wjnc · HackerLangs

And I would add and argue that this effect has wonderful economic and societal effects. If all dictators would be bound to value a persons life and freedom in an economic sense, there would be no more war. And the easier the killing, the less war. It’s the wanton destruction of human and physical capital that is true human evil. (This is capitalism positivism. But would argue for a while that it’s true.)

wjnc

il y a 3 joursdiscuss

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.

wjnc

il y a 5 joursdiscuss

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

wjnc

il y a 5 joursdiscuss

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.”

wjnc

il y a 5 joursdiscuss

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.

wjnc

il y a 5 joursdiscuss

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.

wjnc

il y a 8 joursdiscuss

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?

wjnc

il y a 11 joursdiscuss

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’.

wjnc

il y a 13 joursdiscuss

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-...

wjnc

il y a 15 joursdiscuss

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’.

wjnc

il y a 17 joursdiscuss

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.

wjnc

il y a 17 joursdiscuss

(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.)

wjnc

il y a 17 joursdiscuss

“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.

wjnc

il y a 17 joursdiscuss

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.

wjnc

il y a 20 joursdiscuss

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.

wjnc

il y a 29 joursdiscuss

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.

wjnc

le mois dernierdiscuss

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!

wjnc

le mois dernierdiscuss

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.

wjnc

le mois dernierdiscuss

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

wjnc

le mois dernierdiscuss

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.

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