There's a layer between your input and the model called an agent harness. It's the bit that guides the model how to traverse the file system, where to search, how the codebase is architected, how to navigate the monorepo.
When you say "Add a default $5 tip to the dialog screen titled 'Tip this waiter?'", what the harness does is supply information on where the strings are, the dialogs, and where the design style containing the PrimaryButton might be.
Cursor is excellent at this and probably pioneered the whole approach. Copilot hasn't really bothered to be more than a wrapper.
The models are the same. The agent implementation is different. I can confirm Claude Code performs much better than GH Copilot with the same Claude models.
They might de facto take them over via the defense production act, board demands, or shut them down, and then put the screws on Google who they can already control via their shareholders.
There's always this comment, saying that its useless to possibly govern or resist advancement or development or use of weapons capable of indiscriminate killing.
If the world actually worked like they believe it does, if restraint were just not possible, the world would have been destroyed at least 3 documented times over.
This reminds me of the meme of Margaret Thatcher: "And There is No Alternative" - a way to justify the policies she desired to implement and attempt to preempt any other view.
We're supposed to believe Jack is a victim of circumstance. He hired all those people, and now he has no choice but to fire them - he wasn't clairvoyant to the future when he hired all those people, or else he'd known he would have had to fire them. But now since he is clairvoyant to the future, he knows he must fire them.
Because Block is a mature company now and they don't need the extra productivity. It's not just better for Block but also for the whole society that these developers leave for more innovating companies.
AI writes code. It doesn't fix organizational problems.
But there were no organisational problems according to Jack. Also do you really believe Block has reached peak productivity? Does any company ever reach it?
Because productivity doesn't scale linearly with quantity of developers. There's a point where it plateaus or even descends as quantity of developers goes up.
I dislike Jack going back several years, but I think in this instance he's admitting that he's taking responsibility between weighing the risk of doing this vs. not doing this. Maybe morale will tank anyway and the company will hold on, but be out-innovated by competitors that invested in growth. There are future outcomes that could prove he made the wrong call, and I any time layoffs are announced, there is a tacit mea culpa about past over-hiring.
Its funny how for him, he is enriched by this option as the stock price rises, and its couched in words like responsibility. I was taught when I failed at something that responsibility meant making amends to the people wronged. His reputation taking a hit doesn't come even close to the loss of 4000 people's livelihoods - he will not lose one of his presumably many houses.
> tacit mea culpa
This is the opposite of a mea culpa, this is saying there is no choice and the decision is inevitable, and he is only allowed (by the very framework he constructed) to do it fast or slow.
Id say 2 months is about normal for non tech maybe 3.5 at solid companies. This also adds a week per year at the company so plenty of people will be getting 5 months+ and $5k on top of that
Fair enough. It's nothing crazy by UK standards, you'd usually get your notice period paid off (2-3 months), plus another few months negotiated by your union, plus the statutory week's pay for each year worked (1.5 weeks if you're over 40). You don't normally get to keep your devices, I guess.
Double counting the notice period is unfair IMO. You already pay for the notice period by having the notice period when you want to quit. Companies having to pay you the notice period when they fire you is symmetrical and IMO is not a severance package. Maybe that's just my assumption, but IMO a severance package is the asymmetrical pay-out when one party quits an agreement, not the communal wager you both put down when you enter the contract.
Put another way: if both parties agree on a shorter or longer notice period, I wouldn't expect that to affect any potential severance package. It's just the notice period.
We're talking about worker's comp here. In this thread specifically, the UK is brought up as having generally "better" severance packages. But that's only half the story if you count things which the workers pay the companies when they're the ones quitting.
I worked in the UK, I've had to "pay" for that notice period by hanging around where I didn't want to. It's the other side of the coin which somehow doesn't get mentioned when people bring up Europe as somehow having better employee protections. They might, but notice periods ain't that.
If I had to put as much money into a company's retirement as they put in mine, I wouldn't turn around when I retire and say, wow, great comp package. No: this was a symmetrical deal we made, this time it's working out for me--in a parallel universe it's working out for you; it's a wash.
Severance packages are comp. Notice periods are just properties of the contract. They're not a severance package.
I find this an important distinction because it lets companies pull the wool over your eyes by pretending they're being generous, when really they're just paying you the exact same thing you'd have to pay them were you the one quitting. That's not a package, that's just salary.
Working my notice period has never be even an issue for me. It gives me an opportunity to wrap up projects, say goodbye to colleagues, etc. It's usually fairly light work as well, you're not taking on new responsibilities. I didn't even realise it could be otherwise.
