mrisoli

My GF works with energy infrastructure in Colombia and they have lots of issues with people stealing copper, I didn't verify her claim but she said despite not having natural sources of copper Colombia had significant export volume of copper, pretty much all stolen. Her company has launched multiple investigations and unveiled gangs and networks repeatedly.

Wehad a junior engineer do some research on a handful of different solutions for a technical design and present the team, he came up with a 27-page document with 70+ references(2/3 of which were reddit threads), no more than a few hours later after the task was assigned.

I would have been more okay with AI generated code, it would likely have been more objective and less verbose, I refused to review something that he obviously didn't put enough effort himself to do a POC on. When I asked for his own opinion on the different solutions evaluated he didn't have one

It's not about the document per se, but the actual value of these verbose AI-generated slop, code that is executable, even if poorly reviewed, it's still executable and likely to produce the output that satisfies functional requirements.

Our PM is now evaluating tools to generate documentation for our platform based on interpreting source code, it includes description of things such as what is the title and what the back button is for but wouldn't inform valid inputs for the creation of a new artefact. This AI-generated doc is in addition to our human made Confluence docs, which is likely to add to spam and reduce quality of search results for useful information.

I feel the same way, if all one is doing is feeding stuff into AI without doing any actual work themselves, just include your prompt and workflow into how you got AI to spit this content out, it might be useful for others to learn how to use these LLMs and shows train of thought.

I had a coworker schedule a meeting to discuss a technical design of an upcoming feature, I didn't have much time so I only checked the research doc moments before the meeting, it was 26 pages long with over 70 references, of which about 30+ were reddit links. This wasn't a huge architectural decision so I was dumbfounded, seemed he barely edited the document to his own preferences, the actual meeting was maybe my most awkward meeting I've ever attended as we were expected to weigh in on the options presented but no one had opinions, not even the author, on the whole thing. It was just too much of an AI document to even process.

He doubled down on his opinion by sharing a sequence of posts from a X account that denounces "woke activism" in the software industry and open source projects. He criticised the political activism in open source projects, then, ironically, suggested Palmer Luckey should step in to steward NixOs.

I also left my home country about a decade ago.

I was already expecting a lot of gambling site ads, they took over the soccer tournament sponsorships almost completely anyway.

But what I found out when I came back in the last 3-4 years 100% shocked me. It wasn't just TV and soccer teams, I saw gambling ads in napkin holders at some restaurants, bus stops. I went to get a haircut and the barbershop had TV with gambling ads adorning their frames.

Multiple parties that eventually devolve into a two-party system, for decades it was PT-PSDB until PSDB imploded, now it's PT vs whatever the right/center coalesces into(MDB for decades, PSC after that, now PL). In fact it's more of a two-personalities system at this point, with the right clinging desperately into Bolsonaro's fading popularity while the left clings onto Lula's image as much as they can after failing to make any successor popular.

And after elections, yes, it just turns into negotiation with center parties that will sell off their support for vote-buying projects.

Interestingly, I've spotted a few places in Portugal already accepting Pix as a form of payment, catering to a large demographic of Brazilian immigrants and tourists.

Varies by country, but yeah, in general Credit Card options in Europe are pretty bad, here's my research on options in Spain:

Sabadell: No fees no perks for CC

Bankinter: No fees no perks for CC

Ing: No Fees no perks for CC

BBVA/Santander: Offer an Iberia cobranded card, 9k avios on 2k EUR spent on first 4 months, Iberia Silver Status, 1 point per 3 euros spent, 90 EUR annual fees

Caixa: Vueling card, slightly better avios earnings than Iberia card, some minor vueling perks, fast track at airports 90 EUR annual fee, also a Lufthansa card that offers 7k bonus miles, 95 euros annual fee, no info on miles per euro spent

Amex: Only worthy option, 1 mile per euro, 80k welcome bonus, unlimited lounge access, 400-500 euro credit welcome bonus, 250 travel bonus(used to be flights/hotels, now just hotels), fast track at airports, 780 euro annual fee, network in Europe is growing but I'd say still not accepted at places 50% of the time in Spain.

Revolut: Ultra could be the only comparable option to Amex that it offers unlimited lounge access and 1 point per euro at 660 euros annual fee

So yeah, the only option that actually gives you something is Amex, as the Iberia/Vueling options are laughable and the only reason why you'd have the free CC from other banks is because they are free.

Which confused me, as someone from Belo Horizonte who started uni just around that time. As far as I knew, Google was generally known one of the highest paying companies by far back then. It's benefits were unmatched because the SV-style of office with all the perks were not commonplace in the region, and employee turnover was low to non-existent. Even getting an interview if you didn't have a masters or phd was pretty difficult if not impossible(without connections).

