In other words, schools are now allowed to serve stuff that kids will actually eat again, making afternoon class teachers and any student with afterschool activities happy again.
http://www.washingtontimes.com...
In other words, we're reverting back because the "kids" say so.
Next years menu will include a pound of bacon-flavored ice cream with Ritalin sprinkles for breakfast, along with bong hits and an afternoon nap for lunch. I mean, whatever makes them happy, right?
Perhaps we should try and remember why we wait until a human mind is at least 18 years old before labeling it an "adult". Children quite often make fucking stupid decisions, which includes food choices (like throwing away fruits and vegetables).
The only thing this decision truly caters to is the Medical Industrial Complex, who will be raking in billions treating the ignorant masses who are obese and diabetic.
THIS is what hardware has become these days; a fucking fashion shitshow for hypes sake. Thanks Apple, for starting this trend.
I'm sorry, but I have to beg to differ. SGI and Sun (remember them?) did fashion computers long before Apple did.
Just do a Google image search for "SGI Indigo", "SGI Crimson", "SGI Terzo", "SGI Onyx", "SGI Prism", "SGI Fuel".
Or the Linux Networx LS-X...
Or take a talk down memory lane and check out the Cray-2, which had a waterfall...
Yes, I remember SGI. I worked on SillyG hardware and Sun "pizza boxes" back in the day. The considerable difference here is Sun and SGI were not mass-marketing their hardware to freshman students, or sitting in local malls with free financing.
I also remember when Apple marketed the "portable" Apple II (IIc), so marketing like this is hardly new for Apple, and it does pre-date most of the SGI/Sun marketing gimmicks.
I give Cray a pass on the waterfall. The design practically demanded a waterfall to cool the damn thing.
To be fair, the regulations are trying to push a low fat whole grain diet, which I don't believe is actually healthy. Fat is essential for brain development, our kids definitely shouldn't be eating low fat.
They shouldn't be eating the amount of sodium in the processed fast-food grade shit they serve either, which applies to all humans regardless of age.
Chances are it was the new sodium requirement that was the real bitch to deal with. You can make healthy food taste good, but dealing with bland food is often answered with three days worth of sodium overkill because it's a cheap flavor enhancer.
2002: Law establishing DHS bans it from contracting with inverted companies.
2004: Companies are outright banned from inverting. More and more, respond to the law by instead merging with foreign companies and adopting the new company's headquarters during the merger.
2014: Treasury department tries to crack down on merger inversions with harsher merger rules. Ironically, merger inversions accelerate.
2015: Stricter rules yet again.
2016: Stricter rules yet again - this time, at least, derailing the high profile Pfizer inversion merger attempt that was underway.
How many times does it take to pass "strict" rules in order to prevent abuse? The very response you cited in the 2004 and the irony found in 2014 is exactly what I mean by they're not actually doing jack shit to prevent continued abuse, because Greed lobbies to ensure there's always a loophole to be found and abused. The future end result? In 2025 another dozen laws are passed, and the trillion-dollar company will lobby the UN to become it's own country to avoid paying taxes. Greed at this level seems to always win.
We have anti-monopoly laws on the books that don't mean jack shit either. Every year we see a not-a-monopoly mega-corp attempt to buy out another mega-corp for billions, as the concept of competition becomes a distant memory, and pricing collusion is merely dismissed in favor of maximizing greed for all.
"Loopholes" don't create tax havens. Countries that want to be tax havens create tax havens. Loopholes are an entirely different (also largely American) problem, in that huge tax deductions are given for a wide range of purposes.
You are correct, but tax loopholes allow US corporations to abuse tax havens, such as the one that Apple is abusing. If the US tax system prevented this abuse, it would likely result in a fair tax burden on a multi-billion dollar operation.
"The Surface Laptop includes a 13.5-inch PixelSense display..."
No one attaches a 13.5" display to their desktop and boasts about it. I'd sure as hell give up an hour or two of battery life for some actual real estate. Let me guess, that "monster" screen also has 4K capability too, for some pointless marketing reason.
"...a keyboard draped in Alcantara, a smooth cloth-like material.
Obviously a critical "Pro" feature. I always wanted my keyboard to feel like drapery.
