They were the start of it, but they didn’t account for all of it. And, to be clear, it’s very much an over-correction. As usual they’re going to swing too hard in the opposite direction figuring that everyone else is doing it too, so if they have to hire people back, well they’ll be doing it in a flooded labour market so they can probably just re-hire the same people for less money.
You’re correct and I have no idea why idiots are downvoting you for saying this. Obviously, yes, to some degree companies are testing the waters on using “AI labour” in place of people - Klarna, etc - but for the most part AI is a useful excuse for these companies to dump a bunch of headcount that they warehoused for years just to keep everyone else from getting there first. In large part this is also because investors have finally started to wise up to layoffs not actually being an automatic good for a company. Used to be the word layoffs instantly jacked your share price, but now it’s more of a wait and see attitude, if not outright concern, so they have to wrap up the layoffs in a big AI coat to make them look good.
Edit: To clarify this a little, it’s not just overhiring. It’s that these companies were in a massively over-hired position - many still are to varying degrees - and they’re being pushed to show “growth”. There aren’t really a lot of ways left to do that (capitalism is basically eating itself), but reducing headcount gives you at least a temporary bump in profit, since your overheads go down right away, while any loss of revenue takes a while to hit. The combination of bloated headcounts and a need to show higher profits is the toxic swamp water here, while AI is the packet of kool-aid powder they’re adding to make it look good.
2nd Edit, to previous poster: You should read the article though, it has far less to do with “AI layoffs” than it does with Jensen Huang desperately trying to put out fires, which is very telling.
Transformer model AI has atrocious unit economics. The only way it really works is in some kind of post-scarcity environment where we simply don’t care how much it costs to run.
Crypto only solves problems it creates, or creates new problems out of the ones it solves. It’s a horrendously complicated way of wasting compute power to ultimately achieve nothing.
“How is it possible that AI became productive and useful only six months ago, and they were somehow laying people off two years ago because of AI?” he added. “It doesn’t make any sense.”
This is very telling. Jensen is pulling this “6 months” figure completely out of his ass here, but the reason why he wants that number to be true is because it moves the goalposts. If AI hasn’t actually, really, been here for even a single fiscal year then it explains away everything. Suddenly the fact that it’s made zero impact on productivity, that no one is making any profit on it, all of that becomes justified. “It’s still early.” You’ll recall that this was the narrative around crypto too. Every time anyone criticized anything about it a herd of sheep would bleat “It’s still early” even over a decade into the technology existing.
Investors are starting to ask serious questions about when these tools are actually going to start delivering greater productivity to their companies. Managers are starting to get the screws put to them about why their budgets are ballooning to cover subscription and token costs with nothing to show for it. Jensen can’t have that, because AI is the whole reason why his company is on top of the world, so he’s trying to reset the clock.
For the record, there’s absolutely no evidence to suggest that AI has ever become productive and useful, but that wouldn’t fit Jensen’s narrative either. So instead he has to invent a world where AI is totally productive, 100% useful, just trust me! When did that happen? Oh, just now. That’s, um… Yeah, that’s why you didn’t notice. It just happened, right before you walked in.
As someone who still plays it in 2026, yes, absolutely. It’s a really fun game, with some of the best gunplay and movement out there. Of particular note though is the sound design. I honestly think Insurgency might be one of the best games ever made in terms of sound design. The dialogue, especially, is fantastic; your characters don’t sound like cool badass tough guy heroes, they sound like they’re shitting bricks. It’s a really believable take on warfare that genuinely conveys the panic and urgency of a firefight. No one in this game is a badass, even when they’re trying really hard to come off like a badass.
This approach to realism extends to other parts of the game as well. Insurgency is depicting the occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan and your character options reflect that, with a wealth of middle eastern performances and cosmetic options, as well as the usual American stuff (and a Russian voice option for the insurgent side, because that was a thing that was actually happening). A detail I really appreciate is that you can have a female character, but only on the security side, because the insurgents are meant to be ISIL and their precursors, and the creators didn’t want to whitewash how deeply misogynist those groups are.
Fun fact by the way, the studio was founded by Canadian veterans who actually served in Afghanistan. This is why so much of the game actually feels believable, rather than just wearing the aesthetics of realism.
My one big criticism would be that they’ve made some very dubious choices about cosmetic DLC since the game launched. They’ve pulled back on the more egregious stuff in response to feedback from the community though, so they are listening.
Start with the Cooperative mode if you want an easier time getting a handle on the gunplay and movement. I strugglee for a while, but once it clicks it feels amazing. There’s nothing else quite like it.
The game is still very active, and continues to get regular updates with maps, weapons and cosmetics.
Not remotely. It’s just the part that seemed most prudent to focus on.
My comments about speaking to a therapist were entirely sincere. The fact that I didn’t just choose to respond further when you bristled at them is because they were sincere. I’m not here to belittle you or try to get in a fight with you. And you’re right, I can’t psychoanalyze a stranger over the internet, which is why I’m not trying to. Just asking you to speak to someone professional who can. As the saying goes, “I don’t have to be a helicopter pilot to see one in a tree and figure out that someone fucked up.” You’re displaying very obvious signs that you need some kind of help, but saying any more than that would definitely be stepping out of my lane.
