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Sure for knowledge sharing about tribal knowledge or undocumented plans I see the value of having a person reviewing, but a lot of other stuff that comes up in pair programming can probably also be managed by AI like what are best practices, a bug you might have missed, evaluating alternative solutions, etc.

People are incredibly varied on code reviews too, I can see where some standardization on what should be blocking and what is best left as a suggestion could accelerate things in some cases and prevent issues in other cases.

Is your use case team collaboration and productivity or just for fun? I saw some people have built stuff like FB Messenger bots using GPT.

I think one problem with the idea is that the cost is very high unless you do some optimization work.

$0.03/1k tokens for GPT-4, and if you use the full 8k context window then assume each message costs roughly $0.24.

At 20 message per day, OpenAI costs would be $5/day, and that is like $150/month.

Compare to ChatGPT at $20/month with unlimited messages and it's pretty hard to see how this can monetize. Either OpenAI is baking in a ton of margin to the GPT API or they are selling ChatGPT at a huge loss.

I don't know if there's any feature you can add on top that makes it worth 6-7x just using ChatGPT on its own.

Maybe you can optimize by using some other models or using less of the context window. But even if you cut costs by 50% you are still paying OpenAI $70-$80/month/user and I don't know if anyone is willing to pay that vs just using ChatGPT.

I saw there is this Team-GPT app: https://team-gpt.com/. They charge some money and you bring your own GPT token. So it looks cheap but I guess it's still super expensive, you're just paying OpenAI directly.

Have you tried anything similar to this? I am wondering if it would just be possible with GPT in Slack. I read something from OpenAI about how they built GPT for Slack, but I don't know if it captures previous chat context or not.

I think it would be cool too to be able to give access to github or google docs/notion. I think it would be a more efficient and fun way to collaborate than using Slack, especially if GPT could get edit access to documents and code.

If your employee is blowing their time budget they are most likely either:

a) a bad employee who you should not try to micro manage to make effective but should just replace with a better employee

or

b) unaware of the context around the task and does not have aligned motivations with others to get this done quickly

If b - then a good manager should do a better job of figuring out how to develop the intrinsic motivation of the employee and find ways to align the incentives and motivations of management and employees better.

Trying to micro-manage to avoid employees doing things you don't want is putting a band-aid on the problem. In fact it's even worse because you're creating a bad work environment that will attract more sub-par employees who accept micro-management and will scare away the high-performing employees you so desperately desire. Eventually you have a bunch of micro-managing managers who themselves are being micro-managed and your company bloats to several multiples in size of what is actually required and efficiency is spiraling out of control.

I'm 100% on board with these ideas, and I've also been following a lot of these ideas for a while. I'd like to learn more about the startup if possible, my email is in my profile if you don't want to post here.

Would be nice to avoid having to open another tab to do fact checking - having some kind of a summary or something beyond "10 verifications" would at least let me know if opening the new tab is really worth it. Ideally the article and all verifications would live in one tab.

AFAIK there’s not problem with https in China - today most companies use https for their websites and app servers, see Baidu, Taobao, JD, etc. Maybe BBC didn’t register things correctly with the govt or the govt is just specifically targeting them. But the article’s title is a little misleading by implying that https leads to GFW blocking.

As a self-taught developer, I used to think that some of the theoretical elements were overhyped. I can build iOS apps that work, and I did just that for the last 2-3 years. However, many of the programs that I wrote have not been as easy to maintain as I would like and some difficult to fix bugs have popped up overtime, both of which are due to a lack of deeper understanding of CS fundamentals. Last year I started interviewing and was ridiculed at one company in particular for a lack of CS knowledge. Afterwords I started exploring a lot of the CS concepts listed in this link and I have since found numerous ways to improve my code quality and have a better understanding of how CS best practices came to be. I also used to think that algorithms and data structures were relatively useless for an iOS developer, and I was able to do the job without them, thus proving my point. However, after gaining a better understanding, it quickly becomes clear that things like view hierarchies are simply trees and understanding ways to traverse these hierarchies can lead to much cleaner code. With the open sourcing of Swift, I also became more interested in understanding the language, but a lot of the language design decisions didn't make sense to me until I gained a better understanding of CS fundamentals. I have found the programming languages course on Coursera [1] to be particularly useful, and have also greatly enjoyed the book Designing Data Intensive Applications [2]. There's also a great video from this year's WWDC that really inspires algorithm study and use in everyday applications [3].

