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Don’t wait for the right equipment to start writing, _but_ there is a little joy in just splashing a little on a nice pen and nice paper. A few decades in life and I’ve assembled a set of multiple fountain pens, in different colours and sizes with different inks and colours. It adds to the fun like herbs add to a dish.

Thanks to the comment above I discovered Games on Whales and just read up on the possibilities. Isn’t that exactly your usecase? It seems you can stream to multiple underpowered systems provided you have network, RAM, GPU and enough cores. It even streams to Apple TV, Chromecast etc.

This is US ToS probably? Under GDPR we have no punitive damages, no broad discovery, and the CJEU has kept non-material damage awards modest. So we can sue, but can’t win greatly thus cannot invest greatly in lawyers. Our supervisors are understaffed and to be honest (for the Dutch authority) fighting the wrong fights.

The owner of starlink is planning to be the only remaining capitalist. UBI is not for the US, a return to indentured servitude is.

Like your thoughts! And then mastery is being able to play things exactly the same. But with mastery comes another way for humans to recognize each other. Specific sounds to specific masters (or movements, techniques for say sports). Each master adds individual grace that we can recognize. That might be why we discount AI-creations vs human mastery. There is a grace (I’m stretching) but it is not unique and not acquired via a process of human mastery. (The word ‘bland’ fits very well!)

I bought this Barenboim on Beethoven DVD set 20 yrs ago only for the bonus DVD where he gives a masterclass. These were exceptional students (Lang Lang is rated as one of the worlds best now), and I can’t play piano, but in that video he shows me as a layman the difference between playing with competence and playing with grace. One can hear the difference in depth of the story behind each note. Found one: [1]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NYfrht6TU8

Put on the hats of a risk manager or supply chain manager. Yes, that would have mattered. What you insource today, you can repeat tomorrow. If you know the price of an input will multiply in the near future, you should at least develop processes that can handle disruption. If you expect dirt cheap LLM’s to remain available, or even better: improve in quality, feel free to make that assumption explicit and keep using the external supply. I don’t know what the future holds, but the vibe your software organizations cannot go back to manual development once LoC has exploded. I hope firms are making these choices deliberately.

What they can’t see, they can’t tax. Window taxes and resulting changes in architecture are a nice historic example.

Look, I share your sentiment. But, I can relate to the C-squad though. Going squarely against the market sentiment is not the way to gain and keep confidence. And everyone is vibing right? So they are probably thinking something like: as long as the spent is < few percent of a years profit, we can always adjust direction in the future and at least we’ve bet the same horse as the rest. “Those penny pinchers in finance (:: me) don’t get the big picture.”

No need for the downvotes imho. Can’t speak for u/noduerme but in putting outsourcing (labor, LLM/AI) in the same basket I don’t see a category mistake, but a dry way of looking at business. What are the risks, what are the rewards, what future skills are we at risk of losing (the business logic part) if we go in direction XYZ.

Something completely different (but with the same logic): do you outsource legal, hire your own team of business lawyers or will you let customer services use AI for legal problems (and only hire a lawyer for a day in court)? I think all three solutions are currently active in different firms. From a risk perspective I would always want a lawyer on my team. Insource those learnings. But perspectives vary.

I’m in Finance and learned pretty quickly that to point out the implicit future cost raises based on the cost the LLM-providers need to recoup was unpopular at best (STFU better describes the situation). Running full force into a bear trap.

I enjoy risk seeking behavior as well as the next guy, but lets please be adults and make this opt-in, not opt-out. If you get the LLM to ask the right questions, (for me) obviously you would want it to wait for an answer?

Economically, you would probably be the only customer (stated willingness to pay can differ from market outcome ;) paying that amount. Your stated willingness to pay has little relation to the true value of our data and digital sovereignty to Microsoft.

A funny estimate is possible though. MSFT 2750 G$ market cap and 550 M business users. That’s 5 k$ per user. Grossly misrepresenting everything (AI bubble, other cashflows, …) but it is a ‘directionally right’.

Incomprehensible! “Didn’t quite get his leg over” - that’s the joke? Found a Guardian article and even they do not explain the joke [1]. Further ethnological research [2] explains it all - “to get a leg over” is intercourse.

The story about the test match broadcast is really nice. Just goes to show how deep cultures can be locally ingrained. One could learn perfect English and never get to the point of getting this joke, without serious integration efforts. In this case, worthwhile efforts.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2005/aug/20/sport.andrewculf

[2] https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/get-leg-...

I think you are right but would like to keep in consideration that penalty clauses are real and can be enforced in court. We have no (or perhaps: have some) clue how far the bargaining power is leaning toward the suppliers. Maybe the signatories in the SCA are so cornered, they will sign anything and think ‘boom or bust’.

You are right. Toxic workplaces are abundant. But non toxic I hope as well. I am always interested in how we can or cannot transfer local cultural differences and things we hold as basic truths via a forum.

The second question: yes, in a time of need my manager and HR-consultant did indeed help me find appropriate psychological care. (And we also visit coworkers in the hospital.) This was part humanity, but also part of what ‘we’ (a firm is a collection of people) constitute as being part of what it entails to be an employer. It feels like a reductio ad absurdum to think that this was purely transactional on their part. It was deeply human, or at least I choose to see it as such.

(Won’t fully repeat my other post.) Shame is such a big word. ‘Give people the chance to _teach_’ would be my reply. Which you probably would see as even more vicious, but it’s 100% sincere.

As a junior I made the front page of national news. I answered a question with a very big number on a Friday afternoon. Hit headlines on Saturday. Our prime minister had to defend my mistake in public. (He never admitted any mistake. With just enough spin nothing sticks.)

