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mike50 commented on IBM CEO says there is 'no way' spending on AI data centers will pay off   businessinsider.com/ibm-c... · Posted by u/nabla9
mrguyorama · 18 days ago
Please tell me which of Penicillin, insulin, the transistor, the discovery and analysis of the electric field, discovery of DNA, invention of mRNA vaccines, discovery of pottery, basket weaving, discovery of radiation, the recognition that citrus fruit or vitamin C prevents and cures scurvy (which we discovered like ten times), the process for creating artificial fertilizers, the creation of steel, domestication of beasts of burden, etc were done through Wealthy Barons or other capital holders funding them.

Many of the above were discovered by people explicitly rejecting profit as an outcome. Most of the above predate modern capitalism. Several were explicitly government funded.

Do you have a single example of a scientific breakthrough that saved tens of millions of lives that was done by capital owners?

mike50 · 18 days ago
The transistor was funded by Bell Labs.
mike50 commented on IBM CEO says there is 'no way' spending on AI data centers will pay off   businessinsider.com/ibm-c... · Posted by u/nabla9
ericmcer · 19 days ago
The last 10 years has seen CA spend more on homelessness than ever before, and more than any other state by a huge margin. The result of that giant expenditure is the problem is worse than ever.

I don't want to get deep in the philosophical weeds around human behavior, techno-optimism, etc., but it is a bit reductive to say "why don't we just give homeless people money".

mike50 · 18 days ago
Spending money is not the solution. Spending money in a way that doesn't go to subcontractors is part of the solution. Building shelters beyond cots in a stadium is part of the solution. Building housing is a large part of actually solving the problem. People have tried just giving the money but without a way to convert cash to housing the money doesn't help. Also studies by people smarter then me suggest that without sufficient supply the money ends up going to landlords and pushing up housing costs anyway.
mike50 commented on IBM CEO says there is 'no way' spending on AI data centers will pay off   businessinsider.com/ibm-c... · Posted by u/nabla9
edm0nd · 18 days ago
Honestly I'm not even sure what IBM does these days. Seems like one company that has slowly been dying for decades.

but when I look at their stock, its at all time highs lol

no idea

mike50 · 18 days ago
Basic research and mainframe support contracts. Also they bought RedHat.
mike50 commented on IBM CEO says there is 'no way' spending on AI data centers will pay off   businessinsider.com/ibm-c... · Posted by u/nabla9
SamvitJ · 18 days ago
"They have great R&D but just can’t make products"

Is this just something you repeat without thinking? It seems to be a popular sentiment here on Hacker News, but really makes no sense if you think about it.

Products: Search, Gmail, Chrome, Android, Maps, Youtube, Workspace (Drive, Docs, Sheets, Calendar, Meet), Photos, Play Store, Chromebook, Pixel ... not to mention Cloud, Waymo, and Gemini ...

So many widely adopted products. How many other companies can say the same?

What am I missing?

mike50 · 18 days ago
Search was the only mostly original product. With the exception of YouTube which was a purchase, Android and ChromeOS all the other products were initially clones.
mike50 commented on IBM CEO says there is 'no way' spending on AI data centers will pay off   businessinsider.com/ibm-c... · Posted by u/nabla9
jimmar · 18 days ago
I don't know that I'd trust IBM when they are pitching their own stuff. But if anybody has experience with the difficulty of making money off of cutting-edge technology, it's IBM. They were early to AI, early to cloud computing, etc. And yet they failed to capture market share and grow revenues sufficiently in those areas. Cool tech demos (like the Watson Jeopardy) mimic some AI demos today (6-second videos). Yeah, it's cool tech, but what's the product that people will actually pay money for?

I attended a presentation in the early 2000s where an IBM executive was trying to explain to us how big software-as-a-service was going to be and how IBM was investing hundreds of millions into it. IBM was right, but it just wasn't IBM's software that people ended up buying.

mike50 · 18 days ago
They were selling software as a service in the IBM 360 days. Relabeling a concept and buying Redhat don't count as investments.
mike50 commented on Electric vehicle sales are booming in South America – without Tesla   reuters.com/sustainabilit... · Posted by u/breve
noosphr · 22 days ago
I don't think we've seen the end game yet.

I have an electric cargo bike. During a kids party yesterday I ran 5 different errands with it while someone with a car managed to get stuck in traffic, not find a parking spot, and miss the whole thing.

The only reason why cars are the size and shape they are is because ICE engines couldn't be made smaller. Electric engines on the other hand are small enough that I can have the chassis of a fully functioning car be light enough to lift by one man.

I think we will see small, light weight and intrinsically pedestrian safe cars made of tubes and canvas replace the heavy monstrosities we have now.

mike50 · 22 days ago
The Smart for Two existed with an internal combustion engine.
mike50 commented on Calculus for Mathematicians, Computer Scientists, and Physicists [pdf]   mathcs.holycross.edu/~ahw... · Posted by u/o4c
actinium226 · a month ago
Generally that's what it means. And also when proofs are presented, a rigorous book will go through it fully, whereas a less rigorous one might just sketch out the main ideas of the proof and leave out some of the nitty gritty details (i.e. it's less rigorous to talk about "continuity" as "you can draw it without lifting the pen" as compared to the epsilon-delta definition, but epsilon-delta is pretty detailed and for intro calculus for non-mathematicians you don't really need it).
mike50 · a month ago
This is the reason that everyone at my university said to just take the Applied version of Calculus 1 and 2 t avoid the proofs.
mike50 commented on Meta buried 'causal' evidence of social media harm, US court filings allege   reuters.com/sustainabilit... · Posted by u/pseudolus
delis-thumbs-7e · a month ago
We moderate consumption of alcohol, sugar, gambling, and tobacco with taxes and laws. We have regulations on what you can show on TV or films. It is complete misuse of the term to claim a law prohibiting sale of alcohol for minors is ‘moral panic’. It is not some individual decision and we need those regulations to have a functioning society.

Likewise in few generations we hopefully find a way to transfer the cost in medical bills of mental health caused by these companies to be paid by those companies in taxes, like we did with tobacco. At this point using these apps is hopefully seen to be as lame as smoking is today.

mike50 · a month ago
Only over the air TV is regulated by the FCC. Films and non broadcast TV are only regulated if they contain obscene content. If anything there was more regulation of film production in the past. Hayes Code etc.
mike50 commented on Meta buried 'causal' evidence of social media harm, US court filings allege   reuters.com/sustainabilit... · Posted by u/pseudolus
slaterbug · a month ago
For the uninformed, what large negative impact has Robinhood had on society?
mike50 · a month ago
Exploring unsophisticated investors. Trading on margin used to be for extremely experienced and educated people working for a large financial institution. The risk of margin trading is extreme with unlimited losses.

u/mike50

KarmaCake day115December 22, 2019View Original