Dan Thorpe

does anyone need a sworn retainer. like a terrible instrument of your will who asks no questions and is more of a living weapon than a fully actualized human being

Hype is not noise: Why we need Hype Studies In this article, Professor Neil Pollock, Chair in Innovation and Social Informatics at the University of Edinburgh Business School, and Professor Robin Williams, Director of the Institute for the Stud...

"Hype is no longer fleeting noise. It has become institutionalised, calculable, and consequential."

Neat little essay on studying hype practices, devices, and techniques www.business-school.ed.ac.uk/about/news/h...

“did you girlboss too close to the sun” is a real line from a brand new taylor swift song i just don’t believe it lmfao

"just upload a scanned image of your drivers license no big deal"

I said what I said.

Sora 2 Is Unbelievably Expensive, With Each Video Costing $5 Of Compute and Users Allowed To Generate 100 Videos Every 24 Hours - Meaning OpenAI Will Lose A Month’s Subscription Revenue Every Four Videos Generated Let’s establish some facts: Once you have access to Sora 2, you can generate what appears to be an unlimited amount of videos, at least on a $20-a-month subscription, and OpenAI has promised “generous limits” for a non-specific amount of time. Every Sora 2 generation - in landscape or portrait - generates at 1280x704 - a variant of 720p resolution, and every single one is 10 seconds long, even if you ask it to generate a longer one. Each video appears to have sound, whether or not you asked for it. It takes about a minute to generate each video. Now, I’m a curious little critter, so I found that Microsoft actually publishes the prices of using Sora on its Azure AI Foundry page if you select “US East 2” as your region. To be clear, this is the pricing for the first Sora model, rather than Sora 2, which is likely expensive. Nevertheless, based on Azure’s pricing, it’s likely that each Sora 2 generation is priced at the “720 Global” rate of 50 cents a second, meaning that each video generated on Sora 2 costs $5 in compute, if not more, because it’s very likely that OpenAI’s costs are more than they charge on an API basis. Now, according to The Information, OpenAI’s gross margins were projected to be 50% this year, meaning that even in the most kindly, sweet maths of all time, they’re annihilating all of their margin in two generations, and another subscriber’s margins in two more. I also understand that some may argue that OpenAI’s costs “might not be as bad,” and there’s no evidence that this is the case. Sora 2, by OpenAI’s own description, is a “video and audio generation model,” suggesting it’s one main model rather than a combination with their audio-generation models they released earlier this year.

Premium tomorrow: OpenAI spent $11.2 billion in compute, sales/marketing for $4.3bn in revenue in 1H 2025.

Desperate to grow ChatGPT, they launched Sora 2, which costs them at least $5 per generated video.

Here's $10 off a year of annual.
edzitronswheresyouredatghostio.outpost.pub/public/promo...

Battle lines Railing against AI slop, aggressive algorithms and firms bleeding users of data, Ed Zitron has become one of Silicon Valley's punchiest critics, writes Tabby Kinder. Mad as hell: the man calling BS on big tech Style over substance. Ed Zitron says tech giant leaders are greedy fools who have risen through a broken system. ILUISTRATION F d Zitron is not a journalist, performance to polemic - take aim at the not a whistleblower and cer- "idiots". "conmen" and cynical tech billion- tainly not a prophet. He's not aires he believes are responsible for a "rot- here to spread conspiracies, ten" economy, and they have earned him a to "tell it like it is" or to con-viral following. Take the blog he publishes as I board a truth and that evervbody plane to Las Vegas to meet him for this inter- else is a moron. He is, he says. just a pissed view. A 13,000-word screed about the "era of off. emotional guv who needs to get "these the bucinoce iint" it ic writton with ar fing words out of my head". apostate's disaffection, and argues that mod- Listeners to Zitron's podcast, Better Offline. ern companies, especially those in the tech or readers of his blog. "Where's your Ed at". industry are no longer run by competent are used to the swearing but might scoff at people, but by greedy fools who have risen his protests. Zitron's sneering manifestos - through a broken system that rewards delivered with the dropped Ts of his London superficial action over substance. It opens orrontonio hirinue rhuthm that toore from by calling Satya Nadella, chief executive of Microsoft, the second-largest public company in the world, "either a liar or a specific kind of idiot" for comments Nadella made in an interview about the sorts of questions he asks his company's own Al chatbot. More than 75,000 people subscribe to and regularly read these posts, a number that is growing. Zitron's podcast is owned and produced by iHeartRadio, the largest radio broadcaster in the US, which says it reache…

Mad as hell: the man calling BS on big tech righteous energy so lamilar trom his podcasts. "Look, when it comes down to it, everything's like this: it's f--ed, and you are not insane for feeling bad," he tells me. "You are not stupid for feeling wronged. Things are unfair and you should f--ing say you're angry." Zitron monologues with the visceral dis- of the washed-up broadcaster Howard Beale in the 1976 film Network: he's mad as hell and hes not going to take it any more. In the film, Beale delivers one of cinemas most famous rants about disillusionment and powerlessness in the face of corporate domination but is ultimately exploited by his bosses for views. Beale was deranged, Zitron says (Zitron is not, "thanks to a wonderful therapist I see regularly"), but the character's sincerity, turning a personal grievance into a collective howl of frustration is something to aim for. "Emotionally and sincerely explaining why shit sucks, that's compelling, he says. Over the next couple of hours together, I will hear plenty of breathless tirades. It is, I come to understand, Zitron's default way of expressing himself. His arguments make my head spin, oscillating between grand observations on the business of technology and unguarded revelations about his mental health. Sometimes he reminds me of an opinionated teenager who hasn't yet developed the social skills to know when not to take themselves so seriously. "Tve been told my whole goddamn life to calm down, that I'm too much," he says. But with each unburdening I notice more and more a well of vulnerab-ility; a need to be listened to and liked. Zitron's path from hobbyist blogger to one of big tech's punchiest critics happened first very slowly then all at once. Born in Hammersmith, west London, his was a mostly normal but, he admits, friendless childhood. He did badly at school, struggling with ADHD and dyspraxia, a disorder that affects fine motor skills, but found solace in gadgets, the internet and online fantasy rol…

