There are numerous companies that I won't do business with, although I wouldn't call that a "boycott", exactly, as I'm not trying to make the companies behave any differently.
So, no, I don't tell them. Why bother? I don't personally care if they improve unless I have no option but to do business with them (I'm looking at you, Comcast), and they'll ignore me anyway.
While Google's sparsity was an obvious advantage in the days of modems, slow connection speeds wasn't the only advantage.
It does look like Google's forgotten most of the things that made Google great in the beginning. The quality of their search results has been falling consistently for years now and they keep adding extra cruft to their pages.
The company says the software isn't riddled with advertisements like other free antivirus offerings. Instead of trying to make ad money off your patronage, Kaspersky will use the data you contribute to improve machine learning across its products.
Instead of letting other companies spy on you through this software, they're just going to spy on you through this software themselves.
I'm about to do the same to Comcast.. I'll just keep their internet.
I did this years ago, and it was one of the best things I've done. Now, I'm just looking forward to the day when I can dump Comcast entirely and get my broadband somewhere else. That's not possible yet, though.
Men work harder when their wives get pregnant, woman take time off.
Unsupported broadbrushing. Some men may work harder, sure, but I doubt if it's most. New parents, male and female, tend to be pretty exhausted. And lots of men take time off when the baby first comes home.
Real estate prices and tax breaks (or rates) are not major drivers for me when I'm figuring where I'm willing to work.
Overall quality of life is. Idaho might be wonderful -- I've never spent any serious time there, so I have no idea. Because of that, I wouldn't take a permanent job there for fear that I'd hate the area.
I would, however, consider a short contract position there so I'd have a fixed end-date in case the area turned out not to be to my liking.
It's the sales tax that puts me off. I hate sales tax with an extreme passion -- not because of the tax itself, but because nobody seems to include the tax in the marked prices, forcing me to constantly do math in order to figure out what something really costs.
There are tons of companies who are desperate for highly skilled engineers and will bend over backwards to get them -- but have problems because they are not engineering companies.
I highly recommend engineers, particularly new ones, to investigate these situations. Such companies often offer challenges, benefits, and a degree of freedom that no engineering firm can even come close to.
An engineer typically wants to do engineering on interesting projects. Such projects are more difficult to find in traditional engineering outfits.
It isn't necessary to reverse engineer an existing calculator in order to build a new calculator. What's necessary is that you understand math. However, if you are ignorant of math, reverse-engineering an existing calculator may help you to learn.
To rival the human brain (in terms of intuition, not speed or capacity), you need to first be able to duplicate the human brain.
I disagree. You need to duplicate the human brain (and, I argue, the entire body -- but that's another discussion) if you want to make "human" intelligence.
But there's no reason to think that it's necessary to duplicate the human brain in order to create an intelligence that is just as capable as human, but operates in a completely foreign way. The trick is knowing if you've done that -- currently an impossible task since we don't really know what "intelligence" actually is.
I think Musk is a genuine, old-school visionary and charismatic showman. Like all such people, that means that he takes flights of fancy seriously, is probably half crazy, and is wicked smart.
True, AI is nearly entirely an unknown thing, since intelligence itself is nearly entirely unknown.
We can't even define intelligence well enough to be able to reliably recognize it if we stumble across it. Until we can at least define what it is, it's a bit premature to talk about it as if its right around the corner.
Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. There's no way to know. For that matter, it's possible that we've already built intelligent systems and simply didn't notice that's what we did -- since we have no way to tell. Some people have argued exactly this about the old phone system, and some people argue this about the internet as a whole.
I'm over 50 and while there certainly is age discrimination, it's not really that hard to overcome. You just have to keep doing what you had to do in your 20s -- keep your skills up and stay flexible. It also helps to avoid companies and regions that think there's some sort of expiration date on being a great engineer.
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Doesn't everyone keep their work machines muted anyway?
There are numerous companies that I won't do business with, although I wouldn't call that a "boycott", exactly, as I'm not trying to make the companies behave any differently.
So, no, I don't tell them. Why bother? I don't personally care if they improve unless I have no option but to do business with them (I'm looking at you, Comcast), and they'll ignore me anyway.
Google gave up on "don't be evil" a rather long time ago.
While Google's sparsity was an obvious advantage in the days of modems, slow connection speeds wasn't the only advantage.
