by k310 | 2025-11-24 19:33:30+00:00
I can understand, if not approve, chasing the shiny object. After all, we are approaching a new gilded age of both capitalism, where a few try to corner the market of shiny objects (that do nothing but shine) and spend and garner billions on non-products, that is: they make their money on advertising, or layoffs, and we have the party of "small government" (for those old enough to remember) bloating the government into a giant police state.

Don't jump off a bridge. There's hope that sanity can return to both arenas. That is, unless you're one who lost a job to a hallucinating chatbot, or are rotting in a detention center for having too dark skin. I am Mediterranean and I carry my passport with me at all times.

In both cases, I think that a few see the future as highly concentrated power centers, but that is entirely dystopian for everyone else. I think of it as a new "nuclear weapons race" in which "we do it or they do it and we'd better wipe them out of they will wipe us out", this time with no concern for the destruction caused, because a few oligarchs have an out, somewhere in the world. I'd definitely be looking at bookings for Argentina. The previous escape route was New Zealand, where one could buy citizenship, or Hawaii, where for some reason, someone is building bunkers there. Seasteading was a big deal, but P.T. and others lost interest.

Those who do good with their engineering and leadership skills have nothing to fear. For example, Jobs and Wozniak, who felt that technology should liberate people.

My Mom introduced me to the "revolutionary" Henry David Thoreau, who said in chapter 8 of Walden (The Village)

quote

One afternoon, near the end of the first summer, when I went to the village to get a shoe from the cobbler’s, I was seized and put into jail, because, as I have elsewhere related, I did not pay a tax to, or recognize the authority of, the state which buys and sells men, women, and children, like cattle at the door of its senate-house. I had gone down to the woods for other purposes.

But, wherever a man goes, men will pursue and paw him with their dirty institutions, and, if they can, constrain him to belong to their desperate odd-fellow society. It is true, I might have resisted forcibly with more or less effect, might have run “amok” against society; but I preferred that society should run “amok” against me, it being the desperate party.

However, I was released the next day, obtained my mended shoe, and returned to the woods in season to get my dinner of huckleberries on Fair-Haven Hill. I was never molested by any person but those who represented the state.

I had no lock nor bolt but for the desk which held my papers, not even a nail to put over my latch or windows. I never fastened my door night or day, though I was to be absent several days; not even when the next fall I spent a fortnight in the woods of Maine.

And yet my house was more respected than if it had been surrounded by a file of soldiers. The tired rambler could rest and warm himself by my fire, the literary amuse himself with the few books on my table, or the curious, by opening my closet door, see what was left of my dinner, and what prospect I had of a supper. Yet, though many people of every class came this way to the pond, I suffered no serious inconvenience from these sources, and I never missed any thing but one small book, a volume of Homer, which perhaps was improperly gilded, and this I trust a soldier of our camp has found by this time.

I am convinced, that if all men were to live as simply as I then did, thieving and robbery would be unknown. These take place only in communities where some have got more than is sufficient while others have not enough. The Pope’s Homers would soon get properly distributed.—

“Nec bella fuerunt, Faginus astabat dum scyphus ante dapes.” “Nor wars did men molest, When only beechen bowls were in request.”

“You who govern public affairs, what need have you to employ punishments? Love virtue, and the people will be virtuous. The virtues of a superior man are like the wind; the virtues of a common man are like the grass; the grass, when the wind passes over it, bends.”

end quote

I don't quite get the Sun analogy. I worked at Sun as a sales engineer in the educational market. Sun made a big commitment to research, having created the first affordable scientific workstation, and even passed on the opportunity to make routers, which Unix systems are superb at doing. Cisco thanks you, Sun. At the time, cheaper hardware was becoming available, and bidding always required corporate subsidies. I left after a while for a startup, and both companies feel off a cliff. Life's like that sometimes.

AFAICT, throughout it all, Sun was led by engineers who checked everything out before selling it, the only goof was not including ECC memory in some critical systems (that can be discussed separately)

Sun was ready to cash in on cheaper educational products, with the purchase of Cobalt, and I was going to be our ambassador for those products, when my boss pulled me off the appointment to spend a week on a big university proposal, which I knocked out in a day. He didn't realize that I had tons of experience writing proposals for aerospace.

I guess this proves, at least to me, that conscientious engineers should lead companies in new pursuits, as opposed to megalomaniacs, but OTOH, make entirely crappy managers, especially when new to the position, and unable to read people like they read specs off a product brochure. People are harder to "read" but are likely to improve with some simple TLC, trust and encouragement. YMMV. My experience only.

I see some fundamental flaws in AI, namely that it is always looking backwards, and unable to deal with unforeseen things, which is what life is all about. Again, for another discussion, and others have weighed in on this already.