Having worked on presentation software, it's more complicated than what it looks like in its surface.

First, considering the base/generic case, you can't really beat Powerpoint, Keynote and Google Slides, they are somewhat free/included in basic accounts, they will get the job done, people are used to Powerpoint, and it's not the core product of any of these companies, there's very little incentive for them to improve that.

Second, because you can't compete on base case, a company needs to target those who will willingly pay for presentation software, that's sales and marketing, they don't care about beautiful software, they care about conversion and data.

And lastly, most presentations are bland, the more you invest in a great creation and editing experience, the more complicated it gets and makes it less likely that people who just want to create basic presentations actually do it, doesn't matter if you have tutorials or templates, they will make crappy presentations to get the job done, if they try to do add a little touch to it they will likely overuse animations or similar features and make it even crappier.

In the end there are very few people who put effort into creating actual presentation decks, the actual content being presented is far more important or a presentation is often a hurdle to get over with, such as doing internal presentations or presenting your school assignments.

Even in conferences you still get really bad presentations, the better ones are mostly remembered not because of the quality of the slides, but the contents and the skills of the presenter.

Or in other words, "Markets can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent."

Sounds like every startup ecosystem

What seemed quite common for me was(working in European startups): Company gets investment from american investors, investors either recommend synergy with products or bring some trusted executives, new executives bring in their own crew especially at the director/higher management level, goes on to favor their decisions over others who have either more experience or knowledge about the company/product.

Goals are not met, either due to external circumstances or because executive applied strategies they were familiar with from previous gigs but don't fit the reality of that company, executive steps down "voluntarily", their pawns are let go shortly afterwards, hire new executive in place, back to step 1.

Nitpicking your comment but that's not Olympic archery, olympic archery doesn't include compound bows, only recurve bows(also the Olympics specifically uses 70m distance only).

Chrome is core to Google's business so it's worth it advertising, they also advertise the Pixel phone a lot in high-end places in global cities because they need to gain market share for mobile browsing and phones against Apple.

Anything else, not that important, even GCP which is their major bet doesn't really get any ads because it's a business product so not much sense in doing so.

They seem to believe word of mouth/viral marketing works because it worked for gmail and chrome, so they didn't double down on Stadia before product market fit, and that caused Stadia to fail(along with Google's short attention span reputation).

Because it's easy money(and as others said, to stay employable).

If someone created a framework yesterday there are few experts, and they won't judge experts by years of experience, if you're a relatively new FE in the job market would you go compete with people with 15+ years of jQuery and 8+ years of React or just take on the next new thing?

If you pickup the latest tooling today by the time it's widespread(like React is now) you're way ahead of the crop and it's quite easy to get some nice pay out of that.

Spain salaries can be ridiculous, there has certainly been a boom and some startups are paying well for senior roles as competition heats up, but I consistently get recruiters pinging me with 30-40k openings for senior positions.

> The people at the end of the line who are flipping NFTs do not fundamentally care about distributed trust models or payment mechanics, but they care about where the money is.

This is ultimately the issue, some people want to grown their own vegetables in their backyard, or chickens, but they do it for their own purposes, the loud majority in crypto space(now pushing the web3 branding because it sounds more revolutionary) is in it for the money, and since they lack the tech knowledge to build stuff around crypto they focus on the marketing/virality side, because that will make money faster.

The irony starts when what these people want is to control the supply and distribution channels for what is supposed to be a decentralized set of systems. I think the comparison to the fediverse is very good, people are in it for the tech, no one is blindly pushing it to increase the value of their virtual assets.

Assuming you can objectively measure someone like this, either by LoC or delivery times, this is the wrong way to approach any project.

Having a 10x engineer(or even worse, a 500x engineer in this alleged case) is a huge risk for the company, should the engineer want to leave or if they are incapacitated in a tragic event, the company is severely handicapped, ideally a so-called 500x engineer should spend less time writing the actual code and instead mentoring/managing others to scale up their knowledge, should the company do this right, they might not deliver on time, but they'll have a much wider array of experts when something breaks or for the next projects, reduces overall company risk and it's more profitable in the long run.

Not OP but I worked in Sweden for about 9 months before moving on, here's my take:

Maybe related to the local culture, AFAICT Swedes in general avoid conflict and whenever I questioned something at a meeting I was acknowledged and then the issue was quietly dismissed, no one wants to change anything, review processes or engage in a discussion to make things better, people will hear you, not argue back, and quietly move on, I much preferred environments where people were respectful but ultimately entered open discussions where it feels like you can learn more from each other.

