dopylitty

This is what people don't realize.

At a certain scale you need tons of people to operate a cloud environment, especially if you take advantage of all the features.

Sure for tiny players the devs can be forced to both write the business code and manage the infrastructure but at a certain scale that just doesn't work because everything becomes non-standard and the amount of time to manage it takes up all the time the devs should be spending on writing business related code.

So then you spin up an infrastructure team. And it won't just be one either because the person creating your VPC/network design won't have time to also be working on your backup design or your database design or your image pipeline or your CI/CD.

So at the end of the day you end up with all the same teams you had in managing your datacenter infrastructure (network, storage, OS) except now you're paying way more for the infrastructure itself and the people cost more because they are not just specialist in their area but have to be specialists in cloud platforms as well.

Whether the correlated problems are the dietary guidelines, microplastic tainted junk food, the terrible healthcare system, or communities designed to rely entirely on cars for transportation the root cause is the way the economic and governmental systems in the US are set up to allow for-profit enterprises to control our lives.

The only real fix is to take back control from the companies and remake society into one where health and wellbeing are prioritized over profit.

Seriously. Next up from the Post an article about how great and important leaded gasoline is.

For once a bankruptcy not directly caused by private equity.

Although if you look at the history of “Tupperware Brands” there is definitely some financial fuckery going on which I’m sure took away from producing actual products.

To be honest forcing your employees into the office looks really desperate. It makes me think Amazon is in real trouble if they can’t create a website remotely and need to physically force employees into a big building to try to get them to produce.

That’s not good for public image and if I were a shareholder I’d be planning for an exit.

I can’t tell if this applies to AWS as well but companies that have gone on all in on cloud hosted infrastructure should probably come up with an exit strategy pretty quickly given Amazon’s general flailing.

You really don’t want your important systems being underpinned services run either by disgruntled employees about to quit or by the bottom of the barrel types who have no choice but to stay even when treated like this.

They're tracking movements. Apple has a doc on how it works here[0]

>Apple Watch tracks movement with triaxial accelerometer signals, which capture coarse motion of the body as well as fine movements including motion associated with breathing. Apple developed an algorithm that uses the accelerometer time series data to classify Breathing Disturbances that occur during sleep tracking, which are temporary interruptions in the breathing pattern.

> A total of 1499 participants were enrolled, with 1448 completing the study. The sensitivity was 66.3% (95% CI: 62.2% to 70.3%), and the specificity was 98.5% (95% CI: 98.0% to 99.0%), demonstrating that the feature meets the design objectives to confidently identify sleep apnea while minimizing false positives.

>It’s important to note that the specificity was 100% (95% CI: 99.7 to 100%) for the normal category, indicating that all participants with a “positive” algorithm result had at least mild sleep apnea. Also, sensitivity was higher in the severe category at 89.1% (95% CI: 83.7% to 93.2%), indicating that the large majority of severe cases were identified.

0:https://www.apple.com/health/pdf/sleep-apnea/Sleep_Apnea_Not...

The other thing that should be done is to create a uniform federal test that computer driven cars must pass before being allowed on the streets. The test would have a large variety of environments (fast, slow, construction zones, farmers markets) as well as conditions (wet, dry, light, dark). The test would also measure how the computer driven car reacts when one or all of its sensors are damaged. Only after passing the test should a car be allowed on the road. Any software or hardware changes would necessitate a full re-test.

None of this "well the manufacturer says it works so let's just let 'er rip" that has already gotten people killed.

And yes human drivers should have to pass the same test in the vehicle they intend to drive.

Vox is not “left leaning”. It’s funded by right wing businesses like comcast[0] and constantly puts out right wing concern trolling like this piece and the other examples cited here.[1]

0: https://fair.org/home/comcast-owned-vox-explains-the-great-d...

1: https://www.google.com/search?q=citations+needed+vox+site%3A...

This focuses on communications after hours but there's an even more egregious thing that impacts many who work on computer systems.

The companies decide the computer system must be up 24/7. Ok, fine. In the past things that needed to be running 24/7 were run by three shifts of workers. Companies could decide if the cost of 3 shifts was worth whatever value the system provided.

However, somehow with computers it's different. If there's a problem with a computer after hours the companies just call whoever was working during the day and expect them to fix it. Or they set up "on call" where you're explicitly expected to work all day and also all night.

