Isn't it more complicated than that?
"Ouch" can be a lot of things, and that's where a lot of problems crop up in the AI world.
If one of my friends insults another friend, I might say,"OUCH!" I'm not in pain but I might want to express that the insult was a bit much.
If someone tries to insult me and it's weak, I could reply with a dry, sarcastic "ouch."
Combine that with facial expression and tone of voice and 'ouch' is highly contextual.
One problem with some of the tools used to take down offensive comments on social media platforms is that they don't get context.
Let's say that 'ouch' is highly offensive and you got into trouble for calling someone an "ouch." If I want to discuss the issue and agree that you were being offensive, I could get into trouble with the ML/AI tools for quoting you.
One story that still haunts me about the culture onboard the submarine.
We were dropping the trash and one requirement is that an officer be present. I was told to go get an officer. I found the Chief Engineer sitting in his room reading his Bible. I asked if he could come and be the required officer. He said, "sure."
When people saw the Chief Engineer behind me they mocked, "Hey! Couldn't you have gotten someone more senior?"
I didn't know that "officer" in this role meant to go find an Ensign or Lieutenant JG, not the officer who's 3rd in command of the whole boat. Folks got a lot of laughs out of that one.
Overall, though, life on a submarine is infinitely better than a surface ship. I served on a fast attack sub and a frigate. The people on a submarine help make life better because most of the jobs on a submarine are advanced and require clearances that people can't get if they're on drug waivers or dropped out of school.
My Cold War trash story - One of my roommates in college served on the USS Peterson (DD-969, a Spruance class destroyer), and in the middle of the Atlantic they decided to have some fun with the Soviet "fishing trawler"[0] that was shadowing them. Normally, the crew would weigh the trash bags down so that they immediately sank.[1] But this time they "forgot" to put the weights in and filled the trash bag with adult reading material with all the good parts cut out. And then coated it with the kitchen slops (potato peelings, spoiled meat, etc).
As the Soviet trawler swooped in to claim their floating prize, the Peterson crew was at the fantail laughing at what their reaction would be when they opened the bag up. Yes, they trolled the Soviet Navy.
[1] No classified material was in them - it was mostly to keep the surface of the ocean clear and prevent it from washing up on shore. These days only degradable garbage is thrown overboard. Trash is compressed and stored until the ship makes port.
That Chief Engineer sounds like a good dude. (And he said "sure", so...)
100% agree that submarine life is better than a surface ship. I personally would have had a much harder time with the officer/enlisted relationship on a surface ship, in particular.
> 100% agree that submarine life is better than a surface ship.
Maybe it's different now, but I spent a week riding an SSN as an NROTC midshipman, when I had orders to nuke school a few weeks later (I was commissioned right after first-class cruise and had already gone through The Interview with the KOG; long story). In nuke school I switched to surface, asked for and got sent to the Enterprise, and was pretty happy to be there at the center of the action with great port calls. Standing OOD underway on a carrier — the officer on watch who's in charge of the entire ship, and de facto of the task force — was the most rewarding thing I've ever done professionally, especially during evolutions such as night flight ops. And you deal with (and learn to lead) sailors of all educational levels and from all walks of life, not just the cream of the crop as on subs.
Oh, interesting! I thought that the sub community got all the nukes fresh from school, and the surface nukes all had a sea tour under their belt before getting sent to Power School / Prototype.
You make a compelling case - OOD on a carrier has got to be a hell of an interesting job! Personally I liked the smaller team on a sub, getting to do TS missions, etc. But I can definitely see where you're coming from. (And frankly, I still think submarine life is better than traditional non-nuke SWO life, still.)
I think you’re right, nowadays CVN nukes get a div-o tour before power school. Somewhere they work in SWOS. My class of surface nukes was the first to be sent to SWOS right after prototype (this was 1975), and power school was right after commissioning.
I recently met someone who had desired to be a nuclear operator on a sub, but ended up working an aircraft carrier. At the time that she joined, the Navy didn't permit women to serve underwater-- so apparently operating surface nukes despite having never taken your Jules Verne voyage was permitted, at least ~20 yrs ago.
My experience of Navy personnel from ship visits as a contractor (commissioning and sometimes fixing SATCOM equipment for Australian Navy, US Special Operations ships etc.) has been that quite a lot of the higher ups seem to be pretty good. Maybe they try to weed out the jerks and psychopaths before they get up that high, or perhaps there are natural processes that do it? I have heard that the other services (especially Army) are a lot worse, so perhaps it's all to do with the realities of all these people having to be stuck together for months on ships or subs that means it's much more important to have good leaders at sea?
I had a time when I'd flown out to fix our satellite terminal, it was literally the only thing holding up this patrol boat from deploying, and the CO (commanding officer) came and asked how I was doing and then went and got me a Coke from the galley himself! There was absolutely no annoyance and anger at me because our company's equipment was holding it up, just "what can we all do to get this working as quick as possible". Another time we had to replace a large part of a gimbal on a frigate, with myself and a tech from our company and a couple of low-ranked seamen, and the top WEEO (Weapons Electrical Engineering Officer) happily jumped in and helped us drag a big crate up the side of the ship.
Of course it's different being a contractor coming in than being one of the lower ranked enlisted people, but on all the ships I've been on it always seemed to be pretty good relationally. Of course, I'd usually be on just before deployment so a few weeks or months later things may not have been so rosy either!
