlording is only a problem because it reduces the supply of housing available for people to own directly, and by the extent of it existing, increases housing values. If existing properties are partially used as rentals by those who have extra space to spare, any of the issues I mentioned functionally don’t exist.