cleandreams

I am prediabetic and I have one. It's partly covered by insurance. By the metrics my estimated average glucose has gone down from 129 to 98 or so (normal). I haven't had my HbA1c in awhile.

I think they are amazing. It's been SO HELPFUL. However I don't think it makes sense for normal people. I am on a reddit group for prediabetes and it's not unusual that people who are underweight (anorexic?) and have completely normal metrics come in and post in an utterly freaked out state. These are people who are somewhat compulsive and anxious. I think that if you are normal for blood glucose having access to all this data can make you compulsive and anxious.

However, for me as a prediabetic, it is really useful. It tells you what’s going on with your blood sugar in real time with no ideology. In the beginning I was spiking from things that a nutritionist would say was OK. I found whole grains didn’t work for me. I was shocked at how much I spiked from oatmeal. What causes blood glucose spikes does not map directly to number of carbs and also every body is different.

After 6 mo of lowered carbs, weight training, and getting down to normal BMI, I can now eat SMALL portions of things like brown rice. My health has improved. It's great. IMHO all prediabetics and diabetics should have one, covered by insurance. It would really improve health and reduce complications.

Why not try working for local government. Around here those jobs are secure and have pensions.

I've also been broke and financially insecure and it will better once you can pay your bills even if it's not your fave. Go for whatever your experience is for the first job.

My question is, how do you become a senior developer when the junior developer just keeps throwing "working" "good enough" code at you?

I think companies will want more code faster to the extent that fewer people will emerge from the churn really knowing what they are doing.

I am worried that AI assisted code will be a competitive advantage so that the downsides will not be addressed until there are serious failures in critical code. Boeing but for power plants, for example.

I've been an engineer at FAANG. I think the problems consultants face are simpler than the ones confronting engineers who need to become expert at million line code bases. There are coding standards, styles, security practices. I think AI would help when boiler plate is needed but otherwise it would be a dicier proposition. But there is another issue that I think is long term. The apprenticeship of a top engineer is difficult. If the result of "AI shortcuts" is a less skilled engineer profession there will be considerable downsides in the future. I have read that the ability of people to navigate is negatively impacted by a reliance on google maps.

My experience also. Whenever a site doesn't work I try it in chrome and bing -- and it doesn't work there also.

After all the layoffs we still have an unemployment rate of of 3.4% (as of Nov). In Seattle it is 3.6% (as of Oct). Also the fact the population is increasing probably reflects job hires. It's expensive here. Who else would move here? Maybe AI startups...

I live in SF and I think the doom loop narrative is true of downtown. So many job cuts (though I think the AI boom is already gaining traction).

However the neighborhoods are dreamy, as good as ever. The city lost population during the pandemic but it has been gaining and in 2023, it is the fastest growing in the state.

I've been in tech for years here and it is the best job market, most lucrative, and most advanced. It's an opportunity to work here. Just don't live in the tenderloin.

Yes, Nadella.

I have several issues with coding assistants.

Over time, will less skilled programmers produce more critical code? I think so. At some point a jet will fall out of the sky because the coding assistant wasn't correct and the whole profession will have a black eye.

The programmers will be less skilled because the (up until recently) lack of coding assistants provides a more rigorous and thorough training environment. With coding assistants the profession will be less intellectually selective because a wider range of people can do it. I don't think this is good given how critical some code is.

There is another related issue. Studies have shown that use of google maps has resulted in a deterioration of people's ability to navigate. Human mapping and navigation ability needs training which it doesn't get when google maps are used. This sort of thing will be an issue with coding.

I worked for a startup acquired by Microsoft and suffice to say, MS is a culture killer. Our open dynamism and free discussion withered under a blanket of MS management.

I don't think it's possible that the cultures of OpenAI and MS can be made compatible. MS is dreary. Highly effective at productizing, yes. But the culture that propels deep innovation -- that is not going to last.

The last compiler I wrote needed to be translated to another implementation language. The translator found one bug in it. It was effectively bug free. I am a good coder. I recognize most of these feelings though. Struggling through them is part of my process. I also have lots of ways of working that help me -- I take copious notes for example. Sketch a lot. Talk to others. Staying isolated is a way of staying stuck. Good luck.