[1] https://www.coursera.org/learn/programming-languages

[2] https://www.amazon.com/Designing-Data-Intensive-Applications...

[3] https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2018/223/

A big plus that is still kind of yet to be realized is the increase in utility of notes taken on a device. I like to jot notes in the margins of books and papers while I'm reading, but I almost never go back and look at them. Every once in a while I'll end up searching trying to find where I wrote my note, and usually can never find it.

Recently I have started using Apple Pencil, Apple's Notes app and iBooks to read and jot down ideas. Apple's Notes app already supports searching for handwritten notes, and I hope that soon iBooks can support searching for handwritten notes in PDFs. These apps combined with Spotlight really increase the value of notes + a collection of books/papers, as it turns your device into kind of a personal database.

While I do think that current implementations of digital books are very lacking and thus don't compare as well with physical books as they could, this is one area I have to disagree.

Flipping back through a physical book requires a process of trial and error while looking for that previous page, or referencing the index. A digital book usually comes with a search function that can knock that out a lot quicker.

If you need to quickly add a note or draw a quick sketch then writing on paper has a lot of advantages as compared to typing it out on a keyboard.

If these things supported refrigeration it would be pretty convenient for future deliveries from Whole Foods

Artsy has a bunch of Open Source applications that are interesting to check out, especially for those interested in mobile apps https://github.com/artsy

The VPN is blocked in China. To get around this you have to set your computer's location to the US (or a country where the VPN is permitted), then reboot Opera. The computer's location can be changed in the System Preferences menu of a Mac.

I'm on Mac, and no. All I have is a link to the VPN provider's website where I can purchase their VPN. There is no option to turn it on in the browser, even with 'Show Advanced Settings' selected.

I can't find the VPN option in Settings, even when I search... but the help page says it should be available under Privacy and Security..

Elon may skim through some texts but he definitely also does some thorough reading and research as well..

"One bit of advice: it is important to view knowledge as sort of a semantic tree -- make sure you understand the fundamental principles, ie the trunk and big branches, before you get into the leaves/details or there is nothing for them to hang on to."

-Elon Musk Reddit AMA https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2rgsan/i_am_elon_musk...

Amazon is also slowly pulling AWS from Beijing http://www.amazonaws.cn/en/new/2016/announcing-operating-rel...

Perfect excuse for Didi to raise prices after gaining monopoly share of the market...

Lots of VPNs work. For a while (maybe still), with proper internet speed even the Opera Developer Browser built in "VPN" worked, and worked faster than most normal VPNs.

Thanks, I have taken courses on Coursera before. Are there any in particular that you would recommend for software design or managing development teams?

In my searches I found these courses:

University of Alberta on Agile and Software Product Mgmt: https://www.coursera.org/specializations/product-management

University of Alberta on Agile Planning for Software Products: https://www.coursera.org/learn/agile-planning-for-software-p...

Georgia Tech on Software Architecture and Design: https://cn.udacity.com/course/software-architecture-design--...

The Georgia Tech course looks pretty good, but the Alberta ones look like they may be a little softer and less practical than I'd like.

In Shanghai, using Uber's carpooling feature it is much cheaper to take Uber than Didi. I have had quite a few rides (with 2-3 other people riding with) that were cheaper than it would have cost to take the subway. I'm not sure Didi has the algorithms ready to do this yet. I should say I haven't tried Didi in a few months, it may have improved since the last time I used it.

