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Comment Re:You're obviously not a maintainer of a popular (Score 1) 40

But thats the entire point - at that point you arent scratching your own itch, you are voluntarily scratching someone elses.

If people stuck to scratching their own itches, we would either have fewer large projects or more involvement from users who are scratching their own itches.

But in the meantime, many OSS projects exist on the following flow:

1. Scratch your own itch, and make the solution public because it might help out others
2. Someone else finds your scratching to be valuable to them, so uses your solution
3. You like being involved with something someone else finds valuable, so you start scratching more of other peoples itches to increase your solutions value
4. Growth
5. You complain that other people are having their itches scratched without helping out

All of that is voluntary, and you put yourself in that situation - but you end up blaming others because thats easier than accepting that you made your own situation.

Comment Re:OMG! They had to wait for a token to arrive??? (Score 1) 159

those practices would be in the in the same school as wanting paid for the commute to work.

Employers probably ought to be required to pay for the commute, but due to historical reasons they don't generally
for ordinary employees traveling from home to the office. The employer only has to pay when the commute is between
two work locaations (from one office to another).

Similarly the Employees also get hit again, because the government treats your expenses spent on commuting
that you have to pay to get from home to work and back, as still a part of your income.
It is a bit strange that your commute expense dollars are treated as income by the government, at the same time as those dollars are necessary to earn money, and the employer does not pay you specifically for taking that commute, either.
It's an illogical situation that has been entrenched by traditions.

One of my biggest tools I use is "dreaming the solution". It's a strange thing. I
I've used it to grok solutions to very complex problems. The wife has become used to me bolting upright in bed... "Fixed another problem, hon?" It's not something I control, but it is doing WFH. (half my work is WFH) -- So, if I was paid for time worked, Is that time I needed to be paid for? It isn't an instant process either. It's like running a computer overnight to do computation intensive work.

You technically are not working when at home off hours outside employee supervision just coming up with ideas on your own, unless the employer has written a very distinct arrangement with you into a contract.

The hourly wage system is not really designed for such kind of workers if dreaming the solution is serious work.

A comparable profession would be research professors. Coming up with Ideas and Inspiration in your mind is a necessary precondition to do the work, but you are not paid to come up with ideas in your head --- you are paid for completing and publishing works. Completing the task of turning ideas into a viable Tangible product or solution of some kind is what the system compensates for - not ideas in the head, but the time and ever spent either applying them, communicating, or writing them down.

As for that which you don't write down or document in a tangible form.. How can you even prove work was done if asked to make a showing?

Comment Re:It's the inspiration that I enjoy. (Score 2) 65

Well, yes, that's exactly what it is. And I've often wondered how many avant garde artists were trying really hard not to bust out laughing.

And how many have let the approbation go to their heads and forgot that it's a joke, not the brilliant statement about the self-inflicted alienations inherent to modern society that they told an art dealer it was.

You ever see the Family Guy where Brian writes the stupidest book he can just to prove that literary circles are stupid and then gets sucked into his own success? I'd imagine that story came from somewhere.

Comment Re:This doesn't look good (Score 1) 43

We're witnessing the greatest human invention that will drive a bunch of people insanely, otherworldly rich... Or the deepest hole that will drag entire populations down the drain.

I thought the overall sales-pitch was both? A few people insanely, astronomically rich, the rest of us beyond destitute. Technology! Fuck yeah!

Comment Re:A strange inversion. (Score 1) 43

It seems exceptionally weird that people have started writing as though "AI"'s needs are just axiomatic; and that the size of other things, like revenue or suckers with available capital, must be the problem. The fact that you want something that costs more than you have isn't normally described as a 'funding gap'; it's just you having expensive tastes that you can't afford. Why are talking about there being X trillion in 'demand' when, in fact, there's only X trillion in unfunded hype because nobody has slapped a shock collar on Altman yet?

