Call it cynicism but I think humans just prefer things to be implicit. I've been annoyed by how people do not want to be specific, but then rant about how someone did not understand exactly what they wanted.
A certain CEO says that we won't need programming languages because you will be able to program AI systems with natural language. Well, the problem with natural language is not that we do not have the tech, it is that natural language is too imprecise. People will, again, end up being dissatisfied by the output of AI systems and blame it on the tech, while the problem just remains that as humans we kinda suck at being explicit about what we want.
> Call it cynicism but I think humans just prefer things to be implicit.
I agree with the implicit part, but not with the cynicism. Most human-to-human communication has implicit details, simply because there would otherwise be too many "obvious" details that need to be communicated. Suffice to say, humans tend to misunderstand each other when different assumptions are held and things can go horribly wrong.
People like mathematicians and programmers, who are used to formal thinking, know that you have to be rigorous in your statements. We understand that details and edge cases matter. And it can be frustrating when other people don't understand that you need to look at the full picture instead of a very rough sketch.
> I've been annoyed by how people do not want to be specific, but then rant about how someone did not understand exactly what they wanted.
I'm also annoyed when this happens. But then I say: This is what you requested. I can only work with the information that you provide to me.
> I'm also annoyed when this happens. But then I say: This is what you requested. I can only work with the information that you provide to me.
I think it depends on the attitude of the person giving feedback. I generally find that digging into why this isn't what the user wanted is more illuminating. Tell me a story and I'll gain context and get more of the implicit details right going forward.
The thing is, most of the time, you can actually have both. You just have to spend the time to build systems that way.
To use the example from the article: spreadsheets could use strongly-typed columns, but guess the column type automatically based on the values entered. When things go right, it'd be just as easy as today, but if things go wrong, you always have an escape hatch: with a little more work, you can manually specify the column type. Problem solved. That gives you the increased productivity you want for the happy case, without the frustration of trying to find a workaround for the corner case. This kind of approach needs more architecture work at the beginning of a project, but it's almost always feasible.
That being said, I think your frustration is warranted, although I think it's much more pervasive than tech. At its core, I think the problem is that, in your example, the CEO and the programmer are having two different conversations without really realizing it. The CEO wants a problem solved, but the programmer wants the tools to solve the problem themselves. The CEO thinks that ML should be able to solve their problem, but the programmer sees that ML as a tool has serious limitations, and won't help solve under-specification. And then they both end up talking past each other.
It seems that a lot of (at least western society) is built around the idea that when someone asks for help, what they "really" want is, metaphorically, to be given a fish for dinner, instead of learning how to fish. That's the CEO in your example; the presumption is "I want help" means "solve my problem", not "make it easy for me to solve my problem myself". It's one of my biggest frustrations, because it inherently robs you of agency and in many cases can be downright condescending -- for example, when I was working as a mechanical engineer, there were shop floor guys ignoring the tolerances I specified on my drawings because they assumed I was over-specifying them, because they lacked the context of the rest of the design, and weren't willing to sit down to hear the bigger picture. But when I had to send the parts back for re-work, they acted like it was my fault.
Anyways, this is all a really long-winded way of saying, I think this is largely a social problem, not a technological one. But I don't think it's inherent in humans; I think this is something we've learned as a part of our culture.
For humans it’s primarily a form of data compression. We rely on a shared understanding and ability to detect inconsistencies and ask.
This breaks down when someone starts talking outside of that shared understanding (say, on the internet) but do not realize more context is now needed.
If only there was a trade, a group of educated professionals with specific training in the use of language to describe a desired outcome. We could call them "language engineers" and regulated them via state associations meant to protect the public from charlatans.
I wouldn't call them language engineers as they don't engineer languages. Such an individual would be more accurately described as a Language-Astute Worker Yielding Exact Responses.
Agree. I think marketing teams killed RSS, they wanted you to "subscribe to our newsletter" and send you what _they_ thought was useful. You wouldn't do that if you already had RSS, so that needed to go.
I'm confused why people can't also send anything they want over RSS. Unless you are directly scraping their website for updates, I thought they could publish anything to a feed.
Yup. I pickup my orders from Domino's quite regularly and it the tracker is reliable. The only thing that does happen is that they sometimes do mark it "Ready for pickup" while someone still needs to take the pizza from the oven and put it into a box. So I sometimes wait a minute seconds at the counter for that to happen.
Your statements are correct but they aren't relevant to parent's point. Blocking an email provider has absolutely no positive effect on the safety of the citizens. While it has the potential of a lot of negative effects, like the inability of other innocent citizens to use their email account. It is the same thing when the GoI went ahead and blocked pastebin.com because of a bunch of pastes.
> Blocking an email provider has absolutely no positive effect on the safety of the citizens.
If all the available platforms allow for data sharing and tracking on judicial orders, then a perpetrator does not have a safe way to give threats, without the risk of being identified.
In my opinion, this is a deterrent in itself, the fear of getting caught.
Ah my bad, I should have explicitly mentioned that merely a threat does not constitute a safety issue enough to justify a broad ban. If such a ban could prevent a real attack, then sure.
Yes, personally even I would feel disturbed and anxious when somebody threatens me, but it would be too broad to classify mental disturbance as a safety issue. I am saying this having survived an episode where my father was threatened for life.
