hao's recent activity
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Comment on Opinions on stand up meetings in ~life
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Comment on A coder considers the waning days of the craft in ~tech
hao LinkAnother excellent article by the New Yorker's de-facto resident coder-writer. Hello, Somers, if you see this :^) Having used ChatGPT extensively over the past two weeks to build a simple wedding...Another excellent article by the New Yorker's de-facto resident coder-writer. Hello, Somers, if you see this :^)
Having used ChatGPT extensively over the past two weeks to build a simple wedding website — a photo gallery with automatic thumbnail generation (face detection with OpenCV), and lightly dynamically generated pages (an N-days-til-wedding counter in Microsoft's Razor templating language) — I think we are posed to bring more aspirational coders into the craft than ever. At the boundary, there are all these people who would be happy to code but need a little activation-energy push to get over a hump. Maybe they have kids and don't have many free evenings; maybe they don't have a good text editor or shell setup. If ChatGPT 5 or 6 can be that push, that seems like a net positive for the craft. Who, really, cares what happens to the elite echelon coders who have gone through Ivy League CS curricula? If they get bored and move on to other industries, if their salaries are marginally garnished by the same forces of automatization that have come for every other industry, that does not seem so bad.
More concerning are the concerns, the same ones Ted Chiang raised, that a few monopolies will capture all the profits. AI, conditional on its success, should be the rising tide that lifts all boats. It doesn't seem poised to. Are we to bequeath our generation's set of corporate behemoths to our children? Probably. Let's hope they do a better job of trust-busting than we did.
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stranger video
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Comment on Lighthearted comedy anime? in ~anime
hao (edited )LinkAs someone who normally steers clear of anime, my wife got us to watch Aggretsuko and I loved it. For an American like me, it's fascinating to watch Japanese office politics (and, later, actual...As someone who normally steers clear of anime, my wife got us to watch Aggretsuko and I loved it. For an American like me, it's fascinating to watch Japanese office politics (and, later, actual politics) be satirized by someone within that culture. I did a lot of Googling to try and hunt down all the references in the show. Great time! It does get somewhat serious and treacly in the middle seasons; also, it took me a while to get past the Flash-style animation.
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Comment on Midweek Movie Free Talk in ~movies
hao LinkWe saw Justine Triet's Anatomy of a Fall in theaters off of the extremely strong reviews (I feel like any movie near the 90 mark on Metacritic is doing something right) and the casting of Sandra...We saw Justine Triet's Anatomy of a Fall in theaters off of the extremely strong reviews (I feel like any movie near the 90 mark on Metacritic is doing something right) and the casting of Sandra Hüller, who sparkled in Toni Erdmann. A great, humanistic piece of cinema attached to the engine of a courtroom drama! We are still talking about it.
Killers of the Flower Moon had a great story, but I suspect the book will be better than the film (three bathroom breaks between the two of us). Whether it was the pacing, the acting, or the editing, the movie felt flat. It is hard to root for a couple of dum-dums, and the movie definitely made the protagonists feel like dum-dums.
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Comment on The villa where doctors experimented on children in ~humanities.history
hao LinkAn long-read exposé of Austrian doctor Maria Nowak-Vogl’s child-observation station.An long-read exposé of Austrian doctor Maria Nowak-Vogl’s child-observation station.
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The villa where doctors experimented on children
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Comment on Writing for Friends was no dream job in ~tv
hao LinkGreat article! If you liked this and you like podcasts, check out Subtitles On, which is Sean Clements' podcast (there are more episodes and video recordings of the episodes on the "Flagrant Ones"...Great article! If you liked this and you like podcasts, check out Subtitles On, which is Sean Clements' podcast (there are more episodes and video recordings of the episodes on the "Flagrant Ones" patreon) ostensibly about movies featuring writers; he and the guest frequently use the movies to jump off and talk about what it is like to be a modern-day writer in Hollywood. The short and long of it is that it is rough. The profession is being eroded on all sides: showrunners are choosing not to convene writer rooms; private equity firms that only care about marginal profits are running more of Hollywood than ever; AI is an omnipresent threat; there are fewer places where writers can learn the skills to become showrunners; it is no longer possible to be staffed on a show and earn a living wage.
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Comment on A harrowing vision of mind uploading in the form of a fictitious Wiki article in ~books
hao Link ParentI loved this collection, and it is a very fast read. Months out, I still think about the Turing test short story.I loved this collection, and it is a very fast read. Months out, I still think about the Turing test short story.
