The Idiots in Government and Facebook!

 We have seen floods in New England and mid state New York. To get emergency info the Government agencies use Facebook ONLY! But if you do not have a Facebook account you are out of luck. You are denied critical life saving information! 

It only makes sense if you understand that Government workers believe that everyone they serve must think the way they do. They never think outside their comfortable box. Secure in the belief that they and they alone know the truth! 

Software developers fall in the same class. They never think "what if", they assume that in their own self conceit and arrogance that their approach is the only one and all must follow!

Think the folks in DSA! 

AI Redux

 When one considers LLM versions of AI one thinks of asking a question and getting an answer. I recall back some fifty five years when at MIT I went to scan through journals looking for some info and to my surprise the journals disappeared. The head of the library informed me that they were now all on microfiche, a convenient was for the library to store them. She also lectured me on the efficiency to me rendered by getting exactly what I asked for!

 I had a bit of a fit. I explained that by having the whole journal I had the opportunity to randomly come across something I would never have asked for. Those random occurrences all too often led to new insights and expansions of what I was looking for. Rigid and delimited searches, such as what LLM AI preforms fails to provide those fortuitous occurrences. I would say that half of what I wrote was based on such random reads, something I was not looking for but which bounced to the fore.

LLM AI are for the most part  rigid. You ask a question and the algorithm provides an answer based upon your question and the data it has been fed. The loss of random insights is grossly absent.

The Incompetence of USPS

 The Government has not been known for any form of competence. From now not having enough munitions in the middle of a war to of course the USPS. Socialists beware! My latest example is the delivery of a tiny package from my local Post Office. It arrived there this morning. However they will not deliver it until Thursday at the very best, three more days, likely five. It is just an envelope!

Worst yet, try dealing with the IRS, they hold all the cards! 

Of course there is the NYC/NJ transit mess.  Take a train and you may go somewhere but often where you wanted to go. 

The theme of Government run enterprises is gross incompetence. Hint, that is the heart of socialism. 

 

Who are these people?

 The NY Times has a piece written by a psychologist. Now I have taken one psych course in all my decades of academic pursuit and in my opinion this craft is not science. At best it is some amalgam of various tests from whence global assertions arise. The author asserts:

Data centers should be held to the same environmental standards as any other project. However, according to the researcher Andy Masley, giving up a lifetime of interacting with large language models would make a negligible difference in emissions compared with avoiding one trans-Atlantic flight or switching to a hybrid car. By his estimates, sending a prompt to ChatGPT is about as carbon-intensive as running a clothes dryer for a single second. Communities have long tolerated wasteful projects that take up tons of space, consume lots of natural resources and serve the whims of wealthier people. They’re called golf courses and backyards. The 14,000 golf courses across the United States used nearly 550 billion gallons of water in 2020, and the Environmental Protection Agency estimated that Americans use over three trillion gallons of water on “landscape irrigation” each year. No one knows for sure how much water data centers use in total. One reasonable estimate from Brian Potter at the Institute for Progress put it at about 100 billion gallons in 2023. Even if the number of data centers increases tenfold, we may still end up using less water on artificial intelligence than we use to keep our grass springy.

Unlike the author I am on the one hand an engineer and on the other somewhat expert in medicine. I have studies water tables and the like, sound levels and their negative effects on humans and finally power systems and usage and related pollution. 

Data Centers violate all norms in these three areas. 

This author appears in my opinion to be one of these leftists who want everyone to live in NYCHA housing and have no back yards. Now I do not play golf, but am surrounded by golf courses. Input minus output is net accumulation. Rain and watering are inputs, watering and human use if output. Golf courses have excellent percolation, namely what comes out goes back in, less evaporation. But evaporation is made up by rainfall.

 These arguments are regurgitation of climate fears. but now in defense of massive structures using water, emitting noise and devouring electricity. In my opinion it is not worth listening to psychologists!

 

 

Dialog: A Beginning

 The NY Times obituary today announced the passing of Roger Summit, the founder of Dialog, the first on line search entity. I remember Roger quite well. I was a Group President at Warner Communications in charge of their Electronic Home Services Division. My wife worked for Roger out of the New York Office so I saw first hand how it worked. She had a luggable TI terminal with a 1500 baud modem. She had been doing Dialog searches for a decade by the early 70s when she worked with me at MIT so I knew Dialog quite well.

In 1983 I met with Roger and tried to convince him to expand his service to the consumer market. I saw his data base engine and operational capabilities as an asset in my Warner system. I recall driving up to the end of Sand Hill Road, atop a major fault line and there was Roger's place. I guessed after a meeting that Roger did not see consumers ever being a market, and indeed in 1983 so did a lot of people. Yet at the time we had gotten retail stores, travel agencies, hotels, banks, and even on line gambling! 

 

Roger was a visionary and he was fortunate at the time to have Lockheed financial support. Unlike today's venture companies, Roger was in the DoD world of start ups, great technology but no billionaires. He was also limited by the Bell System slow data rates. 1500 baud was a result of Bell System design. Thankfully the system was broken up, otherwise we would never have the information revolution we have today.

Roger should be remembered as the genius who started on line searching and making it a reality. Pity we were too early in the consumer space! 

Counter Force, Counter Value

 

Back in the 70s when I spent time on the Comprehensive Treaty Negotiations seconded to ACDA, Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, we had concepts of nuclear war such as counter force and counter value. 

The enemy could have a counter force attack, one targeting airfields, silos,  manufacturing, military bases. Or they could have counter value, attacking civilians. Think Dresden and Hiroshima. The intent of counter force was to cripple the enemy's ability to continue to fight by suppressing their weapons. The intent of counter value was massive civilian destruction reducing the moral of the enemy and forcing surrender.

Counter force often had limited value. Counter value was massive human destruction, and the elimination of the will to fight. 

As I noted, Dresden was just such in Germany a case of counter value, as was almost all of the strategic bombing.  Hiroshima was a sine qua non of counter value in Japan. It led to the unconditional surrender of Japan.

Counter force attacks can go on forever. Counter value attacks can be short lived but are potentially morally questionable. 

Thus in the current war with Iran one must ask which strategy to deploy. So far it is just counter force. Is there room for another strategy>