It's become this weird catch-22 for society as a whole, and it's all built on speculative fiction. The true believers really push the narrative that computer god is coming, and that if computer god isn't "born" in the United States, some other country will "own" computer god. And the United States will be losers in the final battle for ... um, let me check my notes... who gets to put the final nail in humanity's coffin. Because, computer god will mean there is no longer any need for humans, and we should all be happy to sacrifice humanity for the sake of letting the universe become something better with AI. Or some nonsense along those lines.

So, for whatever reason, this all translates into some weird fever dream for the ENTIRE investor class, not just in this country, but in every modern country, where they are literally pouring resources at this sales pitch as hard and as fast as they can because they've been sold it's *GOING* to be the future, and everybody wants to *WIN* the future. And winning will always mean replacing all work with machines, and we should all be OK with that.

If someone were to grab a group of semi-intelligent people off the street 30 years ago and tell them what's happening right now they'd think we'd cracked our collective eggs. What the actual fuck are we even doing? It's like psychosis on such a grand scale that individuals can't even begin to put into words why it's so wrong, we just feel in our bones that it is. But every argument against it is met with, "But someone else will!"

We need to pull our heads out at some point if we want to continue on as a modern society, but it seems we're determined as a species to jam it ever further up our backsides.

Comment Re:Every Bubble Pops (Score 2) 43

Sometimes it is just a correction and the market for the [product/service] continues at a more realistic pace. Other times it is a full devaluation.

If we allow this to infect every capital market, it will take everything down when it falls.

I'm honestly beginning to believe that even the AI prophets know it's a bubble, and they're doing everything they can to tie it into absolutely every single aspect of the business world they can before that pop specifically so that they can get that sweet, sweet, "too big to fail" bailout and keep right on trucking even after the pop. Sure, it may destroy the entire economic system of the world, but think of the billionaires backing it. Think how much they stand to gain whether it succeeds or not? They either become defacto masters of the universe when it finally leaps into consciousness, because they're too stupid to realize that would mean it's out of their control at that point, even if it were possible, or they get to raid the taxpayer coffers when it tumbles down and takes entire business sectors with it. It's win-win for the AI companies, lose-lose for literally every single other person living in a country that values this wave of bullshit.

Comment x32 flopped (Score 2) 21

The larger address space can be useful in some applications

Such as high-resolution image editing and high-definition video editing. Compared to a web browser, these aren't quite as amenable to splitting an application into numerous "content processes," each with their own separate 2 GB RAM.

but most applications are already bloated and having bigger pointers hasn't improved matters for this bloat problem.

For a while, Linux supported an x86-64 ABI called "x32" that limits each process's address space to 2 GB so that more pointers will fit in the processor's data cache. It didn't become popular, in part because of a need to load three versions of the system libraries: 32-bit i686, x86-64, and "x32". In addition, porting x86-64 applications to use less pointer-heavy containers gave most of the cache advantage that "x32" would have provided. This includes switching from linked lists to gap buffers (or other dynamic arrays), from B-trees to T-trees, or from pointers to indices in a pool. Rust in particular has encouraged use of appropriately sized indices as a workaround for the borrow checker.

For systems that want to access more than 2GB-4GB of physical RAM, there has long been PAE/PSE-36 that permit mapping 64GB physical address space to a 32-bit virtual space.

There's a widespread misconception that a 32-bit operating system is limited to 3 GB of physical RAM. I think this comes from Microsoft's practice of requiring drivers for 32-bit Windows Server to support PAE as a condition for certification, but not drivers for 32-bit Windows desktop. I seem to remember 32-bit desktop Linux being more PAE-friendly. PAE and content processes are how Firefox for 32-bit Linux managed to hang on this long.

Comment Re:Apple way or the highway (Score 1) 42

It sounds like the author wants a convertible MacBook, not a tablet.

There were a LOT of people when the iPad Pro launched that thought it was going to be the crossover device they had long waited for, that perfect match of iPad and MacBook. It didn't really happen, and too many are still clinging to their disappointment. I think the only folks that were truly happy with their iPad Pro were artists that liked it after the Apple Pencil and programs like ProCreate came around. Everyone else either finds it a little too crippled to be useful, or way more than they need for doing simple things. I've used one to write a couple novels, but it was really most useful as a portable screen. The real editing didn't happen until I moved the Scivener projects off to a real PC.

