It seems to me like the "generation" use case of ML is much more promising than the "prediction" or "classification" use case. It's tough to predict things in general because our universe is fundamentally uncertain. How is some computer going to predict that some mugger sees a target at some random spot and decides to mug them? But the progress in text to image and text generation really blows my mind.
Readit NewsIAmWorried commented on ML is not that good at predicting consumers' choices statmodeling.stat.columbi... · Posted by u/macleginn
there kind of is nobody else.
One thing we've figured out about representative democracy is that name recognition amongst voters is critical. In fact, amongst floating voters, it may be the single most important factor. The well known figures in the Democratic party are either too divisive or too low wattage to stand a better chance than a Biden re-run.
If it comes down to Trump vs Biden Pt2, it might come down to who resists mental degradation best over next two years
I've heard chatter of Michelle Obama running, which I think would certainly make for a close race.
IAmWorried commented on Meta slashes hiring plans, girds for 'fierce' headwinds reuters.com/technology/ex... · Posted by u/samizdis
> Realistically, there are probably a bunch of people at the company who shouldn’t be here
If a company has both
1) A lot of dead wood
2) No better strategy to deal with it than 'turning up the heat'
Then this suggests a profound failure of management and leadership. I'd start cutting the dead wood there.
Eh, sounds like most of big tech TBH. When you're dealing with a money faucet situation it can be tough to tell what's a good decision and what's a bad decision since either choice will result in increased profits. That is, until the fed crashes the party.
IAmWorried commented on Driverless robotaxi fleet paralyzed for hours in San Francisco thelastdriverlicenseholde... · Posted by u/georgecmu
You've nailed the dirty little secret of the AV industry. Everyone's safety model is underpinned by the ridiculous assumption that a human will be (a) reachable with very high reliability over shitty cellular networks; (b) able to correctly interpret complex situations with extremely limited information; (c) able to resolve safety-critical situations by making planner adjustments, without direct control over steering and acceleration.
Wow. I had no idea that these things had such fundamental limitations. I'd feel a lot less safer using one now, to be honest. If you had to estimate, how long would it be before AVs would be able to do all their calculations locally? Is that something that's even under consideration at the time?
IAmWorried commented on Unity is laying off hundreds of employees protocol.com/bulletins/un... · Posted by u/pjmlp
These sorts of sterile PR responses ...
> "As part of a continued planning process where we regularly assess our resourcing levels against our company priorities, we decided to realign some of our resources to better drive focus and support our long-term growth. This resulted in some hard decisions that impacted approximately 4% of all Unity workforce. We are grateful for the contributions of those leaving Unity and we are supporting them through this difficult transition.”
... are dehumanizing, and serve only as a legal smoke screen.
I really wish that layoff announcements acknowledged the pain of those people let go, and the pain of those people who will remain who have to take up the slack under a tighter fiscal belt.
This best expressed by George Carlin's quote on "soft language"[0], which stated; "Americans have trouble facing the truth, So they invent a kind of a soft language to protect themselves from it"
Pretending it doesn't hurt doesn't help. Let go of the euphemisms.
[0] https://www.thoughtco.com/soft-language-euphemism-1692111
First, it was "you're fired". That became too harsh so then we moved on to "layoffs". But that seeped into the popular lexicon too, so nowadays we say "your role has been impacted". I wonder what the next evolution will be. Maybe "we are enabling you to help the company cut costs" or something.
IAmWorried commented on FDA to order Juul e-cigarettes off U.S. market wsj.com/articles/fda-to-o... · Posted by u/kgwgk
Now we're being told what we can and can't do in random ways in America and it's a really strange form of hypocrisy. From talk about regulating the size of big gulps to mandating paper straws to legalization of marijuana and the banning of smoking products, this country is going insane.
We still live in a country where illegal drugs are prevalent in all settings of life. All of the moral legislation doesn't change the underlying narrative that the people we task with serving this country are not doing their jobs right, and simply voting does not fix that because of the deep seated agendas of non-tax-paying corporations and individuals influencing our political systems.
