Posts by Herring` 444 publicly visible posts • joined 23 Mar 2018
It seems to work like this: every so often, rich people go mental and start pretending that things that are actually work fuck-all are now worth a fortune (AI, mortgage-backed securities). Then it all goes tits and the ordinary folks who had nothing to do with it end up suffering while the rich walk away largely unscathed. Regulations might be introduced to "prevent this happening again".
Modern capitalism seems to be about over-promising to raise investment. OpenAI, Tesla, all that lot only talk about how great their tech is going to be. Never about what it is now. We're coming up to the 10th anniversary of when Tesla cars were supposed to be able to drive anywhere with no human input. People were supposed to be on Mars years ago. It's all bollocks. And yet the money keeps pouring in,
Discussing these things in the context of writing code, my point was:
- Yes, these tools can help expert developers as experts can tell wrong from right
- If it replaces junior developers, where are the future expert developers going to come from?
Also I am not convinced that automating the process of making shit up on the internet is a worthy goal.
Delivery pressure. Back in the day we used to spend a lot of time trying to get the most out of very limited hardware. Now the execs want their latest internet brainfart implemented yesterday for £4.50. If that means dragging in a tonne of libraries and writing code in some crappy interpreted language, then so be it.
The public sector is often publicly ripped-off by the big c***sultancies on projects that ought to be helping people. Just maybe, if the government had a team of people who actually understand big IT stuff and could call out these companies on their bullshit then that might help.
Here's one bit of free advice: before you spend billions on a system that does $stuff, maybe consider spending a much smaller sum on trialling and testing what $stuff should be. After all, what is the point in developing something that works "at scale" when it doesn't do anything useful
These models were trained on material entirely created by humans. When the models make it uneconomical for humans to create that material, there will be no new ideas, no new art, no new music, no new literature. Everything will be a pastiche, a shallow derivative of things gone before. And the point of the human race is lost.
Still, nice weather today.
Making self-driving work properly is expensive and difficult (maybe too difficult). There will be lobbying to introduce laws to make doing stuff to confuse robocars a crime (see jaywalking). Then "doing stuff to confuse robocars" will be widened to include things like walking or cycling. Buying politicians has long been more cost-effective than solving problems
Spot on. In my youth, I got roped into trying to start a company, it was me and this other guy (who turned out to be ... nevermind). And yeah, to get stuff to customer then coding for 48 or even 72 hours in a row wasn't unknown. Debugging the crap that I had written while sleep-deprived took even longer.
The fact that there are duty time limits for pilots is instructive. The fact that these limits have to be enshrined in law so that airline execs don't push pilots too far is also instructive.
The P/E ratio of Tesla is around 175. Which is lunacy.
I get the impression that the founders of Tesla started off OK and the cars were new and innovative. Since then, Musk has brought empty promises, faked demos and the Wankpanzer. The problem the US has now is that the big tech companies - which are all of the gains in the stock market plus a bit - have nothing new. They are busy investing trillions in AI "solutions" with no trillion-dollar problem that requires them. Meanwhile they are trying to up the income by making everything a subscription - no such thing as buying a gizmo and just using it until it breaks.
I do believe it's time for a beer.
I feel old in that I have spent a lot of time getting C++ code to run faster - execution profilers, custom heap management, that sort of stuff. These days even assembler is a high-level language - the processor is performing all sorts of shenanigans with register renaming, out-of-order execution, speculative execution, contributing to the climate breakdown that may kill us all ...
I listened along to the Grenfell Inquiry Podcast with the totally excellent Kate Lamble (whom the BBC made redundant like the bastards they have become). The passing of blame amongst the different parties quickly became farcical. A terrible thing happened and it was nobody's fault. Because nobody wanted to ask the questions when knowing the answers and failing to act would make it their fault.
As for so-called "Expert Witnesses" who stood up in court and, under oath, stated that the data in the Horizon system was 100% correct, well fuck them. Actually this could've been a legitimate use of a distributed blockchain - which is a rare thing indeed.
If you take smartphones as an example, they were sold on the basis of an actual product that could do actual stuff. AI seems to be sold on fluff about what it might eventually do.
If I send someone an email carefully laying out facts and a list of implications which they need to be aware of, then I hope that they have actually read and understood the damned thing. If I get a Copillock response then what?
Well, when I did have a Triumph, the whole bonnet, wings etc. hinged up as one unit from the front. Which was great as you can sit on a front wheel and tinker. And if you do need to change the engine (for instance) you undo three bolts, lift the whole body assembly clear and you can get at everything.
There is a dent in the top of a front wing on my car. To the uninformed, it looks a lot like the sort of damage that would occur when the owner - having diagnosed and fixed a tricky intermittent fault - slams the bonnet in triumph* without checking for spanners in the way.
*Skoda.
Hmm. For years - decades even - politics in the US (and to a certain extent in the UK and other countries) has been captured by big corporate interests. I mean, look at the US health "system" - who is that run for the benefit of?
The difference with Trump is that he doesn't pretend. He openly courts donations from big oil in exchange for "scrapping regulations". You can bet that any tariffs he brings in will have exceptions for those showing proper fealty. The thing about people who are corrupt on the quiet is that they fear being found out. Trump doesn't care.
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