"... it can pack in an SSD up to 1TB (that's notably integrated directly onto the motherboard).
Translation: Fuck You consumer. You'll pay factory price for upgrades, and like it, bitch. (Tell me again how this is notably better than Apple's Fuck-You hardware model?)
"You can also expect up to 14.5 hours of battery life..."
Translation: You can expect to get up to 4 hours of Netflix binging.
"Microsoft managed to fit the speakers behind the keys, which Panay claims delivers a more enveloping sound."
Translation: We spent a billion dollars on behind-the-keyboard R&D for the earbud generation.
THIS is what hardware has become these days; a fucking fashion shitshow for hypes sake. Thanks Apple, for starting this trend.
2 words Sun Microsystems. At the top of the Y2K boom Sun was a company which could do no wrong. It asked eeryone to use its language (Java) and people listened. It sold racks of servers which powered the/Internet. It built its own chips. Then it ran out of money and got acquired by Oracle. Apple wants everyone to use its platform , its Swift language, even build its own chips but it doesnt want to run out of money.
And does anyone honestly believe they would have actually ran out of money had they payed their fair share of taxes instead of dodging their obligation with loopholes and tax havens?
I get trying to cover for long-term sustainability and having a financial buffer. Their fucking buffer is quite obscene.
It's a symptom of the US's weird system of taxation....
You misspelled corruption.
...So this inherently creates a motive for moving headquarters out of the US (which the US has tried all sorts of means to stop).
Uh, they haven't tried to "stop" jack shit. It's not like we don't know what the fix is. Just re-write the laws and close the fucking loopholes that ultimately create tax havens. Corruption feeds unethical practices in lobbying, and prevents this from happening.
The world would be a lot simpler if the US decided to stop doing everything different from everyone else.
Corruption exists everywhere, but I would agree that if the US decided to stop catering to the uber-rich with regards to taxation, things would at least be a bit more fair and equitable, rather than continuing to widen the chasm between the 99% and the 1%, as those in control continue to stockpile their riches at the expense of everyone else.
Not long ago, the demand for a $15 minimum hourly wage was brought up. The greedy corporate answer? Install automation instead. Because it's cheaper.
Automation is targeting higher salary positions - which have a bigger pay-off in replacement. The average hourly U.S. wage is $24.57. If you eliminate 50% of all jobs, it is going to be skewed toward the higher salary end, and thus the average position wage eliminated will be more than $24.57 an hour. Minimum wage is currently only $7.25, and anyone actually living on minimum wage is already having that low wage subsidized by the government (Walmart does this quite deliberately and systematic, it is a fundamental part of their business model - planning on government to pick up a large share of the costs for their labor).
Trying to under-price AI labor, to keep humans employed, is a losing gambit calculated to ensure either working paupers, or an effectively government provided income, but without the benefits of it being *guaranteed* (it has by design lots of gaps, loopholes, complex qualifying formulas, and constant uncertainty), or (most likely) both.
There is a significant difference between automation and AI, specifically with capability and application.
Automation is targeting lower-end jobs which are repetitive and simple enough in nature for automation to effectively perform (cashier, assembly line, warehouse).
AI is targeting higher salary positions (such as legal research normally done by attorneys, or other types of big data work).
Both are still being developed, but obviously automation is simplified by comparison, and will be much easier to deploy.
We argue that UBI will need to be created and deployed, but Greed will ensure that those who are taxed in order to fund UBI will lobby, lie, cheat, and steal (as they do today) to avoid paying, guaranteeing that UBI will become nothing more than Welfare 2.0 for the unemployable masses. One can also argue that automation/AI is targeting lower-level positions first, as they will be the cheapest to initially budget and adopt into the UBI framework.
Greed is far too short-sighted to give a shit about trying to fix the impact of automation and AI before the inevitable happens. Even if an entire country refuses to adopt automation and AI to save human labor, then another country will gladly adopt it, in order to financially dominate and cut costs.
Perhaps it's a fitting end to ruthless capitalism; the very Greed that created it will ultimately destroy it. The real problem to solve for in the future is Greed before it creates the global Welfare state.
"remove the last four or five rungs from that ladder"
Don't you mean first four or five rungs? That's also what's happening to home ownership with the ridiculously high prices (which also affect the renter's market of course).
