12 ms·

Mamdani Hires Lisa Gelobter as Chief Tech Officer

77 points by leephillips 8mo ago

neonate 8mo ago
https://archive.is/fM36L https://archive.is/fM36L
andsoitis 8mo ago
https://archive.is/fM36L https://archive.is/fM36L Lisa Gelobter, whose work helped shape the modern web, was also on the launch team at Hulu. Ms. Gelobter was the director of program management at Macromedia where she helped develop Shockwave into a web plug-in that allowed for video games and animation on the web, turning still images into moving GIFs — animated images known as a graphics interchange format. Notably absent on resume and in the news article is proficiency in AI or machine learning, so I am curious to see how she plans to weave that into the portfolio of work and help transform NYC.
- rich_sasha 8mo ago
  I so totally read this as "Hooli" on first reading.
- NoImmatureAdHom 8mo ago
  Hilarious
- SilverElfin 8mo ago
  Macromedia was a great company
- CalRobert 8mo ago
  Gell Mann amnesia hitting hard on this one.
- deleted 8mo ago
  [deleted]
- bob001 8mo ago
  The job is 99% program management and 1% tech. It’s the government. Anyone focused on tech will burn out in 2 weeks and quit loudly via twitter. You know, like DOGE.
  - ch4s3 8mo ago
    Every tech person I know who tried to work in NYC government burned out rather quickly. The government is so sclerotic and shackled to laws meant to break up the Tammany Hall machine that its impossible to do anything good or fast.
    - steveBK123 8mo ago
      A lot of stuff gets bid out, and the procurement process is overly burdensome... Which results in a limited number of qualified bidders collecting rents, and then subbing out the work to subs who then sub it out further.. such that its all done offshore for peanuts while we pay real money to some schmuck who ticked the right boxes in order to collect said rents.
      - ch4s3 8mo ago
        Briefly in the mid 2010s the NYC Department of City Planning tried to build some stuff in house and hired some good people, but the old ghouls in the city ruined it by obstruction and everyone left by the end of 2017. City government in most US cities is so fucked, it's really wild. Another guy I know who graduated from NYU Wagner as a planner got hired by the city to do some mapping work but his boss miscoded his job in a way that precluded him from ever being promoted, so he quit. As of 2023 at least there were people working in city planning who didn't have computers and refused to use them, professional staff.
    - indoordin0saur 8mo ago
      Sort of off-topic but fun fact: Tammany Hall is now a dogfood and kitty litter store! Source: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Petco/@40.7364792,-73.989044,20z/data=!4m6!3m5!1s0x89c259a212f7bdad:0xaf44b237dcb0c4c5!8m2!3d40.7363801!4d-73.9888543!16s%2Fg%2F1tdng52x!5m1!1e4?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI2MDIwOC4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D https://www.google.com/maps/place/Petco/@40.7364792,-73.9890...
- jordanb 8mo ago
  This made me laugh but then I remembered I'm on HN and you're probably serious.
  - averysmallbird 8mo ago
    The response to GP is a credit to HN though too.
- CharlieDigital 8mo ago
  CTO is typically an executive position, not an IC position. The CTO at my $500m, YC, series-C startup is not the most technical member of the staff, does not have the broadest technical knowledge, is not the most experienced, nor is he the best in any single technical field in our team. You misunderstand the role of the CTO in most orgs. His job is to guide technical strategy based on where business is headed. Manage staffing levels, general technical org operations, manage people, be the final arbiter on some org-level technical decisions based on business strategy alignment.
  - hobs 8mo ago
    It really depends on the size, it can span from the lead programmer to the lead architect to the lead technical manager to the strategic technical partner and/or technical visionary for the company.
    - CharlieDigital 8mo ago
      Sure, but we're talking about NYC here, not a 3 person startup.
  - andsoitis 8mo ago
    > You misunderstand the role of the CTO in most orgs. His job is to guide technical strategy based on where business is headed. A great CTO not only guides the technical strategy based on business direction BUT ALSO shapes the business strategy informed by technology direction.
    - reverius42 8mo ago
      And someone with experience in jobs like Director of Program Management should definitely be able to do that. "technology direction" is not the sole domain of people who write code.
- Finnucane 8mo ago
  >Notably absent on resume and in the news article is proficiency in AI or machine learning, You say that like it's a bad thing.
  - JPKab 8mo ago
    Yeah, we wouldn't want someone who understands the most revolutionary technology in 100 years to be the technical advisor to the mayor of the largest city in the United States or anything. That would be silly.
    - triceratops 8mo ago
      Why do you assume she doesn't understand it? From her Wikipedia article: "Gelobter enrolled in Brown University in 1987, eventually graduating in 2011 with a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science with a concentration in artificial intelligence and machine learning."
    - Finnucane 8mo ago
      >the most revolutionary technology in 100 years That remains to be seen. And the job is to make city services work better for residents. It is far from clear that current Ai tech will make that happen.
