I may be very European, and grew up in a relatively chaotic city, but I find quite confusing when I’m on a grid city.
Yes, it’s sort of convenient at a rational level, but everything appears the same, and there’s no way to differentiate one cross from the next. Streets doesn’t have their own “personality” and you have to learn them by name. I don’t know half of the street names of the city I grew in, but I know where I am by the way they intersect and twist around in interesting shapes…
I may be reading a bit extra, but my main take on this is: "in your app, you probably already have PostgreSQL. You don't need to set up an extra piece of infrastructure to cover your extra use case, just reuse the tool you already have"
It's very common to start adding more and more infra for use cases that, while technically can be better cover with new stuff, it can be served by already existing infrastructure, at least until you have proof that you need to grow it.
I think that formatting code is necessary to maintain a codebase that's used by multiple people and keep some consistency. It's very confusing to have different standards in different parts of the same code.
Code should be generally written so it's easy to read.
I like short lines in general, as having a bunch of short lines (which tend to be the norm in code) and suddenly a very long line is terrible for readability. But all has exemptions. It's also very dependent on the programming language.
I see some of this, from the point of view that it's going to be cheaper to create bespoke solutions for problems. And perhaps a "neoSaaS" company is one that, from a very bare bones idea, can create your own implementation.
But, at the same time, there are two issues:
- Companies can be really complex. The "create a system and parametrise it" idea has been done before, and those parametrisation processes are pretty intensive and expensive. And the resulting project is not always to be guaranteed to be correct. Software development is a discovery process. The expensive part is way more in the discovery than in the writing the code.
- The best software around is the one that's opinionated. It doesn't fit all the use cases, but it presents you a way to operate that's consistent and forces you to think and operate in certain way. It guides you how to work and, once going downstream, they are a joy to work with.
This requires a consistent product view and enforcing, knowing when to say "no" and what use cases not to cover, as they'll be detrimental from the experience.
It's very difficult to create software like that, and trying to fit your use case I'll guarantee it won't happen.
These two things tension any creation of software, and I don't think they'll go away just because we have a magical tool that can code fast.
I don't understand why we would ever want an agent to buy stuff for us.
I understand, for example, search with intent to buy "I want to decorate a room. Find me a drawer, a table and four chairs that can fit in this space in matching colours for less than X dollars"
But I want to do the final step to buy. In fact, I want to do the final SELECTION of stuff.
How is agent buying groceries superior to have a grocery list set as a recurring purchase? Sure an agent may help in shaping the list, but I don't see how allowing the agent to do purchases directly on your end is way more convenient, so I'm fine with taking the risk of doing something really silly.
"Hey agent, find me and compare insurance for my car for my use case. Oh, good. I'll pick insurance A and finish the purchase"
And many of the purchases that we do are probably enjoyable and we don't want really to remove ourselves from the process.
Stock images. I’ve already seen trining courses (for compliance reasons) using AI videos. A bit cringey, but I imagine cheaper than shooting real people.
Very confusing to read the article labelled as 1998 and have references for newer stuff (e.g. Ratatouile).
The biggest one for me is to recommend a bunch of 98-propiate languages (C++) and then recommend Go!
I guess that the article has been slightly updated, but it felt weird. In another language I checked the references are older.
Interviewing is a skill. I think that he got really good at it, both in tailor his CV as well as the process itself. It probably worked on the process and make adjustments. Based on the what I’ve read, it seems that he was interviewing all the time.
So, IMHO, he focused in the interview process over everything else, including understanding and exploiting the blind spots. He iterated and refined it, until, he became a master of it.
He really seemed to be not great at the work itself, though. He was being fired after a couple of days, which I don’t think is common. You really have to do it very badly to be fired so quick after being hired.
Given the ginormous amount of resource increase that LLMs are experiencing, I wonder if $20 will be sustainable.
But at least it feels like starting by paying for a service your using is a fundamentally more healthy way to interact with this
On one end, I can see that AI assistants can be useful to solve questions like “Get me a flashlight, enough alkaline batteries for one year of usage, and a waterproof cover that matches. All should fit the toolbox that I bought last month”.
But, at the same time, automating purchases to a GenAI sounds risky, and with “purchase the same thing every month” you have most of it covered. And I remember both the ideas of purchase through Alexa or “push button to order again” that never lived up to their own hype…
Most top movies last year [1] were shot outside of the US. Excluding animation movies, of course. I understand that the idea is “medium/long term” to move production to Hollywood area, but the short term impact can be massive.
[1] “Deadpool and Wolverine”, “Wicked” and “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” in London, “Dune part 2” in Budapest and Italy, “Godzilla x Kong” in Australia. Only “Twisters” was filmed in the US.
The overseas revenue is important as companies will need to prioritise markets. They don’t want to choose, but if they have to, they’ll prefer to keep 60% of the revenue over 40%. Assuming some sort of reciprocal actions, the risk is making Hollywood “less American”.
Biggest real action movie last year was “Deadpool & Wolverine”, a Disney movie which was shot in UK and made a bit over 50% of its revenue overseas[1]. Its main stars were Canadian and Australian.
Does this mean that you’ll have to pay double to go watch it to cinemas in the US? Will that make Disney to focus on the international market?