They get away with this in the US because the meager workers rights laws in there (FMLA) explicitly exclude salaried computer workers from getting overtime[0]. So if you're a salaried computer worker and work all night because some system went down you're working for free and the companies love that because they don't have to do the calculation of whether having the system available is worth paying someone to watch it.

So take the stress from receiving an after hours email and multiply it by 100x because now you're not only expected to reply to the email but to drop everything and fix the computer.

This is also why companies that depend on computers need so many foreign workers living locally on temporary visas. They can be abused this way but can't fight back without risking losing their jobs and being deported.

Either IT workers need to unionize or the US needs to rewrite labor law to prevent this kind of abuse.

0: https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fact-sheets/17e-overtime-co...

As far as I know eye tracking isn’t available in VisionOS[0]

This article snippet is behind a paywall but it seems like it’s talking about the eyes that are projected on the outside of the device.

So basically it’s no more of an exploit than just tracking someone’s actual eyes.

0: https://forums.developer.apple.com/forums/thread/732552

I know of a doctor who has to write weekly reports and has been using an LLM to generate them. I’m sure the people reading them are using an LLM to summarize them.

It’s such an incredible waste of resources and time.

I’ve said it before but I have a picture I took a decade ago of this beautiful meadow I rode my bike past with the morning sun shining through the tall grasses. I remember the birds flying around and insects buzzing. That meadow was torn up and a big concrete data center surrounded by tall fences was put in. All so the tech bubble could go on.

This is such a good point. We rely way too much on technical solutions.

A better approach is to have hyperlocal offices where you can go to do business. Is this less “efficient”? Yes but when the proceeds of efficiency go to shareholders anyway it doesn’t really matter.

Distracted pedestrians are a red herring propagated by the auto manufacturers[0].

When studies actually look at the issue deaths are not caused by distracted pedestrians but by poor road and vehicle design[1].

> Contrary to their portrayal as reckless rule-breakers, distracted pedestrians were more likely to cross with the light and use the crosswalk. Similarly, while distracted walkers did indeed take longer to identify gaps in traffic, this is a form of compensatory behavior that reduces risk.

>The authors point to two alternative culprits for the rise in pedestrian deaths: distracted driving and SUVs, both of which are incredibly deadly and have become more prevalent over time.

>Similarly, the risks to pedestrians were lowest in tech centers (San Francisco, New York, and Seattle) and in college towns (Madison, Wisc.). Instead, pedestrian risks were highest in several metropolitan areas of Florida that are known more for their inhospitable streetscapes than their distracted walkers.

0: https://citationsneeded.medium.com/the-great-neoliberal-burd...

1:https://bloustein.rutgers.edu/distracted-pedestrians-may-not...

Actually the politicians are doing nothing which is forcing the agencies to try to act which is inevitably going to be struck down by a Texas judge with stock in the big 3 auto makers.

NYT is a pretty solidly right wing organization (eg [1] and [2]) like most for profit media outfits in the US. I suspect they’ll react like any other for profit business. Previous leaks have shown this to be the case [0][3]

0:https://www.theguardian.com/media/2022/feb/01/leaked-message...

1: https://citationsneeded.libsyn.com/news-brief-boudin-recall-...

2:https://citationsneeded.libsyn.com/news-brief-the-battle-ove...

3:https://actionnetwork.org/letters/new-york-times-stop-union-...

> In all, sixty-five overweight and obese males (n 26) and females (n 39) were recruited onto this randomised, cross-over design study. Descriptive characteristics of participants are displayed in Table 1. All participants were non-smokers, physically inactive (≤2 h/week of exercise over the previous 6 months), weight stable (±2 kg for the previous 3 months) and not taking medication known to affect metabolism or appetite.

I don’t see anything about the backgrounds of the participants. Of the people I know it seems the people who grew up eating rice are more satiated by carbs while those who ate more meat centric diets are more satiated by meat.

Nutrition is super complicated though. There are effects of genetic background and the way digestion is impacted by the microbiome which is itself dependent on the person’s early life. There are hormonal and microbiome feedback loops that affect digestion and feelings. There are immune system changes triggered by obesity that don’t quickly recover even with weight loss.

