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>> No matter how well “AI” works, it has some deeply fundamental problems, that won’t go away with technical progress.

Without an explanation of what they author is calling out as flaws, it is hard to take this article seriously.

I know engineers I respect a ton who have gotten a bunch of productivity upgrades using "AI". My own learning curve has been to see Claude say "okay, these integration tests aren't working. Let me write unit tests instead" and go on when it wasn't able to fix a jest issue.


The entire rest of the article consists of describing the problems. The problems aren’t about the technical abilities of AI.

A part of the job is only enabled when you get the Principal label. Unlike almost all other transitions, you only prove that you can do the role when given the opportunities. The hardest part about this transition is that you are doing two almost orthogonal roles - Sr. SDE / Tech Lead and the principal parts. It is very easy to not show impact in the former while chasing the latter.


A part of the job that is completely different to what you've been doing, only you were promoted to it because of what you've been doing?

Isn't this like a recipe for the Peter Principle?

    "The Peter principle is a concept in management developed by Laurence J. Peter which observes that people in a hierarchy tend to rise to "a level of respective incompetence": employees are promoted based on their success in previous jobs until they reach a level at which they are no longer competent, as skills in one job do not necessarily translate to another"


Nobody performs as the CEO until they are given the CEO title. If the Peter principle was true 100% of the time, we wouldn't have any successful CEOs ever. Which is clearly not the case.


Some CEOs do, some don't. Some are successful, some are middling, some are shameful failures or frauds.

However, none of this has much to do with what I said: isn't promoting someone for things they would have to stop doing (as in TFA) a recipe for the Peter principle?

At some point, we have to understand articles and blog posts like the one we're discussing are mostly fluff; an ad for the person writing them. They are self-promotion, there's not much sense in trying to extract valuable lessons from them.

----

I thought of another analogy:

"You're an excellent marksman and a sniper, therefore we promote you to... general of the army!"

But, you could argue, maybe the sniper was already directing strategy, and that's why he got promoted? Nope, TFA is clear about this:

    "To get to principal, you need to put yourself on the critical path. To be effective as a principal and go beyond it, you need to actively remove yourself from it"
So whatever the sniper was doing that got him promoted to general, he must now stop doing it.


>> Those are choices. If you want to do that, you need a process that can support it.

__need__ is doing a lot of work here. There is no forcing function to get OEMs to do this ASAP: 1) the market doesn't really care that much 2) there are no regulations around this (and even if they were, can you immediately recall a tech exec going to jail for breaking the law ... )


> the market doesn't really care that much

This. Pixels are not more expensive than flagship Samsungs. If people cared and bought Pixels because they get the security updates, then Samsung (and the others) would follow. But people don't care, so the OEMs don't do it.


It's kinda weird to single out Samsung here, because they are pretty good with security updates and they explicitly talk about long security periods in their marketing. They are not as fast as Pixel, but somewhere mid-range and up (A5x) get monthly updates and they are usually 1-4 weeks behind Google.

It's the other vendors that are the issue. Even Fairphone is behind a lot (and they only release one model at a time).


The "(and others)" part was about including the other OEMs :-). I used the Samsung flagship as a specific example because it is very expensive, and people who buy it don't have the excuse of the price.


This is a feature, not a bug.


Yea all the “this bad thing will happen” discussion misses that the intent has been plain for at least a year now. The administration has plainly said what they would do during the election and they have rather faithfully executed on that plan. This isn’t about fixing things or saving people money it’s about doing what they want to do.


Its about inflicting as much pain in the american public as possible because if you cause indiscriminate damage its bound to also damage their enemies. Its a death cult.


I don't think they think about the other side much at all. It's all about enriching themselves, end of story.


Nah, these people are already rich beyond imagination, they want to be venerated, they have to see their enemies crushed. Money isn't enough for them, they want praise and the peasants haven't praised and honored them enough.


[flagged]


“I know this will be removed” is a pretty transparent attempt to sell the real reason for downvotes (you’re talking utter nonsense) as a made up one that suits your personal narrative.

Don’t be under the mistaken impression that you’re being smart here. It’s very transparent.


Exactly right. HN is generally right-wing but I think it aspires to be more intelligent right-wing than dumb.

Think more Bloomberg News than Fox News (or, for UK folk, more FT than DM).


Exactly, see Enron. Once you control the production and can manipulate the price you then extract obscene profits.


>> a good design

good is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. The point of TLA+/Pluscal is to have a proof of the soundness of the design.


There is a long tradition in India, which started with oral transmission of the Vedas, of parallel cognition. It is almost an art form or a mental sport - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avadhanam


Mental sport - Yes.

It is the exploration and enumeration of the possible rhythms that led to the discovery of Fibonacci sequence and binary representation in around 200 BC.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pingala#Combinatorics


Sounds very much sequential, even if very difficult:

> The performer's first reply is not an entire poem. Rather, the poem is created one line at a time. The first questioner speaks and the performer replies with one line. The second questioner then speaks and the performer replies with the previous first line and then a new line. The third questioner then speaks and performer gives his previous first and second lines and a new line and so on. That is, each questioner demands a new task or restriction, the previous tasks, the previous lines of the poem, and a new line.


The replies are sequential to adjust with new inputs, but the mental process to produce each new line has to do lots of computations


> Obsidian charges $8 a month to access the same notes across multiple devices. While not a huge amount for such a useful app, it adds up to an eye-watering amount - almost $1,000 if I planned to use Obsidian for a decade.

