ByronCinNZ @ByronCinNZ@mastodon.nzoss.nz

Kiwibank - your new "send an SMS" for bank transfers/payments 2FA only works if you actually *send the txt*. So far, several requests have resulted in no txt, and I need to make this payment.

Instead, most people place their blind faith in a few of the largest (and, surprisingly, the most technically inept) corporations the world has ever seen... I'm convinced that faith is completely misplaced.

In the past, it was a matter of professional pride for every worker to *master their tools*. Today, in the computer age, though, that expectation has been dashed. Almost all workers depend on their computers for their livelihood, and 95% are almost completely ignorant of everything about them. This has created an incredible, unprecedented liability - the pervasive digital ignorance is like voluntarily disabling our entire society's immune system.

@ByronCinNZ @z428 @alexjgriffith @aadil This is why I say they need to get together in order to be large enough to share infrastructure and knowledge, but not so large that they're no longer connected to the people they want to serve.

It's not the easy way, but I think we need to seriously consider the possibility that the current promise is a lie and has never really worked. It's not like there's some inherent human right to be able to build a sustainable business on cheap ads or paywalls.

@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.

@enkiv2

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOmdkN6MOwU

True

@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.

https://nyti.ms/2YTMfcx

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