That's not really what happens at all. The characters on the show never make the critical discoveries or are responsible for the major breakthroughs, they're competing in markets that they ultimately cannot win in, because while the show is fictional, it also follows real computing history.
(MILD SPOILERS FOLLOW)
For example, in the first season, the characters we follow are not inventing the PC - that has been done already. They're one of many companies making an IBM clone, and they are modestly successful but not remarkably so. At the end of the season, one of the characters sees the Apple Macintosh and realizes that everything he had done was a waste of time (from his perspective, he wanted to change the history of computers, not just make a bundle of cash), he wasn't actually inventing the future, he just thought he was. They also don't really start from being underfunded unknowns in each season - the characters find themselves in new situations based on their past experiences in ways that feel reasonable to real life.
> you sound like someone from the 1800's shouting about how photography should be banned and not allowed to crowd out hard working painters.
I'm saying that you shouldn't call photographs paintings because they aren't paintings. I don't particularly care if people make AI "music" or "art" and I don't particularly care if they consume it (people have been consuming awful media for the entire history of humanity, they aren't going to stop because I say so), but if you give me a ham sandwich and call it a hamburger I am going to be annoyed and tell you that it isn't a hamburger and to stop calling it that because you're misleading people who actually appreciate hamburgers.
AI "art" isn't art. I don't care whether you like it. It's like fractals or rock formations or birdsong - it may be aesthetically appealing to some people, but that isn't the definition of art.
Similarly, people keep posting articles to HN that get upvoted which are substantially AI edited. They're never labeled as such, and it's unpleasant to find myself reading unlabeled ChatGPTese again. There's a Show HN up now that has an entirely generated readme, which is just... fine, I guess. I just don't want to engage with it.
Ed: two Show HNs that are substantially AI generated readmes, now
I would say trying to dictate what is and isn't art really goes against the spirit of art in general. plenty of art exists to push boundaries including what can be considered art.
This is why most publishers won't even talk to you unless you have a finished manuscript already, but I appreciated this look into a different situation.
> This is why most publishers won't even talk to you unless you have a finished manuscript already
This is absolutely not true in the world of technical publishing. I mean books published with publishers like O'Reilly, Manning, No Starch, etc. Usually you come to them with just a proposal and a couple chapters or even just a proposal. Or their acquisition editors actually reach out to you. It's the exception (not quite rare, but definitely less than 20% of books) that comes to them with a finished manuscript. I did that with my last book. I've published 5 technical books across three different technical publishers, so I know a bit about this business...
I'm just replying to this comment to not discourage people who just have an idea and not a finished book yet but have the motivation to finish and want to get a deal.
This is not true for business books like mine. It's vital to write a proposal first in that world; publishers want to influence the content (as in the OP article).
I think the same is true for tech books but I don't know as I haven't written one.
A novel or other fiction is the opposite; there you do have to write the whole thing first.
This obviously has to be false. Progress is made, people learn better ways to play golf and do all the other things. At the frontier, people simply MUST be doing self-guided experimentation and learning from objective results, and since this has always been true, there was once someone who could not play golf at all (because no one could) who figured out how to hit a ball with a club correctly on their own, without learning from anyone else, because that person was the first person who did it. Thus, self-guidance must be possible and self-improvement must also be.
> But if you repeat the same shitty swing for 10 years with no feedback, you’ll end up exactly where you started.
You always have feedback. If your ball doesn't go where you intended, your swing was bad in some way. If you keep doing the same thing without making adjustments based on measured outcomes, yeah, you won't improve. But you can try different things and figure out what works and what doesn't without ANY instruction or outside guidance.
There are basically zero players on the PGA tour right now who were self taught. For the next generation of pros, if you are not a plus index player by the time you are around 13 you have no chance whatsoever.
> people simply MUST be doing self-guided experimentation
And self guided exploration is a skill in itself which you have to learn. You can experiment for years and get nothing of it because you don't even measure anything. You can find a local maximum and, not knowing the concept, never try something radically different.
I agree in principal, but: The people at the frontier aren't alone at the top of a mountain, they still have each other for guidance. The master that transcended limits while in isolation is a literary trope.
This doesn't contradict my point at all, I agree entirely that people work with each other and it's a great way to learn. And obviously people aren't going to achieve what took tens of thousands of person-hours at the highest level in one lifetime on their own. One does need to stand on the shoulders of giants and all that.
But the OP was making a much stronger claim, that it is, in principle, impossible to learn anything on one's own, and that HAS to be wrong, for the reasons I listed.
For what it’s worth that tracks with me experience in video games.
When I sat with 30 other testers for 6 days per week I achieved mastery I did not believe possible. Eventually I could cakewalk even the most difficult challenges in those games and I was generally recognized as a highly talented tester.
