Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips When my work is done, my day is done. That is what I want. Really? Caution. That leads down a perilous path. I work from home most of the time. This pandemic and such and other factors mean that I don’t have an office in the building. I can go to the […]

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by Dwayne Phillips We move forward to the 1980s when the lawyers prevented artificial intelligence (AI) from helping us do our jobs. Note: This post is about legal maneuvers that prevent helpful AI systems. It is not about AI systems that were built poorly and mimic some human tendencies to discriminate against persons illegally. Those […]

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by Dwayne Phillips We invent new ways of being lazy in communicating. It sort of sets us apart from the ignorant masses. I did a Google search on “Kubernetes.” The result: Kubernetes, also known as K8s, is an open-source system for automating deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications. Oh, containerized applications. Of course. Jargon […]

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by Dwayne Phillips We seem to create silly rules about silence. This is another one of those, “What happens here stays here.” We create silly rules about silence. I wrote about one earlier in this blog, “Silence is agreement.” Nonsense. Another that just came to mind is, “What is said here stays here.” That permits […]

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by Dwayne Phillips This bothers me—this bothers me often and deeply. We abbreviate or shorten descriptions of individual persons. We “lump them together” so as not to name individuals or describe them. Such removes accountability. This bothers me. Here is a news story about the Congress of the United States. There are hundreds of such […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Win-win situations mean that both parties win. Great! There are, however, losers as well. We love win-win situations. Both parties in the situation leave better than they were before. Who wouldn’t like that? The loser wouldn’t. But both parties are better. What loser? Of course there is a “loser.” Of course there […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Linear Regression is an old, basic technique to predict the future given the past. It seems that its utility has been forgotten by many. How did we get here? Why didn’t anyone see this coming? These are a couple questions I heard recently when groups of persons gathered to discuss … well, […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Most systems “work” as we intend when enough people want them to. Those people cooperate with the system and one another. Democracy works because people want it to. There is much freedom in democratic systems. That freedom works because people want it to. People realize the value of the freedom and don’t […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Most “Emergency Operations Centers” function to show that the emergency operations center has electricity. Does that describe yours? A recent serious weather event caused me to interact with an Emergency Operations Center or EOC. The website for that place proclaimed quite proudly how it was built to withstand such serious weather events. […]

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by Dwayne Phillips I guess we will never stop putting individuals into a group and attributing the actions of some individuals to an entire group. Hence, we discuss “the government.” I have been a citizen of the United States since birth. I was an employee of the United States Federal government for 28 years. The […]

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