fallous

14 ms·

151.
by fallous 7y ago
While the hardware it runs on may require servicing, well-designed and well-implemented code should indeed be free of such a need. Alas my experience in maintaining many codebases over the years suggest that most code needs a lot more servi
152.
by fallous 7y ago
Because mechanisms instantiated are by their very nature "published," and any repairs are documented because they require intervention by the mechanic... or could be documented by anyone with enough knowledge and training to exami
153.
by fallous 7y ago
This is one of the down sides of "software is eating the world." A 1960s Ford C4 or Chevrolet TH350 is mechanical and applied physics, whereas a modern automotive transmission is mechanical and applied physics combined with a bla
154.
by fallous 7y ago
And a drug addict, by analysis of behavior, is committing suicide so the AI should help them achieve their inferred goal based on that behavior. Nevermind asking them if that is their intent, it knows better because it sees the behavior. R
155.
by fallous 7y ago
In fact that example argues against Russell's third law. The recommendation engine is observing the user's behavior and inferring that watching a video means the user agrees with the video, and so starts an escalation until it se
156.
by fallous 7y ago
The only thing worse than the "evil" genie giving us exactly what we ask for is the genie that decides its inferences about our actual intents/wants/needs/motivations based purely on our behaviors matter more than w
157.
by fallous 7y ago
I believe the reference is to logical locality, specifically in the case of PDF that transforms and such are essentially atomic and there's no real boundary layer in which you may say "transform X and transform Y are equivalent wi
158.
by fallous 7y ago
The fact that effort is required to find those we disagree with (on the internet) demonstrates the weakness of the internet to meatspace. Merely showing up for work will expose you to those who hold viewpoints with which you disagree and u
159.
by fallous 7y ago
Yes, we're in agreement that it's not acceptable to trade sexual assault for intellectual engagement... and I'm not sure there's a large advocacy group in favor of such a perverse system to begin with. My original point,
160.
by fallous 7y ago
If that had been my intent, I would have said so. Your statements "I might feel differently if I could find better intellectual engagement in meat space than online. If the entire internet were vapid memes, I might be all "Book cl
161.
by fallous 7y ago
Sadly I think a number of atheists decided that an absence of religion meant that there was also an absence of morality, at least in any universal sense. Oddly that put them in agreement with the theists, even if neither realized it. One o
162.
by fallous 7y ago
There are civic organizations that meet regularly, do work within a community, and either minimize or are avoid religious affiliation.
163.
by fallous 7y ago
Indeed, as an atheist I long ago recognized the value of religion even if I could not believe in myself.
164.
by fallous 7y ago
I certainly understand the attraction of a simplification of engagement and for decades I thought that was the true potential of the Internet (via usenet, IRC, later web forums, social networks, etc etc). I'm no longer convinced. The
165.
by fallous 7y ago
I'm unsure what you mean by "viable property access," but blacks owned some 14% of farms in the US and around 15M acres of land (not all agricultural) around the turn of the 20th century. Sadly that has shrunk to around 8M a
166.
by fallous 7y ago
Unless there is a self-modifying feedback loop you can indeed replace any ML model with a hash function. The problem is one of size rather than any fundamental limitation of a look-up table.
167.
by fallous 7y ago
No, it is no longer a combination self-defense weapon and keyboard. The buckling spring action itself is still decent but the build quality is much worse, and the melted plastic rivets that hold the membrane have a bad habit of breaking or
168.
by fallous 7y ago
And that link was the result of government wage and price controls during WW2.
169.
by fallous 7y ago
If it were merely the executives that made the fatal decisions regarding the 737 MAX then clearing out the top level of management may suffice, but it's fairly clear that it wasn't a C-level decision in this case. Once you have a
170.
by fallous 7y ago
The Corvair was actually made safe at the end of the first generation and throughout the second generation rear suspension. The snap understeer of the 1960-1963 models wasn't especially unsafe, especially in relation to numerous Porsc
171.
by fallous 7y ago
The Corvair was a GM automobile, made infamous by Ralph Nader's book "Unsafe at Any Speed." You're thinking of the de Havilland Comet (or possibly the aircraft manufacturer Convair).
172.
by fallous 7y ago
The problem with the newspaper/news industry is that the value their audience places in the product is less than the value that advertisers place on access to that audience. Additionally the cost to generate and deliver that product e
173.
by fallous 7y ago
I'd suggest contacting accelerators and other early-stage startup fund aggregators to see if any of their companies have a need, either to replace a prototype/PoC level product or are engaged in a pivot that would be sped up by ac
174.
by fallous 7y ago
Occam was the native INMOS provided programming language.
175.
by fallous 7y ago
I'm not sure that's true, at least if you were running HeliOS.
176.
by fallous 7y ago
Amusingly the Atari Transputer started out as an Amiga project but Commodore wasn't interested. http://www.classiccmp.org/transputer/metacomco.htm
177.
by fallous 7y ago
Except that the parent specifically stated "the world" and not "the US."
178.
by fallous 7y ago
I'm unconvinced that metal smiths of the iron/steel age did not "understand how it worked." That certain smiths and geographic regions produced consistently high grades of steel suggests they did have an understanding,
179.
by fallous 7y ago
Is there some demonstrable decrease in longevity for sailors (absent the obvious mortality risks of drowning)? It seems to me that if there was a fundamental problem with humans dealing with long-term exposure to blue light, admittedly ref
180.
by fallous 7y ago
Actually it's very easy for a business to have values, those values just have to be those of the customer. Note that "customer" doesn't mean "user," the customer is the person that pays you money. Sometimes us

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