You are entirely correct, and to be more specific, I meant to use the term lowest.
And yes, the market for housing is rather insane. Seems we never learn when we inflate the bubble too hard, too fast.
> Increased security my ass. People don't give a shit about security. Ordinary users are fucking lazy
I disagree.
Personal anecdote: My mom started using the internet in the late 90s / early 2000s. Every time I visited her, I'd have to clean up all kinds of stuff for her. It was a constant nest of toolbars and other random shit she clicked on. She would sometimes install security updates, sometimes not, but there was always a nest of vipers under the hood of her laptop. She had no idea how to fix that, but she was aware it was an issue.
Eventually, she got a Macbook. She LOVED that Macbook, and used it for over ten years. She never had that malware issue with the Macbook, obviously. Mostly, now she uses ios devices.
She was motivated to keep crap off her machine, but she wasn't motivated enough to jump through the hoops needed to achieve enough mastery of her system that she could tell the difference between good and bad choices. When presented an option that offered her more security at a higher price, she took it. The ability to be her own sysadmin was not that amazing compared to her apparent ability to be tricked into installing crap.
Nowadays, she would be safer with a Windows box than she was back then. But that ship has sailed, and she's still much safer with her ios stuff than she ever was on an open platform.
I don't know how representative her case is, but I imagine, reasonably. There's definitely users who wish their machine was more secure, and of the set that don't have a need for advanced features, and can afford a proprietary solution, walled gardens are viewed as a boon.
I hate to say it, but your example essentially validates my point. This example of obtaining a Macbook was nothing more than pressing the "easy" button, which essentially defined the motivational level.
Yes, most users want a secure solution. The problem with pointing to walled gardens is most users don't even have a clue what the term "walled garden" even means, so they sure as hell aren't buying hardware because of it. They're choosing solutions because they're easier to use.
First, "robots" are not "AI". Robots are generally driven by low-level automation that does not even qualify as weak AI (i.e. the "AI" with no actual intelligence). Second, 50% of all jobs in 10 years? No way. Even the administrative processes for that would take longer if the technology was available, ready, reliable and well understood.
Basically all this shows is how clueless VCs are.
In order to climb the proverbial ladder of success, one must be able to reach the lowest rung and start climbing.
When mere automation (not AI) starts destroying all of those lower-level jobs, it tends to make it rather impossible to even climb the ladder in order to reach the jobs that may not be targeted. In other words, it will only take an impact of 10 - 20% of the jobs being eradicated to create a considerable impact on the other 80 - 90%.
We humans should accept one fact; We suck at predicting our technological future capability. I can assure you no one 20 years ago was predicting home gigabit-internet speeds and HD wireless video streams by 2017, back when the masses were still using a modem to dial up to AOL, and using keywords to "search" the World Wide Web, so we should probably stop dismissing future predictions of 50%. We'll probably be dead wrong.
It can be argued society does not owe anyone a job or welfare payments just for existing...
And yet the welfare state exists today for that very reason. The alternative would be watching humans die and not do a damn thing about it, which a civilized society would not readily accept.
The true problem to solve for is still Greed, which will ensure any future system (UBI) will be nothing more than Welfare 2.0 for the unemployable masses.
Not long ago, the demand for a $15 minimum hourly wage was brought up. The greedy corporate answer? Install automation instead. Because it's cheaper.
Back when going to college didn't mean taking out a mortgage-level loan, think about what you did to pay for it. Perhaps you worked a cash register, at a grocery store or a fast food restaurant. Or perhaps you worked as a waiter or waitress. These are exactly the kinds of lower level jobs that are being targeted for eradication by automation.
We tell all young people in order to succeed one must climb the proverbial ladder of success. However, when Greed chooses to remove the last four or five rungs from that ladder, it tends to make it rather impossible for anyone to climb.
You really only have to destroy 10 - 20% to create chaos. By the time we reach 50%, the global Welfare state will be established.
Oh, and once you remove the point of human employment, you also tend to remove the point of educating a human, so higher education will become an extinct concept as well.
Indeed. Human level face recognition software already exists and it has replaced approximately zero jobs...
