traskjd

About 17 years too late to be AI-first.

I’m JD, co-founder of Raygun (https://raygun.com). We’re a paid alternative in crash report logging and user performance metrics. We’ve been operating for years, not reliant on VCs, and are HQ’d in New Zealand.

I’ve met with many customers over recent months who have told me quite plainly that they have been told none of their data is to go into any AI/LLM system. This is often coming from legal and many understand this may not apply forever, but for now it’s a hard no. While many of these were large organizations, the message was almost universal.

To that end, at Raygun we have always run the business as though all data we receive is the customers’ data. Treat it how I’d want our data treated by one of our suppliers. As we look to release our own AI capabilities this year, we’ve been making it clear that these will be opt-in features. We take the role of being trusted with customer data very seriously, and the trust that is placed in us. We’re already compliant with standards like GDPR and tracking what’s coming around AI rules is something I think we’re all paying close attention to also.

Happy to chat with anyone looking, can match budgets: jdtrask@raygun.com

One of the issues in TM law is that if you don't defend it, folks can claim you're not using it.

Leads to perverse outcomes at times, especially in orgs big enough to have folks full time employed looking at such matters.

[Edit: I'm not saying this is good. Yes, cooler heads should prevail. I'm explaining what can lead it to occurring when it seems nonsensical.]

Ultimate test of a good place though if you ask when young.

I asked for my first grad role. I asked a lot of probing questions. 3 years in I was running teams and setting up operations for the business in another country for them. I even told them I’d be leaving to start my own business after this job (and did). This resonated because I was speaking to their founder at the time and knew we’d be cut from the same clothe.

Holding yourself back at a young age can just stunt your career development. Asking such questions will appeal to the right employer.

Unsurprisingly this one went from 35 to 150 staff, profitably in the 3 years I worked there. I was 22 when setting up other parts of their business. I’d started at 19.

I wouldn’t advise folks to avoid such questions just because they’re young or “need the job”. Stand out! You’re even more likely to get the job.

As noted by others here: if they react poorly to this in the interview, you already won by dodging a bullet.

Who to?

Armchair interest only, so please tell me if I'm wrong or at least we theorize how I could be wrong.

My understanding is that even in the full vacuum of space, we do not get to absolute zero. Quantum fluctuations keep it ever so slightly above it.

So perhaps information does actually not exist at absolute zero?

I’m sure it’s no coincidence that Apple is big in music and they don’t like Apple. Wonder what Tim is cooking up for Tim on this one.

Indeed the comment I’ve had surgeons point out: often the most skilled/trained person in the operating theatre is the anesthesiologist.

I should have said, I'm in New Zealand.

If you haven't watched it, Dopesick on Disney+ is an amazing telling of the background here. Highly recommend.

The irony of a developer website where everyone is pissed at somebody else's inability to do good estimates.

Yes that’s why I thought it odd to say the AWS devs have it hardest in the whole company. It’s not a competition though it always feels a bit silly to pretend back breaking physical labor is easier than sitting in an air conditioned office in a chair.

Yes, those poor AWS employees sure have it tough vs that warehouse division.

Keep in mind, we have a political party with absolute power right now. So if you move here, you'll hear a lot of blaming the last govt, while not wanting to acknowledge that the current govt is doing this also and could easily change it.

Identity politics is alive and well in NZ as much as it is anywhere. Blame the politicians who were in power 5 years back.

So you can't really call it an aspiration when all major political parties here support the same model - only the lens of folks political affiliations is being covered here.

I saw this mentioned on twitter yesterday, Microsoft Attack Surface Analyzer, an open source toolset for seeing what config changed when performing software installation.

https://github.com/microsoft/AttackSurfaceAnalyzer

Interesting to see such a strong example of where tools like this could help the very next day.

Note: I haven't used this yet, just saw it and made a note.

Oh great, I was running low on things to worry about.

On iOS devices the other "browsers" still host the same Safari web engine I believe. So in theory, it might work from Firefox on an iOS device.

If you didn't want to use the actual app already on such a device.

Or (hopefully) Microsoft Edge - Chromium engine, without this (and quite a lot of other Goog tracking code).

We've had gigabit internet in most metro areas of New Zealand for many years now (I pay $110 NZD = ~$80 USD a month to have no data cap either). In mid-March 2019 the infrastructure provider (Chorus) began testing 10Gbps connections with small businesses.

I moved to Seattle in 2016 and found there was only 1 provider who could do 1Gpbs, and even then only to some select locations in the city. Somehow moving into the Amazon/Microsoft center of the tech universe was like going back in time.

Now if we could just resolve the speed of light issue between the bottom of the south pacific and US-EAST1.

Jeff's going to be so annoyed when he discovers Musk owns 180bn of AMZN stock.

I'd guess at the same time we accept the stock market is a scam when it shuts down when trading goes full crazy? Helps prevent runs on them?

But.... you have to work at Facebook.

Sounds like you should just use Google Photos as it delivers most of that, with perhaps some improvements in 'backing up' outside of GP.

Weird you don’t share this research, only insinuate it’s there.

This is no way gives a pass but...

I’m a founder of a business. We’re of a reasonable size now and growing. The memory of fighting for every $1 early on really feels like yesterday. I doubt I’ll ever lose that feeling.

I’m not surprised at times when founder-led businesses go too far when they become extreme outliers (like Microsoft or Amazon). Even when I was in my teens and reading about Microsoft, the message was consistent: the fundamental problem was this guy didn’t appreciate he’d won. But now had the extreme resources to fight with the biggest “army” available. He ran Microsoft like he was going to fail and it was a scrappy startup just ripe to be crushed. The numbers get bigger and change, the fundamental drive, personality and (frankly) fear of failing, do not.

As I mentioned, I’m not condoning things, just sharing an observation.

Where’s all of this for your side of the argument? Thanks!

While I get the intent, as noted on the thread about their version 2 script blocker: what better way to hobble what tiny share you have by not allowing site owners to know FF users exist?

I feel like it has to be this way. You can’t both want to be trusted and enjoy the benefits of that autonomy and then expect others to not have that trust an autonomy. In many ways it shows it’s properly baked into the culture and not just some nice sound bite to attract engineering talent.

It's long been a bit strange that they had two products. I needed to upgrade onto Unifi Protect as I literally couldn't get the Video app to load, it would just instantly crash.

Protect is nicer, however the app is also fairly buggy. It let's down the quality found elsewhere in their product suites.

Since upgrading to Protect, and rolling out new hardware at a new home, I still need to manually kill the app every time I've used it on iOS. Otherwise it says it can't connect to my system. It'll always work the first time, it'll never work a second.

It's frustrating, and hopefully moving from building two sub-par products, to focusing on one, will improve the experience for everyone.

I thought the same but recently used Windows 95 and task manager was just a list of running apps you could switch to.

Resource meter was to track resource usage.

Suspect we suffer the same brain fade and the task manager we remember was either windows 98 or XP type timeframes.