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Comment Re:The problem with SAS (Score 1) 27

SAS has been dead for 15y; it started with R and then Python absolutely destroyed it. No one teaches SAS in universities any longer, why would they? It's terribly expensive and absolutely fucking dead.

We migrated away from SAS back in 2017 and never looked back. The only verticals still using it are heavily regulated and running long-standing legacy code that they're slowly migrating to Python.

I remember absolutely dying when they tried to renegotiate our contract UP back in 2015. I flat out told them they were dead and we were moving away from them and they told me, "good luck managing your data without us!"

Two companies and 10 years later, we're doing just fine and they are not.

Comment Re: Can't? (Score 1) 202

Against the federal government, where every agent and federal employee has qualified immunity for any actions without extremely, ridiculously specific, established precedent at scotus level? For civil damages only, because there is no right of private prosecution in federal law as ruled by scotus back in the 80s? Damages paid by the federal government which prints the money, years if not decades after the case crawls the appeals all the way to scotus?

Good luck collecting damages against the federal government, but the frontline agent has zero reasons to care - their chain of command has zero reasons to care, they are immune from accountability. Legally literally, career wise practically - they are too insignificant to be worth throwing under the bus even if things go sideways at that level.

The problem is not about legal recourse - the problem is how incentives and deterrents translate to day to day actions on the ground

Comment Re: Do not immanentize the escathon (Score 1) 227

The escathon of the techbros is slightly less concerning than the escathon of millenialist religious groups actively working to bring closer the End of Times.

You know, the literal source of that expression - not the metaphorical sense its used in politics since Buckley.

I'm not saying this startup is that type of death cult - rather training an AI based on a technology prone to hallucinations on the Book of Revelations... is a remarkably stupid "fit function" unless thats the output you want.

Comment Re: Can't? (Score 5, Insightful) 202

There is a hell of a difference in context - cops are not federal agents. if a citizen brings a civil rights case against a police department they do this in a federal court - the prosecutor does not work for the same people that may be held responsible for the damage. Thats how you get consent decrees, leadership changes, etc.

Those cases can be career ending for police leadership, and career making for the prosecutors - you can figure out the incentives and deterrents that flow down to the chain.

ICE are federal agents - they are not DOJ but work closely enough, and follow the directives of the same executive branch. Unless the agencies have both disparate policies and a lot of independence (not the case today), a zealous prosecution will be damaging and embarrassing for the executive branch in general.

No prosecutor is going to touch that without clear support from the top. Agency leadership is not going to worry about that risk if they're getting the go ahead from the top of the branch. No individual agent will see the risk of "crossing the line" ending his career, or their boss and their bosses' boss.

For a lot of people those deterrents had gone too far, enforcement had their hands tied, etc. so they don't see this as a bad thing. But we have seen what happens in towns and cities when you give local police "bonuses" and incentives for aggressive enforcement without checks.

Comment Re: Repackager? (Score 1) 26

How does the investor find the products that are viable, but not "seen" or getting traction with customers?

The general idea is not new, that's basically "cigar butt" investing strategy. But the point of tech startups is they are high risk / reward enterprises, which have not proven their worth or accumulated hard assets to justify more debt or valuation on liquidation. They don't struggle long waiting for a turnkey investor. Persistence is not seen as innovation and its cheaper to close shop and launch a new venture.

Comment My takes on this presentation (Score 1) 6

1. There are a lot of empty seats; a lot.

2. The demo wasn't live, likely due to the huge failure of an event that the Meta one was.

3. They noted that you do all of this 'hands-free', likely an intentional knock at Meta's offering.

4. The examples were...odd. Who the fuck is going to be using this to shop for a fucking rug? Come on; give some real-life examples that are IMPORTANT. None of these were.

5. The entire presentation's style, across multiple different presenters, was...exhausting...halting...jarring...and...really undergraduate level. It was almost as if they were being fed what to say in their earpieces, not from memory and not in a fluid and practiced way.

---

Personally? I love the idea of AR glasses that work well. I want to have live subtitles for humans talking to me as I'm hard of hearing and hearing aids do not work well for me, particularly in public spaces.

I want it to give me important information, respond to my environment in ways that are useful (telling me where I am really isn't that; I know where the fuck I am--tell me what I should be doing or where I should be going next, perhaps?)

I know these are early adopter level devices, but they're just fucking ugly due to their bulk.

I strongly prefer this option to Meta's simply because I don't have to do stupid fucking mime-style hand gestures, but I want this technology to be useful, now, not in 5 years. We're going to see this largely flop just like so many other AR/VR toys out there unless they make this something more than a gimmicky piece of shit.

Comment Re:Complete failure all around (Score 1) 140

You clearly do not live in the US. The legal system does NOT do anything about anything (other than child support and alimony) as outlined in a divorce decree.

And, even if they MIGHT do something, you have to wait 12+ months to get on the court's docket, paying thousands of dollars to glorified expensive secretaries in the process while you wait.

The entire system is fucking broken.

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