MDGeist

A former colleague of mine recently took a role that has largely turned out to be "greybeard that reviews the AI slop of the junior engineers". In theory it sounds workable, but the volume of slop makes thoughtful review impossible. Seems like most orgs will just put pressure on the slop generators to do more and put pressure on the approvers and then scape goat the slop approvers if necessary?

I think it depends on the part of the US. In my experience, being from the south, I am used to people engaging in small talk with strangers. However, working in the northeast I find people to be very transactional until you wear them down over an extended period of time haha.

IBM was ahead of the boat! They had Watson on Jeopardy years ago! /s

I think you make a fair point about the potential disruption for their consulting business but didn't they try to de-risk a bit with the Kyndryl spinout?

I used to add stickers obtained from visiting my company's clients/partners to my laptop. After 5 years the laptop was basically advertising a bunch of dead brands (either through acquisition or lack of VC funding).

I always assumed the really slow tiers were tape.

Kinda feels like a lot of companies think they can be option 1 because someone else will be option 2, and then they'll hire the young people away after they become experienced.

Awesome thanks for the heads up! I wasn't using anamorphic lenses back when I tried ML so I'll have to give it another try now.

It has been many moons since I used Magic Lantern. Has anamorphic desqueeze ever been a feature or could it be in the future? That's one missing feature that bums me out about shooting videos on Canon.

Every time there is a thread on big O notation I'm hoping someone is going to explain something that will make it clear how it relates to the anime The Big O. I'm still trying to understand what happened in that show.

This is the reason I also go to Microcenter for components. It's too bad there are so few of them and Fry's is defunct. Not many brick and mortar options left.

I had an aunt who was a hold out until this past year. She was in a rather wooded and sparsely populated area and although faster internet became available awhile ago it was much more expensive and she was already used to the limitations of dial-up so she didn't feel compelled to make the jump. If she really needed fast internet for some reason (maybe emailing an attachment) she would drive to the nearest library.

Kind of wondered if that was part of the rationale for making it news. Maybe another company will say "that's all!? we can do better" and help out.

I did not entirely hate the sequels, but I feel like the Animatrix was better and kind of flies under the radar.

I've also seen the top down version where senior leadership like a CIO/CTO wants to put a huge "modernization" project on their resume and they don't care if it is impossible to maintain or falls over after they move on.

There was a recentish David Cronenberg movie about humans evolving to eat plastic so we'll be fine. Can't wait to chow down on plastic.

I was at a company that let people keep laptops (after they were wiped) largely because the severance was so meager it seemed they expected people to sell the laptops for some extra cash. :p

They weren't dead to me immediately just because there are still third party RF lenses that rock, but when Sirui did the AF anamorphic lenses and I couldn't get one for my Canon then it really bummed me out. :/

I think you make an interesting point about the implications of the no-VST constraint. In the earlier days of Reason (before they had VST support or even Rack Extensions) it was great because I could work on a song on any system that had just Reason installed and anyone that also had the current version could open it as is. No installing plugins and no plugin compatibility issues between users. Away from the studio for a weekend? Just install on a laptop and use the dongle, no problem!

Creatively it was very freeing. Naturally, plugin envy eventually crept in and I was glad when they did add VST support, but I miss the ease of use and portability. And you got to know the stock effects inside and out which offered some streamlining in workflow.

Totally agree, but how often is the young coworker using the hip new language in their position because they were told learning it was the key to getting a job in a competitive market and it is what they have to fall back on?

Somewhat similarly, I feel like the boring/mature infra often gets ripped up in favor of something hip and new by a CIO who wants a career checkmark that they "modernized" everything. Then they move on to the next company and forget the consequences of breaking what was stable.

I think mileage may have also varied based on industry and location. I eventually found my way into tech as a writer anyways, but most of the people I met via the STC were not working at tech companies. Granted it was DC so lots of defense contractors and the like.

I was a member of an STC chapter in grad school and I went to a bunch of meetings and networking events hoping to get some practical career advice from more experienced technical writers.

At no point did it feel like anyone in the org could (or would) actually help me in the transition from grad school to technical writing work. It was a really disheartening experience. It does not surprise me that membership has waned over the years.

I have many tattoos (but none on hands/neck) and pretty long hair. I did have facial piercings which I removed during grad school because people really did not care for the piercings. I've never had the tattoos be an issue in the corporate world. The only person I know with hand tattoos is a software engineer and he is plenty successful. I think if you are good enough at your job and good to work with employers will care about that more.

I think your last bullet point is the one that sticks for me the most. If I only listen to independent death metal then why is my money going to Taylor Swift or Joe Rogan or whoever.

Yesterday an expensive desk toy, today a reasonably priced sampler. Not sure if TE is YOLOing or it is all part of a genius marketing plan.

Damn I've been watching zero punctuation since my college days. I suppose it is remarkable that it went on unchanged as long as it did.

At my previous company they created a policy where if it was more than a week or two you had to get permission from the CEO (company was a few hundred people in size). This was after one month where like 5 people all took 3 week vacations after direct manager approvals and it created some operational issues... This all struck me as a bit unreasonable though because it was not an unlimited PTO place at the time so the time had been banked.

As an outsider myself this was my assumption for why the demoscene is not the same as it once was, the hardware constraints are no the same as in the 90s. That being said I kind of look at the demo reels for new versions of Unreal Engine as a sort of modern incarnation of pushing the limits.

I bet they will just try to upsell all the AppD customers with Splunk ES/SIEM. If the Thousand Eyes and AppD integration is any indicator they will add a button in AppD that opens up Splunk...

A fair amount (maybe 15-20% of messages) since I'm on the east coast and my company is on the west coast. I don't feel obligated to reply if its outside of working hours though.

If anyone seems excited about Atmos its a handful of audio engineers. Most people aren't set up for Atmos mixing and so some see it as a way to differentiate their studios, but the reality is its very scammy and an Atmos set up is expensive.