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MangoCats

@ MangoCats @feddit.it

Posts
2
Comments
1001
Joined
1 yr. ago

  • 'Agentic AI' is current industry buzzword - but what does it mean and should we be cautious?

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  • “Hey siri create me an e-commerce site”

    You should try it. If your e-commerce site is simple with a lot of similar examples out in the wild to point at, I believe the latest agents actually can do such a thing. You'll just have to give them access to your financial account details so the site can process payments to you, you understand? While that's a joke, it's also true. You need to be able to check what the AI has done to be sure it's doing what you want.

  • 'Agentic AI' is current industry buzzword - but what does it mean and should we be cautious?

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  • I started working with AI in earnest a few weeks ago, I find myself constantly making the distinction between "deterministic" processes and AI driven things. What I'm mostly focused on is using AI to develop reliable deterministic processes (shell scripts, and more complex things) - because while it's really super cool that I can ask an AI agent to "do a thing" and it just does what I want without being told all the details, it's really super un-cool that the tenth time I ask it to do a very similar, even identical, thing it gets it wrong - sometimes horribly wrong: archive these files, oops I accidentally irretrievably deleted them.

  • Windows 11 could actually become the same kind of mistake Sony made with the PS3

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  • In some, limited, circumstances... jobs done using a computer should be done by the computer, with human oversight. Instead of having a manager who handles a "typing pool" of 30 wives and mothers and girlfriends with all their personal issues and needs beyond the time they spend typing information from forms into the computers, three managers who oversee that the data is being ingested into the system correctly could do the same work, with a similar error rate - probably different kinds of errors but a similar rate, for much less effort. That scales all up and down the range. Instead of 1000 line welders assembling car bodies, a team of 20 can install, maintain and oversee the operation of welding robots. And now, those 20 welding overseers can be reduced to 5 who just make sure that the computer visual inspection devices are doing their jobs properly.

  • Windows 11 could actually become the same kind of mistake Sony made with the PS3

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  • Them being cheap means consumers no longer value them - which is what the wars are all about: value translated to sales and profits. Price is a function of what consumers will pay, which has little or nothing to do with what a thing costs to make.

    If consumers went with HDDVD you would be saying the same thing about them.

    Absolutely. BluRay was Captain of the Titanic, and is going down with the whole physical media ship. Vinyl LPs are the lifeboats.

  • Windows 11 could actually become the same kind of mistake Sony made with the PS3

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  • I'll agree that Apple is the big red nose on a much larger clownshow, but... between Microsoft and Mac, I'll just say that I've got a request in with IT for a MacBookPro when funding becomes available. Some of that is because our IT has crippled Windows beyond its usual hobbled state, which is bad enough, and they haven't hit the OS-X image as hard. But, even so, bone stock Windows 11 on a modern desktop i7 still has HORRIBLE performance issues that OS-X generally doesn't suffer from. Intrusive virus scanning, intrusive file indexing, intrusive cloud backup... Apple does these things, but generally does them a bit better (though the clowns do mess up plenty along the way.)

    I've used Ubuntu as my desktop for the past 15 years, it's a different kind of clownshow - one that I prefer to the other two choices, but it has definite flaws of its own.

  • Windows 11 could actually become the same kind of mistake Sony made with the PS3

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  • Blu-ray appears to have presided over the premium segment of the video-disc market just as it went down the tubes entirely. These days you can buy used DVDs 2 for $0.99, and Blu-Ray for $1.99 each - super 4x premium market they've cornered there.

  • Windows 11 could actually become the same kind of mistake Sony made with the PS3

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  • And all the corporations are looking to put all the AI in all the places... because: magic free labor fairy dust, and all that.

  • Is the FOSS world in danger of a corporate takeover, thanks to pushover licenses?

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  • without money involved

    Without money involved the court system is useless. The whole point of legal action around contracts is to determine what happens when the agreements of contracts have been broken.

  • 'Agentic AI' is current industry buzzword - but what does it mean and should we be cautious?

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  • turn down the randomness to get more consistent outputs for simple tasks.

    This is a tricky one... if you can define good success/failure criteria, then the randomness coupled with an accurate measure of success, is how "AI" like Alpha Go learns to win games, really really well.

    In using AI to build computer programs and systems, if you have good tests for what "success" looks like, you'd rather have a fair amount of randomness in the algorithms trying to make things work because when they don't and they fail, they end up stuck, out of ideas.

  • 'Agentic AI' is current industry buzzword - but what does it mean and should we be cautious?

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  • Mechanical key based door lock cylinders are "Agentic AI" - they decide whether or not to allow the tumbler to turn based on the key (code) inserted. They're out there, in their billions around the world, deciding whether or not to allow people access through doorways WITHOUT HUMAN SUPERVISION!!! They can be easily hacked, they are not to be trusted!!! Furthermore, most key-lock users have no idea how the thing really works, they just stick the key in and try to turn it.