It does look like Google's forgotten most of the things that made Google great in the beginning. The quality of their search results has been falling consistently for years now and they keep adding extra cruft to their pages.
I've moved to using DDG entirely, to the point where where typing it is just muscle memory now.
I still can't quite get on board with saying I "duck" things, though.
I still have yet to see any Type C connectors in person, so using "existing cables" isn't much of a selling point, personally.
That's why everyone should be running external firewalls that block all outgoing traffic unless you specifically allow it.
You can't stop all the spyware, but you can stop it from phoning home.
Instead of letting other companies spy on you through this software, they're just going to spy on you through this software themselves.
What a deal!
Yes to all of this.
I will not use a phone I can't replace the OS on, mostly for these reasons.
Yes, me too.
It always feels weird to me when I go to someone's house and we watch TV the old fashioned way.
My reaction when this happens isn't that I feel weird. It's that I feel actively irritated, and I wonder how on earth anyone can put up with it.
I'm so glad that I have no interest in sports. It makes these sorts of decisions much, much easier.
I'm about to do the same to Comcast.. I'll just keep their internet.
I did this years ago, and it was one of the best things I've done. Now, I'm just looking forward to the day when I can dump Comcast entirely and get my broadband somewhere else. That's not possible yet, though.
Men work harder when their wives get pregnant, woman take time off.
Unsupported broadbrushing. Some men may work harder, sure, but I doubt if it's most. New parents, male and female, tend to be pretty exhausted. And lots of men take time off when the baby first comes home.
It should be avoided anyway.
Really??
That immediately rules out Idaho for me, no matter how nice it may be.
Real estate prices and tax breaks (or rates) are not major drivers for me when I'm figuring where I'm willing to work.
Overall quality of life is. Idaho might be wonderful -- I've never spent any serious time there, so I have no idea. Because of that, I wouldn't take a permanent job there for fear that I'd hate the area.
I would, however, consider a short contract position there so I'd have a fixed end-date in case the area turned out not to be to my liking.
It's the sales tax that puts me off. I hate sales tax with an extreme passion -- not because of the tax itself, but because nobody seems to include the tax in the marked prices, forcing me to constantly do math in order to figure out what something really costs.
Yes, some of them do.
There are tons of companies who are desperate for highly skilled engineers and will bend over backwards to get them -- but have problems because they are not engineering companies.
I highly recommend engineers, particularly new ones, to investigate these situations. Such companies often offer challenges, benefits, and a degree of freedom that no engineering firm can even come close to.
An engineer typically wants to do engineering on interesting projects. Such projects are more difficult to find in traditional engineering outfits.
Precisely.
I'll draw an analogy using calculators.
It isn't necessary to reverse engineer an existing calculator in order to build a new calculator. What's necessary is that you understand math. However, if you are ignorant of math, reverse-engineering an existing calculator may help you to learn.
To rival the human brain (in terms of intuition, not speed or capacity), you need to first be able to duplicate the human brain.
I disagree. You need to duplicate the human brain (and, I argue, the entire body -- but that's another discussion) if you want to make "human" intelligence.
But there's no reason to think that it's necessary to duplicate the human brain in order to create an intelligence that is just as capable as human, but operates in a completely foreign way. The trick is knowing if you've done that -- currently an impossible task since we don't really know what "intelligence" actually is.
I think Musk is a genuine, old-school visionary and charismatic showman. Like all such people, that means that he takes flights of fancy seriously, is probably half crazy, and is wicked smart.
True, AI is nearly entirely an unknown thing, since intelligence itself is nearly entirely unknown.
We can't even define intelligence well enough to be able to reliably recognize it if we stumble across it. Until we can at least define what it is, it's a bit premature to talk about it as if its right around the corner.
Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. There's no way to know. For that matter, it's possible that we've already built intelligent systems and simply didn't notice that's what we did -- since we have no way to tell. Some people have argued exactly this about the old phone system, and some people argue this about the internet as a whole.
It's pretty much all speculation at this point.
I'm over 50 and while there certainly is age discrimination, it's not really that hard to overcome. You just have to keep doing what you had to do in your 20s -- keep your skills up and stay flexible. It also helps to avoid companies and regions that think there's some sort of expiration date on being a great engineer.
Nah, Roombas are cheaper, offer better suction, and make a sexy whirring sound.