I boiled down the rest of your response to one point because that one point crystalises my disagreement… Or, to be more specific, I think it crystallizes where you misread my previous remarks.
Let’s clarify the context here. This what I previously responded to:
“The part of me that is pessimistic (that part seems to be growing these days…) thinks they would just hang up on you and if you call them back enough times they’ll call the police on you to report you for harassment.”
When I pointed out that this was unhealthy behaviour, you didn’t actually engage on that point at all. Instead you built a strawman. Your reply;
“The truth is, we obviously don’t know for sure what will happen, but it’s also not likely to be surprising if it doesn’t go our way. It’s the most likely outcome and pretending otherwise is disingenuous. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t fight, though.”
…is framed as if I had made some broad statement about the likelihood of success of the entire endeavour. I didn’t. I responded specifically to your suggestion that an MP would quite literally call the cops on you just for demanding to speak to them.
So if we’re going to bandy about accusations of arguing in bad faith, I could just as easily choose to point to this as an example of doing the same.
What I did instead, rather than throwing around accusations, was choose to focus the discussion back down to the most pertinent point. I chose that question because it serves three purposes simultaneously;
If you were arguing in bad faith, it would illustrate the failings in your argument.
If you were unintentionally misreading my point, it would clarify the difference between our arguments.
The question itself was genuine; you might have answered “Yes”, in which case I would operating from a false assumption, and you would have corrected me in that.
But you chose instead to take it as an attack. That’s… Telling, to say the least.
Anyway, I’ll sign off of the conversation here. It’s clear from your responses thus far that either by intention, or because you cannot help yourself, anything I say is just going to continue to get twisted up into either another attack on you, or another reason to feel down.
I hope the rest of your week gets better. I do mean that sincerely.
You’re assuming a bad outcome and then acting as if it’s a guaranteed outcome. This is maladaptive behavior under any circumstances.
Please actually talk to a therapist about this if you can. I guarantee this behaviour pattern is occurring in other places in your life, and it’s not healthy.
This is fundamentally the real problem. Submitting false reports to police will always be possible. Anyone can do it. But a false police report should never endanger someone’s life. That’s only possible because of bad policing.
I’ve actually personally made a police report that resulted in our version of a SWAT team being sent. They’re called ETF here in Canada. I saw what looked like a domestic violence incident, with a knife involved. Because there was a weapon, policy said to send ETF.
When they arrived they locked down the entire area, and then they talked to the people inside the apartment. They gave clear and simple instructions, they made them both walk out one at a time, they got everyone’s stories, and they resolved the entire incident without violence.
ETF are trained by JTF-2, one of the best special forces units in the world. These are absolutely terrifying people. If violence had been needed they would have dispensed it with ruthless efficiency. But that training also gives them the confidence to not use violence as a first resort. They’re taught to de-escalate, to resolve situations safely and calmly wherever possible.
This is how policing works all over the developed world. Only in America is “murder by cop” a realistic option, and that’s 100% a problem with American policing.
And, I want to be absolutely clear about this; Canadian policing sucks. We’re not even a good example. So many countries do it better than us. America has set the bar so low that even our middling efforts look amazing in comparison.
Instead of theorizing, just call and ask why they haven’t responded. If the answer is “Because we’re snowed under”, well, there you go. And now they know that you really give a shit because you’re badgering them for a response. They get a lot of form letters but very few people follow up. That immediately ups the seriousness in their minds.
Be unreasonable if you have to be. I don’t mean impolite. Be nice to the human being on the other end of the line. But be demanding. Your MP works for you. Make them work.
Phone their office, demand to know why you haven’t heard back from them. Make them search through their emails and pull up every message you ever sent. Make them uncomfortable. Be a problem.
I’m not sure what you feel like you’re adding with this reply.
Well done for making the effort. Thank you, and we all appreciate it.
But what do you want other people to take from this? Are you trying to discourage other people from taking action? Because you encountered resistance other people shouldn’t try at all, even though they might end up speaking to someone more receptive?
Even your MP may end up changing their mind if enough people speak up. The goal is not to single-handedly sway their opinion, it’s to add your voice to a growing chorus. You’re joining a movement, not fighting a solo battle.
Salt Typhoon, a hacking group connected to the Chinese government, used the backdoors put in place by CALEA in the US to spend months buried deep in US telecoms providers surveilling citizens. The Liberals are proposing to put in place a worse version of those exact same backdoors. Bring this up to your MP, remind them that when the Chinese (or North Koreans, Iranians, Russians, or even Americans) inevitably exploit these backdoors to do the same thing to us, it’s going to blow up in their faces.
They already tried to pass this law once and it failed. Yes, they have a majority now, but it is a very slim majority. If a few MPs defect this bill will die.
Anyone doubting this should look up what happened with CUPE in Ontario, Canada. The government passed a law that would fine them for striking. They went on strike anyway, and a collective of national unions threatened a general strike. The government repealed the law and wiped out all the fines.
OK, yeah, this is awesome. I will definitely be making use of these tricks in future.