partial_accumen

We don’t know what they are identifying. We give it input and it gives output. What exactly is going on internally is a mystery.

Counterintuitively that’s also where the benefit comes from.

The reason most AI is powerful isn’t because its can think like humans, its because it doesn’t. It makes associations that humans don’t simply by consumption of massive amounts of data. We humans tell it “Here’s a bajillion sample examples of X. Okay, got it? Good. Now here’s 10 bajillion samples we don’t know if they are X or not. What do you, AI, think?”

AI isn’t really a causation machine, but instead a correlation machine. The AI output effectively says “This thing you gave me later has some similarities to the thing you gave me before. I don’t know if the similarities mean anything, but they ARE similarities”.

Its up to us humans to evaluate the answer AI gave us, and determine if the similarities it found are useful or just coincidental.

So Vivek is actually a soybean. It all checks out.

Perhaps, but he’s also immune to the effects of Glyphosate (Roundup) herbicide. How many of the other GOP primary candidates can claim the same. We journalists asked those campaigns how they match up against this Ramaswamy credential, the responses were mixed:

• The Trump campaign: “Trump’s well known immunity to Glyphosate was the sole reason for the Deep State’s highly and unprovable coordinated campaign to steal the 2020 election.”

• The Haley campaign “We will neither confirm nor deny Haley’s associations with Glyphosate vulnerability, but we’d like to note that you will likely find historical Haley’s statements at different times both support and condemn Glyphosate, so which every statement you need to produce a positive piece of journalism we can provide it. Just ask. Please. We need some positive press. So, like, if you’ve got any ideas, we’re all ears over here. Really! Keep in mind, it has to resonate with our largely racist and misogynistic base to pass the primary.”

• The Christie campaign “What the f*$# are you talking about? How the hell did you get this phone number?”

• The Desantis campaign did not respond. Phone calls to one phone number at the campaign just went to Voice Mail. We left voice mails that went unanswered. Another number phone number at the campaign office was answered, by a gentleman claiming no knowledge of the Desantis campaign reporting he recently got the phone number but could offer us “$60 for an eighth”. Attempting to get a response we went to a total of three different listed campaign offices. Two of them were newly minted Spirit Halloween stores, while the third appeared to be a homeless encampment with the residents burning “Desantis for President” signs and Tshirts for light and warmth.

Because the calculation was that RFK would pull more votes from Biden not Trump. They’re seeing that that’s not the case so now he’s a liability that needs to be burned.

Thats my point. Former Trump voters that are swayed to RFK Jr won’t be swayed back to Trump because of accusations of sexual assault by RFK Jr. Trump has legal judgements and even personal admissions that he did it and his voters don’t care. Why would they care if RFK Jr has even a fraction of that? How does this burn RFK Jr to former Trump voters?

The whole article is a clear hit piece now that he’s gone independent and his votes are more likely to come from Trump’s pie slice rather than biden’s, he’s no longer the darling of the right.

The right doesn’t seem to have any problem with electing men that sexually assault women. Trump himself has been found liable for it recently, but even before he was elected he admitted to “grabbing them by the …” well, you know.

I don’t see how a candidate that has just evidence suggesting sexual assault is a downside to conservative voters. If anything it might increase RFK Jr’s support among conservatives.

Well, as of 2009, payment for health insurance premiums with both genders.

Here’s what I predict the GOP will eventually end up with

• Hunter Biden served in the United States Department of Commerce in 1998.
• Impeachment is defined by “The president, vice president, and all civil officers of the United States are subject to impeachment.”

So even though Hunter Biden hasn’t been under the rules of impeachment for 25 years, the GOP will find some obscure law saying that Hunter Biden is still bound, and therefor subject to impeachment. The GOP will push through the impeachment of Hunter Biden.

The headline will be “Biden Impeached!”, and then the GOP will take a victory lap for accomplishing nothing. C’mon, you can even hear the talking points and revisonist history the GOP will use:

“As your GOP elected representative to Congress I vowed to bring the Biden Family to justice and promised to impeach Biden. I’ve now delivered on that promise to my constituents. Biden has been impeached! If you donate now we can continue our work of rooting out this corruption from our halls of government.” - some future GOP rep probably

(just in case its not obvious, I don’t actually expect the GOP to try impeach HUNTER Biden)

The Affordable Care Act also dictates that insurers charge men and women the same premium costs. As a young dude, I remember paying $23/paycheck for health insurance while a young woman my same age at the same company for the same coverage under the same plan was paying $147/paycheck. I had no idea that there was a difference in premium costs, nor how big that disparity is.

Yes I pay more for health insurance now, but I’m totally fine with that. We can’t burden 50% of the population that are women with absurdly higher healthcare costs in an equitable society simply because they are women.

Does the pension plan deposit directly into his prison commissary account?

