ianmcgowan

That sounds like my self-diagnosed ADHD - I have exactly the same thing. What changed your mind about having ADHD?

I think the lesson is that after firing your CEO and 80% of the organization threatens to quit, then maybe don't do that. Though if MSFT wasn't there for a soft landing ($), not sure the number would be as high as that.

Got to check out "Diaspora" [1], and it even ties into the theme of ChatGPT! Once a LLM has enough parameters, perhaps there will be a way to upload a human into a Polis :)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaspora_(novel)

Yeah, it's hard to go back to wading through SEO-optimized BS after just getting a decent answer (which, to be fair to the AI-sceptics, you do have to think about before using blindly).

It's an interesting mental shift - I wasn't googling because I wanted to find a web page, I was googling because I wanted an answer to a question. An AR or mixed-mode personal assistant is going to be a game changer.

n=1, but I sang to both my daughters in the womb (different songs) and after they were born singing "their" song would calm them down a lot faster. I don't think this is as much "instincts" as it is "very early experiences".

Either genius or madness, you be the judge!

You wouldn't be a realtor by chance?

I do something similar, but I have one file technotes.md open all the time and just append snippets/commands/URL's/TIL's to the bottom with a date stamp and a hopefully findable comment.

Some notes are referenced constantly, and some I've probably never looked at again. The interesting thing is it's hard to predict when adding which one it will be...

There are dozens of us! Dozens!

I paid $99 for Coherent because Linux didn't support the fancy RLL hard drive in my work computer. Eventually Linux caught up (or I got a new computer) and Slackware replaced Coherent (for little things like X11, better networking etc.). Those were the days :)

Sounds very "Snow Crash" - ancient Sumerian as a mind virus..

I would guess they weighted the cost of being sued into oblivion against the benefits and decided to be conservative...

In the corporate world I've seen (across many countries and cultures) there is no such thing as a "separate, quiet space to work" unless you're fairly senior. The irony of course is that fairly senior folks are on zoom/teams/webex calls 12 hours a day and quiet introspection isn't part of the job.

The common pushback from employees forced into RTO is they are commuting to a significantly worse environment where they still just sit in teams calls all day.

It's a little expensive, but if you love elderberries, we order the jams from this online store: https://carmelberry.com/collections/all

Another see also, a book I used to hand out to developers, support teams and DBA's: http://debuggingrules.com/. It's not CS specific, or even really computers, but the mindset is invaluable. It's also got some engaging war stories to keep you reading :_)

(or for a summary of just the rules) https://courses.cs.washington.edu/courses/cse474/18wi/pdfs/l...

If you're not allowed to install anything, asking for git automatically comes with git-bash, so it provides some cover for the real reason. And hey, bonus, you get git!

Reminds me of my girlfriend's favorite band at Columbia in the 80's - "The Special Guests". They eventually had to change their name because people kept showing up expecting, I don't know, Billy Joel or Beastie Boys, and got mad.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rDcKIAXGRA Paul Cezanne (the father of cubism) for a pixelated blast of 80's pop

Coolness is not evenly distributed :-) Even banks now have Postgres, it doesn't hurt that Oracle is such a nightmare to deal with..

AKA "The Wally Reflector" from Dilbert :_)

From the article,

"Who knows what could come out of that? Robust high-current-density room-temperature superconductors are right out of science fiction (SF readers will recall that one such material was a big plot point in Larry Niven’s Ringworld). Electrical generation and transmission, antennas, power storage, magnet applications (including things like fusion power plants), electric motors and basically everything that runs on electricity would be affected. We could stop throwing away so much generated power on heating up the wires that deliver it, for starters."

Got to admit those Friday afternoon "pub lunches" were great for team-building though, right? :_)

But what will ChatGPT 10 be trained on, if no one is posting blog posts, answering questions on stack overflow, or updating Wikipedia? OpenAI will have to change the logo to a snake swallowing its own tail.

That's a good point, and the sales education process is definitely important. It's a fine line between "let's step back and look at your actual pain points" and "what else can I upsell you on while I have your attention?", that customers are very wary of crossing.

I think the point is when reaching higher levels of expertise is not to try and convince existing customers to move up the ladder with you, it's that you need to find an entirely new set of customers who need that level of expertise and appreciate the difference. It's not about explaining - there's a quantum leap between levels.

It might be trite, but as a contractor walking my rate up over 10 years, I found it interesting.

This is the only thing that ever works for me, but a) you have to be doing repeated projects or high overlap, and b) it's hard to defend when a PM challenges. My response is usually "<shrug> this is how long this kind of thing has taken in the past". I do a lot of the same projects at different customers, so my gut feel is usually pretty close (and I have to give a ballpark quote, so there's some penalty to being over or under). But if it's something completely new, breaking it down in to detail tasks almost never results in a good estimate.

Not to be argumentative, but how did someone get hired if 7 out of 8 interviewers said "pass"? What's the point of having 7 interviewers if only one of them gets to decide?

Definitely agree with your point that some people have a gift for this kind of thing, so just genuinely curious how the 7 of 8 thing worked.

I think you're thinking of career-ending fuckups (where you definitely should try all avenues, quickly, including asking trusted peers for help), rather than the article's more mundane examples of being blocked, having prioritization issues with another team, feeling overwhelmed, etc. If you can't talk to your manager about that kind of thing and expect some help (or at least some advice/sympathy), then agree with your point that it's time to look for another gig. That's no way to live...

The choice is clear - Ready Player One or Minority Report?

Apart from the not-at-all-paranoid answer of "money", it's probably just easier for them to program - if you're going to have (honestly, required for 99% of users) integrations with cloud services like alexa, google, homekit, HA etc. where you need to provide an end-point, it's just easier to make your own app talk to the same end-point. Which is money too, I suppose.

Not sure if it's reasonable, but a very simple answer is to get your kid a feature phone, if the intent is to be able to stay in touch/emergency contact (we let our kids bike to middle school and it was nice to be in touch). We didn't get them smart phones until high school.

Though if my kids are any indication, it's still 50/50 - one is on tiktok/snapchat/insta constantly, and the other could care less.

The lack of symmetry bugs me - if a couple swaps wives, why isn't it ever called "husband swapping", and wouldn't the (technically, and politically) correct term be "partner swapping"?

Or maybe it can all be subsumed under "swinging" or whatever the modern term is?