Do not look at only one side of the coin when it comes to automation. If the demand to recognize faces has increased (which it likely has, given overall surveillance increase), and we've hired approximately zero additional humans to do that job, then face recognition software has in fact replaced human jobs.
MS Excel dramatically decreased the amount of humans needed in any given accounting department decades ago. Automation is not new. Neither is eradicating human employment. This particular flavor of automation is teeing up to be the last wave necessary. That is the difference.
...A very large number of patents are for machines that won't work, won't see the market, or for things not actually related to any engineering at all. Patents protect ideas. Ideas can come from anywhere, even dumb ones like this.
Dumb ideas that won't work? Hmm, maybe I should patent that.
Think about it. One patent could potentially destroy the patent collecting industry that has fucked over ingenuity.
And ordinary users are willingly gravitating to walled gardens because of the increased security.
Increased security my ass. People don't give a shit about security. Ordinary users are fucking lazy, and are "willingly gravitating" towards anything that can do everything for them without lifting a finger.
Voice activated assistants and press-to-order buttons hanging on the wall are two prime examples of just how lazy people have become. Getting online to search and order a product manually is considered hard labor for the Siri generation.
"Ironic" how smart phones have a battery that lasts for a day despite having them having far more memory and far more computing power than a Cray 1 supercomputer which needed a 115 kW power supply.
It's almost like comparing radically different technologies isn't a useful comparison.
The only thing that's "radically different" about smartphone technology today is the fact that the marketing department runs the show, and brought us shit like Bendgate in their idiotic quest for lighter and thinner.
It's not like we can't create a slightly thicker smartphone to dramatically increase battery capacity, or easily create a design that supports a removable/replaceable battery. We can, and we have. We devolved out of pure greed.
Remember that your router is limited to 1W output (FCC limits in the US for all 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz devices), fired in every direction. At a mere 1 meter away from the router, even if your cell is placed facing the router (to have maximim surface area), and assuming 100% efficiency... your cell would harvest about 0.0004 watts of charging power.
But it will not be 100% efficient. Your cell will not be within 1 meter of the router most of the time. This entire idea is ludicrous, and anyone thinking that it's a great idea does not know much about physics.
Time for a round of choose the hypothesis:
#1 - Out of the 10,000+ engineers working for Apple, not even one of them knows about physics.
#2 - At least one of them knows not only about physics, but also some other type of technology that would actually validate the patent filed (somehow).
#3 - Patents for patents sake. Even fake news is still a (click) revenue generator. Oh, and is there an app for patents yet? 'Cause we need some patenty app goodness!
Ironic how "dumb" phones have removable batteries that last for a week, and "smart" phones have non-removable batteries that struggle to last a day.
I share your cynicism about the idea that the true cause was an "aggressive work culture" but the same time this was a human being. You, the person hiding behind the screen and the AC title. Don't be an a-hole. Joseph probably had depression, you have a-hole disease.
From TFS:
"Joseph Thomas worked his way up the ladder at tech jobs in his native Atlanta, then at LinkedIn in Mountain View, where he was a senior site reliability engineer. He turned down an offer from Apple to go to Uber..."
Seems like what he was really suffering from was greed; as in the particular flavor of greed that allows someone with this kind of work experience to put up with an "aggressive work culture" in order to cash out on the get-rich-quick stock option game.
I'm sincerely sorry for his family and loved ones affected by this. He was a human being. That said, the parent was merely stating the truth. He could have easily quit and gotten another job, which tends to make the "scared he'd lose his job" excuse rather weak.
Did that stock option shit once. This tends to highlight why I'll never do that shit again.
Slashdot Mirror
In other words, schools are now allowed to serve stuff that kids will actually eat again, making afternoon class teachers and any student with afterschool activities happy again. http://www.washingtontimes.com...
In other words, we're reverting back because the "kids" say so.
Next years menu will include a pound of bacon-flavored ice cream with Ritalin sprinkles for breakfast, along with bong hits and an afternoon nap for lunch. I mean, whatever makes them happy, right?
Perhaps we should try and remember why we wait until a human mind is at least 18 years old before labeling it an "adult". Children quite often make fucking stupid decisions, which includes food choices (like throwing away fruits and vegetables).
The only thing this decision truly caters to is the Medical Industrial Complex, who will be raking in billions treating the ignorant masses who are obese and diabetic.
