Khan Academy is a 501(c)3 [0] non-profit. "Increase revenue" maybe, or alternatively they may actually believe in their mission. Depends on how cynical you're feeling today I guess.
Non profit doesn't mean what people think it means.
Those expenses could be anything and anyone.
They could be increasing rev to further increase expenses like salaries and exec pay. Not "shareholders" in a typical corporate business way, but still driving profits for a handful of key stakeholders.
Not a bad thing, just don't think non-profit = altruistic orphan saving factory.
I accounted for that by conceding that "increase revenue" would be the cynical explanation. "Increase profit" would strictly speaking be illegal.
Regardless, the idea that Sal Khan specifically isn't fundamentally serious about education and sees this as his personal golden goose is a special kind of cynicism.
A section 501(c)(3) organization must not be organized or operated for the benefit of private interests, such as the creator or the creator's family, shareholders of the organization, other designated individuals, or persons controlled directly or indirectly by such private interests. No part of the net earnings of a section 501(c)(3) organization may inure to the benefit of any private shareholder or individual. A private shareholder or individual is a person having a personal and private interest in the activities of the organization.
None of that means that employees of 501(c)(3) organizations can't earn competitive compensation. But I think they'd be on pretty slippery ground if any part of compensation was tied directly to revenue increases.
Understand and agree with your general point, but Sal Khan quit a job at a hedge fund to be a maths tutor and that's how khan academy got started. I genuinely don't think money is his primary motivation. If it was, he would have just stayed at the hedge fund.
No. Everyone is better off the more path people know. One of the huge struggles in the west currently is the cancer of risk aversion. People can’t grok statistics, so we spend huge efforts negating 10^-6 risks.
The non-profit famous for giving away all of its educational material, in multiple languages, with the goal of allowing no-cost world class education to anyone, is trying to juice it's profits?
"I am Alex Levy, an independent researcher and AGI enthusiast"
Background appears to be exclusively in UI/UX design which shows because the website is very nice. But forgive my skepticism on everything else the page talks about. Might get some VC $ for the enthusiasm but not seeing any firepower behind the claims.
I played 5000 songs through spotify just last year. I don't listen to the same songs over and over. It would cost an insane amount of money, time, and space for me to discover even close to the same amount of music without Spotify (or some other streaming service). I consider Spotify an insane value at most any reasonable price because I really love listening to and finding new music nearly instantly.
This seems to be the point most people are ignoring. I'm on the Spotify family plan, with 4 people using it almost all day. The amount of songs we've discovered, played, etc is absurdly high. We churn through music constantly, so even if I pirated everything, it would be ridiculously time consuming and not worth the effort to curate things the way I have with Spotify. A good batch of the music I listen to isn't even available to pirate; back in the day I had to use youtube-dl to find and download those and sometimes the quality was terrible.
All that being said, I'm not buying the "innovation" bullshit excuse they're throwing at us and I think such a large price hike for the family plan is too high, but it's still at a price point for me that doesn't justify moving to something else. There is a limit though, and at some point I will just move back to the high seas (like I did with movies).
Yeah, me too. I'm constantly going down unheard paths. For me it's Youtube Music, but my life would be considerably less enjoyable if I had to weigh the cost of buying every CD I listen to. I also wouldn't have discovered a ton of music for groups whose albums I have since purchased. Without it I would have never discovered 90% of the artists I now love.
It mentions AI as a big ticket item in electrical demand. Could just be for clicks, but if AI and crypto aren't good for anything else, if it convinces the government to make our electrical grid more robust, I guess I'll call it a win. A very expensive and arguably wasteful win, but a win nonetheless.
All the AI demand software s today isn’t AI, it’s just some mathematics and basic algorithms, but it’s better than nothing which is what’s there today mostly.
Yeah, "AI" is everywhere these days, and I try to give it benefit of doubt - if they want a Generative/LLM AI to build their designs and operational manuals or answer emergency questions, maybe not; if it's a more traditional 'AI' and just means automatically adapt to conditions, probably yes? As long as there exist backups and manual controls? (not because of fear of AI gaining sentience and killing us, just for unforseen or emergency circumstances)
How do you know what Southwest is investing in internally? Sounds like a large problem to solve that will take time. I haven't seen any info about this.
Also, yeah all companies lobby against competition.
It depends on the route obviously but I find Southwest prices to be comparable to other non low cost airlines like Delta, American, etc. The few occasions I got bit by the $200 change fee on the others has made me consider Southwest much more. I refuse to fly the super cheap airlines.
There was a tool a long time ago that did this for an n64 emulator. I tried it and it was fun for a while but predictably would crash often. There was also a glitch art project that would corrupt specific segments of famous image and video files to create something new. I wish I could find either but I cannot.
I watched Lex Fridman interview Richard Wolff and have spent 2 weeks going hard into marxist and anarchist theories and practice. Working through 2 books, a dozen browser tabs, interviews, etc. It's rare something catches my interest like this (especially non-technical). But I'm really enjoying all the different perspectives and formulating my own fantasy scenarios.
If it hasn't made it onto your list yet, Ursula K. Le Guin's book titled "The Dispossessed" is a great exploration of anarchism in practice through a sci-fi lens
Leninism doesn't quite depart from Marxism really, Lenin expanded upon Marx's ideas and applied them to the evolving material conditions of Tsarist Russia. In a manner of speaking he departed with Marx in the way that Marx thought revolution would occur in developed industrialized nations like Germany and France and not rural agrarian societies like Tsarist Russia. Another thing to note is a lot of what Lenin wrote was scathing and sort of exaggerated polemics against others who he often worked alongside strategically, but argued with for the purpose of directing the course of action correctly. His ideas, the conditions and people he was responding to, evolved over time as well, so it's very important to understand those contexts going in, and this book does an excellent job of synthesizing and condensing some of that well:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26268757-revolution-mani...
I agree. Sounds like OP shouldn't give up yet. It's their very first year and the range of experiences at different employers are so vast. Just hop around and see if you like other areas.
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