laserlight

Chasing a thinner product at all costs?

It isn't yet.

Would you care to elaborate how you don't think a phone is not “practically necessary”?

I have never personally met someone like you. I've never known someone who personally met someone like you either. Theoretically, nothing is a necessity. That's why I wrote “practically”. Practically nobody lives like you do.

I could have been clearer. A phone is practically a necessity of modern life. Sooner or later people have to use it, unlike alcohol. Whether social media is a necessity is a different question. I bet everyone gets their own dose of it, whether they like it or not.

I appreciate giving another perspective, but alcohol is not a good analogue of phone. There's no need to “learn” how to use alcohol --- one can do without it. Yet, practically speaking, a phone is a necessity.

which are the ones that drove plane hijackings to near-zero?

How many plane hijackings have occurred in other countries, which don't have the TSA?

Don't forget the fact that you'll be questioned to death when you criticize the current generation of models, but somehow, when the new models arrive you'll be questioned to death if you don't find them better than the old ones.

That's quite a reductionist view of Getting Things Done. There's nothing magic about the system, but someone had to put it together. It has been useful to me.

Agreed. Just like one doesn't owe the society their voluntary work, the society doesn't owe one protection from criticism.

The case supports my argument though. Trying not to hire a bad candidate is not a resilient strategy. Someone might fall through the cracks. You still have to screen the candidate after the hire. Heck, even not hiring is not a good strategy, because someone inside may turn bad.

Louis Rossmann's video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRnno9VIZx0

What if a bad apple is hired despite all the checks? The system should be able to detect and eliminate bad apples before they give “so much damage” regardless of when they are hired.

Of course the organization should do its best to avoid bad hires. It should do so because of the opportunity cost of not hiring the right person, not because of the damage that they might give to the organization.

a bad hire could cause so much damage through incompetence let alone malice

The fact that an organization cannot deal with such a case is a bigger problem in the first place. Eliminating incompetence and malice is among the basic skills of an organization.

What do presets have to do with the touchscreen? Tesla didn't invent presets. Many cars with physical buttons have had presets.

he only designed the interiors not the car body

TopGear reports otherwise [0]:

In a genius move, they hired design agency LoveFrom to handle the exterior and interior execution: that’s headed by former Apple chief design officer, Sir Jonathan Ive.

[0] https://www.topgear.com/car-news/electric/its-finally-here-m...

I don't agree that difference equals boldness. Boldness of Cybertruck comes from its statement. There is no such statement behind Ferrari Luce. It's a cheap Ferrari-for-your-kid kind of design.

That's a pretty bold claim.

Behind every stupid design there are apologists, who claim that the critics don't get it.

What is bold about this cheap design?

long term people who complete courses are your best marketing as they tell others and so completion is importation and thus the deadlines

I don't see why completing courses is a customer satisfaction criterion. I've had many courses that I didn't complete, yet I was quite satisfied with the content and could recommend it to friends.

Executive function problems are symptoms of ADHD, therefore renaming it as executive function disorder would omit the root cause. Dr. Edward Hallowell proposes Variable Attention Stimulus Trait (VAST) as a better name.

Not that it impacts your argument significantly, but for the sake of completeness, Apple employs a huge number of retail employees.

predictably do what they are programmed to do

And now they predictably do what they are not programmed to do.

I can't shell into ECS

Is there a specific reason why you can't shell into ECS? IIRC, I was able to do so by following the guide [0].

[0] https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/containers/new-using-amazon-ecs...

200ml shot

It's not an espresso.

A certain large company

Which one is it? And, more importantly, why not name it?

Note that not being okay with that idea is a symptom of ADHD. Talk about it with your psychiatrist.

Wow. This is news to me. Office Lens had been my trusted scanning app for ten years. It was years ahead of Cam Scanner bullshit, which many people used, likely because of marketing.

I feel like there’s a bunch of factors for why it will never be the same for many folks

Yeah, and the problem arises simply because some people are unable to accept the fact. They insist that if LLM-assisted coding doesn't work for one, it's because “you're holding it wrong”.

I'm sorry that it wasn't clear. I didn't mean to imply that I was going to connect to Sam Altman. I specifically wanted to address why it wasn't the case that people were “intellectually beaten” by Sam Altman.

except the one you imagine is true

I'm not sure what you mean. I told about an example of manipulation that I witnessed. I later learned that these were common tactics employed by con-artists, scammers, etc.

Don’t project them on people you don’t know and seemingly have no actual first-hand experience with.

I don't need first-hand experience with someone to understand that they are a manipulator. I am comfortable forming my opinion based on reports.

I have experience in dealing with Sam Altman-like behavior. I hope to explain how their tactics unfold.

I can see people concluding that they have been lied to rather than accept that they had been intellectually beaten.

There are two angles to this: from an individual perspective and from a collective one.

One's interaction with such a manipulator isn't a single shot. There is not a single event that they are “beaten”. First, one gets persuaded --- you might argue that there's nothing wrong with a skillful persuasion. At some point they realize that the reality is not in line with their expectations. They bring the point up to the manipulator and ask for a change, this time in more concrete terms. The manipulator agrees with the change, negotiates compromises, and the relationship continues. After some time the manipulated party realizes that things are not going in the direction they desire. This time they ask for more concrete terms, without accepting any compromises. The manipulator accepts, yet continues to act against the terms. The manipulated party is now angry and directly confronts the manipulator. The manipulator apologizes and tells that none of it was intentional, and asks for another chance. However, at that point, the manipulator has run out of “politically correct” “persuasion tactics”, and tells blatant lies to make the other party behave.

From a collective perspective, even those “politically correct” “persuasion tactics” are discovered to be lies, because what the manipulator told different parties are in direct opposition to each other, i.e., they cannot all be truths.

Helen Toner suggested that they effectively ambushed Altman because if he had time to respond to allegations he could have provided a reasonable explanation. It did not reflect well on her.

I understand how her behavior may raise a flag for the unsuspecting, but it was exactly the right one. Manipulators prey on the benefit of the doubt. If Toner were to bring Altman's behavior into attention of others, no doubt that Altman would manipulate them successfully.

It's unfortunate that many people are unaware of these tactics and assume the best of intentions, when such assumptions fuel the manipulation that they would better avoid.

He's doing his job as it is defined (make OpenAI profitable.)

What? OpenAI was a non-profit until Sam made it for-profit.