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180053622
comment
byComrade Ogilvy
ember 12, 2025 @03:08AM
(#65789662)
Attached to: AI's $5 Trillion Cost Needs Every Debt Market, JPMorgan Says
The race to build out more capacity also makes me wonder if there might be an intractable continuous obsolescence problem, i.e. 3 years from now a cheap knockoff will be 99% as good as the best we have today for 1% of the price.
179846282
comment
byComrade Ogilvy
er 21, 2025 @04:38PM
(#65741568)
Attached to: Are We Living in a Golden Age of Stupidity?
With No Child Left Behind, there are funding consequences to test scores. The superintendent does not care if a student understands anything, s/he just cares about the test scores. The principal does not care if a student understands anything, s/he just cares about the test scores. The teachers do care about the students learning the material, but they have the principal breathing down their neck to improve the test scores. Guess what happens?
A neighbor of mine threw in the towel after 22 years as a kindergarten teacher. The principal was demanding what boiled down to test prep for the important 2nd grade round of testing, with the drills starting in kindergarten. My neighbor thought it was ineffective to the point of being unethical to drill 5 year olds for this bubble in test, when so many students were still mastering their letters, colors, how to write their name; at her request, she finished off her last 3 years before retirement as a 2nd grade teacher where she could wash her hands of the nonsense.
The problem was not the students or the teacher became dumber. The school system itself became dumber.
Now I am not so naive as to believe school systems did not already have significant problems. And I honestly believe George W Bush meant well, and, at the "powerpoint" view from100,000 feet up, the NCLB sounds reasonable enough. But where the rubber meets the road it has created more problems than it has solved. Emphasizing the material that is easy to test on a standard multiple choice bubble in test is not going to help most students understand the course material better.
178440672
comment
byComrade Ogilvy
22, 2025 @02:03PM
(#65537408)
Attached to: Can AI Think - and Should It? What It Means To Think, From Plato To ChatGPT
You really want to give that same problem to AI?
Want to? No opinion. But it may actually be necessary to have something akin to emotions in order achieve an AGI that will be generally recognized as genuinely intelligent.
178365590
comment
byComrade Ogilvy
12, 2025 @09:01PM
(#65516306)
Attached to: Bitcoin Hits an All-Time High of $118,000, Up 21% for 2025
The problem with gold and silver is Russia is sitting on a lot of gold, and it is conceivable Putin will cash out a big market crushing amount to save his skin.
Not predicting it will definitely happen, but the risk of a huge drop in gold and silver prices is not so small.
178364566
comment
byComrade Ogilvy
12, 2025 @05:37PM
(#65515982)
Attached to: AI Slows Down Some Experienced Software Developers, Study Finds
If the junior developers are offloading a significant portion of the the hard problem solving work to the ML, they are simply less mentally prepared to learn from mistakes. There is less of a sense of ownership. There is less understanding of the situation that precipitated the mistake.
This comes down to how the human brain works and how it learns and improves at hard things.
Now, I am not going to assert that it is inevitable that an individual junior developer is going to learn less. I would say that using ML and pushing for apparent productivity is a situation that will very likely lead to junior developers learning VASTLY less.
Likewise, it is not inevitable that high school student using ML will learn little when creating an essay. However genuine scientific studies show most such students learn ZERO -- they cannot remember much of anything about the topic when quizzed after submitting their essay.
178131025
comment
byComrade Ogilvy
21, 2025 @01:11PM
(#65465941)
Attached to: Congestion Pricing in Manhattan is a Predictable Success
In a manner of speaking, my upper middle class in laws in NYC were very often "priced out" before this change. They owned a nice car and had plenty of money in their wallet, but the hassle of time in traffic and expense of parking was unattractive compared to taking public transport into Manhattan, most of the time.
If the non-rich now have a better run public transport system, the non-rich as a group are probably much better off overall. Having to go in extra early to work because the buses run behind schedule is a cost. Being late to dinner when one was expecting to spend the evening with the family is a cost. These things add up.
So, yes, the poor probably benefit, even if the positives are not necessarily a win for every individual, as is always the case.
177818443
comment
byComrade Ogilvy
7, 2025 @06:51PM
(#65409153)
Attached to: 'AI Role in College Brings Education Closer To a Crisis Point'
Problem is using AI to produce a result without understanding the result. Everyone is already or will be using AI in their jobs in 5 years. Not getting students ready for that world is a mistake.
One has to walk before one can try to run. One has to walk before one can try to dance.
This vision of producing capable independent thinkers who meld their own knowledge with that provided by machines tools sounds great. But how does a student get there, if they never ever stand alone and show they can think at all without the mental crutches? How do you judge their own capabilities without asking them to at least sometimes put down the crutches? How do they improve themselves in their role as AI partners when they have limited or no experience they can call their own?
At some point, a few colleges will throw down the gauntlet and ban all AI assistive tech from most classes, even if this means oral and in class exam are the entire grade. And what employers will discover is 90% of those graduates are pretty competent at many things, and 90% of the students from the AI lemming colleges suck.
