With all due respect, you are kidding yourself if you think those cameras aren’t used for surveillance/ logging
They don’t have to be “adapted” to surveillance - they are made with that in mind
Obviously older generations of equipment aren’t included here - so technically you may be correct for old/outdated equipment installed areas that aren’t of interest
I recently signed up for an annual subscription to Kagi on their Starter plan and I couldn't agree more. Search quality with them has been great so far, and I realize their small web search and exploration features too.
I've been slowly working to find other paid services as alternatives to the free ones that I'm currently using (next big one was shifting away from Gmail and onto a personal domain for mail using Fastmail). Migrated away from Notion and using Obsidian with Syncthing running on my unRAID server at home. Generally just trying to find alternatives that aren't in the data mining and user lock in sphere and more about maintaining a positive user experience without taking advantage of their users and their data.
This. Please can we go back to the days where I simply pay for services or items instead of being trapped inside a maze of buy now pay later, credits, coupons, bonuses, gifts, tiers, etc
I am sure there have never been such a time, but I long for it anyway.
As someone who leads and has led large organizations in the past, I can tell you that believe it or not, users across different companies talk to each other and tell each other about the shitty software they are forced to use
Eventually this leads to pressure to give them newer/better tools
Sometimes, these nontechnical users are dealing with problems as real power users that technical users may not see - there really might be a better way to do something and they may have already seen it at another company or something like that
It also happens that something might be working great but looks really dated and right or not, it can give new employees a bad impression
Still another thing is of course that sometimes someone is just throwing a hissy fit and wants something for no good reason but they somehow get the powers that be to listen to them
I’m dealing with this now - everyone is going out and buying AI tools because there is so much pressure to have AI tools and everyone feels like they are falling behind if they don’t go out and buy 10 task-specific AI tools
All that is to say that it could be that those users you referred to were facing problems that you may have been too far removed from the business to understand, it’s not a knock on you, it happens. It’s also possible they just wanted something new and shiny. The pressure to do that kind of stuff is real - I can’t imagine forcing people off of slack, for example
"Eventually" often means 30 years later. Computer Associates was a pure customer abuse house for 20 years; many Oracle products have been that way for 35 years.
Enterprise software—software bought by people who don't have to use it—is as a rule abysmal. My model of how this happens is that there are large barriers to entry, and actually working well is not one of them, because the guy signing the PO doesn't have visibility into whether they work well or not. I don't know what the barriers are, but I suspect they include hiring people who already know CTOs, bribing ignorant shills like the Gartner Group, and having a convincing appear you'll still be in business in 10 years.
This is pretty sad. It sounds like emotion-driven FOMO than reason-driven decision-making. Or maybe CYA-driven decision-making ("migrated infrastructure to AWS", nobody ever was fired for buying AWS!).
I would very much understand it if the reasons given were like "We miss the following capabilities that our competitors have: ...", or "We have trouble interoperating with key partners", etc. These would be actually good reasons to pay more, and risk more.
Yeah that’s what I thought I said - that sometimes it’s legitimate need, sometimes it’s not, and sometimes it’s...complicated.
I don’t think this phenomenon is unique to software - there are people who redo their kitchens every year because they can and people who are doing it for the first time in 30 years - it’s just what it is
Yeah I think the only thing OP was passing judgement on is on the competition aspect of it, not the actual achievement of any human or non human participant
That’s how I read it at least - exactly how you put it
Kind of wild watching engineers, technologists, etc clutch their pearls
AI makes mistakes - so do people - I’ve been paid many a time to go clean up the non-AI generated code humans left behind. I’ve spent countless hours troubleshooting dumb bugs generated by humans
AI brings its own set of problems but I think some people just don’t want to hear what a net benefit it is
Post after post lamenting that no machine will ever replace the human touch is so old - people have been saying that about new technology since the beginning of time
I say embrace it - great to talk about its problems objectively and how to avoid common issues, but it’s tiresome to hear all the reasons why it’s crap all the time
I would instead love articles (you do see them here sometimes) that go over how people coded complex solutions to problems using AI and the challenges they faced along the way
Knowing where the weak points are or where it may be prone to error
If you don’t embrace it, pretty soon kids coming out of college that grew up with it that contrary to popular DO understand fundamentals are going to be running circles around the people who haven’t yet figured out how to get value out of it - while you’re out there saying it’s crap and only idiots use it, these kids are going to be moving mountains - I can’t wait to see the cool stuff people build - I don’t see the future as bleak
People forget that nature only optimizes for sexual reproduction and that’s pretty much it
In this case for example, it doesn’t really give a shit about your psychological well being or shaving years off your life because of some negative thought pattern
If being on your toes, anxious, paranoid, and always looking over your shoulder keeps you alive and making babies - then as far as the developer that nature is, it’s a feature not a bug
> People forget that nature only optimizes for sexual reproduction and that’s pretty much it
Common misunderstanding.
Evolution optimizes for system success. Not individual gene propagation. Genomes are not agents with individual goals.
Many species, but especially social animals, have numerous behaviors and traits designed to prompt communal success rather than individual survival and reproduction
That's why it's best to sow plants as close to each other as possible, as they will help each other thrive. Or maybe that leads to famine and disaster, as it usually does when people try to apply their personal political beliefs to nature.
They don’t have to be “adapted” to surveillance - they are made with that in mind
Obviously older generations of equipment aren’t included here - so technically you may be correct for old/outdated equipment installed areas that aren’t of interest