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Here lies humanity, they tried to do the same things 15 different ways and squandered their resources doing so. (Not saying you’re advocating for this, just th

Here lies humanity, they tried to do the same things 15 different ways and squandered their resources doing so. (Not saying you’re advocating for this, just that it is the current plan it seems)

gumby 8y ago
Here stands humanity, they tried to do the same things 15 different ways as a way of figuring out what was best for various situations.
- bradknowles 8y ago
  And then there were 16: https://xkcd.com/927/ https://xkcd.com/927/
d-sc 8y ago
Humans are good at building houses and have many standard plans detailing how to do so. Yet we still hire architects to design custom homes. I’m ok with that. Efficiency doesn’t always need to be the end all goal.
hopler 8y ago
Humanity built the tower of Babel, all speaking one language, and was struck down and fragmented for their hubris.
cabalamat 8y ago
> Here lies humanity, they tried to do the same things 15 different ways and squandered their resources doing so. Polities that don't retain control over their computing infrastructure will in the future have effectively ceded independence to others. Because controlling the full stack from silicon to cloud services is expensive (fabs can cost c. $20 billion), this has geo-political implications: namely that in the future there will only be a small number of loci of independent power. The USA will be one, China another. Does Europe want to make itself a third, or will it be content to be subservient to others?
- Mirioron 8y ago
  The EU won't be content with it, but they still won't do anything about it.
  - ionised 8y ago
    Why not? Safe Harbour was shot down after the Schrems case. Google and Facebook are being taken to task currently. The huge fines for GDPR violations will come if the companies cited as in breach of the regulations fail to do what the EU asks. The EU is doing a lot. Just because it can't act with immediacy it doesn't mean nothing is happening.
pjc50 8y ago
Well, yes. Merely duplicate effort is a great improvement over last century's plan to be able to destroy civilization at 45 minutes notice. Speaking of which, I believe Pakistan had two mutually distrusting nuclear weapons programs, reflecting the internal conflicts between parts of the state security apparatus.
irrational 8y ago
That does seem to be a common occurrence when there is a sufficiently large number of people. I work for a large Fortune 150 company. At least once a year a new department is created that duplicates what my department has been doing for 15 years. Inevitably someone who knows of us tells the other group and they get in touch with us to find out what we actually do. I can't tell you how many meetings I've been in where the other group finds out that we already do 100% of what they've been tasked to do. They always look at each other with expressions of confused disbelief, wondering what they are supposed to do now. Sometimes they find some niche (on occasion we've thrown them some scraps of things we used to do that we no longer have any interest in pursuing), usually they are quickly dissolved. The worst was a group that had existed for more than a year and had already spent millions of dollars, only to be dissolved as soon as higher ups found out they existed and were trying (unwittingly) to duplicate our mature solution.

Here lies humanity, they tried to do the same things 15 different ways and squandered their resources doing so. (Not saying you’re advocating for this, just that it is the current plan it seems)

gumby 8y ago

Here stands humanity, they tried to do the same things 15 different ways as a way of figuring out what was best for various situations.

bradknowles 8y ago
And then there were 16: https://xkcd.com/927/ https://xkcd.com/927/

d-sc 8y ago

Humans are good at building houses and have many standard plans detailing how to do so. Yet we still hire architects to design custom homes. I’m ok with that. Efficiency doesn’t always need to be the end all goal.

hopler 8y ago

Humanity built the tower of Babel, all speaking one language, and was struck down and fragmented for their hubris.

cabalamat 8y ago

> Here lies humanity, they tried to do the same things 15 different ways and squandered their resources doing so. Polities that don't retain control over their computing infrastructure will in the future have effectively ceded independence to others. Because controlling the full stack from silicon to cloud services is expensive (fabs can cost c. $20 billion), this has geo-political implications: namely that in the future there will only be a small number of loci of independent power. The USA will be one, China another. Does Europe want to make itself a third, or will it be content to be subservient to others?

Mirioron 8y ago
The EU won't be content with it, but they still won't do anything about it.
- ionised 8y ago
  Why not? Safe Harbour was shot down after the Schrems case. Google and Facebook are being taken to task currently. The huge fines for GDPR violations will come if the companies cited as in breach of the regulations fail to do what the EU asks. The EU is doing a lot. Just because it can't act with immediacy it doesn't mean nothing is happening.

pjc50 8y ago

Well, yes. Merely duplicate effort is a great improvement over last century's plan to be able to destroy civilization at 45 minutes notice. Speaking of which, I believe Pakistan had two mutually distrusting nuclear weapons programs, reflecting the internal conflicts between parts of the state security apparatus.

irrational 8y ago

That does seem to be a common occurrence when there is a sufficiently large number of people. I work for a large Fortune 150 company. At least once a year a new department is created that duplicates what my department has been doing for 15 years. Inevitably someone who knows of us tells the other group and they get in touch with us to find out what we actually do. I can't tell you how many meetings I've been in where the other group finds out that we already do 100% of what they've been tasked to do. They always look at each other with expressions of confused disbelief, wondering what they are supposed to do now. Sometimes they find some niche (on occasion we've thrown them some scraps of things we used to do that we no longer have any interest in pursuing), usually they are quickly dissolved. The worst was a group that had existed for more than a year and had already spent millions of dollars, only to be dissolved as soon as higher ups found out they existed and were trying (unwittingly) to duplicate our mature solution.