"Since RSS only enables a flat audio file to be distributed to consumption platforms, creators gain limited and often inaccurate insight into how the audio is consumed, such as where it is being consumed, how much of the audio is being heard or enjoyed (or not), and whether or not the audio is even being heard at all (and not just automatically “downloaded”)."
Yeah, you cannot track people.
A few paragraphs below it started to make sense, the article is basically written by Spotify.
Please provide some statistics. Your personal opinion is just that.
While I can probably agree that the middle class is not doing great the last decade or so, I'm pretty sure the EU has gotten richer.
For example 25 to 31k Euro GDP per capita for 2012-2019
There isn't one. It's just not true. There is lots of creative work that is routinely outsourced and cannot be automated yet. A CEO of a startup constantly outsources tasks to people, whenever they cannot be automated easily.
That's because it is illogical. A company may outsource some of its creative inputs, like graphics design or music for a game. That does not mean that creative work can be automated.
There are different reasons for outsourcing - lack of talent in-house, lack of time etc. Cost reduction may not be the only issue, and not every "cheap" task can be automated, either.
It's based on the faulty presumption that labor outsourcing motivations are purely based on cost minimization. Obviously, this falls apart if one considers that outsourcing also occurs for specialized labor that firms prefer not to keep in-house.
A great example of this is legal. If you rewrote the title as "Lawyers are hugely expensive -- why not automate them?" it would sound patently absurd.
I'm not saying that there isn't -- but another common fallacy you'll see is conflation of rote work automation with decision automation. Rote work automation is very doable and quite helpful, but it helps create a force multiplier for the human who is at the end of the day doing the job.
Decision automation is not easy at all -- whether for executives or for legal. There's a lot of root cause analysis, presumption unpacking, and other complex problem definition that's intrinsic to the nature of the role.
But that's a crucial distinction -- if you can't automate the decisioning, you're not necessarily going to make CEOs (or lawyers) less expensive; on the contrary, you may rather just increase the scope of what they're capable of doing (because there were all these other things they would've done had they had the resources and tools to do).
I think of that the same way I think of the "Software engineers are expensive -- why not automate them?" question. Maybe some of it can be automated, but some of it is just plain human problem solving. Not all human problems can be solved with automation. Especially if/when faulty automation is what created those problems in the first place!
I think the logic is that if you can describe what you need delivered (by the contractor) then an automated system could take the same inputs to deliver the same output.
It is not necessarily always true right now (you can't get robot building contractors just yet) but that is not to say the logic is true that the outsourced work could be automated.
To outsource something you have to be able to unambiguously specify requirements (otherwise costs blow up as you go back and forth). Once you’ve made it truly unambiguous, the next logical step is automation.
Not all automation is economically efficient - i.e. it's cheaper to hire outsourced janitors than building state of the art cleaning robots to automate their jobs.
> Not all automation is economically efficient - i.e. it's cheaper to hire outsourced janitors than building state of the art cleaning robots to automate their jobs.
And a trap many companies large enough to afford full time janitors don't realize: with outsourcing janitors they're relinquishing a lot of control towards the service provider and the work quality. The result more often than not is disgruntled employees waiting for days for stuff such as replacing a cracked toilet seat to be done.
This does not follow, since there are things that machines cannot yet do but that humans can. Producing new humans is one such example. It is not at all clear whether "CEO-ing" is another example.
It might be different now, but prior to ML approaches working for captchas people absolutely paid for outsourced labor to solve captchas all day. And that was an intentionally un-automatable problem.
You can see it even more clearly with "consultancy." The reason consultancies can get away with using so many newly minted MBAs, is that what most of them do is just reflect back the to the company what their employees already knew, but in a form that is consumable and justifies the business case for that action.
There is some internal reason why the organization can't just make the decision, even though plenty of employees know what needs to get done. It could be weak leadership, inability to take risks, analysis paralysis, fear of unfamiliar territory, unwillingness to own the risk (CYA) and even more dysfunctional characteristics (like different teams unwilling to talk to each other). Brining in someone external can cut through much of that mess.
Unfortunately, Bulgaria is not in a much better place. We are in EU and NATO, but not many other differences. Our ruling elite hasn't changed much - still communist secret police related figures and oligarchs.
Romania seems more reformed, they even managed to put some politicians in jail recently.
Exactly - BMW is the has-been German brand, that you can buy as a 10-20 year old import. It holds no cachet and is harder to maintain and less fuel efficient than other brands with similar features.
Tesla is the brand that people aspire to own, that people snap their eyes towards on the street. In small towns, all of the owners of Teslas are known and prestigious individuals.
Functionally though - Teslas are too big and too fast for old European cities. The Renault Zoe seems to sell well but is still very expensive for mass adoption.
Teslas fit just fine into European cities, they are no larger than BMWs or a VW Passat, not to mention the humongous SUV "tanks" that seem to be so popular.
Tesla isn't that popular in Europe simply because most are not insane enough to spend 80kEUR for Model S - for that price one can easily have a Porsche or some other real luxury or sports car.
And Model 3 is very overpriced for what it is. 55k EUR? For a compact car with mediocre range? Seriously? You can have a Porsche Cayenne for that price. Or two compacts like Renault Clio or even VW Golf.
That is really only for die hard fans of the brand. Nobody else buys it here. Also, the network of charging stations is much less developed in Europe than in the US and most are paid (and pretty expensive at that!).
Status symbols are cool but most people don't have Silicon Valley salaries here.
That is a very high level observation, although I do not disagree entirely. You should not forget about countries like Norway, the Netherland and Switzerland where people really have valley-like salaries.
EV registration numbers are going thru the roof in Norway and the Netherlands.
Also, the most basic Cayenne costs 100k EUR, at least in Switzerland.
Yes - but only because of massive government subsidies for buying electric cars and installation of charge points in those countries, especially in Norway. And given that Tesla is/was pretty much the only thing on the market in that class, no wonder it is selling a lot there.
E.g. Norway has exempted electric cars from 25% VAT. That's some 20k EUR "discount" on a Model S right there. Plus it has excepted EVs from other taxes levied on gasoline and diesel cars. So no wonder that people are buying these vehicles there, they would be stupid not to.
The issue is not people buying electric cars but Tesla's claimed status as some sort of status symbol.
Heck, I would go electric myself if there was a car on the market I could actually justify buying - i.e. with about double the range of the current offerings, reasonable battery replacement costs (not costing more than the value of the car after 5-7 years - see Nissan Leaf ...) and reasonable price at the dealers (i.e. about half of what they cost today). People aren't stupid, they see the advantages of driving electric - but also can buy only as much as their wallets allow.
Cayenne prices start around 78k EUR in France, VAT and government ecology maluses included. So I doubt that 100k figure from Switzerland which has much lower VAT taxes, unless they have slapped some sort of "gas-guzzler" tax on it there (which wouldn't surprise me).
kids are also a pretty good indication. if for some reason my model 3 is not parked where it's usually parked, the kids of the neighbourhood come over and ask where the Tesla is. i'm not joking. nobody ever cared where my previous bmw mini, vw golf or land rover parked.
