somethoughts

It'd be great to see some comparisons to other fields/industries versus just looking at computer science in a vacuum.

It's quite possible there has been a slow down in tech hiring from the mid 2010's with multiple offers and signing bonuses/RSUs but relatively I suspect its still easier to find positions than in other fields. There have been mass layoffs in many other industries. I can't imagine hiring is as robust across the board as it was during ZIRP.

I'm a luddite when it comes to generative AI models but to me it seems like the primary use case for training OpenAI on Reddit posts would be if you wanted to be able to create a more realistic genAI bot to post on Reddit for some reason.

Surely if you are making a genAI bot for medical/legal applications the likelihood of hallucinations/misinformation is way higher if Reddit posts are included than if it were solely trained on official medical/legal documents

In all seriousness (although half joking) - these days it seems perhaps the best way to get people not to do something is to make them think that some "Big" corporate monopoly - with an army of lobbyists - want to sucker them into buying their mass produced product for huge $$$ profits.

The movie "Thank You for Smoking" has a great scene between Big Tobacco, Big Alcohol and Big Firearms lobbyist caricatures [1].

[1] Merchants Of Death Thank You For Smoking https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ss0jLHvMO20

The one that concerns me personally is the whole wastewater recycling directly to drinkable tap water.

Between micro-plastics from washing machines to medicine disposal, the long term unknowns to human health seem to be significant, not to mention the potential for human error.

To be honest - it actually seems like a risky Private Equity play as I bet the $65000 sticker price is due to the fact that Medicare is footing the bill. Medicare is likely what is requiring a regulation grade wheel chair, not the users themselves.

I bet a huge segment of the user base could easily self purchase a mobility scooter and achieve the same quality of life if the price point was such that they could out of pocket the purchase and there was decent quality/repairability/safety.

There do seem to be a fair number that are approaching "geez I might as well just buy an over the counter version" (i.e. sub-$2000) instead of going through the paperwork hassle of getting a free Medicare "prescription" for one.

Would be curious to get people's input - Assuming you were a candidate with a decent resume but no significant public Github activity, would it be an interesting alternative to a take home assessment or in person white board coding session, if a hiring manager suggested that you fork an open source project of your choice and make a PR of your choice (or other contribution)?

Not sure about the validity of the source but it does suggest that second hand smoke could be related.

"What’s behind this rise in lung cancer in women who have never smoked compared with men, and particularly in Asian American women? One possibility: While Chinese American women may never smoke themselves, they frequently live with partners or family members who do. (About 28% of Chinese American men smoke heavily, Dr. Li said.) “We think secondhand smoke might be one of the key risk factors, because they’re living with people who smoke,” Dr. Li said." [1]

[1] https://www.chestnet.org/newsroom/blog/2024/03/secondhand-sm...

I could see a possible scenario where a first generation (i.e. immigrant, English as a second language) Asian father/husband smoking at home in the 1990-2010 timeframe and not getting the second hand smoking messages/ads (that were primarily in English as quickly) as the rest of Americans and it's is just now that the statistics are showing up.

A plus of this law would be if this would force social media sites to stop locking down read access behind a sign up wall.

I think the barrier to entry with creating a new account on each site right now is low when no ID is required - so social media sites lock everything down.

With the new friction of requiring ID, it could be harder to get users to create accounts so locking down everything won't make sense from a viewership access perspective.

"unload boosted goods at a swap meet, or at a store where illicit items are “washed” by commingling them with legitimate ones. Pilfered commodities often wind up online."

I do feel like one way to at least prevent resale would be for Target, et. al to work with the manufacturers to put more prominent markings that are custom to their retail outlet (i.e. stickers which signify Target). That way if I order skincare products or a t-shirt from Amazon and I see that the manufacturer labels have Target on them I can report it to Amazon.

I feel like Amazon, eBay, etc. are all key to the increase in the ease of reselling lifted items.

Going forward - I think it's important to not just categorically say all self driving cars are safer than human drivers. It's probably better to say I feel safer around Waymo and <insert other trusted company> self driving cars.

With such complexity and unknowns within the codebase - there is likely going to be a much higher amount of variability w.r.t. safety and AI decision making. I'm not so sure I'd categorically say a self driving car from say Nikola or some SPAC'd startup would make me feel all that safe.