THIS is what hardware has become these days; a fucking fashion shitshow for hypes sake. Thanks Apple, for starting this trend.
I'm sorry, but I have to beg to differ. SGI and Sun (remember them?) did fashion computers long before Apple did.
Just do a Google image search for "SGI Indigo", "SGI Crimson", "SGI Terzo", "SGI Onyx", "SGI Prism", "SGI Fuel".
Or the Linux Networx LS-X...
Or take a talk down memory lane and check out the Cray-2, which had a waterfall...
Yes, I remember SGI. I worked on SillyG hardware and Sun "pizza boxes" back in the day. The considerable difference here is Sun and SGI were not mass-marketing their hardware to freshman students, or sitting in local malls with free financing.
I also remember when Apple marketed the "portable" Apple II (IIc), so marketing like this is hardly new for Apple, and it does pre-date most of the SGI/Sun marketing gimmicks.
I give Cray a pass on the waterfall. The design practically demanded a waterfall to cool the damn thing.
To be fair, the regulations are trying to push a low fat whole grain diet, which I don't believe is actually healthy. Fat is essential for brain development, our kids definitely shouldn't be eating low fat.
They shouldn't be eating the amount of sodium in the processed fast-food grade shit they serve either, which applies to all humans regardless of age.
Chances are it was the new sodium requirement that was the real bitch to deal with. You can make healthy food taste good, but dealing with bland food is often answered with three days worth of sodium overkill because it's a cheap flavor enhancer.
Yes, there have been.
2002: Law establishing DHS bans it from contracting with inverted companies. 2004: Companies are outright banned from inverting. More and more, respond to the law by instead merging with foreign companies and adopting the new company's headquarters during the merger. 2014: Treasury department tries to crack down on merger inversions with harsher merger rules. Ironically, merger inversions accelerate. 2015: Stricter rules yet again. 2016: Stricter rules yet again - this time, at least, derailing the high profile Pfizer inversion merger attempt that was underway.
How many times does it take to pass "strict" rules in order to prevent abuse? The very response you cited in the 2004 and the irony found in 2014 is exactly what I mean by they're not actually doing jack shit to prevent continued abuse, because Greed lobbies to ensure there's always a loophole to be found and abused. The future end result? In 2025 another dozen laws are passed, and the trillion-dollar company will lobby the UN to become it's own country to avoid paying taxes. Greed at this level seems to always win.
We have anti-monopoly laws on the books that don't mean jack shit either. Every year we see a not-a-monopoly mega-corp attempt to buy out another mega-corp for billions, as the concept of competition becomes a distant memory, and pricing collusion is merely dismissed in favor of maximizing greed for all.
"Loopholes" don't create tax havens. Countries that want to be tax havens create tax havens. Loopholes are an entirely different (also largely American) problem, in that huge tax deductions are given for a wide range of purposes.
You are correct, but tax loopholes allow US corporations to abuse tax havens, such as the one that Apple is abusing. If the US tax system prevented this abuse, it would likely result in a fair tax burden on a multi-billion dollar operation.
"The Surface Laptop includes a 13.5-inch PixelSense display..."
No one attaches a 13.5" display to their desktop and boasts about it. I'd sure as hell give up an hour or two of battery life for some actual real estate. Let me guess, that "monster" screen also has 4K capability too, for some pointless marketing reason.
"...a keyboard draped in Alcantara, a smooth cloth-like material.
Obviously a critical "Pro" feature. I always wanted my keyboard to feel like drapery.
"... it can pack in an SSD up to 1TB (that's notably integrated directly onto the motherboard).
Translation: Fuck You consumer. You'll pay factory price for upgrades, and like it, bitch. (Tell me again how this is notably better than Apple's Fuck-You hardware model?)
"You can also expect up to 14.5 hours of battery life..."
Translation: You can expect to get up to 4 hours of Netflix binging.
"Microsoft managed to fit the speakers behind the keys, which Panay claims delivers a more enveloping sound."
Translation: We spent a billion dollars on behind-the-keyboard R&D for the earbud generation.
THIS is what hardware has become these days; a fucking fashion shitshow for hypes sake. Thanks Apple, for starting this trend.
