Bugs: some are useful

So Tuesday.  Tuesday was a long week. And Monday seemed to really be 3 or 4 days.  Not helped by my approach to illness (ie ignore it) is starting to come undone.  By that I mean it has now had a few weeks to manifest itself to a stage where I cant really ignore it any more.  I’m now at the stage where I cant really breath nor will it allow me to fall asleep, which is getting to the point of frustration now after 2 nights.

But ho-hum, work is inevitably going to try its best to see that there shall be no time for sickness.  Because and sit tight now kids, here comes the lesson, people are sh!t and will let you down as soon as you let them.  Basically as soon as you start to rely on anyone for anything then you’re opening the door to disaster.  And thus the only way to get around this is to do everything yourself. This inevitably means that you become incredibly busy.  And even then nothing is guaranteed if your E Coli bugs decide not to grow, for no particular reason other than “we don’t feel like it”.

And then the icing on one’s sublime cake is getting to stay an extra 2 hours after work, not getting home until near 7, listening to someone that still seems to struggle with English some days with a thick accent talk about something that I thought I understood.  But alas no, seemingly not, nothing quite like going to a mandatory lecture on something you thought you knew and coming out the other side more confused than you ever thought was possible.  Especially on a topic that you’ve been familiar with for the last 6 years.

Bah! People!

In the spirit of equality. I hate you all.


This page previously appeared on morganbye.net[^1][^2][^3]

[^1:] http://morganbye.net/96 [^2:] http://morganbye.net/2009/11/96) [^3:] http://morganbye.net/blog/?p=96

What distinguishes you from other developers?

I've built data pipelines across 3 continents at petabyte scales, for over 15 years. But the data doesn't matter if we don't solve the human problems first - an AI solution that nobody uses is worthless.

Are the robots going to kill us all?

Not any time soon. At least not in the way that you've got imagined thanks to the Terminator movies. Sure somebody with a DARPA grant is always going to strap a knife/gun/flamethrower on the side of a robot - but just like in Dr.Who - right now, that robot will struggle to even get out of the room, let alone up some stairs.

But AI is going to steal my job, right?

A year ago, the whole world was convinced that AI was going to steal their job. Now, the reality is that most people are thinking 'I wish this POC at work would go a bit faster to scan these PDFs'.

When am I going to get my self-driving car?

Humans are complicated. If we invented driving today - there's NO WAY IN HELL we'd let humans do it. They get distracted. They text their friends. They drink. They make mistakes. But the reality is, all of our streets, cities (and even legal systems) have been built around these limitations. It would be surprisingly easy to build self-driving cars if there were no humans on the road. But today no one wants to take liability. If a self-driving company kills someone, who's responsible? The manufacturer? The insurance company? The software developer?