So, a politician, who is usually an attorney, doesn't understand the business that tech companies engage in and therefore no one understands the business?
There’s no such thing as a tech expert anymore
51–60 of 113 posts
Re: There’s no such thing as a tech expert anymore
#52We should also update the definition of tech.
Every company has a website these days, but does that make them "tech" companies?
Re: There’s no such thing as a tech expert anymore
#53I had an issue with this:
"while in graduate school in American Studies, I realized that computer science was a method of understanding much like many others . . . I’d also misunderstood coding as a craft instead of a field of knowledge and inquiry."
I agree that computer science is a field of "knowledge and enquiry" (aren't all academic disciplines?) but disagree with his conflation of CS and "coding." Computer science has little to do with most software development which is very much a "craft"
Re: There’s no such thing as a tech expert anymore
#54“I am not a tech expert” != “There’s no such thing as a tech expert”. Edited to add: all of science is beyond the comprehension of one person, but we wouldn’t say that scientists don’t exist anymore. I think the shock experienced in these kind of hearings has more to do with leaders and law makers being hopelessly out of touch with common technologies that are used by most people every day; it’s akin to them puzzling…
> but we wouldn’t say that scientists don’t exist anymore. Yes we do. They don't exist as we have romantically understood them. Scientists used to take risks, play with the entire world, question things, actually be open, actually play with science as a child. Now they join the Facebook group "Fuck I love science" and be done with it because they are pushed into STEM as an ultra narrow career and don't actually under…
Read Muellers report, it's rather good and detailed. It just your "normal" meddling, the difference is that thanks to internet its so much cheaper and easier. Muellers report also revealed that Russians ran biggest BLM social media to they can divide you, should give you an idea what is going on right now in your country. Strangely enough media doesn't talk about it. There is no Russian connection there, it's all 'grass roots'.
Re: There’s no such thing as a tech expert anymore
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
> but we wouldn’t say that scientists don’t exist anymore. Yes we do. They don't exist as we have romantically understood them. Scientists used to take risks, play with the entire world, question things, actually be open, actually play with science as a child. Now they join the Facebook group "Fuck I love science" and be done with it because they are pushed into STEM as an ultra narrow career and don't actually under…
Read Muellers report, it's rather good and detailed. It just your "normal" meddling, the difference is that thanks to internet its so much cheaper and easier. Muellers report also revealed that Russians ran biggest BLM social media to they can divide you, should give you an idea what is going on right now in your country. Strangely enough media doesn't talk about it. There is no Russian connection there, it's all 'gr…
Can you reference the section of the Mueller report that covers BLM?
Re: There’s no such thing as a tech expert anymore
#56The argument this piece is built around is flawed on so many levels. 1) the author conflates tech basic literacy and preparation on the specific topic by the congress members and marks them as “being a tech expert”. Nobody asks them to know the ins and outs of the companies they’re scrutinizing, but just to be prepared about the matter that’s being discussed and to show some minimal tech literacy. 2) the author proce…
Exactly right. As an experienced software developer, there's a ton I don't understand about the intricacies of OS kernels and integrated circuits, but I don't need to know that stuff and nobody can learn everything. Popular science books can explain quantum theory well enough for a layperson to at least get enough of a clue to have an opinion. All politicians need is enough knowledge to make an informed decision about the effect of various technologies on society.
Re: There’s no such thing as a tech expert anymore
#57Ha! Imagine writing this about medicine. Computers are 100% deterministic, from top to bottom. Even their effects of society can clearly be tracedback.
> Computers are 100% deterministic, from top to bottom. Not in every respect. Concurrency and C's undefined behaviour spring to mind.
It's still deterministic. It doesn't randomly do something different with the exact same IO. Just because it's hard to recreate the exact same state with concurrent processes on a modern CPU doesn't change it's determinism.
Also, undefined behavior in C only means a compiler can do what ever it likes. It doesn't make it random. People need to stop pretending UB in C is magic. It's not going to delete your hard disk, or make you a pizza unless that's already part of your program. GARBREPLEDFAH.../rant
Re: There’s no such thing as a tech expert anymore
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
Read Muellers report, it's rather good and detailed. It just your "normal" meddling, the difference is that thanks to internet its so much cheaper and easier. Muellers report also revealed that Russians ran biggest BLM social media to they can divide you, should give you an idea what is going on right now in your country. Strangely enough media doesn't talk about it. There is no Russian connection there, it's all 'gr…
Can you reference the section of the Mueller report that covers BLM?
"Initially, the IRA created social media accounts that pretended to be the personal accounts of U.S. persons.[44] By early 2015, the IRA began to create larger social media groups or public social media pages that claimed (falsely) to be affiliated with U.S. political and grassroots organizations. In certain cases, the IRA created accounts that mimicked real U.S. organizations. For example, one IRA-controlled Twitter account, @TEN_GOP, purported to be connected to the Tennessee Republican Party.[45] More commonly, the IRA created accounts in the names of fictitious U.S. organizations and grassroots groups and used these accounts to pose as anti-immigration groups, Tea Party activists, Black Lives Matter protestors, and other U.S. social and political activists." [1]
[1] Page 22: https://www.justice.gov/storage/report.pdf
Re: There’s no such thing as a tech expert anymore
#59Yes there is. It's everyone on Hacker News! Just post about about some Unicorn here and at least half a dozen people are pretty confident they know more about the company in question than the founders or the people running it. In the future Congress can just post questions here.
I will never stop being amused by the original post about Dropbox here on HN, where a large contingent of the audience was so critical of it, it was destined to fail. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863
Most of the comments in that thread were quite positive. This certainly doesn’t support your point.
Re: There’s no such thing as a tech expert anymore
#60It's almost as if the author is projecting his own imposter syndrome on the Congress.