The reason I'm saying it's part of the redundancy package is because (some?) companies will pay off your notice period without you having to actually work it. I've taken voluntary redundancy only once, and I was told that I would stop working at the end of the month, but I was still paid my full 3 months of notice (in addition to the tax-free redundancy payout). That was not part of the initial contract.
It reads as hypocritical because he frames it as himself making a sacrifice when what he's really taking responsibility for is choosing the outcome that makes himself the most money.
> It's not up to Dario to try to make absolute statements about the future.
Thats insane to say, given that he's literally acting in the public sphere as the mouth of Sauron for how AI will grow so effective as to destroy almost everyone's jobs and AGI will take over our society and kill us all.
All I'm trying to say is that nobody can predict the future, and therefore saying statements pretending something will be a certain way forever is just silly. It's OK for him to add this qualifier.
> it's easy to know how they will act when the going gets rough
Even if you went to burning man and your souls bonded, you only know a person at a particular point in time - people's traits flanderize, they change, they emphasize different values, they develop different incentives or commitments. I've watched very morally certain people fall to mania or deep cynicism over the last 10 years as the pillars of society show their cracks.
That said, it is heartening to know that some would predict anyone in Silicon Valley would still take a moral stance. But it would do better if not the same day he fires 4000 people to do the "scary big cut" for a shift he sees happening. I guess we're back to Thatcherisms, where "There Is No Other Option" to justify our conservatism.
Your comment reminds me of a story. John Adams and Lafayette met in Massachusetts something like ~49 years after the revolution. (Lafayette went on a US tour to celebrate the upcoming 50 year anniversary of independence.) Supposedly after the meeting Adams said "this was not the Lafayette I knew" and Lafayette said "this was not the Adams I knew".
In these days of the Epstein mails, it's worth remembering one thing that's become clear: Epstein was an extremely nice guy. He seemed kind, sincere, interested in what you were doing, civilized etc.
But to quote Little Red Riding Hood in Stephen Sondheim's musical: Nice is different than good. It's hard to accept if people you really like do horrible things. It's tempting to not believe what you hear, or even what you see. And Epstein was good at getting you to really like him, if he wanted to.
That doesn't mean we should be suspicious of niceness. It just means that we should realize, again, nice is different than good.
In German you say „Nett ist die kleine Schwester von Scheisse“ which means „Nice is the polite version of being an asshole“. And this is how I cope with what decision-makers say. Zuckerberg was also „nice“ for a long time.
The effects of gambling aren’t good. Been to a casino? They’re sad places. It should be illegal the same way heroin and fentanyl is. Lots of ppl use opiates, and most don’t end up ruining their lives and that of their families. But there’s quite a few who do, and those folks end up on the street, families break up, and you get a lot of petty crime, squalor, and health problems that your community ends up paying for one way or another. All to make some asshole getting paid from addicting people rich.
> 1. Average American spends THREE THOUSAND DOLLAR year at Amazon.
Where else would americans be getting home goods like soap, appliances, electronics? Vitamins, perscriptions, etc?
The answer to almost every one of those, for the vast majority of Americans, is one of like 5 megacorps. Target, Walmart, Kroger, CVS, Amazon. Things have largely stopped being available retail because of all this consolidation. If I want to go buy a multivitamin, its no joke like $25 a bottle at my grocery store, and $8 on amazon. It is just kinda... a part of people's lives now, and the alternatives all involve either spending more money or time.
It’s funny: a loved one gifted me a book knowing I’m opposed to Amazon’s practices. They let me know they bought it elsewhere and the act of paying more was part of the gift’s charm (they’ll use Amazon otherwise.)
You can buy used books, they sell extremely cheap and are perfectly readable. There is a lot of seller, at least in France, but I guess it must be similar in usa.
Books are staggeringly affordable (aside from hardback), and if even they seem too expensive, libraries exist and offer ebooks. I would honestly be embarrassed to announce this – it reveals something very unflattering.
Staggeringly affordable? Last time I checked ebooks were roughly the same price as physical books. That's ridiculous. If they were like 20% of the price I'd buy them.
I don't care man. It doesn't matter to the world whether I spend money on books or not. It only matters to me. Or I guess it's more correct to say it matters much more to me than to the rest of the world.
So yeah, I'm not worried about it. I don't tip either, by the way, unless I see a very good reason to. Given the choice, I prefer to keep my money rather than give it away. Couldn't care less what you or anyone else thinks about it.
