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- Hacker News
- I have another weak correlation to TEMU to add.
I have never, ever, bought anything on TEMU, because anytime I open the website it gives me a gambling roulette for some supposed discount thing. I hate gambling, so everytime I see the roulette I just close the webpage and go do something else.
Well, the whole cheap-generated content craze feels basically like gambling to me to this point, too. Folks are just randomly generating content: books, videos, articles, even applications, and gambling that something will pay for itself.
So now we have Enshitification, Eemufication and Gamblification of the Human Society. Damn I might write something on Substack about that.
by guhcampos - Thought-provoking article, makes sense on some levels but it cuts too broadly.
For physical goods (clothes, purses,..) most buyers can discern high quality goods from bulk manufacturing with cheap materials. When it comes to digital goods, for movies, songs, books, etc. the buyer can discern a clear difference between AI- and human-generated, so the TEMU-fication argument is valid.
But for software engg, design, etc., I suspect that very few people can (or will be able to) discern the difference. There may be people who care about manual output, but then you have to come up with proof of manual work. Something like "prove to me that you have coded this application or designed this site without using AI". I don't see that happening.
- A few years ago I would have laughed at anyone telling me that there is a serious market for ten-dollar drills, two-dollar dresses, and one-dollar pairs of shoes shipped from a warehouse on the other side of the planet.
TEMU doesn't sell those things. They're more expensive than that, but subsidised by VC capital from PDD Holdings, Blackrock, Vanguard, etc. It's a very boring 'spend the VC bucks to get the customers' play, and when they've got the customers they'll jack up the prices and lose the customers again. It's Uber-for-cheap-stuff basically.
by onion2k - > A 2025 Veracode report found that approximately 45% of AI-generated code samples failed security tests and contained critical vulnerabilities
Co-worker of mine who was excellent at both system design AND coding and I were chatting about LLMS:
Him: "I guess coding will just be a hobby now"
Me: "Coding def feels that way but software engineering as a profession is still alive and well."
by alexpotato - The US has been exporting Treasury bills and digital hot air for quite a while.
LLMs are the logical conclusion of this scam, until other countries stop gambling on the US stock market with fake $1 trillion corporations.
It works because the whole world's media is captured, owned and censored by US platforms and amplifies the US messaging.
by 239182 - Quality products are amazing but I do get the downside of building very durable products.
For example, we have a Vornado fan in my house that is probably from the early 2000s. It still works perfectly even though we've left it running 24/7 for weeks in humid or dusty environments (e.g. to help air dry a wet basement). In terms of money paid/hours used, we got an amazing deal on the purchase.
From the manufacturer's perspective, the life time value (LTV) of us as a customer was basically just one fan + the free marketing of folks like myself writing this kind of post. It reminds me of the joke "Did you hear about the company that made lightbulbs that lasted 30 years? They went out of business!"
It makes sense that manufacturers would start to lower quality at a slightly faster rate than they lower the price as this means that folks still feel happy with the purchase. Sure, the fan doesn't last as long due to what is essentially planned obsolescence but the company does get to stay in business.
Temu/Shein etc are just the logical endpoint of this line of reasoning. If you are going to wear a shirt for the one summer where it's in style, why would you spend a large amount of money on it? And in turn, why would the company selling it spend a lot of money making it?
(I should add, this is purely an economical argument and ignores the working conditions/health effects/etc)
by alexpotato - Love this writeup. The temu analogy is best to describe what is going on beyond just what llms have done to software. What's closer to question is temu could only exist in the way it did (it's fast rise mainly) because of the work done by amazon prime in making fast shipping both logistically doable and the psychological default for many. So my question is what was the "amazon prime" era of software and perhaps learning what did (and did not) occur then can better understand why AI has wrought the effects it has in less than 10 years.by tolugenius
- "The key to this sort of business model is not innovation, but instead the externalization and compression of cost. Somewhere upstream, people work seventy-five hours a week, in conditions most readers of this website would refuse to even visit, so that the rest of us can have a cheap plastic spatula at our doorstep within five business days."
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While it may be true in some rare instances, for the vast majority of products its more likely to be fantasy that exists only in stereotypes.
The truth is why American attempts to onshore manufacturing and make it even cheaper with automation have failed miserably. The truth is that Chinese manufacturing is as automated as is possible with cutting edge technology. They build cars in factory's that don't even have lighting until finished cars reach the quality control area. This is why the North American auto sector relies on crushing tariff's and outright import bans to force North Americans to buy North American autos. Without those, you could buy a Chinese car that's better than what you drive for half the price.
The factory cranking out the one-dollar-shoes Temu sells is likely entirely automated.
TEMU sells what was made with the LLM-ification of manufacturing.
by beloch