The basic science around it is super interesting and valuable but taking action based on any one study is not likely to have a positive outcome.

Pedestrian education is an industry sponsored way to put the blame for tragedy caused by bad road design and bad car design onto individuals.

People wouldn’t need to step off the curb if roads were designed to allow them to cross more than once every mile. They would need to step into traffic if roads had frequent under or overpasses rather than just zebra stripes.

There’s a great podcast episode here [0] covering the history of companies shifting the burden of safety from themselves to individuals and convincing regulators to do the same.

> “Listening to music was not associated with higher crash risk.”

> “‘Distracted’ pedestrians were more likely to cross with the light and use the crosswalk.”

> Pedestrian risks were highest in several metropolitan areas of Florida “that are known more for their inhospitable streetscapes than their distracted walkers.”

0:https://citationsneeded.medium.com/the-great-neoliberal-burd...

Inflation is caused by companies deciding to raise prices. It has nothing to do with government. Whether there's more or less money out there it's still the decision of the people running the company to raise prices or not.

"Inflation" is really the magical bogeyman invented to make people not ask questions about the companies actually raising prices and to instead think everything is controlled by the government. Pay no attention to the CEO and shareholders on their yachts.

Countdown until a Texas judge with stock in a corporation decides not only that the FTC can’t issue such statements but that consumers should be forced to buy whatever product the corporation is selling.

> No matter how badly Amazon treats its workers, we all keep shopping there

This doesn’t have to be true. I cancelled prime and haven’t shopped at Amazon in years.

> We should be putting less trust in software.

This is the conclusion I've come to as well. Nothing critical should be solely software dependent. Software will fail and critical systems should be able to function without it.

It doesn’t matter how easy a job is to learn. What matters is how many people are willing to do it and how important it is to society. Trash collection may be mostly driving trucks and throwing bags in the back but very few people are willing to do it and society grinds to a halt without it so those folks should be making way more than some Facebook coder who adjusts ad pixels all day.

The problem is the US economic system is so backwards it values the ad pixel pusher more than the trash collector. At least until there’s a communicable disease going around and suddenly the trash collector is recognized as an essential worker and forced to come to work while the ad pixel pusher “works” from home.

On the other hand traceroute isn’t real[0]

0: https://gekk.info/articles/traceroute.htm

In other words in the US economic system it pays better to sell ads than to try to produce an actual tangible product.

That says more about the economic system than it does about Intel.

> But completely eliminating planned on-call rotations is not part of the goal.

It certainly should be. You want your app supported 24x7 then pay for three shifts.

If the government won’t make it a law then IT workers can make it a demand when they unionize.

This only makes sense if emergencies are strictly defined. For instance "don't come to the office there's a bear inside" is an emergency. "the crud app you support fell over" is not an emergency. If the latter is an emergency to the company they should staff for 24/7 support, not rely on exploiting people during their off hours to provide free support.

It would help if people stopped calling it "AI" and called it what it is which is enterprise document search, a thing that has existed forever and which these new tools are just poorly controllable version of.

Would you enable a search indexer on all your corporate data that doesn't have any way to control which documents are returned to which users? Probably not.

It's a known issue with SharePoint going back years and has various solutions[0] such as document level access controls or disabling indexing of content.

If we called it what it is though the C-levels probably wouldn't even care about it. They never cared about enterprise document search before and certainly didn't "pivot" to enterprise document search or report on the progress of enterprise document search implementation to the board.

0: https://sharepointmaven.com/3-ways-prevent-documents-appeari...

In my experience calls rarely have a definite end. "Quick" calls often turn into 30 minutes or an hour of the colleague talking about things unrelated to the issue they wanted to discuss originally.

In the office I've had people sit at a desk next to me and just talk at me for more than an hour about themselves. Trying to politely end these kinds of conversations just results in a brief blip in their monologue before they go back to it. I've even had to get up and walk away after someone wouldn't stop talking at me.

For whatever reason there are many people who are incapable of thinking about how they're using other peoples' time. The only defense is asynchronous media like chats or emails where you aren't forced by social politeness into continuing to be disrupted.

Except they barely work for cars[0] and don’t work at all for pedestrians[1]

0: https://newsroom.aaa.com/2022/09/braking-bad-automatic-emerg...

1: https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a26469713/iihs-testing-suv...