I don't think that fact disputes my argument. Let's consider a few assumptions to try to see a more well-rounded view of the firewall problem. Consider for a moment that all domestic firms must comply with self-censorship or be forced offline (see Papi Jiang's recent problems with cursing in her programming and being forced offline). From this we can assume that censorship issues are not only an issue for foreign firms, but also a primary concern for domestic companies. If we accept these assumptions, then censorship is just a market condition in China, the same way that bad infrastructure or government instability are market conditions in some countries. The difference is that through the internet, foreign companies can escape this market condition and still compete with domestic firms. Whereas in a country with poor infrastructure all companies are subject to the market condition. Without a firewall, domestic firms would be at a severe disadvantage because foreign companies would be able to easily escape government discipline.

Now, under these assumptions we can consider the Google case. Google tried to compete under these market conditions and lost. Thus, if we accept that the firewall is a way of the Chinese government extending market conditions to force fair competition, then any argument that Google could have beaten Baidu in the Chinese market is wrong.

Of course, this assumption may not be correct, but unless you work in the Chinese internet bureau it is not possible know the motivations behind the firewall. I'm simply presenting a devil's advocate view.

I know someone who works at one of the government backed incubators in Shanghai and he told me that a few of the companies they have are pretty promising, but there are a lot of accepted companies who don't have much of a shot. Startup solve a national problem of having too many college graduates and not enough job opportunities, so some of the incubators just soak up some of the extra graduates with the hope that maybe they could make something useful with time. Of course, with continued government support the incubators could improve and become more focused, but for now it seems at least a few are a way to provide jobs to what may otherwise be unemployed college grads.

Beijing is most certainly the software center of China. I work in a Shanghai startup and when we raise funding we have to go to Beijing to find the VCs. Beijing also has the best universities in China, so the talent is there. China's version of the Paypal Mafia is more like the Microsoft Mafia. Look inside of most top software companies in China and you can almost certainly find a handful of execs who worked at Microsoft around the year 2000. Microsoft's offices were (are?) in Beijing, so most of them hung around after they left to startup or join other tech companies.

Shenzhen is the center of the manufacturing world, and as the article points out they have DJI which produces 70% of the world's drones. Essentially anyone who wants to produce something cheaply and quickly will have something being produced in or around Shenzhen. If the Internet of Things really takes off into a mainstream industry then Guangzhou and Shenzhen will become a secondary hub of innovation. I just heard recently that Cal-Berkeley is establishing an engineering graduate program with Tsinghua to be hosted in Shenzhen. For a university right outside of Silicon Valley to do this is definitely saying something.

Shanghai has a decent number of finance related startups, but people in Shanghai tend to be motivated to work in large multi-national companies. Go to a startup in Shanghai and you'll find mostly people from outside of Shanghai without the best education - not saying that it's impossible for these people to create a great company, but it's a far cry from Beijing where Tsinghua and Beijing University students are being recruited to early stage startups.

Alibaba and a few other tech companies are in Hangzhou, but that city still lacks the pre-A, A series type companies that Beijing and Shanghai have.

Chengdu in the West has offices for half of the Fortune 500, but although I've heard the local government is pushing hard to attract entrepreneurs, their startup ecosystem seems to still be lacking. It's possible that if some of these employees leave their Fortune 500 employers to startup then the city could become more of a hub in the future.

Chinese social media and search platforms employee loads of people to only censor information. If any of the Western companies tried to match the level of censorship required it would dramatically increase costs of operation. If Facebook or Google agreed to censor their content to the degree that Chinese companies do, I believe they could operate in China. Google and Facebook claim to be morally opposed to censoring information, but it's unclear to me if this is really the case, or if spending the money required to self-censor is the impetus behind their "moral actions." Obviously if China got rid of the censoring then the market would be much more attractive from a profit-based view.

At the same time, if Facebook entered China today I don't know how many people would convert to using it like people from other countries do. WeChat is a really powerful player and a lot of recent Facebook Messenger features are basically pulled straight from WeChat.

Same with Youtube and Vimeo - Youku and PPTV are basically Youtube, Netflix, and HBO combined in one. Chinese users can watch Netflix and HBO shows for free via Youku and PPTV's license deals with Western content producers. Plus Chinese users watch much less user-generated content online, unless it is live-streaming.