Yet another refugee who washed up on the shore after the great Reddit disaster of 2023

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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 12th, 2023

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  • There isn’t one type. There are the ones like Bezos and Dell, who got rich by growing one or more businesses, and are still at it. They likely don’t work normal hours, but they likely work more than 40. Some of those, like Gates, get older and move on to other things like foundation work, but not an actual job. Hard to say what kind of hours they work. Then there are the ones like Christy Walton, who inherited their wealth and don’t really ever work.


  • First, sometimes the lighting is terrible if you look. Like shadows going one way for some objects, another way for others.

    But generative AI is generally extrapolating from its training data. It gets lighting right (when it does) because it’s processed a giant number of images, and when you tell it you want a picture of a puppy on the beach at sunset, it’s got a million pictures of puppies, and a million pictures of things on the beach at sunset. It doesn’t know if it’s right or not, but it’s mimicking those things.



  • That all makes perfect sense, and I think you’re spot on.

    There’s another factor I’ve noticed, too. Like I said, I’m a manager. Honestly, when I’m home, I get more done because there’s fewer interruptions. But many of those interruptions are employees popping in to talk to me. Sometimes they just want to say hi or whatever, but not infrequently it starts with “Hey, there’s something I wanted to talk with you about…” and they tell me about some issue or something going on. They could email/message/call me about those things, but often they just don’t.

    So I think my job as a manager is more effective when we can talk face to face. I go into the office three days a week.


  • I have mixed emotions about it. I manage a software engineering team at an aerospace company. I do see some increased quality and productivity when folks who work together and colocated. But there are tradeoffs, and happier employees for sure needs to be in the trade. Our company has sites in different states, and for years and years we’ve grabbed the skills we need from wherever they are. That is, we’ve recognized that it’s workable to have at least some people not colocated, and are willing to take that hit if it buys us something.

    We were nearly 100% remote for the better part of two years, and it was fine. Our productivity was at least adequate. My personal feeling is that a hybrid arrangement, where everyone has some overlapping days, is the sweet spot. But I’ve fought for individuals being fully remote when it made sense.






  • Plato did talk about other universes, but it was more like planes of existence. Sort of like the concepts of heaven and hell in a way. A key element, to me, of the multiverse is that it’s variant timelines, not just another realm.

    There was a novel in the early 30s called “Sideways in Time” that talked about not just going forward and backward in time, but also sideways.

    You could make an argument that the early 20s HG Wells story “Men Like Gods” did it earlier. It has a branch in time with the two paths existing simultaneously.








  • I worked on the space shuttle program, and I found Armageddon almost unwatchable. I mean, those things go up with the big solid rockets and an external tank full of hydrogen and oxygen, all of which get jettisoned during launch, then they come down as a glider. But in the movie they’re landing on asteroids and taking off again, smashing into things and still flying, etc. (remember how Columbia blew up because of a crack in the leading edge of one wing?). Plus the whole premise of it being easier to teach oil drillers how to be astronauts than to teach astronauts how to be oil drillers is a joke. Every astronaut I’ve met has been an amazing capable person - many are test pilots with multiple advanced degrees.