Similarly, everyone in Sweden is very nice, up to a point where it's way too impolite not to be nice, everyone was very nice to me and I felt very welcomed and integrated and then I saw everyone was playing corporate chess in the background and complaining about me to my managers for reasons I'm yet to comprehend.

Ultimately I left Sweden because I didn't find it the right fit for me for several reasons combined, climate is of course not the best, salaries are not high compared to the cost of living you get in other European cities. The fact that I didn't enjoy my working environment there was just extra.

I only had one short lived working experience in the city so it might have been an odd case.

I picked up a lot of conversational english because the TV Show Friends was on pretty much during the entire afternoon when I was a teenager and I would spend most of my time after school watching it.

Since I spent a lot of time in english-speaking professional environments for the last few years I managed to deviate a little bit from "Friends style" speak but I still end up saying "like" often if I start rambling.

A lot of people I know also have a bit of a vice with the word "like" and picked it up from Friends as well, it's an interesting thing to notice.

I always thought about this, but not about Coca-Cola, since people actually need to want to buy it to acquire it, but Visa and Mastercard have huge advertising budgets, notably for events like the World Cup and the Olympics, and I never met someone who actively pursued a specific card flag when getting a new card and instead just get whichever their bank has to offer.

It also had a competitiveness to it by using a points system in photos, it was quite clever and it rated photos based on a wide set of criteria, including pose, framing, you'd get multipliers for having groups on the frame, it was quite unique for its time.

I loved that game, I'm glad they are coming out with a sequel but I outgrew Pokemon as the newer generations came and I am probably not as interested in the sequel, might try it out for the nostalgia factor.

Pokemon Snap is truly a testament to Nintendo's creativity in coming up with innovative gameplay, it leveraged their new 3D system in a cool way back then.

Not sure what it's like these days but back when I starting university Google had just acquired a local company and setup their first Latin America office in my hometown(Belo Horizonte), salaries were probably a fraction of its SV counterpart but they were still 5-10x higher than just about any other company in the region. It was notoriously difficult to get in, only way to get an interview was to either have a phd or a masters with an impressive resume, even then you probably needed some connection to refer you.

Honestly I hoped their presence would help push local companies to up their game and drive salaries up for developers in a low wage market, unfortunately that is yet to happen 15 years later.

I think it's Google Podcasts, barely any efforts on features for the app, seems like they just made it because there needed to be a podcast app, Keep, while not given much attention by Google, is still easily accessible within Gmail.

Worst one I can think of is ConvertKit's rebrand that was so bad they went back on it(kept the new logo, but reverted the name change because it had some religious meaning), then again, it's not as big of a brand as TransferWise.

It's very unfortunate that restaurant websites are often so terrible that sometimes they don't even include a proper PDF to check the menu, I can imagine it really makes it impossible for people with special needs to get the info they want or to order, I myself almost always only go to restaurant websites as a last resort because they tend to be awful unless they belong to some big chain.

There are of course some site builders restaurant owners can use to improve this, but since, as others have said, they are not always tech savvy they probably don't know, best thing to improve accessibility I can think of is that local commerce boards create some sort of recommendation or guidelines on how to setup a business website following best practices with a list of easy to use builders for such.

What sucks about the domain squatting is that those large corps will have much better SEO capabilities, so even if someone owns register bobs-pizza-chicago.com and make sure it works they could just make chicago-bobs-pizza.com or some variant and beat them in SEO and steal their traffic, even if they were required to provide some banner saying "this is a doordash website" most people wouldn't care and order anyway.

A previous employer used it when they wanted to move away from ActionScript due to flash EOL approaching as the goal of transpiling to multiple platforms was appealing, performance was not the best however and they ended up moving towards a different approach. Still, by the time I joined a few primitive libs were maintained in Haxe because they were stable and there was no reason to migrate them, so I had to dabble with Haxe a few times at work, not saying it was terrible, but it was far less enjoyable then our much more robust TS setup, this is arguable tho as since it had been deprecated by the company it received fewer tooling support in house.

It's a matter of perception, especially in poorer countries like Brazil, why would anyone pay money for something that was previously free?

Good example of this is WhatsApp, IIRC it was free for a year then charged $1 for lifetime access, people still scrambled to get around the app(download illegal APKs, or recreate accounts).

IMO it's a no-brainer to choose complex technology, the incentives are much more attractive.

Go the simple way and it works, you get paid and off to the next project, if it doesn't work, its your fault.

But on the job experience with scaling tech is way more valued than doing some online course, you get paid to learn by doing on company time, and you don't lose anything by possibly wasting company resources. So you tick the box that often job postings have "proven track record of <insert scale buzz here>" which could possibly lead to a much better salary, its all incentives.