From a game theory perspective, Sundar's approach is actually probably the safest approach. If they didn't add the "over the top" diversity and inclusion filter, Gemini would probably not be given a second chance if the twitter-verse was able to generate anything remotely objectionable as presently the diversity and inclusion crowd has somewhat captured social media, etc. and is quite vocal and experienced w.r.t. canceling people/companies/things.

If Google adds the diversity and inclusion filters and the social media influencers/stock market want it to be less filtered, then Gemini gets to live another day. The Gemini team can go in retro-actively and remove the diversity and inclusion filters and Sundar can write an apology letter.

Then if the Gemini team goes too far in the opposite direction, there is precedence to apologize again as they fine tune it.

Agree - I do think that part of the bureaucracy is due to the fact that any new consumer facing product from a FAANG is going to be relentlessly challenged adversarially by every social media tech-influencer as in this case. And no product team wants to put the CEO in the media/congressional hearing hot seat.

Conversely a new consumer product from a new startup is going to spend half the time talking about what the new company is etc. before getting to any product flaws. And most of the time such things are relegated to niche reddit subgroups.

I think the biggest strategic oversight that Google leadership has made is not learning from Microsoft's Tay fiasco.

What Google should have done is setup an entirely separate startup (or startups) similar to the approach Microsoft has taken with OpenAI. Let a few young, ambitious startup CEOs lead the way and supply them with billions in funding which they must use in Google Cloud Compute AI spend - in exchange for a majority stake in their company and integrating with Google properties only.

Book the GCP AI revenue and get stock bump from YoY GCP growth. If the startup(s) misstep, claim the tax write-off then move on to the next batch. If they are successful over a five year stretch then just buy them out fully and get some positive news coverage over the successful strategic acquisition.

As a member of Mag7/FAANG, Google leadership must realize that any and all minor missteps are going to be blown out of proportion via clickbait articles.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tay_(chatbot)

This is about temporarily allowing companies such as TSMC to bring in their specialized fab building construction companies to get these mega projects built on time instead of insisting on fully local non-specialized labor.

I think the key part of the proposal that you are missing is that it eventually (i.e. after a decade) gets rolled back to a normal economic zone and the special foreign privileges get rolled back.

What you want is just insist that a small contingent of local specialized project teams be allowed to shadow the foreign teams. Its a bit of a marshmallow test for unions.

What states in the US should do is create a special economic zone where foreign companies can have have more freedoms with respect to labor relations initially.

Then slowly convert those special economic zone into a normal commercial zone once critical mass has relocated to that location.

I think the technical prowess w.r.t. semiconductor development and fab building probably exists in the US but its spread across the country in random locations.

I think the issue in Arizona is you have a bunch of non-semiconductor construction companies attempting to bid on very specialized construction projects. As such they include a bunch of overhead in putting together the teams and ramping up on the technology.

Would be curious to hear more as I'm not sure I quite understand. I think the proposal seems like a more conventional proposal which seeks to maximize classical measures like overall global economic productivity and ignores the general domestic populace.

It seems like that using import tariff duties to subsidize more imports would encourage more importation of goods by lowering the final cost to the end user. It would also likely just directly benefit the domestic importers and the foreign exporters. It would also further exacerbate the differential over domestic producers and domestic alternatives and do nothing to prevent economic/labor regulation arbitrage.

Tangentially (and as an armchair/hobby economist), I've always wondered if the proper way to do a protectionist import tariff would be to collect the import duties and instead of just putting it into the general fund - either:

1.) Return the money to the country of origin via a blank check.

2.) Use the money to fund NGOs which help importers like Nike, etc. audit their foreign contract manufacturers for US level environmental regulations and labor regulations. This would reduce foreign countries from enabling arbitrage via lax regulation.

3.) Distribute the money equally to all tax paying US citizens via tax rebate or something.

I think the issue with globalization is that CEOs of multinationals are seen as the primary beneficiaries of environmental/labor arbitrage.

Agree that there is probably room for improvement to such a process and still a great amount of subjectivity required and a presumption of good faith participants who aren't actively gaming the numbers.

In general though even if some developers are gravitating to only projects that are simple/trivial, those wouldn't necessarily be differentiators because such projects would have checkmarks by other developers as well.

Also it can help to have the Product Management team rank the features in terms of strategic importance and criticality to the functioning of the company.

I'd say the biggest benefit of such a spreadsheet is to provide visibility to leadership about the bus factor of the team. Too often the critical projects are really only maintained by a few team members. There's no incentive for new team members to learn the "legacy" projects versus creating their own pet projec. Then the inevitable RIF or transition happens and the lack of long term support becomes an issue.