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Comment on DisplayPort: A better video interface in ~tech
hao Link ParentI do this too, and it has made me acutely aware how slow my Dell 4k monitor is to wake up compared to my LG 4k monitor. Unrelatedly, I'm hoping a family member needs a monitor soon so I can get...I do this too, and it has made me acutely aware how slow my Dell 4k monitor is to wake up compared to my LG 4k monitor.
Unrelatedly, I'm hoping a family member needs a monitor soon so I can get rid of these. I really envy the setup some people have where they can daisy chain a laptop to two monitors on one Thunderbolt cable. It just feels so wasteful to throw away / Best-Buy-recycle two perfectly working monitors though...
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Comment on Does anyone read a weekly printed news publication? If so, which and why? in ~talk
hao LinkI recommend Portal:Current Events on Wikipedia if you haven't seen it before. I don't think it's anywhere near comprehensive, and the focus is kind of scattershot (it is volunteers, I guess, after...I recommend Portal:Current Events on Wikipedia if you haven't seen it before. I don't think it's anywhere near comprehensive, and the focus is kind of scattershot (it is volunteers, I guess, after all), but here are two things that make it worth checking IMO:
- It's not U.S.-centric at all. Sometimes frustratingly so for someone who lives in the U.S., but usually a breath of fresh air.
- It links out to Wikipedia articles, which have so much context. Newspapers never give you enough context. They will talk about a recent development in the Israel-Palestine conflict and expect you to hunt for all the context. P:CE just directly links you to the ultra-specific thing you need to know. It's great for learning about things that you would usually need a history textbook for.
Again, Wikipedia, factual accuracy, editor bias, highly non-diverse writers, I know. But the depth is extraordinary nevertheless.
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Comment on Does anyone read a weekly printed news publication? If so, which and why? in ~talk
hao Link ParentI'm also a huge fan. Whether it's Ted Chiang's recent entries about large language models (it is a blurry JPEG of the web, isn't it?), or this longform essay about caterpillars by Elizabeth...I'm also a huge fan. Whether it's Ted Chiang's recent entries about large language models (it is a blurry JPEG of the web, isn't it?), or this longform essay about caterpillars by Elizabeth Kolbert.
One of my coworkers is a contributor and he says, once you get off the slush pile, they spend so much time fact-checking and editing and compressing your words. Every line of dialogue has to be backed by an audio recording or a phone call to the speaker. Every fact has to be traced to a citation.
It is one of the few publications that feels like a pleasure, not a chore, to read. The downside, I think, is that they aren't a good place to read about oh-my-god-what-just-happened-today information. At the same time, I like that they aren't rushing to put things up online just for eyeballs.
Lastly, I see their tote bag all the time in NYC. And I get why -- for cheap subscriber merch, it's a really good tote bag.
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Comment on Does anyone read a weekly printed news publication? If so, which and why? in ~talk
hao Link ParentI can't speak to all their columns, but their recent coverage of the Eric Adams administration in NYC made me rage-unsubscribe from the magazine. I think it's a classic case of "this journalistic...I can't speak to all their columns, but their recent coverage of the Eric Adams administration in NYC made me rage-unsubscribe from the magazine. I think it's a classic case of "this journalistic outlet seemed very intelligent up until they started covering the one thing I'm familiar with". I don't want to nitpick everything but you can see from this submission that it's not much more than repeating the talking points of the administration. It's shockingly uncritical of power for a journal of repute. People who have followed Adams since his time as borough president (one of the hardest jobs to mess up, as it very few responsibilities, and is much more akin to being a state dignitary) know to view everything he says and does with skepticism. The Economist didn't seem to do much of that background work.
I remember reading the magazine consistently in 2011-2012 and then again these past two years before quitting. I think their pivot to online content and the daily here's-what's-happening style of content has maybe drained some of the talent and focus from other areas. I think it's difficult to cover the nuances of niche areas, like NYC local politics (which, let's be honest, their readership probably doesn't care much about, so maybe it doesn't even make sense to go into the level of detail I want), in the short word count they afford articles these days. The word count is so much shorter than it used to be, I feel like!
On our fairly large team (n = 16-ish), we had long, boring standup meetings that we slowly evolved into nice, interesting ones where people remain engaged:
I think any time a meeting follows the format where each person goes around and says something they're prepared is automatically doomed to fail. At a certain team size, I feel like one has to prioritize what gets said -- it's expensive to keep eight people in a room for an hour, and it's even worse if people are bored! Forcing people to write something takes all the pressure to verbalize everything synchronously and makes room for questions and discussion.
It's not perfect. I think it takes someone in the room to be the conversation babysitter and keep the ball rolling, too. Good process always takes work.