- jihadjihad 8mo ago
  There's still time to add the /s
- fillskills 8mo ago
  Unnecessarily being voted down. Post is adding some information. Doesnt violate any HN rules. cc @dang
  - giraffe_lady 8mo ago
    HN doesn't have rules it has guidelines https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html I don't know what the difference is intended to be but the guidelines also don't have anything to say about voting on comments except not to complain about it. The comment sucked so I downvoted it. Yours too.
    - andsoitis 8mo ago
      > The comment sucked A great CTO not only guides the technical strategy based on business direction BUT ALSO shapes the business strategy informed by technology direction. We know that AI has to form part of that story and so you want a CTO who can steer clarity and vision, without resorting to keyword soup and hype. To be clear, I have no signal where this CTO is likely to fall on that spectrum, so I’m very much looking forward to the difference she will make.
- Larrikin 8mo ago
  Good? Seems like she was there when Hulu was great and when Macromedia was great.
- triceratops 8mo ago
  Why do you think she doesn't have an high-level knowledge of AI? Like what's a NN, a transformer, how they're trained? Anyone can pick that up over a weekend. She doesn't need to have experience training models or designing new architectures for this job. EDIT - someone posted a link to her Wikipedia article (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_Gelobter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_Gelobter), which states: "Gelobter enrolled in Brown University in 1987, eventually graduating in 2011 with a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science with a concentration in artificial intelligence and machine learning."
  - andsoitis 8mo ago
    I’m not thinking granular low-level knowledge, but rather a strategic point of view to shape the tech strategy and organizational goals of NYC. We know that AI has to form part of that story and so you want a CTO who can steer clarity and vision, without resorting to keyword soup and hype. To be clear, I have no signal where this CTO is likely to fall on that spectrum, so I’m very much looking forward to the difference she will make.
ChrisArchitect 8mo ago
What is this business about her role in GIFs? She helped invent Macromedia Shockwave.... Not remembering any kind of connection between those things... I mean, animated GIFs were already a thing that popularized on their own.... nothing to do with Shockwave really. Just both contributing at the same time to popularizing or encouraging the use of animation on the web, yeah?
- deleted 8mo ago
  [deleted]
- jtokoph 8mo ago
  I don’t have access to the article, so I’m basing this response solely on your comment. I wonder if the author thinks all animations on the web are called GIFs. So being part of creating one of the early methods of publishing animations on the web (Shockwave) confused the author.
  - mbrumlow 8mo ago
    I think somebody is trying to push a narrative. A now deleted post was pointing to this https://seattlemedium.com/lisa-gelobter-the-trailblazing-computer-scientist-behind-the-creation-of-the-gif/ https://seattlemedium.com/lisa-gelobter-the-trailblazing-com... And I can see how maybe the author of the post this entire thread is about could see this and just roll with it. For the record the link I post seems to be entirely and completely wrong, and if I had such a post written so factually wrong about me, all while trying to take credit where none was owed, would be so embarrassing. But we live in a strange new world where we can just fabricate anything we want and back fill websites and probably pollute AI with nonsense just to push political agenda and gain favor in the masses who ether are ignorant or don’t care to ever know the truth.
    - lkbm 8mo ago
      It's interesting to poke around and see how the game of telephone works. The first mentions I saw on Twitter were from February 2018[0]. Subsequent Black History Months[1] would reiterate how she invented GIFs or sometimes animated GIFs. You even get crazy things like how she invented the animated GIF while working with the Obama administration[2]. (That post references an article that talks about her working with the Obama administration that doesn't mention GIFs[3]. The author just merged the two things she's credited with.) In 2024, the story is that she invented the GIF at Netscape[4], which obviously makes little sense. It could be a reference to GIFs looping, but I see no evidence for that, especially since her LinkedIn[5] doesn't say she worked at Netscape. She worked at Macromedia, which involved work with Netscape, and I suspect the genesis is her work on Shockwave during that time (2005-2010), and that was taken to be a precursor to animated GIFs (obviously false, but an easy mistake for someone young and non-technical. Maybe it's a cultural precursor to modern animated GIF usage in people's minds?) Overall, though, this is a pretty dumb thing for them to claim, even if the claim is widespread across the Internet these days. She was roughly 17 when animated GIFs were first developed. As I said, it's interesting to see how the game of telephone plays out. I don't think anyone involved in this was intentionally spreading false information, and I don't really expect random Twitter users to fact-check carefully. I would like NYT to put some effort into it. As it is, we now have a NYT touting an obviously-false claim when she actually did a lot of really important and impressive stuff they could focus on instead. There's no need to spread fake accolades for her. Her actual contributions stand on their own. [0] https://x.com/Reel365/status/960288180447694848 https://x.com/Reel365/status/960288180447694848 [1] https://x.com/search?q=%22Gelobter%22%20%22gif%22%20until%3A2020-01-01&src=typed_query&f=live https://x.com/search?q=%22Gelobter%22%20%22gif%22%20until%3A... / https://x.com/search?q=%22Gelobter%22%20%22gif%22%20until%3A2022-01-01&src=typed_query&f=live https://x.com/search?q=%22Gelobter%22%20%22gif%22%20until%3A... / https://x.com/search?q=%22Gelobter%22%20%22gif%22%20until%3A2024-01-01&src=typed_query&f=live https://x.com/search?q=%22Gelobter%22%20%22gif%22%20until%3A... [2] https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:share:7034543821229084672 https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:share:7034543821... [3] https://theblackwallsttimes.com/2022/08/18/computer-scientist-lisa-gelobter-is-the-gif-that-keeps-on-giving/ https://theblackwallsttimes.com/2022/08/18/computer-scientis... [4] https://seattlemedium.com/lisa-gelobter-the-trailblazing-computer-scientist-behind-the-creation-of-the-gif/ https://seattlemedium.com/lisa-gelobter-the-trailblazing-com... [5] https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisagelobter/details/experience/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisagelobter/details/experience/
vjvjvjvjghv 8mo ago
I am always confused with the role of CTO. I don’t recall any company I worked at where it seemed the CTO had much of an impact. They were just thee, some of them were good at demos, but overall I just didn’t notice what they were doing.
