Seems to be where Udio and Suno were 2 years ago, but with a better initial UI than they had. I'm sure Google will discontinue this in a year or two. Suno has since pulled significantly ahead. This isn't another Songsmith, but it's behind the curve right now.

I once quit caffeine cold for 6 months: 2 weeks of pure hell then it was like I never craved it until life got real and stressful and I fell off the wagon. Today, I drink my espresso with a dot of lowfat milk now and life is currently too real and stressful to consider trying to drop it again. I do suspect some of us likely have undiagnosed low-level mood disorders leaving us highly functional but discontent and caffeine is the spackling compound used to plug the hole in our souls.

I stopped drinking coffee for a month and didn't notice any difference in my anxiety/mood/etc, so I returned to my regular schedule (3-4 large cups in the mornings).

Same here, and it made me wonder, why did I go back to drinking coffee?

My best explanation is that there are effects, I just suck at self-awareness :)

Well, because I like it, and I like my morning rituals.

I quit caffeine for a year but it didn't work out for me. I felt mentally sluggish all the time; there would be times I'd be staring at my screen with my mind resisting the act of processing any information. I also noticed I became very sensitive with how much sleep I got, and if it was anything less than 8 hours the day would be miserable. I could be a special case here with altered brain development since even as a small child I was drinking liters of black sun tea. So since my withdrawal experiment I've highly regulated my caffeine intake with pills with a maximum of 200mg a day before noon, although I will sometimes cut back to 50-100mg a day during periods when my life isn't running full steam. This has worked out well for me.

When work was chill I went to decaf for the morning espresso on weekdays, and enjoyed real coffee on weekends. I took glee in withholding energy from work that I redirected to my personal time.

Then when work picked up, I went back to regular coffee everyday.

I don’t think there’s a hole in my soul though. And caffeine degrades my personality a little bit (to my own judgment).

Caffeine (like all stimulants) can alleviate symptoms of various dopamine-related disorders, like ADHD. I'm sure many people are self-medicating.

This study considers caffeine concumption outside of coffee, so an alternative caffeine source might be worth looking into. That was my takeaway, at least. I also drink espresso, for the caffeine and the noticable ease on my gut compared to drip or pressed coffee.

Money fills your Maslow. After that, you are responsible for your happiness. And there sure are a lot of rich people who aren't very happy.

Similarly, I roll my eyes when people still blame Ronald Reagan for the current homeless situation in California. There's been plenty of time to correct that mistake and well???

But honestly, IMO America has become a joyless, directionless dystopia of soma and bread and circuses in the middle of a geopolitical knife fight to define the 21st century and maybe even hit the singularity. I'm not happy with the current management, but it was the same unhappy bunch talked about here that decided by voting or opting not to vote that gave it a second shot. Kinda deserve this, no? If no, I'm all ears for your one weird trick to fix America, go for it!

Yeah I know, downvotes incoming for such heresy. If you don't pick a side, then what are you even doing?

"letting go of people who have made meaningful contributions to Meta during their time here..." is a sacrifice Mark Zuckerberg is willing to make.

Time to cancel my subscription.

Classic time value of money situation. They get access to the HW now so they can continue to grow the business. Of course, if you think AI is just pets.com redux, I can see how you'd think it's already peaked. All those years of very important people insisting Bezos couldn't just pull a switch on reinvesting all the revenue into growing Amazon and then he did exactly that comes to mind.

I think you really need to have boots on the ground in the AI cinematic universe to keep up and separate the wheat from the chatGPT. It's moving fast, warts and all, and I agree with Jensen Huang's take that we don't even need further advances in the technology to base a new industrial revolution on it.

But it's pointless to argue with the extremists that either believe it's just a planet killing stochastic parrot or that it's on the verge of becoming Skynet. I mean if someone puts their nuclear arsenal under the control of openclaw, that's dark comedy although it will seem like tragedy at the time because comedy equals tragedy plus time according to Lenny Bruce.

But the AI bubble is probably real w/r to shoe companies and grocery stores pivoting to AI and ludicrous w/r to the money that can be made by the already entrenched players just riding the wave of deployment and specialization. But wouldn't it be nice if the US spent more money addressing the shortage of compute rather than blowing $h!+ up for the lulz?

> But wouldn't it be nice if the US spent more money addressing the shortage of compute rather than blowing $h!+ up for the lulz?

No actually. The best way to ensure growth is in exactly these kind of industries that promote innovation. Sure some companies don't make it but that's the price to pay for risks.

This is a classic case of optimising for the short term and forgetting the long term benefits

So you're saying starting opt-in wars and blowing shit up is sound economic policy for the long run? Gonna disagree. I think the long view is unbounded compute. But I also believe it doesn't take up all that much space, and that we already have the technology to power it if we weren't squandering our impulse cash on dumb shit like subsidizing coal and wars of peacocking.

Where did I suggest starting opt-in wars?

What did you think I meant by blowing $h!+ up? And I gather you are against strategies like China's w/r to building up their own separate tech infrastructure and going all in on renewables and nuclear so they aren't power-limited because you believe these should both be entirely free market operations?

I believe that gives countries that act like China a significant advantage over relying entirely on a bunch of antagonistic billionaire monkeys banging on their economies in the hopes of bringing the singularity somehow. Again, we can agree to disagree here. But we're also forgetting that this is how the United States made Elon Musk happen in the first place.

For pennies on the dollar, we could just legalize and regulate psychedelics and anyone could go meet their god whenever they wish. The stoned ape theory might have been the AGI of spirituality that led to religion after all. Not saying it was, not saying it wasn't, but it's not like Elon Musk has to boil the ocean and build a Dyson Sphere to have a heart to heart with his personal invisible friend.

As for AI, it's incredibly useful in the right hands and it's incredibly hazardous in the wrong hands. But in the US, we can't even depose a lunatic flushing even more money than spent on AI on warmongering and you think we're gonna rein in the tech billionaires? Funny in that dying's easy it's comedy that's hard way. IMO this one plays out in the weakly efficient market of ELEs. My money's on DNA and planet Earth, it's been through so much worse and they always bounce back with new ideas on how to get in trouble again.

Not a doomer, AI and STEM could really deliver on the promise of a better future for everyone, but with tech billionaires driving the clown car, are you kidding me?

Now do AI art and music. I think a lot of the same applies there.