choonway

the same way calculators replaced mental sums. not because it was sometimes faster, but that it was definitely more deterministic.

mass surveillance is like nuclear weapons.

it will never go away.

yep. and with the western funding model, how many hardware iterations can you do before you run out of runway?

I can say many things, but most people here will not believe me. I'd say just watch China do the 'impossible'. Then some self reflection should be in order.

yep. the word they use is probably 克制 or self-restraint. no need to raise so much cash if you can't use it.

in his article he talks about the negative aspects of getting everything you want. (all the money, brightest minds, biggest share in AI) etc. he says that these are the things that will cause a company to fail.

no different from how the mcdonalds system can turn any random person on the street to a smiling cog in the machine.

as a lifelong chopstick user, this article is for one of those fault finding crazies.

hold the chopstick however you like. so long as you don’t drop things unintentionally it’s fine.

this is how and adult sounds like in a room full of children.

the lesson to learn is - don't let the conversation die off. think of all the weird scenarios that wouldn't make google sheets work.

e.g. no access to internet (or at least VPN access via completely locked down devices) / internal email server / only open source etc.

if something doesn’t exist in this world, no amount of money will guarantee that you will get it.

if it exists in abundance like the air that we breathe no amount of conspiracy will be able to monopolize it.

finance only works in a very narrow band of environmental conditions. we are very well past that.

employers that demand long hours do so because they have no other way to appraise employee ability.

they cannot judge a brilliant insight from a slacker that would have saved thousands of man-hours rushing the wrong way.

do you really want to work for such a company?

I have purposely omitted the specifics as I also have given up trying to convince others interested in my worthwhile problem. If interests align, we will naturally meet.

I usually tell them it is more important that they should take some time (6 months - 1 year) to reflect in isolation to find their own worthwhile problems, and not get distracted by fads and drama.

I was like the author of the article, then I realized that I was solving problems that were created by other peoples' incompetence. Sure they were challenging, fun but they didn't bring anything postive overall. The incompetent people are still there - causing more problems.

So I decided to find a worthwhile problem that deserved my talent. And I did. And I am now even more happy than before.

I’m from the self-replicating self-reconfigurable systems side.

The problem with this is not about making the machines but the human intervention to make use of them effectively. You really need end-to-end automation to solve this.

If i don’t remember wrongly all this started due to john deere implementing DRM in their equipment. this is a political problem because the issue can be resolved by just buying chinese equivalents and changing patent/ip law.