Uh, no. Generative AI does not have a standard of truth. It generates text according to the probabilities given what it learned from its data set. There is no systematic modelling of a world that it can test its assertions against. What are called hallucinations are a fundamental property of the approach. The hallucinations are probable -- just not true. The model has succeeded but the assertions are false. This has to be understood or the models will mess stuff up. A lot of checking is required.

Humans always assemble information according to a standard of truth. It is a big part of how humans learn. No method is perfect but the human method results in fewer routine hallucinations.

I had a student in my class who wrote about being from a "low caste" background. So when a friend hosted a woman from India on her podcast who said there was so caste discrimination in India I spoke up about this. The podcast guest said that the fact that anyone in the west mentioned caste discrimination, even within western tech companies, was an act of racism against Indian culture and reflected colonial judgements. My friend, who is very, very woke, agreed. I was so annoyed. Thank you for bringing this up. Such discrimination has no place!

I went to a dentist for 20 years. He was a visiting professor in a dental school and was of the school, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." My teeth are basically good and I take care of them well.

After he retired the new dentist who bought the practice had no end of things she wanted to do. I have a new crown or two and new fillings. What really got to me is that she kept wanting to put me in braces. I'm 67. I said no once, twice, thrice.

After that I found a new dentist who was a colleague of my old dentist. No unnecessary work!! I'm glad I left that practice.

This is SEO. I read a food blogger on this. She had to make her recipes long, long, long with lots of fluff or it wouldn't get a good ranking.

Google should stop this. It's just going to make ChatGPT more attractive.

Why should we imagine that?

This has literally never happened to me. I started using it almost daily 3 years ago.

I have begun to find bing search invaluable. It's annoying to use google although I don't even like the bing user interface for AI search. Much too hard to get to. I don't want a single extra keystroke.

Once you've trained on the internet and most published books (and more...) what else is there to do? You can't scale up massively anymore.

One problem in San Francisco is that the private schools are truly expensive. One good high school, Urban, has a tuition of 55K year. That means it is hard to leave the public system even when it has these awful flaws.

San Francisco has never really gone whole hog in trying innovative programs with underachieving programs for minority youth. This trick of trying to drag down high performers to disguise the other failures is typical of the district.

Property theft is bad, significantly worse than the other 20 largest American cities.

However murder and aggravated assault are about 50% lower than the average in the same set of cities.

Wow. I've lived in SF since 1980 and I don't know a soul who had a home invasion robbery. I know several in Oakland.

My B.S. C.S. was a fabulous deal. It's funding my retirement. I will be forever grateful to the State of California for the inexpensive solid education available to me.

I did not go to a fancy school but it was enough to get me into a fascinating and successful career. Could not be happier.

Living in SF for 30 years I am over, over, over severely mentally ill people killing themselves and harming others. No, they don't take their meds. The consequences mean they do need involuntary hospitalization. This has to be done with checks and balances but it has to be done.

I once read a shocking statistic that children of the poor in London during the Industrial Revolution were 6 inches shorter than children of the rich. What raised the standard of living was bloody, persistent labor revolt. It wasn't pretty and as your comment shows it has been mostly forgotten.

It's not just issues of tech and economics but perhaps more importantly, of power. If workers have political representation (power) than these productivity increases can feed into wage increases and hour reductions. A big if. In USA, workers are pretty powerless. That means it is most likely to result in massive waves of unemployment and political instability.

When I first moved to the city in which I live there were NO homeless. That was in 1980. Since then the working class economy here crashed and the professionals took over. Now we step over bodies in the streets.

I think it is likely that the AI wave will be this, but worse.

BTW my last job was at an AI company as a high level tech contributor.

So much about this is funny. Microsoft! ha ha ha. I bet google is rolling in the aisles. AI hallucinations! I've had a view. A great way to liven up the work day. The only distasteful part is the accuracy checks that are necessary...

With you. It's excellent fun.

sometimes I wonder what havoc would break loose if we ever had a serious conflict with China.