Meanwhile I’ve sunk more cumulative hours alone into Elden Ring and I have accepted I will never reach that same level of mastery.
It’s a humbling realization how much of my prior greatness was actually just my environment at the time.
I think with rowing in particular due to certain counter intuitive parts of the stroke you absolutely can get nothing out of years of self exploration.
Yes. I've been twice in the 9 years that I've been living here. Total time in the DMV in 9 years is under an hour. Last time I went, I spent under 5 minutes inside the building, less than a minute at the desk getting my registration done (I usually do it online, had a weird one-off situation).
I've never experienced customer service half that good from ANY corporation.
I think most stereotypes are the opposite of the truth and it isn't hard to find reasons why.
It's also interesting that you draw a a correlation between "hard to fire" and "incompetent". It's very hard to fire Elon Musk, what does that make you conclude about him?
Maybe, but it sure makes all the hyped claims around LLMs seem like lies. If they're smarter than a Ph.D student why can't they use software designed to be used by high school dropouts?
> A cosmopolitan, as in one that truly knows the different cultures and people of the world because he has deep first hand experience, or has read so much that it allows to draw some independent form of conclusion, is either a strong proponent of borders or a fool.
This is the most incredible No-True-Scotsman fallacy I've ever read.
> (This may be out-of-date at this point, but I haven't heard of Amazon or Google doing on-device processing for Alexa or Assistant.)
It was out of date 6 years ago.
"This breakthrough enabled us to create a next generation Assistant that processes speech on-device at nearly zero latency, with transcription that happens in real-time, even when you have no network connection." - Google, 2019
I'm not sure what other people's hands are like, but mine are pretty big and I can just barely push my thumb against the part of my index finger where I would wear a ring, and doing so renders my thumb useless for any of the opposable things that I usually use my hand for. It's also extremely uncomfortable for my hand and thumb. I've managed to press buttons on my watch with my hands full, but it would literally be impossible to activate this thing with my hands full.
I've worn rings, and they can rotate in place on the hand if they're not perfectly sized, and there aren't any half sizes here, so this would definitely rotate on my finger, making no guarantee that I can even reach the button without adjusting the ring with my other hand, or maybe awkwardly spinning it with my thumb until the button is in reach again.
And it only lasts for 10-15 hours of recording time. And there looks to be a cloud services upsell for better STT than the open source offering on device.
This seems like an early alpha version of something that might be a good idea, but as it is I can't imagine buying one.
it's easier for me to touch my thumb to the bottom of my finger (palm side) than the other way around, and you could also press it into whatever you're holding potentially.
You obviously have never worked a company that spends time arguing about the "definition of done". It's one of the most subjective topics I know about.
Sounds like a company is not adequately defining what the deliverables are.
Task: Walk to the shops & buy some milk.
Deliverables:
1. Video of walking to the shops (including capturing the newspaper for that day at the local shop)
2. Reciept from local store for milk.
3. Physical bottle of Milk.
1. A whitish liquid containing proteins, fats, lactose, and various vitamins and minerals that is produced by the mammary glands of all mature female mammals after they have given birth and serves as nourishment for their young.
2. The milk of cows, goats, or other animals, used as food by humans.
3. Any of various potable liquids resembling milk, such as coconut milk or soymilk.
And when on the receiving end of the deliverables list, it's always a good idea to make sure they are actually deliverable.
There's nothing worse than a task where you can deliver one item and then have to rely on someone else to be able to deliver a second. Was once in a role where performance was judged on closing tasks; getting the burn-down chart to 0, and also having it nicely stepped. Was given a good tip to make sure each task had one deliverable and where possible—be completed independent of any other task.
Well, I think in this example someone else wrote down “buy milk”. Of course I would generally know what that’s likely to mean, and not buy the ridiculous thing. But someone from a culture that’s not used to using milk could easily get confused and buy the wrong thing, to further the example. I guess my point was that it’s never possible to completely unambiguously define when a task is done without assuming some amount of shared knowledge with the person completing the task that lets them figure out what you meant and fill in any gaps
(MILD SPOILERS FOLLOW)
For example, in the first season, the characters we follow are not inventing the PC - that has been done already. They're one of many companies making an IBM clone, and they are modestly successful but not remarkably so. At the end of the season, one of the characters sees the Apple Macintosh and realizes that everything he had done was a waste of time (from his perspective, he wanted to change the history of computers, not just make a bundle of cash), he wasn't actually inventing the future, he just thought he was. They also don't really start from being underfunded unknowns in each season - the characters find themselves in new situations based on their past experiences in ways that feel reasonable to real life.
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