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Comment Re:Disintermediation in tech (Score 0) 51

You can't have a wifi device that doesn't phone home because the manufacturer keeps the price down by selling your data. While the fee per user may not be much, in aggregate it allows them to reduce prices enough that nobody can compete without doing this. It's been tried quite a few time with seversl different types of device, but the increase in price to pay for not selling your data is more than most people are willing to pay and so none of these attempts were successful. So if you want a wifi thermostat that doesn't need an internet connection you'll have to make one yourself because nobody can make a profit from making one for you.

Comment Re:Yeah, cleaning up other people's vibe mess (Score 1) 81

I just sent a bill to my client doing exactly that.
They have a junior dev who used to a hardware gal and then configured networks and somehow became a code. Boss spent lots on money to build an app that the AI basically copy-pasted all over the place. She could not cope (but then she is scared of git and refuses to write tests since they are boring) I was brought in to fix the mess

Ka-Ching!!!

Comment Re:Same old, same old. (Score 2) 30

I don't think it's entirely that. It may be for things like NASA projects where innovation is much more prevalent, but there are other factors in Government projects as a whole. I suspect there's a large element of costs and time frames being deliberately underestimated. If the true costs were stated up front it may be more difficult politically to get something approved. HS2 here in the UK seems to be an example of that. The originally stated costs and time frame were ridiculously low and have risen steeply since, but if the full price had been stated upfront it's doubtful it would have ever got approval. That may well have been a good thing, but that's a discussion for another time. I suspect (but obviously can't prove) that underestimating such things is common in Government projects across the Democratic world so that things get started, then the later rise in costs is easier to sell and often becomes Someone Else's Problem anyway.

Comment Re:Radicalize the moderates. (Score 3, Insightful) 54

It's even worse here in the UK than the US. At least your Government and President campaigned on the platform they are governing on. Nobody there can truthfully claim they didn't know what to expect when they voted Trump in. Labour campaigned on a platform of progressive change, promising to govern for the people. The second they got in power they started clamping down on free speech and banning peaceful protest. It's a coup. They don't have a mandate for this.

The problem with this specific law though is that it wasn't this current Government that brought it in. It was passed by the last lot, who are now claiming they are against it. And the Far Right ReformUK also voted for it but are now pretending they didn't. Vote for Center Left get Far Right. Vote for Center Right get Far Right. Is it any wondser that the most likely next Government is a blatantly Far Right one? We get that whatever we vote for anyway, why bother voting against it?

Comment Re: Useful If Verified (Score 1) 248

I'm as certain as it's possible to be that LLMs are not the path to more accurate AI. They will be a part of it, but statistics just doesn't work that way. They are as accurate as they will ever be. Something else is needed to correct their errors, and to the best of my knowledge nobody knows what that is as yet. These Companies keep claiming they've found it but every time their claims don't stand up to any scrutiny. That's not to say it won't happen in the near future, nobody can predict when that sort of breakthrough will happen. But equally it may not happen for decades if ever. We don't understand how human thought and reasoning works well enough to emulate it yet.

So my answer was based on the models we have now. That's the question that was asked after all. Predicting what may happen in the future is a fool's game, but right now the models we have aren't good enough for anything but the simplest of problems, and only usable on problems that a human has already solved. Using them is the equivalent of looking up the answer to a question every time, and not bothering to remember that answer or understand the subject on the basis that it will always be available to look up. This is also making predictions about the future that may or may not come true.

Your machinist is fine for as long as a CNC lathe is available but without it may be useless. That's still better than a programmer relying on current AI because that lathe can at least do every job conceivable in that domain. In the programming domain AI can't yet and may never be able to.

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