This highlights one of my personal bugbears. People have a mental barrier when it comes to recurring, low-cost payments; even though the net sum is small in comparison to other things that they wouldn't think twice to pay for.

A $5 latte every workday comes to (260 * 5) $1300 annually. Obsidian sync is $96. Why would you not pay this amount for a tool you use everyday?


> People have a mental barrier when it comes to recurring, low-cost payments;

It's because they add up. In this specific case, considering OP job and it's heavy use of obsidian, it makes no sense to not pay for the synchro, if only to support the company[1], but if I was paying 8€/month for all software and service I'm using I would be bankrupted immediately.

Ironically this hurt open source and companies proposing generous free tiers the most because the amount of money people have for software will go to the one they cannot get for free.

[1] actually it makes no sense to develop your own tool when alternatives already exists


Also it is competing with a free editor and USB stick that has been around since 2000. That's the anchor.

Then now you have Google docs, Dropbox, O365, Notion, Confluence, etc.


I mean, by this definition it's competing with a small paper noteblock and a graphite pencil. Lose the USB and everything is gone, forgo all features of Obsidian, etc.


Also Obsidian asks for permissions to read files in all of the device on Android. They don't explain clearly why that is necessary.

I don't see it being discussed that widely.

Also another aspect is that many people seems to think Obsidian is open source, while it is not so.


Not anymore. As of Obsidian 1.8.10 you can use app storage which doesn't require additional permissions. It's explained here:

https://help.obsidian.md/android


Still they are recommending people to use device storage permissions with "All files" permissions rather than the limited App Storage permissions.

They prefer that the users use the less secure option.


The primary reason it's recommended is that it provides more freedom and interoperability. Read this thread and you'll notice that many people sync their notes using Syncthing. You cannot use Syncthing with app storage because the files are sandboxed. Many people enjoy the freedom of being able to read/modify notes using multiple apps.

The secondary reason is related to user expectations and file deletion. The device storage option behaves more like desktop in that if you delete Obsidian your files will not be deleted.

For people who are okay with the tradeoffs, app storage is now an option. That's a good thing, no?


That(using whole device, all files access permissions) is entrusting all your files to the good senses of Obsidian, which is not an open source app.

There isn't a good reason to grant an app unlimited file access permissions.


If Obsidian didn't allow people to store files in the device storage it would be accused of forcing people to use the paid first-party Sync. Offering both options lets people make the choice that's better for them.


Well, the file reading/writing makes sense if you wish to store vaults in your filesystem, an ability which is one of obsidian's main and most attractive traits over alternatives.


> Also Obsidian asks for permissions to read files in all of the device on Android.

Oh interesting where did you find that?


> A $5 latte every workday comes to (260 * 5) $1300 annually.

I spend ~€10 on food per day. Paying $5 for a coffee _every day_ sounds like a lavish luxury. Fun fact: global median income is only ~$2500.

> Obsidian sync is $96. Why would you not pay this amount for a tool you use everyday?

If I paid $96 for my notes to sync, I'd still need to set up some synchronisation mechanism for other files (e.g.: photos, documents, music, etc).

I.e.: I would still need something like Syncthing. If I'm going through the effort of setting up Syncthing, including notes notes for it is trivial.


reoccuring costs for reoccuring labour (i.e. running a sync service) are IMO fine. You either pay with money, or with time for such things. At the price they're asking and for what is offered (sync and financial support of an awesome product) it seems like a steal to me.


This is super cool! The GIFs showing the object being built are just yummy; I have no other way to describe it.

If anyone else was searching for the dataset, it is at https://huggingface.co/datasets/AvaLovelace/StableText2Lego

It contains " contains 47,000+ different LEGO structures, covering 28,000+ unique 3D objects from 21 common object categories of the ShapeNetCore dataset".

Local inference instructions are over at their github page - https://github.com/AvaLovelace1/LegoGPT/?tab=readme-ov-file


>> Stealing deprives someone of something

Yes. In this case, it is the artist's sole right to reproduce said images, based on their creative output.

>> decreases scarcity, it doesn't increase it

What does scarcity have to do with stealing? You can steal bread and reduce food scarcity, but that is still theft.


Your analogy between copyright infringement and bread theft is interesting, given how "stealing bread" has traditionally been used as a shorthand for systemic inequality.

Copyright is why Disney can ruin someone for doing something with Goofy they don't like. Yes, it protects smaller, less profitable artists too, but make no mistake: it's a tool of mass control and cultural capture.

Perhaps it's time to seriously ask whether copyright is actually doing its job of "promot[ing] the Progress of Science and useful Arts." "...but generally speaking, other nations have thought that these monopolies produce more embarrasment than advantage to society" [Jefferson].


The Trump admin has shown the same attitude as the Biden admin when it comes to mergers. So why do they think the merger will go through this time?


Because the one thing I don't think you can plausibly say about the security software space is that there is a lack of options.

It uniquely seems to be fragmented and messy compared to most other parts of the software industry,(not sure why, just saying what I observe.

So the market situation looks very different to the ones that the DOJ was going after (like Google in ads,if Wiz was a big ad company then maybe the government would be more interested in trying to block it). Wiz isn't even close to having some kind of insurmountably dominant market share in their specific area of expertise either.


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