high_derivative

NVIDIA is going to do that either way. Huang is not asleep at the wheel.

I am not really buying the lack of participation in MLPerf. Just give us the numbers, don't skirt around about 'not being made for these benchmarks'.

Yes, it's the end of the road with me for Apple products. Might go for Pixel 6 + GrapheneOS, and Dell XPS instead of MBP.

I am happy with their timing because I would have otherwise bought an iPhone 13 and be really annoyed if they announced their spyware right after.

Im really starting to develop a visceral hatred for Apple.

They are talking sanctimoniously about privacy out of one end of their mouth, put on a family friendly face by banning anything offending prude sensibilities, while having no qualms about doing as much business as they possibly can in China. Now this.

They are the ultimative dystopian corporation, I find them even worse than Facebook in that regard, at least Facebook has some interest in free speech and does not operate in China.

I guess the reason I am so angry is that I like the devices and engineering marvels they can produce. But I cannot be a customer of this.

I dont think this is cynical and I don't think it's a bad thing. OpenAI is not a huge org. The truth in 2021 is that not only is robotics 'just not there yet' in terms of being a useful vehicle for general intelligence research (obviously robotics research itself is still valuable), there is also nothing really pointing at this going to be the case in the next 5-10 years.

Given that, unless they want to commercialise fruit picking or warehouse robots, it seems sensible.

As a FAANG employee, the way this typically happens is this:

There is some sort of team reshuffle, someone moving to a new project and so on. Another team agrees to take on a high level IC (I assume this guy was at least L8-9). At that level, this move is approved by a VP. Person moves, headcount is filled/removed at his old team. Then new VP decides he is not ok with some part of the working arrangement (e.g. remote, scope). Person is now given a few weeks to find a few project/team, but most teams cannot accommodate senior ICs at that level easily.

Boom, out of a job. Basically VP backroom dealings. It's just 'bureaucracy', and seniority almost does not matter. The only way to stop it at that point would be calling other VPs or SVPs for favours.

In fact, seniority works against you here, because it becomes more political, while nobody cares about a low level IC switching around, and almost any org can absorb a solid L5 contributor.

Pushing back against ideas of critical race theory is important lest they dominate all our discourse and turn us all into victims.

Apple likes a family friendly facade on its products of Chinese slave labour

I wonder how much of this is owed to the financialization of medicine where many patients especially in poorer areas are now not seeing a doctor but a 'nurse practitioner', where responsibilities are diffused by design.

"Adjustments to our technology to better account for situations in which language may be reclaimed by underrepresented communities and used in non-harmful ways."

Rejoice: The digital n-word pass is here at last. Will they scan faces and names to accurately determine who has white skin but maybe a drop of blood?

Why did you pay the $10k?

Why anyone would ask sociologists about how tech work should be done is absolutely beyond me.

My understanding used to be that this will not change much on an immediate basis since the nano-particle delivery system + its manufacturing chain are quite complicated and not easily scalable. Does anyone know if this is not the case?

Critical race theory in 2021 is so absurd that if you wrote a novel about it being used as a cultural weapon to destabilize societies it would be rejected. But it's happening and there are no signs of it slowing down yet.

The name is too similar to google in my opinion, mooglemail/googlemail..just inviting trouble I think

I don't know why you are getting downvoted for this. AirBnb's valuation is basically extracted from society by pocketing the difference to anyone needing to follow regulations.

AirBnB does not create value, it extracts it from communities. It's not the kind of startup anyone should be cheering on

Oh come on, nothing on the conflict of interest of Moxie being involved with MobileCoin? You have to address the elephant in the room at some point.

(https://www.coindesk.com/signal-founder-may-have-been-more-t...)

I cringe every time I read startups proudly writing about their unique compensation philosophies.

Almost without exception, they have to end up changing it and ending up with typical corporate structures. Because there is a reason for them. Because all employees are not equal. Because some people put in much more work than others.

Would be a huge red flag for me, it's typically a special type of arrogance leading people to believe it's not enough to build something new, they also are special enough to re-invent the wheel on every organizational aspect.

In a sense I suspect there is a deep immaturity: Not wanting to deal with the realities of having to treat people differently, of struggling to figure out how to reward high performers, how to allocate finite resources. This is then justified in hindsight by coming up with some nonsense like:

'Some will say that this doesn’t offer a career ladder. Uniform compensation causes us to ask some deeper questions: namely, what is a career ladder, anyway? To me, the true objective for all of us should be to always be taking on new challenges — to be unafraid to learn and develop.'

