Applications like Photoshop will one day be regarded as the castles of this era. Technically impressive, but economically/politically irrelevant. While they could be reproduced at a fraction of the cost there just isn’t any point to it because there are much better ways to allocate capital.
I had a similar experience. Back then gamers were an outsized part of the online community, so if you wanted to build a site that got some actual use and engagement, building to that audience was a good strategy. And of course, it helps when you are part of that audience.
I learned about this technique from Owen Wilson’s character in the otherwise exceptionally forgettable movie “The Haunting (1999).” Paradoxically, you are the one doing them a favor by effectively giving them permission to ask for help in the future.
I interned at a company called Stratus which did hardware fault tolerant computers in the 80s/90s. I think they called it a “Pair and spare” approach, where every component had 3 copies running and comparing state every cycle. If one component’s state stopped matching the other 2, the failing component would be taken offline and the system would call home for a replacement to be fedexed overnight. I think just about every component was hotswappable too. Pretty cool, but expensive, and other architectures for improving availability, or mitigating impact from loss of availability, won out (except for a handful of exotic use cases).
In California cops, family members of cops, and related personnel (e.g. police union officials) can get a special insignia on their license. So when they're pulled over and are asked to present their license....
The FOP (Fraternal Order of Police). Also a thing in NY and NJ.
Fun facts... the insignia you put on your license or on your car also has a thing like a registration tab... The FOP says its "to show your ongoing support", everyone else with a room temperature IQ knows its "to show you're 'paid up' on your protection money for the year".
Oh, and some enterprising souls have created "counterfeit" FOP insignia and stickers and other regalia (or for those tabs), and sold them on eBay... only to have the weight of the police union's attorneys come down on them with cease and desists, etc.
It's probably for the better they're taken down. In California, and perhaps NY and NJ, too, the status shows up on your DMV records, so when a cop runs your license or your plate (and I presume plates are scanned and run automatically), they'll see the discrepancy immediately. So someone is just asking for trouble by using fake stickers, just like if they went around flashing a gang sign when they're not actually a member.
That in itself blows my mind, why on earth should someone see your membership in this order? It's not a LE agency, and in many states the FOP allows membership for retired cops.
I do agree with what you're saying, though, but the issue to me is why that's even something that should show up when your plates are run, "Oh, you're a cop somewhere, or used to be".
I don't remember if the DMV status is actually FOP, or something else, but I knew a lawyer who worked with a police union who had this status. But that's just icing on the cake compared to stuff like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_Enforcement_Officers%27_Bi...
I have a friend who's a union leader (as in actually runs a sizeable union) and, in the eyes of most people, a straight-up socialist. He convinced me public sector unions are a horrible idea precisely because of the above. I had known about the above, but I always had trouble squaring my support for the right to unionize with the problems with public sector unions. He basically gave me permission to call a spade a spade.
What about the Federal register of LEOs who have been terminated or resigned to avoid termination? Very useful concept for transparency...
... but the police unions that represent approximately 70% of the nation's police have negotiated it into their CBAs that this register "cannot be used for hiring or promotional purposes".
I think the FOP stickers are quite bad, but it's obviously not a "protection racket"; virtually nobody around here has them, and for a protection scheme to work there has to be some pressure to buy in.
To perhaps give a little insight into why this is on the front page by someone who upvoted it: I didn't realize it was so open and easy. Now I do. The Golang code simply serves as proof in how open and easy it is.
> Even at the time, the task didn't seem like "enough" for a show-the-world blog post.
Its an old (de facto industry) standard, but maybe more relevant than ever. I'm interested in moving more of my compute usage off-cloud these days, which is why this is of interest to me right now. I suspect many others feel the same way.
Might be a good time to post other tidbits of knowledge you have like this, targeted at software engineers that are starting to get more into infrastructure management. Standards that are ubiquitous and just work are awesome.
It is completely possible that the path that got them to this point was the optimal path given their goals and knowledge at the time. And wildly enough, maybe it was even the optimal path with perfect knowledge of the future as well.
I don’t think people are spending their time on more pressing issues. I think they are just are hooked on an endless stream of content that is built for addiction and is always within arms reach.
I think the idea is that if they cannot perform any cognitive task that is trivial for humans then we can state they haven’t reached ‘AGI’.
It used to be easy to build these tests. I suspect it’s getting harder and harder.
But if we run out of ideas for tests that are easy for humans but impossible for models, it doesn’t mean none exist. Perhaps that’s when we turn to models to design candidate tests, and have humans be the subjects to try them out ad nauseam until no more are ever uncovered? That sounds like a lovely future…
The reality is machines can brute force endlessly to an extent humans cannot, and make it seem like they are intelligent.
Thats not intelligence though. Even if it may appear to be. Does it matter? Thats another question. But certaintly is not a representation of intelligence.
I do love the concept, but a little part of me died
each time I came across an article with a very strong AI voice. That just feels antithetical to the ‘small web’ ethos because it obscures the ‘neighbor’ behind it.
