tforcram

This. Incremental progress is one thing, but incremental movement that makes the problem worse and actually harder to solve later is not progress.

It's indicative that maybe you're attempting to solve the wrong problem.

The dot-com bubble/crash had just happened and a lot of non-tech folks thought it would never come back. I remember telling my uncle I was going to intern at Amazon around 2005/6 and him asking me in all seriousness, "aren't they bankrupt?"

I accidently clicked on the article instead of the comments link for this one, a rare mistake as I usually glance at the comments before deciding to read, but I'm glad I did in this case.

I read it all, and found myself engaged throughout. Not to say that it was all riveting, there were certainly dryer spots than others, but it felt 'real'. Maybe they did use AI (I somehow doubt that given the content), but even if they did they went over everything in a way that retained a voice that felt authentic.

I hate many of the articles I read now all feel like they have the same half hearted attempt at trying to grab your attention without every actually clearly saying what they mean.

As for the content, I had actually just been told by management this last week that I need to become AI 'fluent' as part of future performance evaluations and I have been deeply conflicted about it. I do think AI has value to add, but I don't think it's something that should be forced and so this article resonated with me.

It's a long read, and not for everyone, but I recommend it as a way of hearing another humans opinion and deciding for yourself if it has value.

Actually all of those sound fine to me... I guess it's really just Internet advertising that feels wrong to me, especially when they try to fill in as the source of revenue themselves rather than a means to drive revenue for the main product.

Tenable for what, global business? Many local businesses do fine without advertising and/or using these methods.

Making global business harder and forcing things more local actually sounds like a great benefit.

Similar experience with a 2010 Honda Odyssey, drove it for 10 years and never saw a crack even though I'm sure it took a beating.

Then we got a 2022 Passport and I swear every single trip has a new crack or chip. I was surprisingly fortunate to be talked into the windshield warranty as the sales guy has been through this exact thing and replacing these windshields with assistive tech is expensive. That warranty has already paid for itself and more including once full windshield replacement.

I've had a malignant melanoma, my mother and extended relatives had it as well (including a great uncle I never met who died from it), 4 (of my 9) siblings have had multiple, mostly those of use who have red hair/fair skin. I don't think I've ever heard of a greater risk of skin cancer due to genetics/familial occurrence than I have.

After my mother got it and had a huge chunk taken out of her leg when I was very young, we have had it drilled into our heads that the sun was going to kill us and we needed to cover up and lather in sun screen for even the slightest possibility of sun exposure.

Obviously that didn't help much as many of us still got it anyway, hah!

But yea there are some folks who are terrified of the sun. I personally think 15-20 minutes unfiltered sunlight is good for me, but beyond that I'm looking for the nearest shade or trying to cover up.

I just had that conversation with a coworker last week, they started with 'I wonder if there is anyone left who isn't using AI daily?', and I had to reply with.. 'um well me actually'.

I only occasionally try it out for specific tasks and have never felt the inclination to try making it a part of any daily process, but his mindset was such that he couldn't perceive of anyone not wanting to fully dive in everyday and that those who didn't were missing out on significant value to their lives.

I remember living in Japan around 2001 and having to handle random addresses.

We had several atlas books of regions and neighborhoods. Looking up an address was an exercise in getting the right book for the neighborhood, then using an index which noted which block of the map that house number was in (eg 'c10' using a grid with numbers across the top and letters down the side).

Plotting a course from where you were to this location was also exciting and required patching together multiple maps.

Actually following that course in real life was another challenge altogether and really required visualizing what you saw on the map since, as noted, there aren't many street names.

I'm honestly surprised we were able to succeed at getting to places as often as we did.

I kind of miss that experience, just plugging an address into a phone and following directions is much less exciting.

I thought it would be in the article, but it only mentioned muscle mass. I believe lifting weights actually improves bone strength as well, but I don't have the references available that say that.

`the sweat of thousands other people's brows`.

This is a great point, and I think lends itself to a better solution than taxes. Why give all the excess to the government, who will do who knows what with it? (actually it's pretty clear where the majority of it goes, and I'm pretty sure most people wouldn't spend it the same way as the government).

If someone attained their wealth with the help of others, why can't we enact regulations saying that the wealth must be divided amongst all of them? Sure you can have some differences for those at the top, but it shouldn't be orders of magnitude difference.

Then each of those individuals would be both better off individually as well as spreading that wealth farther across the economy instead of concentrated to a few individuals.

I'm probably too naive in my thinking here though.

This reminds me of a time I tried to install Ubuntu on an old thick Dell laptop many years ago.

Each time I would try the system would overheat and then crash. The existing (windows) system still appeared to work fine with light loads so I was pretty sure I just needed to get past the install and decided to try one more time.

It was winter at the time, I can't remember if it had snowed recently, but I think it was probably close to 40 degrees F outside. So I hooked up a wired keyboard and mouse, and then plopped the laptop outside on the deck and closed the door with only the keyboard and mouse inside. There was a window which I could see the screen through and start the install.

Sure enough with the natural winter cooling the install completed and I was able to use the laptop for a few more years.

This reminded me of early days running AWS SQS. We didn't charge for storage as message size was limited and the expectation was any message was going to be read immediately... But sure enough some users would just leave messages there forever and we could never figure out what they were trying to do except maybe exploit it for free storage somehow.

I think pragmatism would be the middle ground, or 'dealing with reality as best you can'.

I don't think it's possible to actually sit perfectly in the middle, won't you always end up thinking slightly positively or negatively about whatever situation comes up?

In that case I think that 'Expect the best but prepare for the worst' is a good mindset to have.

How would that compare with US based pay?

I'm bilingual (brushing up on my kanji with wanikani) and considering moving to Japan, but I've always heard the comp packages aren't great.

What children? The reason the population is declining is because they didn't have children, increasing the burden on the government.

I've been to rural Japanese towns where it felt like there were no young people at all, only elderly, and the largest employers were related to elder care.

I suppose one aspect that might reduce the burden on the government, is that all the savings of these elderly are not going to someone's inheritance, but instead to the elder care institutions.

This exactly. Someone may be aware that it's possible to change the flags for improved performance, but they likely have a mountain of other things they need to deliver and the current set up seems to work fine so no attention is given to changing.

Anyone else coming across these flags will probably just have their eyes glaze over and wonder how any of it works at all.

Wouldn't trying to interface with the brain be a good way to understand more about it?

It does sound unlikely that neuralink actually accomplishes anything impressive, but I don't think it's a joke to try and maybe it will be a step towards something that does succeed.

I interned on the SQS team back in 2006 and subsequently joined the team full time for a few years including briefly managing it. I have some great memories of that time. Keeping things 'simple' while scaling as AWS grew was a great introduction to the industry.