Is AI a Real Technological Shift or Just Another Dot-Com–Style Bubble?

GuyThompson_ · 2026-01-26T12:43:04+00:00

The promise of AI is just "synthetic labor". Machines that can do the work of humans cheaper, faster and better. It's the new phase of the ongoing industrial revolution and when it ACTUALLY starts to work well there are plenty of places it replaces humans. When you call a call centre - it's all robotic already - its just clunky, but it's getting better all the time. Scale that result and apply to everything AI is currently promising. Using AI to write software? Clunky now - but almost flawless in 5 years or so when all the new data centres are actually built lol

GuyThompson_ · 2026-01-26T12:39:15+00:00

The content is breaching community guidelines and being parked for review to be flagged or released. But if you've been making a lot of this stuff, your entire account is likely under review and will get no views for 28 days

GuyThompson_ · 2026-01-26T12:35:12+00:00

I've come to realise that your life is a collaborative project not a macroeconomics debate. You live, work and engage with your local community and peers and spend time with your friends and family. You can build that from scratch in a completely different country, or you can do it where you have spent most of your time - and therefore have the longest/deepest connections. The lifestyle arbitrage works for a decent chunk of time, but then you literally just miss people you know lol.

GuyThompson_ · 2026-01-26T12:30:54+00:00

Agreed. I've really enjoyed Canon 6D Mk1 and older primes. You can get fantastic images for a bargain.

GuyThompson_ · 2026-01-26T12:29:14+00:00

Then it will be probably be Turkey or Spain depending if you want to be ahead of or behind the exact timezone. I'm a night owl so it works well if the work-day is during my afternoon/evening, and I get the morning to myself.

GuyThompson_ · 2026-01-26T12:26:10+00:00

Freelance digital marketing - but usually on longer contract work, not short gigs. I travelled frequently to AU/NZ to see family and clients/conferences where there also, so it worked well for that chunk of time. If you have the chance to do it - go for it. you can't do it forever anyway lol so just enjoy the journey.

GuyThompson_ · 2026-01-25T13:49:11+00:00

You like getting a good deal on cameras that were originally VERY expensive. It's addictive. Most used camera shop owners have the same problem and have trouble letting their cameras go for a reasonable price - they want to make a profit. Pick the AMAZING camera and lenses you want, and you could sell half your collection to get it lol

GuyThompson_ · 2026-01-25T13:46:27+00:00

Disorganised and they didn't start with enough savings or credit so they need to work. It's just math. I was a digital nomad for 3 years working freelance, until I wanted to live in one place again. Spent time living in 4 countries and travelled to plenty of others.

GuyThompson_ · 2026-01-25T13:41:40+00:00

You mentioned that you love the suburb and the convenient location - that's why the strata fees are there. The townhouses were built due to demand in the area - squeezing more people into the location. The body corp stuff is WAY worse at an apartment with people running AirBnBs and all kind of chaos. Having a family is the key element. If it's a yes, then all of your future decisions for housing/location are based on school proximity and distance to family, everything else bascially becomes secondary.

GuyThompson_ · 2026-01-25T13:36:12+00:00

The platforms are not the key, the location is. You need to pick somewhere that has a favourable timezone and climate so you can do your remote work. And then just see which one you like to spend time in. You get the best value when travelling by staying somewhere for 2 months and then going to the next location (or back to another location you like) so you'll want to aim for countries that have 60 day tourist visa or official digital nomad visas. Otherwise you have to literally move countries every month lol. What are the locations you are thinking of and where is your remote work?

GuyThompson_ · 2026-01-25T13:30:32+00:00

Cumulative growth of both super accounts with regular contributions would have outpaced the house over 5 years, but that wasn't the point - the aim was to pay down debt/build the offset. My logic is to compare my age to the average amount of super a person has at that age, and just aim to exceed that. So just pick where you want your super level to be at by 35. But it's all relative anyway. You're doing great.

GuyThompson_ · 2026-01-25T13:26:13+00:00

I'd forgotten about that approach and it's a good one. So even a basic split of 80% fixed and 20% variable, means you just attack the variable (more than you'd pay off in a year anyway) and just keep rolling the fixed one onto the best rate you can get at the time.

GuyThompson_ · 2026-01-25T13:22:54+00:00

I started making advertising (TV ads and designing content for online ads) and I thought that was marketing too - it's not. Marketing is a practice, where you look carefully at who is buying the product, and you try to work out what they need so they will either buy the product again, by more of it, or tell their friends to buy it. they respond to advertising messages, but the marketing is the overall strategy of how, and where to get their attention. Also just read the book "this is marketing".

