HN user

osolo

298 karma

I started programming on a ZX Spectrum. If you know what that is, you're probably an old geezer like me. Nowadays I’m a dev manager at Microsoft working on "AI".

https://stackoverflow.com/users/862099/oz-solomon https://www.linkedin.com/in/ozsolomon/

Posts6
Comments20
View on HN

I don't think they've announced publicly what models we're using. I don't think there's any particular reason for this, but just in case, I can't name them here. I'll see if this can be addressed in a blog post of something.

I can tell you that Recall isn't using Phi. Rather, it's using a collection of models that are much more tuned (and therefore much more efficient) for the feature.

My team worked on this feature and I can confirm that yes, semantic search is being done for both text and images. This allows you to do fuzzy searches like you mentioned in your comment and use words to match images. Everything runs on your device (all the models, the vector database, etc.) in order to preserve privacy.

I wouldn’t do that. Let me explain this from the perspective of a hiring manager. For a compelling position, it’s not unheard of to get 100 resumes per one spot (the ratio for my positions about 1:85). That’s a lot of resumes to go through. Often you’re hiring multiple people, so there are literally hundreds of resumes!

You can’t possibly interview everyone who applied, so you have to filter. Sometimes it’s easy (eg you’re hiring a senior but the candidate has only 2 yrs experience) but that’s rare. You have to develop more filters, or you’ll drown.

If I see a resume with a recent gap, it presents a question: What’s up? Why was this person not employed? There are many reasons, many not good. So I’ll pass, there are many other resumes without this problem.

Doing your own thing doesn’t mean there needs to be a gap. Write what you did! Call it a Startup or Startup Explorations. Talk about the idea, the tech, the UX, the marketing, all of it. This will show that you’re a self starter, a problem solver. Leaving the years empty doesn’t show any of that.

Let me leave you with this pragmatic thought: We can argue here if chronological resumes are good or bad, and what we should have instead. In the real world, that doesn’t matter because everybody else is submitting a resume, and you want yours to stand out for the better, not for worse.

The attitude in these threads always boggles my mind. When YOU, your teammates or someone else you know makes a mistake, then it’s just a mistake. But when someone at Microsoft makes a mistake it’s because Microsoft is evil and by extension so is the person who offended.

“It’s a big company”, you say. They should have a process! And I’m sad to say, they do/will have a process exactly because of this attitude. Then, everyone wonders why it takes forever to fix that bug they’re furious about or why features are slow to come.

Full disclosure: I work for MS, though have nothing to do with this. It’s a huge company. I know hundreds of people and most of them are upstanding and try to do the right thing.

Microsoft Applied Sciences Group | Senior / Principal Software Dev | REMOTE (Canada) | Full-time

I’m hiring for my Windows incubation team. We think of, research, and implement next-gen products, technologies, and user experiences. It’s like working at a startup, but with the job stability and perks of a large company. The team is all senior/principal level, affording us a fast pace even in the face of complicated challenges.

We’re currently working hard on an ML-based inking application (https://aka.ms/journal) but will ultimately move to other projects when ideation yields a higher-impact idea. The idea could be Windows tech, or maybe related to Surface hardware .. you never know.

I’m the hiring manager (nice to meet you!). Feel free to reach out with questions at first.last -at- microsoft.com.

• More info + apply as principal (15+ yrs): https://careers.microsoft.com/us/en/job/1214131

• Apply as senior (7+ yrs exp): https://careers.microsoft.com/us/en/job/1214156

My kids complained today that Google Classroom isn't working. After a quick investigation, I noticed that Snort on my firewall blocked the relevant Google server due to incoming TCP port scans. Sigh.

Imagine you're Expedia, and you want to make this consumer friendly change.

Now, on your website, all the hotels seem to be more expensive.

Nobody will understand the intricacies of why, and they'll simply book somewhere else where hotels are "cheaper".

We need regulation so these fees appear industry-wide.

$3700/2.5 years in electricity vs projected $12,500 in gas. So about $8800 in savings over 2.5 years, ~$293/mo, ~$3500/year. Still makes it hard to justify the Tesla based on just the gas savings, unless he keeps the car for >15 years.

I really appreciate these blog posts and have used the data they present when buying HDDs for personal use.

One thing that bothers me is that the data presented doesn't really take into account the age of the HDDs. For example, if a batch of HDDs of a particular model is 6 years old and has a failure rate of 12%, that really doesn't tell me much except that it's an old HDD.

What I'd like to know, for a given model, what the blended failure rate is after 3mo, 6mo, 12mo, 24mo etc of operational time. That would be a real apples-to-apples comparison.

I wish they outlined a plan to push this icon out to Stable. Even better the plan should call for the browser to eventually refuse to submit forms with password fields unless HTTPS was used for both loading the form and submitting it.

I think that developers who are still using HTTP with passwords either don't understand the implications (and a tiny icon won't help), don't care, or don't have "management buy-in" to spend the time to fix it. Having the browser force best security practices will benefit them and everyone using their websites.

Literate SQL 11 years ago

It seems to me that these would be rare rather than the typical case. I think we could make the case that the more straightforward uses (like the ones in the articles) could be optimized away as described above. Leave the more complex/less optimized code path for these edge cases.

Facebook's trying to double dip. They want you to pay to get your fans and pay again when you want to market to them. It's nothing short of a scam.

I think that this stunt will increase Facebook's profits in the short term, mainly because of businesses that have already invested in building their pages. Longer term, however, we'll definitely see a shift to direct email marketing.

Once you have someone's email, you own that relationship and there's no gatekeeper to charge you for every interaction. As business start realizing valuing of the direct relationship, Facebook will start taking a hit, and rightfully so.

I think the author has it backwards. Expiration dates in offer letters are normal, and should always be included. "Bullshit" is the exception: expiration dates that give you only 1-2 days.

In the normal course of things, you want the expiration date to be there because the offer letter (depending on your jurisdiction) can be binding, and you don't want the candidate holding on to it forever and messing with your ability to hire someone in a timely manner.

I usually add a 10 business day expiration, which allows the candidate enough time to consult lawyers/SOs while still maintaining the company's interests.