2 words Sun Microsystems. At the top of the Y2K boom Sun was a company which could do no wrong. It asked eeryone to use its language (Java) and people listened. It sold racks of servers which powered the /Internet. It built its own chips. Then it ran out of money and got acquired by Oracle. Apple wants everyone to use its platform , its Swift language, even build its own chips but it doesnt want to run out of money.
And does anyone honestly believe they would have actually ran out of money had they payed their fair share of taxes instead of dodging their obligation with loopholes and tax havens?
I get trying to cover for long-term sustainability and having a financial buffer. Their fucking buffer is quite obscene.
It's a symptom of the US's weird system of taxation....
You misspelled corruption.
...So this inherently creates a motive for moving headquarters out of the US (which the US has tried all sorts of means to stop).
Uh, they haven't tried to "stop" jack shit. It's not like we don't know what the fix is. Just re-write the laws and close the fucking loopholes that ultimately create tax havens. Corruption feeds unethical practices in lobbying, and prevents this from happening.
The world would be a lot simpler if the US decided to stop doing everything different from everyone else.
Corruption exists everywhere, but I would agree that if the US decided to stop catering to the uber-rich with regards to taxation, things would at least be a bit more fair and equitable, rather than continuing to widen the chasm between the 99% and the 1%, as those in control continue to stockpile their riches at the expense of everyone else.
Not long ago, the demand for a $15 minimum hourly wage was brought up. The greedy corporate answer? Install automation instead. Because it's cheaper.
Automation is targeting higher salary positions - which have a bigger pay-off in replacement. The average hourly U.S. wage is $24.57. If you eliminate 50% of all jobs, it is going to be skewed toward the higher salary end, and thus the average position wage eliminated will be more than $24.57 an hour. Minimum wage is currently only $7.25, and anyone actually living on minimum wage is already having that low wage subsidized by the government (Walmart does this quite deliberately and systematic, it is a fundamental part of their business model - planning on government to pick up a large share of the costs for their labor).
Trying to under-price AI labor, to keep humans employed, is a losing gambit calculated to ensure either working paupers, or an effectively government provided income, but without the benefits of it being *guaranteed* (it has by design lots of gaps, loopholes, complex qualifying formulas, and constant uncertainty), or (most likely) both.
There is a significant difference between automation and AI, specifically with capability and application.
Automation is targeting lower-end jobs which are repetitive and simple enough in nature for automation to effectively perform (cashier, assembly line, warehouse).
AI is targeting higher salary positions (such as legal research normally done by attorneys, or other types of big data work).
Both are still being developed, but obviously automation is simplified by comparison, and will be much easier to deploy.
We argue that UBI will need to be created and deployed, but Greed will ensure that those who are taxed in order to fund UBI will lobby, lie, cheat, and steal (as they do today) to avoid paying, guaranteeing that UBI will become nothing more than Welfare 2.0 for the unemployable masses. One can also argue that automation/AI is targeting lower-level positions first, as they will be the cheapest to initially budget and adopt into the UBI framework.
Greed is far too short-sighted to give a shit about trying to fix the impact of automation and AI before the inevitable happens. Even if an entire country refuses to adopt automation and AI to save human labor, then another country will gladly adopt it, in order to financially dominate and cut costs.
Perhaps it's a fitting end to ruthless capitalism; the very Greed that created it will ultimately destroy it. The real problem to solve for in the future is Greed before it creates the global Welfare state.
"remove the last four or five rungs from that ladder" Don't you mean first four or five rungs? That's also what's happening to home ownership with the ridiculously high prices (which also affect the renter's market of course).
You are entirely correct, and to be more specific, I meant to use the term lowest.
And yes, the market for housing is rather insane. Seems we never learn when we inflate the bubble too hard, too fast.
Red Forman had it right.
When someone creates or perpetuates a bad idea, you slap them upside the head and yell "Dumbass!"
Lather, rinse, and repeat as necessary until the stain of ignorance fades to an acceptable level.
"...That means we can eliminate middleman languages and use one language to explore, learn, teach, and think."
One solution for all? Never gonna happen.
Some prime examples:
"That means we can eliminate the standard system and use one metric system to measure everything."
"That means we can eliminate the right-side driving wheel and everyone will drive on the same side of the road."