One approach to showing value is as follows:

1.) Create a spreadsheet with all of the features of your group's/company's products(s) listed in rows.

2.) Create a column for every team member in the group and highlight the lead developers for each feature.

3.) Then ask each team member to add a checkmark in their column for every feature for which they would be willing to be on hook for 24x7 triage pager duty.

Over the long term - the most valuable contributor(s) on the team will be the one(s) with the most checkmarks next to the features they led development on (i.e. they write understandable code and document well) combined with the most checkmarked rows in their column (i.e. they proactively seek to understand other peoples codebases).

At this point Apple should release an phone which has an M2 chip and runs full blown OSX but with a phone sized form factor. Then just port a phone app and have some touch enabled features for developers to design a UX for phone sized screens.

Maybe call it the MacPhone Pro and have the same level of security/customizability/install your own store as a full Mac.

That way Apple can keep the iPhone/iOS branding as the OS for customers that just want a phone that works, is fully iOS wall gardened and don't want to tinker/potentially see blue screens.

Then let the market decide. Perhaps the MacPhone would actually be more popular.

Also a slide deck/presentation that seems related by Akouos - the original biotech company that Eli Lilly acquired.

https://akouos.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/2021_0503_ASGC...

This could be of interest if it has to be 3D. I haven't tried it myself but Code Combat generally has a series of "wizard style" tutorials.

https://codecombat.com/roblox

If he's ok starting with the basics of coding and 2D game development then Code Combat's original Game Development 3 Course Series is pretty good to start with if you want him to go autonomously with out basically having him type out/copy pasting what you are doing.

https://codecombat.com/play/game-dev-1

If they are willing to do 2D and can follow a tutorial I'd recommend microstudio.dev using Lua/Python/JS or Microscript.

https://microstudio.dev/tutorials/

I found this insightful:

Why Louisiana Stays Poor

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWTic9btP38

Definitely sounds very similar to CPG's "Rules for Ruler" video where he provides a description of rulers ruling in resource rich countries.

Agreed - and it is that backdrop of growing nationalism where it might actually be beneficial to have a small subsegment of the population in every country which shares a common, unifying belief in the design perfection of a global hipster coffee shop.

The two comments/critiques I would have on the article are:

- Having a shared global design aesthetic also means there are likely open communication channels through which a shared global understanding might be achieved. If the citizens of the world can understand and appreciate each other through design, what else might they understand and appreciate about each other?

- Instead of critiquing existing designs - it'd be helpful to have a vision of what locally culturally distinctive designs for a coffee shop or AirBNB could look like. Help us readers envision what a better world - that's more "design inclusive" - might look like.

The advice to the author would be - "use your outlet to be the change you want to see." Highlight that cafe in Mexico City... or Morocco... serving coffee authentically that us readers should visit.[1][2]

[1] Mexico City coffee chain - Cielito_Querido_Cafe - looks distinct from a hipster SF coffee shop -

https://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurant_Review-g150800-d24591...

[2] Morocco coffee chain replicating across Asia - Bacha Coffee - also distinct from hipster aesthetics

https://www.timeout.com/hong-kong/restaurants/bacha-coffee

It is curious as to why Fidelity is owning X shares. Is this on behalf of some sort of Fidelity mutual fund that invests in private companies? Or is some sort of alternative investment fund targeted at accredited investors only?

Or do they invest the Fidelity customer cash balances in some sort of David Swenson style diversified portfolio?

It'd be interesting if some of the funds from the sale will be used for AI software development to provide a better coordinated response to CUDA.

The two scenarios that concern me long term are:

- What happens when all of the infrastructure gets built up around self driving cars and peoples first hand knowledge of how to drive diminishes. Once a near monopoly/duopoly is attained by a select few SDC vendors, it will become a utility. Then what fallback does society have if the likely enshittification happens. Do we just have to live with it?

- Its all fine when the companies able to do this are part of the most elite, technology first companies - but what happens when companies known to take short cuts (like the ones who can barely get bluetooth working for their audio infotainment system) start try to enter the market by focusing on lobbying the SDC oversight board.

Nice - that's super meta.

Agreed. It'd probably also help for OpenAI/Bard to generate some tutorials and white papers on best practices for the customer support use case - perhaps focusing on how companies can integrate ChatGPT/Bard into tools like Jira/ZenDesk to enable such workflows.