176564975
comment
byComrade Ogilvy
uary 27, 2025 @03:55PM
(#65199593)
Attached to: The Reality of Long-Term Software Maintenance
To build on what you just said...
I am very wary of any argument that may boil down to "I do not not really understand what is going on here, but surely it will be easy to do better with a rebuild". Such claims are often founded on broad ignorance regarding the complexity of the real underlying requirements. And what I mean by "real underlying requirements" are those yardsticks by which the success of the project will be judged by the users/consumers who rely on the software. If the PRD was woefully incomplete you can argue failure is not your fault all you want, but you are still a failure.
However...something that is very messy primarily due to a poor choice of architecture, that is a reason to be auspicious about a rewrite being better. But do not be naive about the previous point. It is so easy to make incorrect assumptions about the requirements scope that your very promising new architectural approach will not save your project from disaster.
176564821
comment
byComrade Ogilvy
uary 27, 2025 @03:33PM
(#65199543)
Attached to: Are Technologies of Connection Tearing Us Apart?
You handwaving argument that is so weak on specifics requires no refutation. The fact that you feel compelled to put words into my mouth in order to pretend to have a point is a mark against you.
176560281
comment
byComrade Ogilvy
uary 27, 2025 @10:06AM
(#65198745)
Attached to: Satya Nadella Argues AI's True Value Will Come When It Finds Killer App Akin To Email or Excel
You are right that "paradox" is not really the right word, but that is the label commonly slapped on.
It really a kind of Measurement Dysfunction, where an incorrect/misleading or fatally incomplete measurement drives counterproductive business behavior.
The underlying cause is the tendency to make linear extrapolations for all outstanding issues, where the poorly understood issues are presumed to be approximately as hard as well understood issues. Someone with a little self awareness would realize that if I understand X well and not Y, it could well be that is not random but because Y is much harder, the genuine difficulties hiding behind the cloud of my own ignorance.
176560125
comment
byComrade Ogilvy
uary 27, 2025 @09:54AM
(#65198713)
Attached to: Satya Nadella Argues AI's True Value Will Come When It Finds Killer App Akin To Email or Excel
Fair question.
I would say these were necessary but not sufficient for outsourcing jobs to foreign countries. So the 10% growth is there over the last 30 years in certain sectors, just harder to measure here in the USA.
176279719
comment
byComrade Ogilvy
ry 17, 2025 @01:55AM
(#65172313)
Attached to: Are Technologies of Connection Tearing Us Apart?
Presenting conjecture as the truth is simply lying -- that is likely to offer negative value. Presenting conjecture as an idea that might worthy of further investigation -- that has a significant chance of bringing positive value.
176106599
comment
byComrade Ogilvy
ry 03, 2025 @12:50PM
(#65138737)
Attached to: Bluesky Grows to 30 Million Users. Threads Adds 20 Million More Just in January
At face value, you are arguing for a position that I am 100% certain that no sane adult believes.
It is a matter of context.
If I have a feed whose topics include politics, of course it would be lame to curate away all opinions that differ from mine. Of course, I accept that some people will make lame choices -- that is how freedom works.
But if I am running a feed where the topic is organic farmer and someone keeps goading participants with off topic political posts, I am going to be quick to shut that down. Gentle persuasion would be best, but if that does not work other means would be applied. Anyone who is bothered by a little moderation there is simply a childish crybaby.
176097029
comment
byComrade Ogilvy
uary 01, 2025 @04:41PM
(#65135403)
Attached to: Bluesky Grows to 30 Million Users. Threads Adds 20 Million More Just in January
My SO tried Twitter and despised it yeeeeears ago, long before any of the political controversies alluded to on any of these comments. Long before Trump even dipped a toe into politics. She has strong reasons for like Bluesky.
The key feature of Bluesky is the control of your feed is in your hands, not some central authority.
Want certain topics? Go find specific tagged streams on those topics.
A troll is annoying? Block the troll (and deny the troll access to your posts). And because trolls are so easy to never see again, those childish attention getting antics used by attention whores do not work.
a couple of conservative folk I know were promptly banned for expressing their opinions.
Nobody has to listen to you on Bluesky. Your conservative friends were not "banned" from Bluesky. They were blocked out of reading and posting to certain groomed feeds that were controlled by individuals. It is called freedom. Individuals who control certain feeds may or may not be making good choices here, but they are making the choices, not a company algorithm.
Don't like it? Make your own feed for like-minded people. Take responsibility. Freedom gives you options.
Or let a corporate algorithm whore your attention to its feed, if you are not up to being responsible.
Your choice. Real freedom works that way.
176096981
comment
byComrade Ogilvy
uary 01, 2025 @04:32PM
(#65135391)
Attached to: Bluesky Grows to 30 Million Users. Threads Adds 20 Million More Just in January
It is a place for people who want control of their feed, rather than let their personal attention be whored by a corporate owned algorithm.
And because it is easy to block trolls, the childish attention getting antics common to most social media work poorly.
People who abhor civil discourse are quick to claim that civil discourse is some kind of "Democrat" thing. They may be right about that.
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