> Blocking an email provider has absolutely no positive effect on the safety of the citizens
I agree that it's a half assed patched, but if a platform isn't responding to litigation or law enforcement requests, there is always the chance of bad actors weaponizing that loophole.
And it's not like Proton AG hasn't been linked to terror attacks. The perpetrator of the Bataclan Massacre used Protonmail to communicate with handlers, leading to the French government to require email platforms like Proton AG to honor French law enforcement requests [1].
Upvote this. Can't edit my previous comment which misread the wired article linked or can @Dang just delete the offending comment for incorrect/misleading info?
It was a temporary block due to an overly broad denylist the Indian government put out in 2013. Pastebin ended up getting unblocked in India in the same time period as well.
> I dunno what grand strategy is supposed to compete with that.
Agree 100%.
In its current state I find Firefox simply _better_ than Chrome - mostly due to how well integrated Multi-Account Containers are. Like you I am puzzled by exactly what is Firefox missing that it is a deal breaker for people. Is it just the occasional hiccup when using a Google/MS service? Some people mention 4K videos not playing properly - that sounds like an acceptable reason. But surely that still isn't a good reason for not being able to have Firefox as one's daily driver.
I have the same suspicion as you, Chrome's marketshare is simply because Google services are so popular and they direct you to Chrome, and that the most popular mobile OS (Android) runs Chrome by default.
Yes, if the developers want to use Apple's App Store, they should pay for it, that is not the problem. The problem is that developers are forced to use Apple's App Store instead of another distribution platform. But now Apple is saying "Its okay if you want to use another distribution platform, but you still need to pay us". Why is that okay? (And no, an iPhone itself is not Apple's platform, once the user buys the phone, its their platform).
Once the user buys the phone, they own the physical device, but that’s not all they are receiving. They also receive software and services. They don’t own those - they have a license for them.
I think what many people are missing and you're pointing out is that this is a licensing issue. It's no different from Unreal Engine taking a 5% cut of every game sold or Sony taking a cut of all PS games. Developing using iOS libraries and tools requires developers to accept the licensing terms put forward by Apple. There is a lot of precedence for Apple's terms and they are better than most others.
If this is an issue we want to address, then we need software/ip licensing in general to be changed.
You are right, and I don't think the DMA applies only to Apple. If PS does not allow anything from other sources, then Sony will have to change too.
The Unreal example is wrong though, there are other engines to choose from.
> The Unreal example is wrong though, there are other engines to choose from.
There are other phones to chose from also. This is where the rub is. Apple has already successfully argued in the US that the phone and the software and app store are a single entity. Breaking them apart does not make sense.
Instead of paying 5% for the Unreal engine, I only want to pay 2% when I use someone Unity's networking stack. And, if Unreal isn't happy about that, I will petition the government to force them. It may sound odd or absurd, but it's still just a ip/software licensing agreement.
BTW, any PS game sold digital or physical owes Sony a licensing fee (~15% last I saw). So even if Sony is forced to allow other digital stores on the PS, they will likely still demand a licensing fee for each game sold. Where the game comes from is irrelevant, except with physical sales falling under right of first sale doctrine.
> There are other phones to chose from also. This is where the rub is.
Why do certain people always always fall back on this lame response that's not even applicable.
> It may sound odd or absurd
It's indeed absurd. Unity and Unreal Engine are not gatekeepers in any sense of the word. They do not control any market, they simply sell software and services to developers. Game engines are dime a dozen and games switch between different engines surprisingly often.
This regulation addresses business dealings between Apple and developers working with their platform. Developers have a completely free choice of using Unity or Unreal Engine, it doesn't make a lick of difference to anyone except developers and artists working on the game.
Developers do not have a choice of which platform their customers are using, the developer can't "choose Android" because they need to reach users on iOS which makes up half of their customer base.
Not just in the app market, but in any market - hardware products, physical businesses, government services. All of those need to play by Apple's rules if they want to survive. This is what makes Apple the gatekeeper, they have the power to affect technological development of the entire world.
If Apple decided that apps couldn't use NFC, this could potentially hold back modernization of the entire European public transit system. If Apple blocked apps from using certain bluetooth features, this would sink their competitors in the accessories & IoT market.
It's not acceptable for one corporation to essentially hold the world hostage, hence this regulation.
Holding the world hostage is exactly what this is and it already happens, most notably with browsers and how Apple drags their feet on PWAs, making them an non-viable alternative to apps. Consumers don't even notice, because progress which can't happen... doesn't happen, and there's nothing to see. Even if they knew, the app simply doesn't exist and there's nothing they can do about it.
The DMA calls this out, explicitly:
> Gatekeepers have a significant impact on the internal market, providing gateways for a large number of business users to reach end users everywhere in the Union and on different markets. The adverse impact of unfair practices on the internal market and the particularly weak contestability of core platform services, including the negative societal and economic implications of such unfair practices, have led national legislators and sectoral regulators to act.
As for:
> Developers can certainly choose Android to develop features that Apple prevents them from doing.
You can't release something like a public transit app only on Android and you know it.
A certain CEO says that we won't need programming languages because you will be able to program AI systems with natural language. Well, the problem with natural language is not that we do not have the tech, it is that natural language is too imprecise. People will, again, end up being dissatisfied by the output of AI systems and blame it on the tech, while the problem just remains that as humans we kinda suck at being explicit about what we want.