I’m not in Salesforce work but its likely this part:

"but it seems like a lot of his clients want to customize the crap out of their implementation and not do things in the prescribed manner. "

When you’re consulting your ethical duty is to inform the customer of the informed consequences of those choices (using your technical expertise). The client then says “do it anyway” or “we don’t thinks X consequence will happen/be that bad so we want it done”. Then you do it as ordered, and collect your high pay. When the consequences occur exactly as you said they would, you communicate the amount of effort (money) it will take to make it as workable as it can be now that the client chose to go down this path against your advice.

This is one of the reasons consulting is profitable. You get paid to fix the same thing multiple times. Nowhere is this unethical as long as you’re honest with the client and use your skills to warn them beforehand when they are making risky (expensive) choices.

also what it used to cost, and what it does now, so you can skip the article for other reasons instead:

“YouTube’s annual subscription plan in South Korea was initially 10,450 won ($7.95 USD) per month for the web and 14,000 won ($10.65 USD) per month for Android and iOS.”

I could have done that and called into question your naive understanding of financial transactions. However, I wanted to keep from insulting you, but it looks like you’ve removed that opportunity.

Let’s look at that same sentence with one subject swapped out for charger.

Would you want a requirement that a 4 pump location with no cover is staffed 24/7 just to provide gas for a car and stick it in and pull a trigger? Thats a crazy high cost to avoid the not-frequent damage you’re trying to address.

Right, its an unnecessary waste of money that 49 of the the 50 states in the union have done away with.

but I guarantee if someone’s working there, those things aren’t getting broken while they’re on the clock and their job is threatened.

…and…

… but… again… they don’t take care of their shit. None of them do

You’re suggesting one way to address broken chargers. What you’re suggesting is an unnecessarily expensive way. Ask yourself this: if employing an on-site worker is the only way to prevent broken chargers, how is it that the largest charging network of DC fast chargers (Tesla Superchargers with 1,246 fast charging locations ) not only doesn’t use an on-site worker, yet also has the most reliable chargers with the highest operational uptime?

Do they simply make a better charger? Possibly, but I’ve still seen an occasional non-working stall. Out of 20 visits to a 20 stall EV charging location I might see one stall not in full operation. So the Supercharging network clearly has technicians that are keeping things repaired, and it doesn’t take someone sitting on a stool at the location for at least 8 hours a day to make this happen. So you say none of the charging companies take care of their networks, except the largest network operator of DC fast chargers does.

For whatever reason, folks seem to think that because EV is new, it’s not subject to the same shitty human behavior we see everywhere else where no one is forced to provide adequate staffing.

Adequate staffing doesn’t mean an on-site worker sitting there everyday waiting for a charger to break to report it. That seems to be the solution you’re championing.

Gas is treated like a store…

Rightfully so. Gasoline (and diesel) stored in large quantities can be dangerous. Leaks into soil cause large problems of contamination. Contaminated fuel can cause damage to consumers vehicles. These are storage and product purity concerns for private gas station owners. A commercial distribution network for volatile liquids is a safety issue. Electricity has neither of these.

None of that applies to electricity where we pipe it into our homes everyday. Why would you treat electricity transport the same as gasoline transport when they don’t have the same dangers and don’t behave the same?

Until the rules FORCE companies to take care of shit, it will be the same as slum lords do. Bare minimum to set up, get as much cash as they can reasonably suck out of people stopping to charge, and then letting it go to shit once any sort of subsidies fade away.

You’re misinterpreting the problem. I get it. Its complicated, but you’re seeing the same symptoms as I am but you’re attributing the wrong reasons to why those symptoms exist.

Lets start here:

Who owns the biggest EV charging networks (by DC fast charging locations) in the USA?

1. Tesla Superchargers - owned by Tesla. Tesla has an incentive to maintain a high quality charging network so that people will feel comfortable buying Tesla cars and know they can travel long distances reliably. I think Tesla has been successful with this.
2. Chargepoint - each charger is owned by hundreds of individual businesses. To my knowledge Chargepoint corporate doesn’t own any of the deployed chargers. Each individual owner is responsible for maintaining their Chargepoint charger. Alternatively, the owner can contract with Chargepoint corporate to maintain the owner’s charger for a high fee. This is why you have some Chargepoint chargers that are very well maintained, and others which are always broken: Many different owners each with their own goals and resources.
3. Electrify American - Owned by a company forced to exist because of VW’s emissions cheating scandal. This company has a mandate to set up chargers, but zero incentive to maintain them.
4. EVgo - originally created by NRG Energy for regulatory compliance. The company has changed hands a number of times since creation. It looks like their current motivation is to make money only through selling EV charging electricity. Essentially the pure retail charging play. They do a decent job of maintaining their chargers, but they also have some of the highest fees for charging. I personally consider them a “charger of last resort” because I know I’ll pay more at an EVgo charger than any other retail charger.