Comment Re:It's the inspiration that I enjoy. (Score 1) 65

I'm once again left wondering if it's all just a joke. Could it be that a small number of brilliant pranksters managed to convince the wealthy and gullible to parade around looking like village idiots or refugees from some 1980's futuristic dystopia?

It's all an elaborate avant gard art installation.

Comment Re:It's a micropurse. (Score 1) 65

Well, maybe personal wealth more than just bad sense. If $150-$230 is a trivial amount for you, then why not blow it on a trivial whim? Well, because you're so wealthy that something that cheap will invite laughter - "Oh, was your valet unwell that day?" So, "I'm so wealthy that I can throw $200 away on worthless crap to show off that I can throw $200 away, but no so wealthy that I can pay someone to carry my phone for me. Now you know my economic class without having to ask. You're welcome, f-k off."

Nobody climbing in wealth will spend money on this nonsense. Throwing $200 plus at something this silly is a sign you aren't interested in continuing to climb in wealth. This is aimed at those who want to *PRETEND* they have that kind of money to throw around. Hence, why I said bad economic sense.

Comment Re:It's the inspiration that I enjoy. (Score 1) 65

A bit of cloth inspired by... a bit of cloth.

That's high fashion for ya!

I highly recommend taking a look at the designer's work. https://us.isseymiyake.com/ While you do, ask yourself, "wha..?", "huh?", and, "what awful sci-fi movie did I see that in?"

OMG! The dancing models in ridiculous oversized swatches of fabric. I don't think I've seen anything funnier than that serious angry face stomp-dance with the sleeves flowing around like she was pike-hiking a mountain trail in a long time. That's the best laugh I've had in days. Imagine being the guy that had to explain to her, "I want you to look angry and really sell the trudge while swinging your arms around like an idiot!" I'll bet she ended up thinking porn would have been more dignified.

Comment Re: Cloud computing is one the dumbest ideas ever. (Score 1) 82

So the service worker installs the entire Grab site to you phone? Grab handles food delivery, grocery delivery, package delivery, ride sharing, financial services, etc.. That seem extremely inefficient to load every single function to your phone just because you visited their website.

Each function could be loaded the first time the user uses it. The device has to be online to query what is in stock at any given moment anyway. And I'd be interested in others' speculation about why the client side of the most widely used functions can't all fit in (say) 5 MB, which is twice the size of Doom.

You suggested a solution that Grab, Doordash, Uber Eats, Instacart, Favor, Grubhub, Postmates, etc. do not use. I pointed out maybe these companies know way more about their needs and solutions than you. Do you accept that?

I accept that, adding a clarification that I suggested the solution for the purpose of asking other people what these companies might know that I don't.

Comment It's a micropurse. (Score 2) 65

It's not a sock. It's not a pocket. It's a micropurse. A micropurse for signaling to others that you are a trend-hopper with bad economic sense.

On the other hand, it does absolutely look like a great tool for prison. Would hold a bar or two of soap, and you could swing it nice and hard at someone's face in as a mele weapon. Not sure how many prisoners can afford it though. Guess they'll just have to make do with tube socks and clip-on straps.

Comment Re:Some introspection (Score 4, Insightful) 36

I read this and was immediately skeptical. Why am I like this? What is it about AI that I find so off-putting?

We're being told constantly and continually that AI is going to replace us at our jobs. At the same time, we are being told that we need to use AI all day, every day, or we'll be left behind. Put those two things together, and you get the solidly reasoned impression that we're training AI to replace us. While at the same time being told that AI will soon do all our thinking for us. To free us from the burden of thinking, of working, of reading, of writing, of creating art, of having hopes, of having dreams, of living. Provide your data, then move out of the way fleshling. You are no longer relevant.

I have no idea why you'd find any of that off putting. Don't you want to sacrifice yourself for the AI future?

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