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sebgr

464 karma · joined May 20, 2014

Imperial College EEE Graduate

Engineering @ ARM 2012 & 2013

Machine Learning Engineer @ Startup 2014

Associate Product Manager @ Google 2015-Present

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sebgr··on Tech employment now significantly worse than the 2008 or 2020 recessions
this makes sense, in 2018-2022, I would get tons of emails from recruiters at meta, doordash, snap, stripe etc now I barely see any (maybe they've given up )

My friends who are still at Google also say that most job postings will end up going to someone internally - in fact people say they don't do that many external interviews anymore.

Finally the interview cycle seems to take a lot longer than I remember with quite a few added rounds.

sebgr··on Everything that's wrong with Google Search in one image
the sponsored results looks like you are in an ads experiment since this really isn't how it typically displays
sebgr··on Adaptation to high-altitude hypoxia on the Tibetan Plateau
Everytime I see the word delve in an article I can't help but assume it was written by an LLM which this probably was?
sebgr··on Claude 2.1
For coding it is still 10x worse than gpt4. I asked it to write a simple database sync function and it gives me tons of pseudocode like `//sync object with best practices`. When I ask it to give me real code it forgets tons of key aspects.
sebgr··on 11.8M CHF for clinical trials of novel arthritis repair
In case this is useful - I had end stage arthritis in one of my ankles and ended up getting a bipolar ankle allograft in San Diego at Scripps. I barely think about it nowadays except that sometimes after a long hike or strenuous workout it will feel a bit stuff. Considering I could barely walk before it was a night and day difference.

You essentially get a completely new joint surface from a donor and have to be in crutches for 3 months but it was 100% worth it for me. I refused to do fusion and avoided any doctor that said nothing could be done.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31045670/

Another solution for end stage ankle arthritis is distraction surgery but I didn't look into it much but it could be useful too: https://www.hss.edu/conditions_ankle-distraction-arthroplast...

sebgr··on Things Unexpectedly Named After People
America is named after Amerigo Vespucci, an Italian explorer who was pretty sure America was a separate continent - pretty random !

https://www.loc.gov/wiseguide/aug03/america.html

sebgr··on Switzerland government raises investment funds to support Swiss startups
I can confirm. Just moved from Zurich to San Francisco. Pretty much everything except rent is cheaper in San Francisco (food can be up to half price of what I paid in Zurich) but rent being such a major expense, it ends up being similar. Salaries are a bit higher in Switzerland though so one would save more on average there.
sebgr··on Swiss endorse new surveillance powers
Only some cantons require voting on citizenship, the others have a more formal process.
sebgr··on Brexit: Berlin eyes Britain’s tech talent
They democratically elected to basically jump off a cliff so you can't blame the media for having the time of it's life.

And referendums aren't always a good idea, prop 8 in CA was overturned because we eventually realised its a bad idea.

sebgr··on Why the Media Fixation on “Transit Is Failing” Stories?
This is very much an American thing to hate public transport though. Places in Europe, especially Switzerland for example, have much better infrastructure and taking a car can be a pain compared to a train which is faster and a lot more comfortable.
sebgr··on Switzerland begins tests on the longest train tunnel in the world
It seems OP was referring to tax as % of ones income and you are talking taxes as % of GDP is what I was trying to get at.
sebgr··on Switzerland begins tests on the longest train tunnel in the world
The average Swiss citizen will earn more than your average american - overall swiss citizens will pay a smaller % on taxes than americans.
sebgr··on Apple buys UK-based speech technology startup VocalIQ
This is an early video of VocalIQ's system (2010) for people interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NwuqjUZalU
sebgr··on Y Combinator's Search for the Next Big Startup [video]
For some reason the video keeps on failing to play for me, here's the youtube link for people with similar problems: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIad4KkQkuY
sebgr··on Hound voice search NLP demo [video]
ok so I have an invite and it fails all questions except "Who is Bill Clinton"

Having tried it somewhat extensively I'm quite disappointed - I don't mean to say it's bad but that video was definitely curated in terms of questions.

sebgr··on This French tech school has no teachers, no books, no tuition
I have quite a few friends in Paris who have also told me that 42 is good at teaching most standard CS concepts but they were definitely not a good choice for "mathematical" projects.
sebgr··on Andreessen Horowitz-Backed Leap Buses Are Hitting SF Streets This Week
duplicate of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9219672
sebgr··on Are humans getting cleverer?
duplicate of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9131923
sebgr··on Magic Pony Technology – Claimed 50% better video compression
Only additional info I have is their AngelList:

https://angel.co/magic-pony-technology/jobs/53654-product-de...