I started because I wanted to think about transportation policy but my work as a Data Scientist wouldn't let me. I continued because a colleague convinced me it could help position me as a thought leader and get me a new job or engagements. More recently it's been a way to complain about the absurdities of mega corp life, awful past coworkers and jobs, etc. without being too obvious about it (hopefully).
But also I have always enjoyed writing and producing. Just passively consuming the internet leaves me feeling a little empty. Also I hate the short, singular point of view, short attention span, social media, everything we say and write getting neutered and just made worse by communications and legal departments world.
That was my first thought too. But they can say that this one was created by their administration. And is more AI.
I'd love to hear from people who had experience with USDS before this administration. The chatter I see online is overwhelmingly positive. OTOH, I interviewed with USDS and the experience was not good. I don't love tech interviews in general but this one was somehow worse. I remember thinking the interview would have made more sense if they were hiring for PMs, but I wasn't a PM and didn't want to be one. Focusing on my communication abilities and professional history is one thing, but this ... wasn't that. I always wondered if others had the same experience. Maybe I just had the wrong interviewer on the wrong day.
Sadly almost no local governments would be equipped to process the data. This would probably benefit firms like Streetlight and Replica but not materially improve public transport. Written by someone turned cynical after years of working in this space.
This looks a lot like my childhood. I would guess most of us were popular-group rejects, latch key kids. Pencil fighting, paper football, exploring nearby creeks, (poorly) playing guitar for one another, gossiping in each other's basements, etc. Great times!
we have used it at my last 2 companies for most geospatial data analyses. defining and visualizing catchment areas. making maps dividing up service areas. picking out high demand density areas. etc. before h3, both companies were using zipcodes and more ad-hoc data transformations. i'm not saying h3 is perfect. i wouldn't know. but it definitely beats zipcodes.
I've never seen this. Is this some weird right wing talking point?
I have seen a disconnect between what is covered in ethics classes and the types of scenarios students will encounter in the working world. My (one) ethics class was useless. But not political even with the redrawn ethical map of the Trump era.
I'd hate to work at a place where the backlog comes from the PM and the requirements come from a mix of PM and UX. Do you really think your PMs know that much more than your Engineers, Data Scientists, Ops/Business, etc.? This just sounds like something the type of PMs most of us hate, the type who insist on being the main character, would say.
There's some truth to this but it's also an anti-semitic trope. There are a whole bunch of Jewish people on the Left that don't support the current Israeli regime.
Yes! And stakeholders will come to you with tasks and expect your team members to deliver as fast as you used to deliver. Sometimes they will ask you to put another "resource" on the task to make it go faster. Which is not how any of this works.
You and the other replies focus too much on the Jewish community within the US. Support for Israel is very strong in the US, particularly among Republicans, because of the rise of Evangelical Christians. Evangelicals have ... religious reasons for supporting of Israel. They also strongly identify with Europe and people with European backgrounds. They have an inability to identify with Palestinians.
It's not as bad as the article makes it sound. It is an operations research program with some startup-y courses tacked on. The post is just LinkedIn style cringe mixed with the hubris of Stanford alumni. The authors seem narcissistic but most graduates of the program are great.
are we going to overlook the big orange elephant in the white house? listen to him talk. it's hard for me to believe he wouldn't be labeled a moron by most if he wasn't the President.
Hmm... as someone who lives in LA... I think your news stream is polluted. There were maybe 100 bad actors. Responding to people in military gear vanishing day labourers and fruit sellers and seamstresses. Bringing in 10,000 National Guard and 1,000 Marines is not an appropriate response.
So much of academic life revolves around bringing in grant money. This is particularly true in STEM fields and at the best research schools. There are ever increasing administrative hoops to jump through to bring in that grant money. And grants nowadays are often given out for research on very specific topics often chosen by bureaucrats. These topics are, almost by definition, not innovative. The NSF is an exception but there are very few NSF grants given out, relative to the number of researchers. My assessment is that the most famous, most published researchers can still afford to explore, if they have the time and inclination, but the rest cannot.
There's been a ton of research on this and the conclusion has been that light rail does indeed attract more development than bus rapid transit, but that there is no net gain in development across an urban area. It just shifts development to the corridor in question. There's a reason the overwhelming majority of transportation engineers favor bus rapid transit. On the other hand, I personally prefer to ride in light rail and I think many people would agree. So there's a reason that many urban planners prefer light rail.
I worked on the earlier iteration of this at Uber. I was curious why more people didn't call it out at the time. Yes, using cell phones and Uber's market share to make demand responsive microtransit is an interesting idea. Yes, it can work relatively well in areas where there isn't enough demand for fixed route bus service but there is sufficient demand for this type of service. On the other hand, every public transit nerd will tell you that microtransit has serious limitation and is often used to negative effect in areas that would be better served by fixed route bus service. The sad thing for me was that almost no one at Uber knew anything about public transit or transportation in general. The claim that it's just a bunch of tech bros reinventing the bus (again) sadly rings very true to me. As someone that was there.
I kinda love this idea. I wonder if there would be any additional value to having the AI access the departing employees documents and/or code. Or maybe coming up with a first draft of certain materials for the departing employee to correct, as needed. You could also generalize so that some tool like this becomes the source of institutional knowledge. Confluence but with videos and with AI generated or initiated content. What if you could have a dialogue with the AI version of the departed employee? Or an AI avatar capable of explaining institutional knowledge? But like not clippy, ok?
I would guess that we will be in this phase for awhile. HN seeing just how much AI can do and possibly seeing fewer jobs for developers. The Economist seeing flat productivity and employment numbers, adjusting for other factors. My educated guesses:
1) There will always be productive ways to use human labor so we aren't on the precipice of mass unemployment.
2) Individual lives are getting disrupted and will continue to get disrupted. It is sometimes difficult to tell what was actually caused by AI and what was caused by macroeconomic factors, the latest trend in Silicon Valley, etc. But there have already been many lives disrupted by the emergence of AI.
3) A lot depends on how AI develops and, frankly, none of us know the answer to that.
Can any controller or person who otherwise works in this area comment on the tracingwoodgrains blog post? I always see it linked on HN, but never mentioned anywhere else. Seems like there would be a huge scandal with lot of commentary and links if it were true.
I haven't been able to find it since but at one point I came across a quote saying that NextGen was the "greatest failure in the history of organized labor." Or something to that effect. A bit of an overstatement but I have to admit I found the parts I could see circa 2010 ridiculous.
"Not to learn from history"? We're in the twilight zone now. It's the right wing that is currently enacting tariffs, scapegoating immigrants, pushing for appeasement in Ukraine, etc.
The Republican party traded logic for populism long ago.
Do you really believe this? I've never met anyone opposed to birthright citizenship for the US. Our shared history, values, and national culture are all about immigration so this isn't computing for me. Plus the law seems settled on this issue, or at least was before Trump 2.0. I genuinely don't understand how thinking people can support the current administration's policies on numerous issues. Tried going to r/conservative, watching Fox News, etc. but it hasn't helped much to date.
This is a really interesting take. I find the argument that AI will lead to mass unemployment both historically and economically illiterate. There will always be some things a person can do that a machine can not (yet) do that is worth some economic value. I have had a hard time identifying what those things are. But you're probably right. It's probably non-digital stuff.
There's very little in the way of evidence demonstrating your "sensible" hypothesis. On the other hand, a lot of ICs have experience working in office and at home and have noticed we do better work at home.