dnackoul · HackerTrans

5 saat öncediscuss

We use a tool called Weave (I believe YC 25?) that analyzes PRs for "expert units of work" and shows lift from AI tools. My understanding is they have their own proprietary model that assesses the difficulty of each PR. I find the organization level view and pivots useful and aligned with intuitive expectations.

dnackoul

7 ay öncediscuss

I've generally observed latency of 500ms to 1s with modern LLM-based voice agents making real calls. That's good enough to have real conversations.

I attended VAPI Con earlier this year, and a lot of the discussion centered on how interruptions and turn detection are the next frontier in making voice agents smoother conversationalists. Knowing when to speak is a hard problem even for humans, but when you listen to a lot of voice agent calls, the friction point right now tends to be either interrupting too often or waiting too long to respond.

The major players are clearly working on this. Deepgram announced a new SOTA (Flux) for turn detection at the conference. Feels like an area where we'll see even more progress in the next year.

dnackoul

7 ay öncediscuss

During my time there (late 2000s) there was a Software Lab (6.170) that focused on programming fundamentals and culminated in a four-person, month-or-so long project. At least at the time, it was one of the more notorious courses in terms of time investment. It was common for people to live like monks during project time.

Unfortunately I heard that class was retired and there was no direct replacement, which is a shame. It was an excellent crash course in shipping.

dnackoul

11 ay öncediscuss

I also took Professor Winston's seminar in college and have similar feelings about it. It was far and away my favorite class and the wisdom in his advice has only become more apparent over time. At its heart, it was really about how to understand and communicate ideas.

One of the things I treasured the most was that Professor Winston overtly subscribed to the "make topics crystal clear and broadly accessible" school of technical communication. He would contrast this against the "make things incomprehensible so everyone thinks you're brilliant" school of thought. I am eternally grateful someone biased me early in life towards the former, not just when I'm speaking but when I'm choosing what to read and who to listen to.

I've also wondered lately what he would think about the current LLM wave. I'm sure he would have had a characteristically clear and profound take. I feel the world is losing out not having his voice during the current moment.

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