This literally does not mean anything. It's just handwaving around not wanting to deal with employee issues. Stay way.

And these employees are deleting subreddits (e.g. gender critical), suppress media they don't like..it's really surprising reddit has not found attention the same way twitter or facebook have. Maybe because of their political leanings.

I will never forget getting my Butterfly MBP repaired (within the warranty), and the Apple employee telling me it would have been $600 but they were generously doing this for free, this time.

The grind is that if you are coming from impoverished circumstances, it the salary you can send e.g. to your family can lift your whole family out of poverty.

It's a great personal sacrifice that most HN readers do not need to make, but keep in mind there are people for whom this presents an opportunity to change their entire family's life.

>, the grind for the first few years to make a small mark and advance up the ladder is very similar,

Citation needed. At which FAANG do people work 90 hours a week? I see junior engineers working consistently 40-50 hours (FAANG ML lab), and some managers perhaps putting in 55-60. I have never even heard of people at Amazon (arguably the worst grind) putting in these hours.

One thing I find interesting is that banking is still a way to make a large salary almost purely on grind. It's not an intellectual competition, it's much easier to get into than good FAANG jobs with better work life balance. It purely rewards the grind.

I totally get why people want this.

But they did not do everything they can. They did not expedite AZ vaccine approval, they are messing up the rollout, they tried to negotiate prices instead of securing vaccines at all costs. They made a whole theatre about AZ deliveries and almost created an international crisis around Ireland..but no, no political aspect to it, none at all..

I don't think they are trying to get revenge. They are trying to cover for their own failings. By any reasonable means, the vaccine rollout in continental Europe in relation to the wealth and logistics available compared to US/UK is a complete failure.

The difference being that there is no evidence yet to point towards vaccinations causing these, while there is plenty evidence for covid. Further, there is plenty of evidence for the lost lives by NOT vaccinating faster.

Same thought, I think this is part of political cover for the failing (in comparison) vaccination effort's in continental Europe.

'See, we were right not to vaccinate this fast'

For the downvoters: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/mar/15/eviden...

I am not an expert on this, and these below are not my opinions but how I have understood the debate thus far:

- Gender dysphoria is classified in Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5)

- When it manifests in young people, there can be various reasons, for example, coming to terms with being gay.

- Therapy can explore the reasons for this and help understand how to best help the patients

- For some patients, the right course of action is to have gender affirming surgery and transition

- For other patients, this is a temporary discomfort with their identity that passes or can be resolved otherwise (e..g by accepting sexual identity etc). <--- This is the controversial part. Trans right activists see this position as an erasure of trans identity/denying their right to exist, etc pp. They seek to suppress any kind of research investigating e.g. the rapid rise in gender dysmorphia in teenagers as a medical phenomenon (e.g. in https://quillette.com/2019/03/19/an-interview-with-lisa-litt...), and seek to ban any books/research/open debate in this area.

I have no idea on the biological or psychological reasons, but I object to any suppression of research on medical phenomena.

This seems on the surface about protecting LGBTQ+, but it seems the kicker is really about treatment for transgender teenagers.

There is a movement to stop any kind of discussion about therapy on gender dysphoria other than transition. Trans activists seek to cast all therapeutic interventions other than transitioning in the same light as conversion therapy.

I think we will deal with the fallout of this activism for decades to come: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/calls-to-end-transgender-...

I have mixed feelings about this. I despise white board and leet code. I hate it when we (at a FAANG) cannot hire some otherwise excellent candidate.

One interesting thing though is that from a market perspective, it still ends up making sense for our org (ML research lab). There are simply so many applicants, that we can afford to pass on anyone. All the candidates hired tend to still be excellent on all other fronts AND they can do these quizzes. And it does result in some hires not being the most credentialed ones with the longest CVs but the ones who outperformed during the interview for whatever reasons.

So..I can see it makes sense for the most prestigious orgs, but I still hate it, and I especially do not see why startups who are struggling to hire feel the need to copy this when they clearly do not have the same options.

Another thing that really irritates me when people in hiring committees actually pretend passing them means something about candidates' innate skill. Like, I get it, these are the rules we made up, but do we have to pretend they are that meaningful?

The main difference to me seems that some in the West are vehemently denying anything is even happening.

'There is no cancel culture. You are just being held accountable. People just don't like you. You have no right to social media. Make your own app/cloud/host..'