Sure, ebooks could be cheaper, but they’re still cheap as hell. $5-10 for what, ten hours of entertainment? A fraction of what you pay to dine out. I mean, you can be as cheap as you like, but this thread exists because you’re promoting your cheapness tactics for others to emulate, which, at scale, actively harms the very things you are enjoying. You can be cheap! It’s just parasitical, which is why I suggested it was a shameful thing to announce.
I looked up the price for Project Hail Mary which I read recently, it's like $20 and the physical book is the same price. Think about that. Imagine all the work involved in producing and transporting the physical book, compared to just infinitely copying a single epub file that's probably generated automatically from a word document or whatever they use to write books. The fact that those are the same price is outrageous. It's completely unreasonable.
I wouldn't say I'm cheap, I'd say I'm frugal. I'll happily spend money on things, just not when I don't need to. And especially not when it's completely unreasonable like ebook prices. I can get it for free so I'll take that deal. You can say it's parasitical, I guess I don't disagree with that. Personally I think there's a lot bigger fish to fry in that department like insanely rich people who hardly pay any taxes, but sure I'm slightly parasitical in some minor and insignificant(to everyone except me) ways.
I also don't really think it matters that much. Most authors don't make enough money to live off it. The ones who do, make a fortune. I generally read books written by those lucky few who make a fortune, and I don't feel the slightest bit guilty about not paying money to Andy Weir, who's worth about $55 million according to a quick Google search. He'll be fine. And all the middle men like Amazon and publishers etc can pound sand as far as I'm concerned.
Yeah, I mean millionaire authors are one thing, but saying "Most authors don't make enough money to live on, so I'm not going to pay them for their work" is a bit absurd.
That's not what I said. I said I don't read their work. Maybe I do some times, but it's not often and I seriously doubt the $2 or whatever they end up getting after everyone else has their cut makes any difference to them.
Oh yeah because I definitely want to be giving money to entitled shits who'll spit in my food. That makes all the sense. Tipping happens after anyway.
And for the record I'm not American, we don't have the insane tipping culture you guys do. I know you're American because only an American would say what you just did.
I'm not American, but I assumed you were American because you were defiantly declaring that you don't tip, whereas in Europe (for example) it would not be worthy of comment :P
Guess we both assumed.
Also, you're right that the tip comes after, so not tipping is safe... until you go to the same restaurant twice (in America).
No, I don't mind giving physical books as gifts to people who want them. In fact I don't mind physical books at all.
I just prefer ebooks because an ebook reader is 100 times better. It has backlight so I can read in the dark, it's compact so I can put it in my pocket, it's light and ergonomic so I can easily hold it and flip pages in one hand, and it can fit literally a whole library worth of books in my pocket. It's not even a competition, as far as I'm concerned physical books are furniture at this point.
For vitamins/supplements specifically, there's Costco, iHerb, nootropics depot.
While they might not be the absolute cheapest options, they're usually a pretty good price and at least with those sources I'm not too concerned with counterfeit or tainted supplements, unlike Amazon [0]
There used to be 6 Walgreen's in my city. Now there are 2. I've used Amazon to fill some of that gap because the 30 minute drive is bonkers for toothpaste. COVID hit this economy like a Mack truck and helped the monopolists grab even more of a share.
It might surprise you to know that there are different kinds of toothpaste and even toothbrushes, all with differing levels of effectiveness. Some people get advised to use specific kinds by their dentist.
At least I don't feel morally repugnant shopping at Costco. I live right next to WalMart and leave it as a means of last resort. Cancelled Amazon Prime. I guess Vonz/Ralphs/Albersons are all Krogers, so I'm got there if I need small groceries.
Soap comes from everywhere. It's in the grocery store, drug stores. Hell it's in every hotel you stay in. Just grab it before you go and you've got a few weeks' supply.
I would guess that the median American can count the number of times they've ever been to a hotel on their fingers. Possibly even the average American.
Eh it's the same with motels, which a lot more people go to for one reason or another. It's not even worth cherry picking when there are so many other sources of soap that don't come from the back of a van.
I'll add to the chorus who ditched Amazon years ago because of their predatory practices. I do recognize though that I'm a relatively rich American so I can afford to, but if everybody who did, could, the market might look different.
That said, how much of that $3k/year is spent on things they need vs things they bought through Amazon's upselling algorithms? I drive past the giant warehouses and I wonder, how much useful stuff is actually in there? Because when I do find myself on amazon.com most of what I see is just trash wrapped in plastic.
And it proves a point: Things are still available at retail. Sometimes it is a box store but just as often it's a smaller shop. Does it take more time? Sure! But seriously, what is everybody using all that time they saved by shopping at Amazon for? From what I see it's more shopping online.
What about warp, is that also just a wrapper?
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