No it's not, it was just a nonsensical rant from Terry Davis that caught on. It was never very funny and felt like a forced meme at the time

except with a good dose of EA and Star Trek added in

I think it has to do with the feedback loop. Ikea doesn't know what you're doing and can't adjust and adapt to provide you with new instructions if you take a wrong turn.

this has some pretty extreme selection bias though. You could just as easily say

"We're not going to wear Google Glass"

"We're not going to use Blockchain for every single transaction"

"We're not going to connect every single object and device we have to IoT"

It's the same vibe as "They called <insert genius> crazy for his ideas!"

Yes, the also called lots of actual crazy people crazy. In fact the probability of actually being crazy, given people are calling you crazy, is very high.

next you're going to tell me that the guys who drive locomotives aren't engineers

Unlike the USA where anyone can be an "engineer", there are countries where words mean something and terms are protected: https://engineerscanada.ca/become-an-engineer/use-of-profess...

> there are countries where words mean something

You're using engineer in a highly context specific way; yes, in some contexts, engineering is a licensed field, but the general meaning of the word is:

> Engineering is the practice of systematically applying natural science and mathematics to design and improve systems, devices, or processes that solve problems under constraints.

Which is a word-for-word description of the sort of work (…some…) software engineers do.

(Perhaps less and less "systematically applying science" these days with the slop fest out there … but the field should be doing engineering.)

Most software "engineers" never got a degree in engineering, and even fewer ever bothered to do what is necessary to enter the profession where it is regulated.

That's why I've always described myself as an engineering graduate

Explain about mobile data vendors?

when mobile data first arrived, it was expensive and people bragged about their bills (token counts today)

with time, it became commoditized, people now have unlimited plans, and the money is made by the applications that sit on top (token generation is increasingly undifferentiated low-level infra)

This is not to say there has not been significant innovation in the time since, but it's a low margin business (tokens look to be headed this way)

I wouldn't go that far. But as we've seen repeatedly, people who have enough qualms with how these labs operate just leave. And the people who stay behind and rise through the ranks are the ones with either very little conscience or some bizarre world view that rationalizes everything.

You do realize that Anthropic was founded by OpenAI employees because they had ethical concerns about OpenAI, right?

Their ethical concerns were "OpenAI is not following Yudkowsky enough". Which is not necessary in line with ethics of the rest of us.

Because their idea of ethics is still "worrying a lot about sci-fi threats 1000 years after while discounting harm done now as less important".

And it matters.

I've never had a frame go bad that soon. Most of those are recalls where they replace the frame

Let me ask Mr Walmart to see what he thinks

Within a distance of less than 1/3 mile, we have like 3 big faceless supermarkets and like 5 (perhaps more) small greengroceries. We make a big monthly purchase at a big supermarket ("Coto") using the online page, but we don't include the fruit and fresh vegetables there (only some frozen ones). We buy the fruits and most vegetables in one of the greengroceries. This one usually has better quality and give good advice.

Yeah we actually only buy produce from the farmer's market and we have certain vendors we like more than others. I was just kidding about walmart

"Mr Walmart" hehehe. That's nice.

For a moment I really did personify that giant soul-less corporation. Good wordplay. :)

Not really. That may have been true in the past, but it would be so cheap to CNC carve or extrude or injection-mould some ornamentation. Certain materials have gotten more expensive, but I think most of modernism was driven by materials progress and a boredom with previous trends