ByronCinNZ @ByronCinNZ@mastodon.nzoss.nz
@ByronCinNZ Yup. Imagine if the NZ gov't funded the development of a #FOSS gun licensing tracing system... and then told the US - "here, this worked for us. You can just use it. It's Free". And it would also give NZ some nice tick marks for its Digital 9 Charter membership... https://www.digital.govt.nz/digital-government/international-partnerships/the-digital-9/
@ByronCinNZ also, ultimately, the big corporates like SAP aren't actually worthy of their scale... that's true of all the corporates. They use market distortions, supported by gov'ts, to achieve their scale, not their greater competence.
I particularly like this:
<< Programming language design is part of user interface design. Not only that, but user interface design is part of programming language design. A user interface is a language with which a user explains their intent to the computer, and a user interface that makes decisions that would not be welcome in a programming language is broken, because a user interface is a programming language. >>
And following hot on the heels of the last one... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6vvpQEaRdk
Great analysis of what algorithms (I appreciated not using the term AI) do to us via social media. From one of my most favourite political journalism sites - TPM.
"Our political conversations are happening on an infrastructure built for viral advertising, and we are only beginning to adapt."
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/cafe/algorithms-bias-internet
@alcinnz @uranther Information is like fixed capital in that way: high initial investment to create it, low ongoing cost to use it. Companies that invest in large-scale fixed capital like railroads and utilities usually find themselves forced down to break-even because they can't move it elsewhere if they don't like the price the market (or government) is offering them. The same funding model works for both, too: subsidize its creation (somehow), make its use free or cost-of-delivery.
when a company advertises a "machine learning" or AI approach, we should ask them
- what is the model you're using? no, I won't accept that it's proprietary info.
- what is your training set? is the data complete? no, quantity is not good enough. where are the blind spots and how have you consulted with experts in the field to correct them?
- have you received peer review? If not, there's the door. come back when you have.
At a recent meeting where Min of Ed staffers were present, between sessions I heard them talk about wanting to do a "what is blockchain" course... *sigh*. I told them that blockchain was the least of their worries. It's definitely mostly hype. Same with AI. The Min of Ed would do better by giving staff enough tools to understand how their tech policies are needlessly making a couple generations of NZ learners hostages of monopolistic foreign proprietary software corporate...
Wittgenstein on Rules & Private Language - YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32pKC-iqnjc
No. 2 on the list I find interesting. It needs some nuance. Technical language is debt but necessary debt. Too often we are mandated to use "plain English" and end up sacrificing the professional precision and clarity needed for the work. Tech speak is there to solve this problem. But if the tech speak is not well governed, terms are not well defined, then it can cause as much harm as good.
Here are the summarised recommendations from Tom MacWright's article -
1 - There is no shame in saying a project is not ready. Recommend paths that work.
2 - Treat new bits of jargon like technical debt, because that’s what they are.
3 - set realistic goals and make realistic statements.
4 - set long range goals, define the mission
Been focusing recently a great deal on documentation - the achilles heal of FOSS imho. This article about IPFS by Tom MacWright has some good comments on this (as well as a good summary of the difficulties facing large FOSS projects like IPFS).
The Epilogue has some especially good points.
https://macwright.org/2019/06/08/ipfs-again.html
I mean, if you consider how underwhelming Windows 10 is despite the 10s of $billions spent on it, compared to Linux, with an insignificant fraction of that spent on its development, which is now the most widely used computing environment on the planet (it's true, even if few realise it). Seems a no-brainer if gov'ts a) want sovereignty, and b) want to cooperate as they claim to want to - see https://davelane.nz/nz-and-d5-charter