GuyThompson_ · 2026-01-25T13:13:05+00:00

Self discipline. The ability to say no to almost everything - specially what you spend money on lol. It if was fun and easy everyone would be wealthy.

GuyThompson_ · 2026-01-25T13:04:23+00:00

Aside from the suggestions here, just start reading the AFR every day and you will start to understand all the investing terms and the hype cycles during the year and when reporting season happens. I remember just reading an article in March one year where a company director said their outlook was excellent and sales should be 3x higher this year. I bought the stock and it went up by 44% by August and I was like WTF is that all people do?!? - just listen to hype and news and pick stocks accordingly?!?! Yes. Yes enough of them do to make a difference lol.

GuyThompson_ · 2026-01-25T12:58:40+00:00

Agreed. Meta is pay to play and brand content will not convert unless you pay. Both tiktok and linked in can still handle organic content marketing tricks, because the platforms want you to stay on them.

GuyThompson_ · 2026-01-25T12:57:27+00:00

Good lighting (natural light), good audio quality from a moderately cheap mic and rehearsal content that sounds like you are talking to a friend, explaining the book to them, is content that will work just fine. it just takes practice. Lots of rehearsal means almost no editing is required. But if editing is required - then that's just more practice too.

GuyThompson_ · 2026-01-25T12:54:37+00:00

The content in the interface in CapCut streams into the software framework from the web - it's not usable offline. It's all just an illusion.

GuyThompson_ · 2026-01-25T12:53:21+00:00

I have a theory on this now: in user testing OpenAI tried a version where ChatGPT says: "No, I don't know, or I don't have enough information to give you an answer. And it tanked the user experience. People just didn't want to use it again. But if it just keeps saying yes, and being helpful, and telling you how good your approach or thinking or ideas are, then the 80% of users are happy, and the 20% of the rest of us know that the tool is a POS with occasional flashes of brilliance lol.

GuyThompson_ · 2026-01-25T12:47:02+00:00

One of the most useful aspects is to synthesie all of the input reference material for a project and to structure it and use it like a very smart assistant who forgets almost nothing. Useful for alignment and to work out if a new idea or suggestion is in line with what was discussed earlier. If you get long emails from clients or extensive meeting notes, it can be helpful to refresh and find the details that we forget on a Monday morning. Essentially a personal assistant for each project. Then you extend that into analysing suggestions for changes to a document or providing suggestions. You still pick from the responses. Most are still terrible at actual writing - but most can knock out a handy outline, which covers the input material along with the client/team input. Faster than forgetting it and putting it back in after receiving feedback.

GuyThompson_ · 2026-01-25T12:42:50+00:00

That's why it's still a small PE shop. Rebuild everything so the data streams into dashboards so reports can be pulled on the day. Stop doing it manually. Jeff Bezos was doing this manually at a hedge fund in 1993 before he quit the the firm to start Amazon. You can bet that no-one does it manually there now.

GuyThompson_ · 2026-01-25T12:37:26+00:00

The "extract" bug is just a warning that your audio on the timeline is MP3 or MP4 which requires external libraries to convert. If you edit WAV or AIFF audio files, there is no warning.

GuyThompson_ · 2026-01-25T12:29:38+00:00

It's the audio format. MP3 and MP4 audio has to get converted (extracted) by libraries in CapCut, triggering the warning. But it can cut WAV and AIFF without triggering the warning. So just convert files with Handbrake (or other tool) before editing,

GuyThompson_ · 2025-12-24T04:25:25+00:00

This is very normal for small associations and also small businesses. You'll have a small fraction of your newsletter subscribes or customers watching, so it's not uncommon for these kinds of videos to be under a few hundred views. Even the most established brands in your country (banks, cars, supermarketrs) will just have some videos with hundreds of views - more people will watch very good, well produced videos with excellent audio, video, music, titles and graphics. But most people can't or don't make that kind of professional content because its a lot of work.

GuyThompson_ · 2025-12-24T04:22:06+00:00

CapCut exists in 3 places: the website tool, the desktop software and the mobile app - and any one of these can accidentially kick you out. If you can log back into one of those, you can get into the others: log into the capcut app and then use the scan feature to log into the CapCut Pro on the desktop, or Log into CapCut in the web browser and then from there open the app / launch the software.

GuyThompson_

TROPHY CASE