bumby
bumby on Hacker News
Not the OP, but we have limited attention bandwidth. For everything the person advocated we spend our attention currency on (additional podcast information, location information, etc.) we are removing it from something else. It’s not that any of that is bad per se, it’s that attention is a zero sum game and we should be cognizant of where we spend it.
I think describing it as horrendous is overdoing it. People have lived even more disconnected from devices except for the last 20-30 years and I wouldn’t call their existence “horrendous”
I think people discount a lot of the upsides of the parts they are trying to “optimize” out of life.
To your maps example, some of my best road trips are not “optimized” but take two lane roads that are out of the way. Some of my favorite trips involve coming across places we came across by sheer happenstance. I also think boredom is the cocoon of creativity. But we have all but eliminated it from our lives when we constantly have a screen within arms reach.
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should be expected to solve 99% of their tasksI largely agree with the main idea in the post, but would push back on this.
As I’ve gotten older, I notice a large proportion of tasks can be chalked up to busywork. Not in the sense that they aren’t real bugs, but they’re not fixing root causes of problems.
To your point about process, there may be a hundred tasks that stem from poor repents management or poor testing process etc. There will likely continue to be many bugs until that root process issue gets fixed. To that end, those root problems generally take much more work to solve.
So, yes, many tasks can be done quickly unless you’re doing true root cause analysis.
So your saying authority is usually necessary to make large groups run well
Do you think that is what u/pluc was doing?
People always retort this. Just change it to $3k in stock, or whatever. It isn’t usually meant to be taken literally, it’s just a reference point for his differential level of wealth.
It’s like saying Usain Bolt would run a 2:30 mile at his 100m pace. Yes, we know that’s impossible but it’s an interesting way to conceptualize how ridiculously fast he is.
Humans have an inherent loss aversion. Meaning they are more fiercely protective over what they already have above and beyond the rational value.
My past analogy for me overly protective policies was hypothesizing IBM stock was given to all Americans. This would create a public incentive to create anti-competitive policy to protect that company. I fear this move goes beyond mere superficial public support.
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It's genuinely a simple taskEh…like the saying goes “there are levels to this sh*t”
If you just want to play around as a hobbyist, sure, it can be treated as a simple task. But if you’re working on, say, space avionics it is much more detailed and complex.
I think that depends on your perspective of work, and what constitutes value of work.
Do you think all jobs of equal moral value? I think most people feel that some work is more "humanizing" than others
Even if machines could do it, it doesn’t mean they could do it at or below the equivalent cost.
I also disagree with the automation point regarding what humans should do. As we see with current AI, many creative tasks can be automated but it doesn’t make them unfulfilling human endeavors.
I’m curious where you get the estimate that humans hold “like four” parameters in their mind at once?
Right. As you said, sqlite was developed to fill a specific need, therefore it’s applied research and not basic research. (I wouldn’t even consider it research, but more development, but I’m trying to be generous to the discussion)
I took “basic research” to mean “fundamental research”. Sqlite is not fundamental research. It’s an exception that proves the rule. It was literally designed for a solving a specific problem. Somewhat ironically, it also comes from the industry that originated the term “self-licking ice cream cone”. An occasional useful offshoot doesn’t justify massive amounts of otherwise less useful busywork
I don’t agree, but understand the sentiment.
It’s not basic research in the vast, vast majority of business cases you’re describing. They aren’t Bell Labs doing novel work, they’re usually doing busy work on mundane apps. I’m not going to move our understanding of financial physics forward playing around with a social media or CRUD app. Hell, most work isn’t even testing a hypothesis other than “I hope this change doesn’t break shit”
It comes across as “everyone else’s work is trivial and low value but my, MY, work is difficult and important”. We shouldn’t be so precious.
Yeah, I see this. I think in that case, both the sales and development team are deadweight (ie self licking ice cream cones)
What about charging people for electronic books? From an IP perspective, code is just a really bad book.
A less cynical take is that sales connects the people who need a problem solved to the people who can solve it.
Isn’t that what they advertise as a “feature” on their website?
As someone else mentioned, a software-oriented solution is likely to introduce more failure modes because of the number of dependencies, updates etc.
Is the fouling functionality more complicated than one would assume? From a naive perspective, it seems like it would just be a simple photo-eye sensor
You can make even more money if you make sure you have accurate data while your competitors do not.
As long as it’s properly addressed to avoid abuse, I don’t have a problem with private companies and individual citizens both benefiting. You could easily put rate limits if you think it’s a major issue while still maintaining the free service for smaller users. I personally don’t like the privatization of profits while also maintaining the narrative that companies don’t benefit from public works.
I don’t follow. I would rather the government manage the API, like what NOAA does/did.
Depends if the accuracy is counter to profit. Not to say governments don’t have their own biased incentives, but they tend to be of a different kind.
As a counter example, the government manages and collects all kinds of weather station data. But the trend is for private companies to get contracts to privatize the dissemination of that data through fee-based APIs etc. I would rather the government provide it instead of taxpayers having to pay twice to enrich some rent seeker.
Annnd…we’re full circle. Again, DC-X was considered a successful proof of concept. Almost 40 years ago. Musk himself said SpaceX was “just continuing the great work of the DC-X project."
https://www.thespacereview.com/article/3556/1