From 2020 to 2022, I've encouraged a steady stream of students to pursue their education in computer science. Tech companies were hiring like crazy. I would interview 3 candidates a week on some occasions. The future of tech seemed to be paved with gold. Any day now, several...
I'd say in a given week I probably only do about fifteen minutes of real, actual, work. — Office Space
I was watching a video where a guy said he has 8 agents working in the background. He was stressed out and was trying to "get shit done." At one point he said "I have no ...
For a software developer position, there isn't a trick to finding the best candidate. Your criteria do not determine how solid the candidates will be. Everyone is submitting 500 applications a month now, and those who automate the process submit thousands. So how do you hi...
As I mentioned before, it takes me way too long to edit a single video. So I am releasing it in chunks. If I never finish it, well then at least I'll have a few videos out.
What is the video about? Well, it is about the future we were promised, versus the one we are actually living in. It's not dystopian, but it seems like the goal of tech is supposedly to automate the tedious and mundane, so we can have more time to do the things we love. But along the way came the word productivity. The goal of productivity is not to get free time. It is to produce more in the same amount of time. Not produce more in less time. Read this a couple times for it to stick.
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The first one was 1 minute long. Today's will be two minutes. And the next will be 3 minutes long. Then I'll have to think about Fibonacci.
Read the non-interactive version.
The next morning was the apocalypse that Amodei had predicted. Only there wasn’t any fire, there wasn’t a mob of protesters, the power wasn’t even cut off. We were all alive. He was wrong about the details. This was a quiet apocalypse. A ...
For me, boredom is just a signal. It means I've hit a roadblock and my brain is trying to convince me not to go any further. "Give up. This sucks anyway. Why are you still wasting your time on this silly thing?"
That's how I feel when I do things I'm really bad at. I think I...
"I'm sorry, you're out of time, we have to move on. Senator, what's your response? You have three minutes."
Watching a political debate these days feels useless. Candidates get two minutes to make their case, and their opponents get even less time to reply. I'm reminded of...
Three years ago, I bought an Asus laptop, specifically the Zenbook Pro 17. It's a powerful machine and works just fine for my needs, but it had one problem that made me want to either return it or throw it out the window. I would work on projects for hours on end and close...
I don't think there was any official announcement, but I'm pretty sure Microsoft is secretly trying to trick you into using Edge. Well, it has always been trying to trick us, but this time it's even more aggressive. You can no longer tell Edge from Chrome. Just go ahead and ...
We’ve given in to using LLMs for writing at work. From emails and Slack comments to full-on documentation, everything is AI-generated. However, I’ve realized it only ever saves me time when I’m being lazy. That is, it’s great at converting meetings into transcripts, summariz...
Last week I opened Edge to test my Internet connection, because that's the only thing I use it for, and noticed something new. Right beneath the address bar was a new bar with a button offering to let the browser launch automatically whenever I start my computer. That was st...
Have you ever watched any old hack movie lately? The hacker can write at 180 WPM, never using the backspace or changing his mind ever. It’s like before they ever started, they already knew the last character they would type on the screen. But that’s not how it works in real ...
I started learning web development around the time the term search engine optimization, SEO, was becoming more common. You could still see the shift between pre-SEO content and post-SEO content. A popular article titled "Forgotten" (a great story) was suddenly republished as...
This was so casually uttered by LG executives in their sales pitch to advertising companies.
We own the glass.
What they mean is, they own your tv. They own everything on it. You may have paid for the box, but they own the glass. They can run anything they want on it, and...
My biggest challenge isn't code per se. It is explaining to someone else what I am trying to do with the code. It is surprisingly hard to convert the thoughts in my head (or the code) into something coherent someone else can understand.
I still believe that. I don't even remember when we had this discussion, but I'm glad Walter has kept it up. And a great reminder of my priorities.
If you weren't coding, what would you be doing?
I'd be a writer. (not a good one, but one nonetheless)
It's easier for someone in my position, after working 20 years in this field to talk about morals. I can disagree with the choices my employer makes. In fact, I can walk away. But I remember the dilemma I felt I was in, earlier in my career. The lead developer stood behind...
The YouTube tag marking a video as AI-generated is as insignificant as the little "Sponsored" text in search ads. I've taught my mother and her friends to check for that tag, but most, if not all, of the videos they share with me don't even have it. Even though they're cle...
I don't think it's going to work out the way everybody thinks it will. The current narrative, at least the one pushed by the companies selling the shovels, is that AI will become centralized. Anthropic and OpenAI will offer safe, vetted AI. Developers will become mere prompt...
There is a machine called Productivity, and on this machine there is a knob and a button. The knob increases productivity, and the button is labeled "reset." My job was data entry at a non-profit. It was my first job in the US where I didn't have to lift heavy objects. My ...
What are you supposed to do after you've created the most successful product? Not just successful, but the most useful. In an ideal world, you would sail into the sunset and enjoy your riches. In this real world, you have to come up with another, even more successful product...
The aliens arrived, and their first instinct was to check our networks. They accessed one of our most important websites. A government website. Unfortunately, they were met with a reCAPTCHA.
Are you a robot?
They are not robots. But after fifteen minutes of squinting and trying to select all the fire hydrants and traffic lights, they gave up. Defeated by a checkbox, they returned to the stars.
The aliens arrived, and their first instinct was to check our networks. They accessed one of our most important websites. A government website. Unfortunately, they were met with a reCAPTCHA.
Are you a robot?
They are not robots. But after fifteen minutes of squinting and trying to select all the fire hydrants and traffic lights, they gave up. Defeated by a checkbox, they returned to the stars.
During the pandemic, we completed one of our largest projects at work. To celebrate, since we couldn't meet in person, we all ordered food on DoorDash and played an online escape room game together. We were on a Zoom call, helping each other out and having fun. The first cha...
You must use the tool. We must justify it. These aren't the words companies use, but that's what it comes down to. When you buy an expensive solution before you've clearly identified the problem, you have to use the tool to justify its line item in the spreadsheet. At most c...
A couple weeks ago, the CEO of Snap was all over the news in the US because he and his wife made a large donation. The weird part about it was that every news outlet that covered it had an acrobatic title where they didn't specifically say how much they donated, yet insisted on that $550 Million amount.
I think I finally figured it out. That is, the reason why AI written articles suck:
Both the author and I are reading the article for the first time.
When an article is insightful I don't even mind the emdashes or that the stark truth is not X, but Y. A good take can transcend even llmism. But then you have questions, and somehow the author doesn't even know what you are talking about, it's simply because they are discovering the insight at the same time you are.
They were busy, they didn't have time to write. As a consequence, they only dedicated enough time to skim the result before publishing. They don't know what's in it. You can't ask them what they were thinking when they came up with the insight because, well, they didn't think.
The great article sucks because there is nobody behind it.
You've probably heard this one before. It might have come from a parent, a teacher, or a friend who bought an expensive item and wanted to justify it. It goes something like this:
A poor man buys a cheap pair of boots for a few dollars. They fall apart within a year, so h...
When I was a kid, my father bought a family home computer and placed it in the living room for all to see. When guests came to our house, they would stop by the computer and admire its marvel without even turning it on. While everyone else was careful with the computer, trea...
I like building websites. But in some circles, I might as well say that I like to drive to the forest before sunrise, chop down a tree, load it in my trunk, and gather some dry wood as well, then drive back before first light. All this just to use the wood to start a fire an...
Imagine being worth $2 billion. Would you give away $550 million? That's a quarter of your wealth, more money than I could spend in several lifetimes. Yet that's how much Evan Spiegel, the CEO of Snapchat, and his wife have donated to a charity in California. Specifically, t...
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