Yeah, the the characters kind of feel like Doonesbury characters, where they just slot in wherever they're needed at a particular moment in history. Each season's story by itself feels authentic, but when you watch their character arcs from start to finish, each person involved would have to be a generational talent.
And it's not like that kind of thing never happens, like look at General Magic and its through-lines through the tech industry up until 2015 or so, but it just happens too conveniently in the show. Particularly Bosworth's role seems far-fetched to me. He's already at the end of his career in season 1, and somehow he remains relevant through the internet age?
The "Phoenix" monologue in the last episode evokes nostalgia for everything Donna and Cameron have been through, but it also breaks suspension of disbelief by pointing out just how much of history these two people have been involved with firsthand.
Take a look at the careers of Ken Thompson, Rob Pike, Brian Kernighan, Larry Wall, James Gosling, Kirk McCusick, Allen Holub, Al Aho, Marvin Minsky, Daniel Friedman, Gerald Sussman, Lance Leventhal, John Carmack, John Romero, Paul Graham, Guy Steele, Christopher Date, Bill Joy, Eric Raymond, Douglas Comer, Andrew Tanenbaum, David Patterson, Jeffrey Ullman, Fred Brooks, or Jim Keller.
At the end of the day the viewer should get to see what they want to see. But in my case I usually want to see what the author had in mind, and I want my TV to respect that preference.
I wanted to like The Hobbit in 48, but it really didn't work for me. It made everything look fake, from the effects to the acting. I lost suspension of disbelief. If we want high frame rate to be a thing, then filmmakers need to figure out a way to direct that looks plausible at a more realistic speed, and that probably means less theatrics.
It’s happened to me since before any cinemas were digital. I only figured out why by trying to play games below 30 fps. At least for me, it’s definitely the frame rate.
I keep all that stuff off my LG TV by keeping the ethernet cable unplugged and let Apple TV handle all the streaming stuff. I still somewhat resent that I need to wait for the software to boot up just to change inputs, but at least I don't get ads. Hopefully Samsung works the same way?
It's so annoying that the only way to stay "online" is to decline the privacy policy, etc. But by doing that, you lose access to the app store and the ability to update the firmware. I hate my damn Samsung Smart TV, even though it (almost) doesn't show any ads in my country/region. Its bloatware makes even the most basic use of the TV infuriating.
I tried this for a little while but quickly stopped as a critical mass of websites broke when I tried using it to sign in. Special characters in your email address is an edge case that produces inconsistent results even within a single product
YMMV, I think I only tried to sign up on 3 websites where it was not working. You can fallback to the original email address in those case.
The funniest part was that for one it work great for the signup part, but they used a third party tool for licences that broke because of my e-mail.
For another, only the js code was verifying the e-mail, and I could push it by removing the validation. When the owner had to validate my account, they got a message that the e-mail was incorrect when they tried to submit the form. They called me and had a great discussion about web apps security. We had a good time.
I would point out that it kind of prevents you from checking if your email is in a leak database as you need to test each aliases you used.
Consistency is often helpful, but you also need to be wary of cargo culting. For example, you see a server back end that uses an ORM model and you figure you'll implement your new feature using the same patterns you see there. Then a month later the author of the original code you cribbed comes by and asks you, "just out of curiosity, why did you feel the need to create five new database tables for your feature?"
I know, that's a pretty specific "hypothetical," but that experience taught me that copying for the sake of consistency only works if you actually understand what it is you're copying. And I was also lucky that the senior engineer was nice about it.
As with any of these LLM workflow automation tools, it raises a few questions about each potential use case, and the likely long-term outcomes.
1. Is this working around friction due to a lack of interoperability between tools? For example, is this something that would be more efficient if the owner of the website exposed a REST service? Will the existence of this tool disincentivize companies from exposing services when it makes sense?
2. If there is a good reason for the lack of a service endpoint, perhaps for security reasons, will your automation workflow be used to bypass those security measures? Could your tool be used by malicious actors to disable major services? Are you that malicious actor yourself? Will your tool be used by scalpers to prevent consumers from buying high-demand products?
3. If this is being used to work around deferred maintenance with internal tools and processes, will the existence of these kind of tools be used by management to justify further deferral of that maintenance? Will your tool become a critical piece of the support staff's workflow?
4. If your tool is being used in good faith to work around anti-patterns in website design, will the owner of the website be incentivized to break your workflow? Is your use case just a step in an arms race?
These are the thoughts that go through my head whenever I hear about software being laid on top of complicated processes, where instead of simplifying the underlying processes, we add another layer of complexity to sweep it under the rug. I'm sure that people will find your project useful, but I wonder what the longer-term effects will be.
1. Yes absolutely. But the issue is a little bit more nuanced than that. Websites without APIs don't have them for one of two reasons: (1) They want to protect their data (LinkedIn) or (2) can't be bothered to make an API (boutique websites, government portals). This solves that problem, but also makes it so these websites never have to build an API (after LLM costs go down).
2. We don't want Skyvern to be used on websites that prohibit this kind of behaviour (LinkedIn is the obvious example). Specifically, we didn't open source any of our anti-bot or captcha related code because we get requests to make "Reddit upvote rings" and such. We don't want to support bad actors like that
(3) I think this is a net net good thing. AI browser automations= less need for APIs = no need to maintain both an API and UI = streamlined experience + less code = simpler systems
(4) I'm not 100% sure about this one. We usually just assume companies don't build APIs because they don't have budget for it. Ie for non malicious reasons. Companies like LinkedIn will likely thwart any attempts at automation, but we're not interested in participating in this cat mouse game
I think 100 Gb of GPU memory will always cost multiples of CPU + regular memory.
Using LLMs and computer vision for these kinds of tasks only make sense in small scales. If the task is extensive and repeated frequently, you're better off using an LLM to generate a script using Selenium or whatever, then running that script almost for free (compared to LLM). O1 is very good at it, by the way. For the $0.10 of 1 page interaction charged by Skyvern, I can create several scripts using O1.
Unless we want all those ISPs to be digging up all the streets all the time, that means we need strict regulations on sharing of physical infrastructure then, which brings us back to the CLEC/ILEC wars of the late 90s. Having each company maintaining its own last-mile access is an extremely inefficient use of resources.
I sympathize with your situation, and I appreciate that you're trying to be a cool parent who accepts your daughter unconditionally for who she is, but I wonder if it's even possible to know where the limits are on that, or how much she feels that way. Personally, I grew up in a really supportive family, but I still had a whole lot of hangups as a teenager that meant I didn't always want my parents to see what I was doing or looking into on the internet. Some of those private interests turned into major parts of who I am, and I don't really want to imagine the world where I had to worry about what my parents saw.
Would it have been better if I'd talked these things out with my parents? Maybe, but would I have? Or would I have just self-censored my dreams rather than face that conflict?
I guess maybe as a middle ground, maybe keep watching while she's young but pull back as she gets older?
And it's not like that kind of thing never happens, like look at General Magic and its through-lines through the tech industry up until 2015 or so, but it just happens too conveniently in the show. Particularly Bosworth's role seems far-fetched to me. He's already at the end of his career in season 1, and somehow he remains relevant through the internet age?
The "Phoenix" monologue in the last episode evokes nostalgia for everything Donna and Cameron have been through, but it also breaks suspension of disbelief by pointing out just how much of history these two people have been involved with firsthand.
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