onmental Protection Agency for policing the don't have that in me. I find the idea of Ed internet - although he has little hope that catron the chancerreal unny because is anything reining in big tech will happen dur- just me, I dont have a mask I put on." Hegoes ing Donald Trump's second term. But when on: The irony is my mask would probably asked how he would actually solve some of be a bit less emotional, a bit less aggressive the issues he sees with the tech world. his about this stilla answers become almost metaphysical. In many ways, The Sphere - a $US2.3 bil- "We need something that savs vou cant hon LED-wrapped orb just off the Vegas make shit worse like this," he says. Silicon strip - is the perfect analogy for the tech valley needs a reckoning with how man world.as tron sees it. It is an overwhelm liars there are. I think we need a better moral ing visual assault, its 15,000 square metres of society in general, but in the valley alone . screens demanding total, verugo-inducing he goes on to list, again, the tech bosses he immersion, and it lost SUS500 million last thinks are makins the world worse year. It is a lascinating, pointless shrine to Last year, Casey Newton, who co-hosts scale and spectacle. The New York Times tech nodcast Hard Fork Zitron and Thave left the Venetian to watch defined two camps of Al critics in an article the movie created for The Sphere, and shown titled The phony comforts of Al scepticism there at least once a day. Postcard from Earth The first camp, which Newton says is made directed by Darren Aronofsky. As metaphors up ol techs external critics, Delieve ALIS upon which to trame this aracle go. it is fake and it sucks", while the second - New- almost too on the nose. Fifty minutes of foot- ton's camp - consists of internal critics who age or earth, loosely Iramed around a science think Al is real and dangerous. Newton fiction plotline in which humans have aban- namechecked Marcus as the archetype of doned the planet through spa…

My Financial Times interview got reprinted on the front page of the newspaper The Australian Financial Review with an incredible illustration of the contents of my mind and the big handle I turn when I blog

www.afr.com/technology/t...

What a website

Screenshot from Sumud fleet tracker.

This is a remarkable moment.

Since the Ezra & Ta-Nehisi discussion is still happening: the main point I think most are missing is that Klein is saying the role of the journalist-intellectual is to do strategic politics, whereas Coates says the role of the journalist-intellectual is to tell the truth

Stress-Free Eric Adams Spends Day Bribing Pigeons In Central Park

Stress-Free Eric Adams Spends Day Bribing Pigeons In Central Park

Juukan Gorge, it seems, was an outrage only because it was immediate and unmanaged.

the president has begun ranking generals out loud by fuckability

in @thesizzle.com.au today: how two self-representing Aussie took on Samsung and won!

I mean, if that doesn’t resonate with your experience then idk what to tell you man get it together

happy birthday, by Empty Threats 14 track album

LOVE the new Empty Threats. Also, wildly good production for DIY (that BASS TONE!). Worth a listen if you like Amyl and the Sniffers, Twine, or if a non-binary person yelling at you to take your amphetamines resonates with your experience theemptythreats.bandcamp.com/album/happy-...

"don't you wish you could go to Walmart.... in two thousand and two???" what. do you have encephalitis

This motherfucker don't miss.

Yeah look this idea fucks, I’m afraid.

How i feel about my writing after spending all day responding to colleagues’ comments on two papers I’m getting close to submitting

Anyway, I LoLoL all 540 standard orders lmao, time for a new game (I can’t put my partner through me doing this in DS2, too lmao)

No shade on Kojima, desperately wanting to suck off Norman Reedus is an impulse we share, after all.

I love Death Stranding but when Sam says “this bike is so cool it should be on Ride with Norman Reedus” it raises so many questions. Does Norman Reedus exist diagetically?Has Sam been told he is an eerie doppelgänger for Norman Reedus his whole life??? Kojima I need answers

To the surprise of no-one, #Albania 's supposed #AI Minister is revealed as a human actress on green screen... the whole thing being a smokescreen for some dubious government procurement dealings.

AI is helping judges to quickly close cases, and lawyers to quickly open them Brazil’s overburdened courts and lawyers are adopting artificial intelligence. But experts wonder whether it serves justice.

“We note that the use of AI, in the end, rather than diminishing litigation, is increasing it…[AI] may be a solution, but no one’s sure if it will actually work.”

Tl;dr, my job is really affirming my sense that trans people in this shitty country deserve so much better

So much health services research skirts around addressing how to deal with the alienation-driven loathing so many workers feel for their patients. Found some really interesting emergent work in Aotearoa around repairing this, but further leads appreciated if you’ve got them, bsky.

Spent a disturbing amount of yesterday trying to find an academic way of saying “sure, we need to run codesign workshops, but we also need to change the hearts and minds of some weapons grade transphobes” and it’s yet to happen