It's not about Juul products, it's a hostile bid to take their market share...
There are literally 20+ other vape product companies, and many other non-legal suppliers that will step in regardless of what laws are passed, many adding harmful chemicals to products as well, while the FDA is not focused on making vape products better and safer. It's meant to be simple nicotine, that's been around since America was inhabited by native cultures. What's next for elimination? Brands of Alcohol?
Are we going to limit blood alcohol content to 2 sips per outing? Who is driving all of this? Name the specific people pushing these rules, and then follow the paper trails, and you'll find that in a country where health care companies give major contributions to legislators to keep the market deregulated that it's all about money, not our best interests, and we fund it all every year, mandatorily, when we pay taxes...
Everyone is getting prodded and pushed around by the legislators we're mandatorily funding. I'm not advocating protest or overthrow of government and corporations at all, but the ones we have in place are not helping us by any means right now, and they're overreaching into our privacy and lives and driving policy based on agendas and profit at our expense. People smoke mostly because they are stressed and burdened within their lives, reduce public financial and emotional stress factors first, then they'll have no excuses left for smoking.
We need to be more vocal about the harm in moral legislation, even if smoking is eliminated, we still don't have free health care for being citizens, and we pay an extraordinary amount in taxes every year with cost of living that threatens to kill most well before smoking ever could.
People will always find ways to screw themselves up. Trying to ban this or ban that is like playing whack a mole. It ends up being a contest of who can shout the loudest to gain the government's attention, which isn't fair and also hurts the economy. The only answer in my opinion is deregulation + strong family values to help raise kids right.
IAmWorried commented on A subreddit dedicated to busting shoplifters inputmag.com/culture/loss... · Posted by u/not-now
Copying my other comment here. There definitely is a moral issue
>busting people who are shoplifting items that they either need to survive or items that they can sell to survive to say, pay rent, because our capitalist system has shit on them and left them with no options
Property rights should not be above human life. Full stop.
I'll let the other commenters do the debunking of this extremely stupid point you made - just want to point out that this is so clearly some shitty troll account. 5 months old and all the comments are idiotic crap like this.
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IAmWorried commented on The end of the world is just beginning for shipping gcaptain.com/end-of-the-w... · Posted by u/mooreds
This is probably an unpopular opinion: it pains me to see the manufacturing industry decline in the US. I don't really mind paying $300 for a pair of shoes. Yes, it will be expensive, but then I'll just buy fewer pairs. In return, more people get decent jobs, or so I hope. And no, I'm not talking about just the so-called "low-end" manufacturing, but also the high end. Indeed, how can we even grow "high-end" talent if we don't have a place for them to start their career? The average age of workers in the remaining few ship manufacturers is well over 50. The cost of producing things in the US is just way more expensive than in China, even if we factor out labor cost. When covid started, both GE and BYD set up factories to produce masks. GE's assembly lines are semi automatic, if not manual, and their machines looked archaic. In contrast, BYD's assembly line was fully automated and shiny.
I mean, can a country as large as the US be really competitive without manufacturing? I just can't see how services and virtual stuff like FB alone can be essential.
The only people who this is an unpopular opinion to are the rich fat cat execs who only care about their profits and share prices. Pretty much everyone I know thinks it was a bad idea to outsource manufacturing to less than friendly countries. Thanks, Krugman.
IAmWorried commented on The end of the world is just beginning for shipping gcaptain.com/end-of-the-w... · Posted by u/mooreds
I've read a few of Zeihan's books, and it seems like the author of this article is missing the point. Zeihan says, again and again, that basically the ONLY reason for the US pulling away from globalization is the new shale oil boom, which makes the country energy independent. My layman's understanding is that under the Biden administration regulators have hobbled these shale wells in the hope of achieving an energy "transition", whatever that may mean. So we aren't really energy independent after all, at least not until the transition is completed. So I'm not sure how the conclusions of the article really make sense, notwithstanding the many references to how you could get rich quick by betting on these outcomes.