"That means we can eliminate all of the world's individual spoken languages and use only one language to communicate."
Humans are stubborn. Like really fucking stubborn.
> Increased security my ass. People don't give a shit about security. Ordinary users are fucking lazy
I disagree.
Personal anecdote: My mom started using the internet in the late 90s / early 2000s. Every time I visited her, I'd have to clean up all kinds of stuff for her. It was a constant nest of toolbars and other random shit she clicked on. She would sometimes install security updates, sometimes not, but there was always a nest of vipers under the hood of her laptop. She had no idea how to fix that, but she was aware it was an issue.
Eventually, she got a Macbook. She LOVED that Macbook, and used it for over ten years. She never had that malware issue with the Macbook, obviously. Mostly, now she uses ios devices.
She was motivated to keep crap off her machine, but she wasn't motivated enough to jump through the hoops needed to achieve enough mastery of her system that she could tell the difference between good and bad choices. When presented an option that offered her more security at a higher price, she took it. The ability to be her own sysadmin was not that amazing compared to her apparent ability to be tricked into installing crap.
Nowadays, she would be safer with a Windows box than she was back then. But that ship has sailed, and she's still much safer with her ios stuff than she ever was on an open platform.
I don't know how representative her case is, but I imagine, reasonably. There's definitely users who wish their machine was more secure, and of the set that don't have a need for advanced features, and can afford a proprietary solution, walled gardens are viewed as a boon.
I hate to say it, but your example essentially validates my point. This example of obtaining a Macbook was nothing more than pressing the "easy" button, which essentially defined the motivational level.
Yes, most users want a secure solution. The problem with pointing to walled gardens is most users don't even have a clue what the term "walled garden" even means, so they sure as hell aren't buying hardware because of it. They're choosing solutions because they're easier to use.
First, "robots" are not "AI". Robots are generally driven by low-level automation that does not even qualify as weak AI (i.e. the "AI" with no actual intelligence). Second, 50% of all jobs in 10 years? No way. Even the administrative processes for that would take longer if the technology was available, ready, reliable and well understood.
Basically all this shows is how clueless VCs are.
In order to climb the proverbial ladder of success, one must be able to reach the lowest rung and start climbing.
When mere automation (not AI) starts destroying all of those lower-level jobs, it tends to make it rather impossible to even climb the ladder in order to reach the jobs that may not be targeted. In other words, it will only take an impact of 10 - 20% of the jobs being eradicated to create a considerable impact on the other 80 - 90%.
We humans should accept one fact; We suck at predicting our technological future capability. I can assure you no one 20 years ago was predicting home gigabit-internet speeds and HD wireless video streams by 2017, back when the masses were still using a modem to dial up to AOL, and using keywords to "search" the World Wide Web, so we should probably stop dismissing future predictions of 50%. We'll probably be dead wrong.
It can be argued society does not owe anyone a job or welfare payments just for existing...
And yet the welfare state exists today for that very reason. The alternative would be watching humans die and not do a damn thing about it, which a civilized society would not readily accept.
The true problem to solve for is still Greed, which will ensure any future system (UBI) will be nothing more than Welfare 2.0 for the unemployable masses.
Not long ago, the demand for a $15 minimum hourly wage was brought up. The greedy corporate answer? Install automation instead. Because it's cheaper.
Back when going to college didn't mean taking out a mortgage-level loan, think about what you did to pay for it. Perhaps you worked a cash register, at a grocery store or a fast food restaurant. Or perhaps you worked as a waiter or waitress. These are exactly the kinds of lower level jobs that are being targeted for eradication by automation.
We tell all young people in order to succeed one must climb the proverbial ladder of success. However, when Greed chooses to remove the last four or five rungs from that ladder, it tends to make it rather impossible for anyone to climb.
You really only have to destroy 10 - 20% to create chaos. By the time we reach 50%, the global Welfare state will be established.
Oh, and once you remove the point of human employment, you also tend to remove the point of educating a human, so higher education will become an extinct concept as well.
lol at "recognizing faces" means replacing jobs.
Indeed. Human level face recognition software already exists and it has replaced approximately zero jobs...
Do not look at only one side of the coin when it comes to automation. If the demand to recognize faces has increased (which it likely has, given overall surveillance increase), and we've hired approximately zero additional humans to do that job, then face recognition software has in fact replaced human jobs.