So two of the 4 were created by forced regulatory compliance. Yet the most successful of the 4 in terms of reliability is the one that has an incentive to have working chargers available at the most places all the time with no regulatory requirement.

Don’t think that I’m a proponent of laissez faire capitalism. Quite the opposite! Put regulations where they are needed. Perhaps there are some needed yet in EV charging, but forcing charging companies to staff them like gas stations is not it.

Of course, these weren’t schemes or a rip off because it was ‘legal.’

Now you’ve got it. One was unethical but legal (most of the housing crisis), Madoff was breaking established written law. Only Madoff was the Ponzi scheme.

Bernie was doing the same thing as everyone else in 2008, but his clients were all rich folks.

CITATION NEEDED

Lots of companies were using legal but sketchy as hell financial instruments and over inflating safety on investments where lots of people lost lots of money. Bernie was different. He was creating fraudulent statements saying you had money in your account with him for years and only paying out with what other new investors put in; classic Ponzi scheme.

What other large Ponzi schemes at the time are you saying were occurring?

I honestly wish it wouldn’t.

Would you want a requirement that a 4 charger location with no cover is staffed 24/7 just to plug in a car and press a button? Thats a crazy high cost to avoid the not-frequent damage you’re trying to address.

You can find numerous videos all over YouTube already showing fucked up EV charging stations.

Thats because owners don’t maintain them. Gas pumps break frequently too, except there is staff there to report it immediately, and other staff to repair them within a day or so.

There’s a two post EV charger I am close to in a place I have been visiting for years. About 3 months ago one of the two become non-functional. The other is still working so its not usually a big deal but a couple of times I haven’t been able to charge it. As of right now, the one is STILL broken. Is this because people are tearing it up? No, its because the owner has acknowledged it isn’t working, and simply is choosing not to fix it. This is sadly pretty common for non-Tesla chargers. Charging companies don’t maintain their equipment. This will change with time and demand.

Self service vehicle fueling is going to happen anyway in the decades ahead when EVs become the norm.

Yes, because there’s no union there to bargain for better pay, bonuses, more time off work, and so forth. Tech is a new industry where workers have more bargaining power on an individual level because expertise is so sought after.

We’re in agreement. The individual has all the power to bargain for themselves better pay, bonuses, more time off work, and so forth. A union in this case not only adds no value, but subtracts value because it dilutes the benefits across more people. There is certainly a good chunk of dead weight in IT, those that let their skills stagnate or don’t put in effort to the team. I’ve worked with a number of them. At one point I’ve personally been one of them before I understood it. Much of the individual bargaining means gaining resources that, if spread evenly, would go to some of that dead weight. Keep in mind, even dead weight in IT pays pretty decently. Those folks aren’t going hungry. In some ways its one of the few partial meritocracies left, though merit here is not only technical skills but soft people skills combined.

We’d likely also have more time for tech debt, as unions increase certain types of innovation.

Again, this is mostly an organizational benefit, not an employee one. If the employer doesn’t heed the warnings of the employees that tech debt is increasing and becoming a business risk to the organization, the employee doesn’t have to fall on their sword to try to save the employer in spite of themselves. The employee jumps to another employer which pays more (or requires less hours). The new employer may have equally or possibly even more tech debt. So the situation for the work is unchanged but the employee’s salary and benefits are increased. This is the mercenary culture of IT I was referring to.

Why would we assume tech workers in a very profitable industry wouldn’t be able to get away with even more?

Because those at the far end of skilled are getting less to level out those that are less skilled or less committed. Ultimately it IS a zero sum game.

Keep in mind, many IT skills can be very “flash in the pan” or trendy. One year you’re in extremely high demand able to demand top dollar, and others your skills are out of market favor and saturated with IT workers with the same skills that aren’t in demand and what you can earn with what you know is drastically reduced. It requires the constant prognostication of what going to be in demand next, and the effort to learn those skills to be skilled up if those skills go up in value for a time. Its a huge gamble. You bet right sometimes can demand a kings ransom for more hours than you can bill. Other years you bet on the wrong skills and have learned something nearly worthless or so short lived it wasn’t worth the effort.

Savvy IT people (and other industries that work the same) understand this cyclical nature and save during the fat years to be able to live okay during the lean years.

You’re making good arguments why a company employing IT staff (software devs, engineers, architects), but where is the argument to the benefit of the worker themselves in this case?

I’ve seen turnover rates of 1-2 years for some of my favorite people I’ve worked with.

This is a benefit to the worker. They’re leaving because they got a better paying gig or less work/fewer hours for the same amount of money.

I do appreciate Google listing the carbon consumption per GCP datacenter when deploying a new workload. It allows customers to make low carbon choices for compute.

I’ve been a union guy for 25 years and I will go to my grave not understanding the fierce resistance to unions by my X gen and the boomers.

Certain specific professions like IT, and its mercenary culture, don’t fit well with the collective bargaining model. For many other professions/careers, a union can be a great tool for workers.