It's a pretty reasonable question for both of them. Perhaps more for the CFO, given what we know of Altman's, er, lack of candour with the board where money is concerned. But maybe given the "Her" debate it applies to both of them, in different ways.
Is this a company where the executives can really be more than rubber stamps?
Right. I mean... I sometimes think that Webpack is a malign, inscrutable intelligence! :-)
But at least it's supposed to be deterministic. And there's a chance someone else will be able to explain the inner workings in a way I can repeatably test.
Indeed, and presumably well before 1965, which is when Greater London was created. Most of the non-disambiguated High Streets will be in the Greater London boroughs (Bromley, Bexley etc.)
When I was a kid, Bromley was already a London borough. But we sure as heck didn't consider Orpington to be proper London! ;-)
I dunno. I tend to annoy people when taking on jobs by telling people what I am concerned about and do not understand, and then sharing with them the extent to which I have managed to allay my own concerns through research.
I turn down a lot of jobs I don't feel confident with; maybe more than I should.
> I don't think this is indicative of people who don't know what they're doing. I think this is indicative of people using "AI" tools to help with programming at all.
I think using AI tools to write production code is probably indicative of people who don't really know what they are doing.
The best way not to have subtle bugs is to think deeply about your code, not subcontract it out -- whether that is to people far away who both cannot afford to think as deeply about your code and aren't as invested in it, or to an AI that is often right and doesn't know the difference between correct and incorrect.
It's just a profound abrogation of good development principles to behave this way. And where is the benefit in doing this repeatedly? You're just going to end up with a codebase nobody really owns on a cognitive level.
At least when you look at a StackOverflow answer you see the discussion around it from other real people offering critiques!
ETA in advance: and yes, I understand all the comparison points about using third party libraries, and all the left-pad stuff (don't get me started on NPM). But the point stands: the best way not to have bugs is to own your code. To my mind, anyone who is using ChatGPT in this way -- to write whole pieces of business logic, not just to get inspiration -- is failing at their one job. If it's to be yours, it has to come from the brain of someone who is yours too. This is an embarrassing and damaging admission and there is no way around it.
ETA (2): code review, as a practice, only works when you and the people who wrote the code have a shared understanding of the context and the goal of the code and are roughly equally invested in getting code through review. Because all the niche cases are illuminated by those discussions and avoided in advance. The less time you've spent on this preamble, the less effective the code review will be. It's a matter of trust and culture as much as it's a matter of comparing requirements with finished code.
I shoot digital, and only black and white film, these days.
(I need to build a darkroom so I can print again)
But the thing that really hooked me deep into photography was 6x6 transparencies from a Rolleicord. Velvia, incident light meter, sunny day, job done.
Downvotes on my earlier comment suggest that people haven't had this experience: no matter how great, practical and useful digital is, there is something mesmerising and emotional about a great transparency.
These days I get my visceral buzz from assembling my own simple lenses.
I have good reasons to consider myself neurodivergent (and others do consider me such). There are definite divergences that have caused me problems. I have what people consider "superpowers" and what people consider "difficulties".
Not certain I am autistic. Might have been considered mild or (the then-termed) "high functioning" as a kid in the 80s.
But on the other hand, I don't think it's necessarily wrong to put me in the same broad category as autistic people, because I have the same issues in the context of the article -- with being conventionally "ambitionless", having relatively little grasp of (or instinct for) power games etc., and needing the kind of support that others often do.
That category needs a name. (In the UK we'd traditionally go for "boffin", which is broadly a term of affection, but it's a little harder to spot a boffin these days because of casual clothing at the office)
TBH I cannot, which is why I talked of doubt in the quantity comparison, and it’s a fair point to pull me up on. My broader point was that people associate film with chemicals often because they have been within sniffing distance of a darkroom or developed film at school. They do not associate consumer electronics with chemicals, when silicon chip manufacturing involves some true nasties that you would not be able to safely go near to with gloves and tongs like a fixer.
It’s just my instinct based on what I know of the processes involved in manufacturing the main bits that are different between even a late era film SLR and a contemporary mirrorless camera —- displays, high density batteries, sensors, additional microcontrollers and usually two powerful CPUs.
The nastiest bit is the sensors, which are very large chips.
But given the sheer amount of electronics in it and what we know of the impacts of toxic waste pollution in Taiwan and other silicon manufacturing centres, and even just CO2 emissions, it seems likely to me that the contents of a digital camera are likely worth hundreds of rolls of film and their prints in terms of pollution impact once you consider all the processes that are involved in controlling that pollution.
The average secondhand consumer digital camera in my experience has shot in the low thousands, where that data is easily found still; it’s getting harder to find shutter activation data and it may not really be a useful guide anymore. But in the DSLR era it was normal to find secondhand kit with use equivalent to 50 to 80 rolls of film at the very most.
This is why secondhand camera companies and hire shops are so important, because they extend the useful life of what is otherwise e-waste. And I think there's a lot of delayed e-waste out there; people who own DSLRs but haven't chucked them because they are occasionally still better than their phones.
Digital cameras use more (and much worse) toxic chemicals. It’s just that you don’t get involved with them personally.
I doubt most digital camera owners ever shoot enough to get to the point where there’s an environmental net benefit compared with film.
This is one of the reasons why I only shoot with secondhand digital kit now.
ETA to whoever downvoted me: I accept you think I might be talking made-up nonsense! But to get an idea of what I mean, I would urge you to look at why there are so many Superfund sites in Silicon Valley.
It's a pretty reasonable question for both of them. Perhaps more for the CFO, given what we know of Altman's, er, lack of candour with the board where money is concerned. But maybe given the "Her" debate it applies to both of them, in different ways.
Is this a company where the executives can really be more than rubber stamps?