MS Excel dramatically decreased the amount of humans needed in any given accounting department decades ago. Automation is not new. Neither is eradicating human employment. This particular flavor of automation is teeing up to be the last wave necessary. That is the difference.
Yeah, imagine not being able to do anything for 8 hours. Crazy!
Humans used to do this thing called sleep for 8 hours.
Of course, that was before Netflix, YouTube, and online porn.
...A very large number of patents are for machines that won't work, won't see the market, or for things not actually related to any engineering at all. Patents protect ideas. Ideas can come from anywhere, even dumb ones like this.
Dumb ideas that won't work? Hmm, maybe I should patent that.
Think about it. One patent could potentially destroy the patent collecting industry that has fucked over ingenuity.
"... they lobbied for and bought these laws..."
While this is the most accurate statement I've seen in a long time regarding how laws are passed, there's no need to be redundant about it.
Just say they bought the laws, because that's exactly what the fuck lobbying is.
And ordinary users are willingly gravitating to walled gardens because of the increased security.
Increased security my ass. People don't give a shit about security. Ordinary users are fucking lazy, and are "willingly gravitating" towards anything that can do everything for them without lifting a finger.
Voice activated assistants and press-to-order buttons hanging on the wall are two prime examples of just how lazy people have become. Getting online to search and order a product manually is considered hard labor for the Siri generation.
"Ironic" how smart phones have a battery that lasts for a day despite having them having far more memory and far more computing power than a Cray 1 supercomputer which needed a 115 kW power supply.
It's almost like comparing radically different technologies isn't a useful comparison.
The only thing that's "radically different" about smartphone technology today is the fact that the marketing department runs the show, and brought us shit like Bendgate in their idiotic quest for lighter and thinner.
It's not like we can't create a slightly thicker smartphone to dramatically increase battery capacity, or easily create a design that supports a removable/replaceable battery. We can, and we have. We devolved out of pure greed.
Remember that your router is limited to 1W output (FCC limits in the US for all 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz devices), fired in every direction. At a mere 1 meter away from the router, even if your cell is placed facing the router (to have maximim surface area), and assuming 100% efficiency... your cell would harvest about 0.0004 watts of charging power.
But it will not be 100% efficient. Your cell will not be within 1 meter of the router most of the time. This entire idea is ludicrous, and anyone thinking that it's a great idea does not know much about physics.
Time for a round of choose the hypothesis:
#1 - Out of the 10,000+ engineers working for Apple, not even one of them knows about physics.
#2 - At least one of them knows not only about physics, but also some other type of technology that would actually validate the patent filed (somehow).
#3 - Patents for patents sake. Even fake news is still a (click) revenue generator. Oh, and is there an app for patents yet? 'Cause we need some patenty app goodness!
Ironic how "dumb" phones have removable batteries that last for a week, and "smart" phones have non-removable batteries that struggle to last a day.
...I just want to know the magic being her old age.
Perhaps it's a brand of Tequila she drinks every day that keeps her in such high spirits.
Try getting a contract awarded with "It's too chaotic to tell"
The other key component of a contract is defining a budget, which gets blown when timelines inevitably become "chaotic".
Perhaps the real myth that is being identified here is defining an accurate budget for software development.
I share your cynicism about the idea that the true cause was an "aggressive work culture" but the same time this was a human being. You, the person hiding behind the screen and the AC title. Don't be an a-hole. Joseph probably had depression, you have a-hole disease.
From TFS:
"Joseph Thomas worked his way up the ladder at tech jobs in his native Atlanta, then at LinkedIn in Mountain View, where he was a senior site reliability engineer. He turned down an offer from Apple to go to Uber..."
Seems like what he was really suffering from was greed; as in the particular flavor of greed that allows someone with this kind of work experience to put up with an "aggressive work culture" in order to cash out on the get-rich-quick stock option game.
I'm sincerely sorry for his family and loved ones affected by this. He was a human being. That said, the parent was merely stating the truth. He could have easily quit and gotten another job, which tends to make the "scared he'd lose his job" excuse rather weak.
Did that stock option shit once. This tends to highlight why I'll never do that shit again.