Odd comment about the Army there. The culture of Army officership is all about leading from the front, carrying your own rucksack and cleaning your own rifle, eating last, and taking care of people (literally inspecting feet for injuries in the field). Senior Army officers I've met are overwhelmingly gregarious and affable, if not always competent in the broad array of things they're charged with.
There's one part of the article that I think deserves more attention. I see Netflix in a big disjointed mess of entertainment.
I've got Netflix and then someone will tell me about something very interesting on Hulu, Amazon Prime, HBO, or Showtime. I'm not gonna sign up for Hulu just to watch 1 movie or a series. I'm not gonna give Comcast more money just so that I can get HBO and a whole lot of other channels that I don't want.
And the marketplace is so complicated. I can pay Comcast to get the History Channel (and a lot of channels that I don't want) or, I could go to another steaming service and get History Channel, but you've gotta look into the details to discover that the "new" episodes are actually 1 season behind.
So, when I think about dropping Netflix, it's not because Netflix in and of itself is lacking or too expensive. It's more about throwing up my hands and quitting the madness of the whole marketplace.
Excel is constantly being improved. Are you aware of Power Query? And how about the 14 news functions that were released to Insiders a few weeks ago? Excel Online is far behind the desktop version of Excel but it's making fast progress.
YUP! And too often a company claiming to have something better than Excel isn't a direct equivalent. It's a way to market their whizzbang solution.
Domo was claiming it could get companies off of spreadsheets. But it turns out that they're an enterprise level reporting system that's a minimum of $30,000. That's not a viable option for a 5-person non-profit, but they'll get swept up in the conversation only to find out later that no, Domo and Excel are not equivalents.
1. I see an ad for some really nice pens. COOL!
2. I go to a website that allows me to opt out of tracking but I'd have to opt out of their 300 affiliates one at a time.
3. The privacy policies that state: we do not honor do-not-track signals because we don't know if it was the user or a browser default.
I don't want to be included in something that I never asked to be part of, and then have to put in the effort to get out.
This is one of the things that is so upsetting: most of the industry puts it on the consumer to get out rather than come in. I often look at the list of third-parties when a website says I can opt out. There are often over 300 third parties that I would have to opt out of one at a time.
One thing that's good to see is how Excel can be applied. I was a host when the challenges were:
1. Roulette
2. Biathlon
And, no. It's not heavy on tips. The rounds are timed and each of the contestants have their own methods. It was interesting to see some people use formulas and some people use conditional formatting for the same solution.
A lot of comments are criticizing Excel users as if we are resistant to learning more about other programming languages. Resistant as in hard-headed or lazy.
One thing to remember is that the vast majority of Excel users aren't fully in IT or tech. We have to deal with data but the roles aren't primarily data roles.
- Customer Service Reps
- Admin Assistants
- Warehouse Managers
- Non-profit Fundraisers
- Sales Reps
- Realtors
- Inventory Managers
- Insurance Agents
I've taught at non-profit conferences and saw how people were torn. The fundraiser who uses Excel every day has to decide: do I spend 4 hours in an Excel session or 4 hours in a session on fundraising trends?
===
So many roles require some kind of data use, and Excel is immediately accessible, even if all it is is typing numbers into a cell, hand-coloring certain values and getting a sum.
Here's the question: WHEN is a person best served to put in the time and effort required to learn Python, JavaScript or another formal programming language? WHEN should a Warehouse Manager be sent to a Python class? What would that situation look like?
Personally, I hate true programming--and I've done a lot of it. But true programming is a whole different mindset. I like the visual aspect of Excel. But when I open a code editor and there's this wall of letters, numbers, indents, curly-brackets ... WOAAAHHHHHHH! No. HELL NO!
Even with WordPress and the templates that are supposedly drag-&-drop, I still found myself writing CSS and HTML.
===
One other thing. Don't forget looking the opposite way. Too many coders don't know what Excel can do. I watched a presentation on 6 hours of JavaScript that someone wrote to accomplish a task. That same task would have taken less than 5 minutes in Excel.
I think a lot more automation/computing should be done in these more approachable “citizen programming” tools.
“Job done”, “I did it myself”, and “I understand how it works” are three qualities that are often undervalued when “real programmers” look at the work of “citizen programmers”. I say this as someone who loves and makes a living at “real programming”.
WOW! Excellent perspective. And I've never heard the term "citizen programmer" before.
You're right. "I did it myself" and "I understand how it works" are definitely undervalued. And that plays into a lot of the empowerment/disempowerment conversation.
I had a client who would have me build prototypes in Excel, then he'd hand them over to his in-house development team. I asked him why he uses me in the middle. He explained that he can guide me and kinda understand what I'm doing, and we can test and tweak formulas really easily. He can stop me and ask questions if I start doing something that seems wrong.
Then he said, "but, when my devs open that code editor, I don't know what the hell I'm looking at."
That was a different kind of disempowerment that he felt vis-a-vis his own devs.
I first read “citizen programmer” here on HN and it immediately resonated. I’m happy to pass it along, but I can’t properly attribute from whom I first read it.
If one of my friends insults another friend, I might say,"OUCH!" I'm not in pain but I might want to express that the insult was a bit much. If someone tries to insult me and it's weak, I could reply with a dry, sarcastic "ouch."
Combine that with facial expression and tone of voice and 'ouch' is highly contextual.
One problem with some of the tools used to take down offensive comments on social media platforms is that they don't get context.
Let's say that 'ouch' is highly offensive and you got into trouble for calling someone an "ouch." If I want to discuss the issue and agree that you were being offensive, I could get into trouble with the ML/AI tools for quoting you.