The head of the organization literally cursed and spat at me. In that same meeting from the no. 2 down they stood up for me. It’s still a great story about how to treat mistakes 20+ yrs on. Admit mistakes. What did __we__ (not: he) do wrong? (Hint: from medior to board everyone had an afternoon off and we had never discussed stakeholder management. I was in no position to say no to a ministerial request.)

“Shame” is a big word. I wouldn’t shame a member of my team. Why would I!? They are great people. Same with “blame”. Everyone faults, everyone can be blamed something. That doesn’t change the basics of a person.

Giving people a chance to discuss, as adults and professionals, how they got sniped beats any second hand training and experience by miles.

Now we get to hear that x% of a sample failed including #y elevated privileges people. How will somewhat naive management handle that?

Sometimes I get a feeling many HN-ers work in ultra toxic environments. HR is not your friend, your manager is there to screw you over and the firm will fire you for pennies. That’s just not my experience in working.

Yeah, this is a part about itsec I don’t understand in my firm. They run social engineering tests, but never notify management when individuals fail, only in general terms. While being psyopped needs to be activelly discussed among coworkers imho.

He bought a house with < 1% of his net worth, which he made himself. Then proceeds to give away 100x that. Aristotle would call that modest and of a balancend demeanor. An absence of excess indeed. I would be living in a cardboard box with these figures. I can get some irritation with the worlds billionaire class. But I do think modesty is somewhat based on circumstance.

This is a UI/UX problem, no? While the current suppliers are mostly locked in the ‘chat for everything’ mode. Guess what, we didn’t go to the moon in chat mode, we don’t drive cars via chat and cyborgs don’t play chess that way. Domain specific interfaces are the way to go (opinion).

Edit with an example: Read some interesting science news yesterday regarding man made risk of high water (Nature). Mailed the author, found the article (popular news doesn’t do attribution) and data and code was open source. Claude Fable had it running very fast and explained the things I forgot from high school. Started on localization and adding some methods from my background (econometrics, extreme value theory). All nice in the /hobby/ way. I can overlap fields in hours now. A brilliant feeling (but probably not brilliant).

What I cannot do is assess the value and novelty of the created work on my own. So I still need to have a set of geologists and econometricians / actuaries work through ‘my work’. That’s what we need tools for! We need UI/UX in this case for novel fields interacting with quality controls made easy. I currently wouldn’t dare ask the author for her time based on my slop. And I cannot critically assess what I’ve made. I only learned today that Greenlands ice attracts water, that Manila and other cities are sinking due to exhaustion of their aquafiers and that the North Sea is surge heavy and unique that way.

Am I reading you right that breaking power (that you want to regenerate in the system) >> speeding power? Obvious now I come to think of it, and still pretty nifty new thing learned if true!

In that analogy bigtech AI is currently investing in cleaner air for all of us? We _could_ breath it through their hose, but might as well breath it outside.

I stubbed my toe. I don’t feel like ice cream today.

I found them worth reading for the following set of thoughts came up:

- programmers had problems with delivering quality long before LLM’s

- very much research and tools went into that, bringing us {Git, libraries, VSCode, reviews, …,} but the human factor stayed the same (and more pronounced imho than in other fields of engineering)

- LLMs democratized programming, enhancing a few, dropping the bottom to no skill programming

- the tools and practices created for the quality problems from the past turn out to be wholly incapable of maintaining quality in the present

The main problem behind this is that those delivering the QA tools of the past are central in the AI race. Old school engineering would separate these concerns.

If you care to explain why, I’m interested. I imagine a situation where large Sum X is in ETF but gets adapted by a few little shorts. It’s still mainly the ETF in the portfolio. (Exactly this is why in my firm some ETFs are deemed too precise, since they are thought to follow the insider knowledge as well.)

A long and a short cancel out. So you could construe this yourselves. (Recognise that this has a long tradition on HN ;)

In highly bureaucratic companies there starts to exist a value for bureaucracy ‘per se’. This can be found in endlessly growing risk and operational policies. Actually, one is lucky if the policies don’t say much. That means that the bureaucracy is trying to stay out of the way of operations. So while bureaucracy is a way of management and staff departments to fulfill their needs, the fish are still being caught.

One step up on the ladder is that the fish aren’t being caught anymore due to regulations pertaining the hooks (disallowed) and the length of the line. The fishermen complaining are being told that the regulators are also complaining and that management has decided that complaints everywhere are the best balance.

What about expecting them to suck up their pride, work with the other lead for a comprehensive plan that includes possible WONTFIX-es?

Strategy and leadership don’t come to exist on their own. It’s middle management that has the best operational and tactical view bear none. Use that to influence decision making instead of complaining. (Yes, this is a theme in my professional life. Our middle managers don’t know their own worth. Pretty please give me Plans about what you Want to Deliver. Those are so much better than general strategies.)

This is spot on. My dad was a professor and had dozens of PhDs. The only thing differentiating them (as I remember him telling me) was the resolve to keep work as /tiny/ as possible. Who is remember for his/her PhD? Only the smallest cream of the crop. He even made good fun of worthless thesis by (then) well known professors. It’s not about your PhD.

When I did my MSc thesis he told me it was a pretty good PhD. (Before giving me a months work in corrections.) I didn’t understand back then, but I understand now. It was small, replicatable and novel (still is)! Just replicate three times and be done with it. You’ve proven your mastery. Now start something serious.

I have not much followed the science of gut microbiome and psychology. Is this really going where this article is pointing? That we can tease out causation in foods and habits via gut microbiome towards behavior and psychology? Pretty rad.