  • Is the FOSS world in danger of a corporate takeover, thanks to pushover licenses?

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  • The whole legal/courts system is pretty dysfunctional at the low end of the economic spectrum (like: license fees that a group of 10s of developers might charge...) We have a shared well with our neighbor, put there by the previous owner of both properties. When he tried to sell to a previous potential buyer, they tried to hammer out a legal agreement around the shared well, and it just wasn't feasible. The cost of anything approaching a legal agreement about sharing maintenance of the well cost more than putting in two new wells.

  • Is the FOSS world in danger of a corporate takeover, thanks to pushover licenses?

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  • We didn’t want to control or manipulate people, using our code to extort a particular behavior out of them.

    The FOSS community, and even the community of developers on single large FOSS projects, is large and diverse... The royal "We" doesn't really apply at all, even in the case of Linus and the kernel - sure, he's a clear leader, but he's hardly in control of the larger community and their wants.

    I think the current state of open source licensing is much as it should be... MIT has its place, as does GPL, and if we're going to pretend that intellectual property is about protecting creators, then it's the creators who should get to choose.

    In the world I live in, intellectual property is a barrier to entry that's primarily used by organizations with a lot of power (money) to prevent others from disturbing their plans of making more money. MIT seems most appropriate for individual creators to assure that that world doesn't come crashing into their bedroom with CDOs and lawsuits. GPL is "cute" - but I think most practitioners of GPL licensing don't have any clue how far out of their depth they are if they should ever seek actual enforcement of their self-declared license terms. That's not to say GPL is toothless. It gives small players a tool to amplify the trouble they can make for those who would violate their license (primarily mode of violation being by use of the code so licensed.) But, other than making minor trouble for the bigger players, thus discouraging the bigger players from entangling with them, GPL isn't going to "make" the bigger players do much of anything other than stay away.

    GPL does shape the community, it has its effects, I just get tired of hearing about the specific immediate legal language of it, because that's far from the actual effects it has.

  • Is the FOSS world in danger of a corporate takeover, thanks to pushover licenses?

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  • Of course, shit-for-neighbors can make all kinds of trouble out of anything. I was thinking more along the lines of MIT free nuts, take 'em, eat 'em, sell 'em, just don't sue me over 'em. As opposed to GPL "free nuts," must be consumed on the property. If you take a dump while you're here be sure to bury it at least 3" deep along with any TP used. Bring your own privacy screening.

  • Is the FOSS world in danger of a corporate takeover, thanks to pushover licenses?

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  • In the corporate world, they have a lot to lose. So, they have lawyers - expensive lawyers - who, in theory, protect them from expensive lawsuits. One of the easiest ways to stay out of lawsuits over GPL and friends is to not use GPL software, so... that's why it's radioactive. Just having the parasitic lawyers review possible exposure is hellishly expensive, better to re-develop in-house than pay lawyers or even begin to think about the implications of entering into an agreement with a bunch of radical FOSS types.

    It sucks, but it's also how it is. Some corporations (like Intel) do heavily support and contribute to FOSS, when they feel like it.

  • Is the FOSS world in danger of a corporate takeover, thanks to pushover licenses?

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  • GPL has certainly failed time and time again, openly in the case of FFmpeg and their clones all over Eastern Europe and elsewhere. FFmpeg made a lot of noise and resorted to "public shaming" mostly because the courts weren't working for them. And they have a very visible product... so many GPL licensed things are lurking inside proprietary products where they'll never be seen.

    It's like putting a license on COVID to prevent it from spreading... it just doesn't work in the real world.

  • Is the FOSS world in danger of a corporate takeover, thanks to pushover licenses?

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  • The point of all of this is that you really should, no matter what it is.

    That's like saying: I have a pecan orchard, I like my trees and I don't mind if people collect the nuts as they walk by. Oh, but the point is: you really should, those are your nuts, you pay the taxes on the land, you care for the trees, YOU should be the one to sell them, not give them away to some randos passing by.

    Yeah, sure. You do you.

  • Is the FOSS world in danger of a corporate takeover, thanks to pushover licenses?

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  • without my consent or their assuredly begrudging reciprocation. This should not be controversial. The GPL accomplishes this

    In legal theory. In corporate practice, MIT and similar "pushover" licensed software, especially FOSS libraries, is more readily adopted by corporate users - and through this adoption it is exercised, tested, bug reported - sometimes the corporate trolls even crawl out from under their rocks and publish bug fixes and extensions for it. By comparison, GPL stuff is radioactive, therefore less used.

    Then we can talk about how successful you are likely to be in enforcing GPT on any large entity, particularly those in foreign countries.

  • Valve's new Steam Machine and Steam Frame and implications for Linux

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  • I'm just wondering about basic functionality - can it play through without a crash or is it still Windows only for a smooth UX?

  • Valve's new Steam Machine and Steam Frame and implications for Linux

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  • But, what's the user experience playing the MYST humble bundle on it?