- tossandthrow 8mo ago
  You could say the same about a cfo, if the company does not use financial engineering, etc. The CTO role is to be invisible to the business, and do that by ensuring that the tech org is working
  - anvuong 8mo ago
    At every companies I've worked at the CFO always has a large presence at every townhall, after all they are the one who is responsible for sending your paychecks on time. As for CTO, yeah it's a mixed bag in my experience, I mostly see them as just another layer between the CEO/COO and the principle engineers. Maybe that's exactly what they want though.
    - tossandthrow 8mo ago
      Yeah, probably in the US, where workers protection are mostly non existent - you need to be friends with the money!
- pm90 8mo ago
  If they've been invisible, they are doing their job right.
woah 8mo ago
> It was at Netscape Communications where Gelobter first began working on the development of the GIF. > Lisa Gelobter, a computer scientist who helped shape the modern web by leading the team that developed the animation technology used to create GIFs. Looks like the GIF was invented by CompuServe in 1987? > CompuServe introduced GIF on 15 June 1987 to provide a color image format for their file downloading areas. This replaced their earlier run-length encoding format, which was black and white only. GIF became popular because it used Lempel–Ziv–Welch data compression. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIF https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIF
- drcongo 8mo ago
  Non-animated though - there's a section on animated gifs coming out of Netscape in your link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIF#Animated_GIF https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIF#Animated_GIF
  - vlovich123 8mo ago
    > In September 1995 Netscape Navigator 2.0 added the ability for animated GIFs to loop. > To enable an animation to loop, Netscape in the 1990s used the Application Extension block (intended to allow vendors to add application-specific information to the GIF file) to implement the Netscape Application Block (NAB). VS from the article: > Lisa Gelobter, a computer scientist who helped shape the modern web by leading the team that developed the animation technology used to create GIFs. So this person worked on looping the GIF at best, not the animation technology itself. This is a bad look taking credit away from the person who actually did the hard work behind GIF, Steve Wilhite & his team at Compuserve. Netscape certainly made GIF animations popular by introducing the loop - prior to that basically no one used the animated GIF for the prior 6 years before the loop. The annoying part of the article is making it seem like a technical accomplishment instead of a UX / product / marketing one.
    - 650 8mo ago
      She was Director of Program Management, which is different from Product Management as well. You can google what a program manager usually does, and its usually not inventing things or technical work.
frumplestlatz 8mo ago
> In 2016, Gelobter founded and took on the role of Chief Executive Officer of tEQuitable, a start-up that provides an independent and confidential platform to address issues of bias, harassment, and discrimination in the workplace. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_Gelobter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_Gelobter
lunias 8mo ago
[flagged]
throw7 8mo ago
[flagged]
- enraged_camel 8mo ago
  Huh?
- sjm 8mo ago
  And what has Mamdani lied about?
- tbrockman 8mo ago
  Interested to hear you cite some examples!
ksynwa 8mo ago
Can an American please help me comprehend how much power a mayor has? I am supposing a NYC mayor would be more influential than that of a less important city. But I still don't understand how that would make an appointment like this significant.
- yieldcrv 8mo ago
  It's only interesting because 8 million people live there, and many more pass through the city This population size is greater than most countries, and the density and speed of commerce there is fairly unique, so it's a constant coordination problem and experiment on a large scale that people look to. Think of NYC more as one of the Free Cities in the old world. They aren't a top level government by any means but they're mostly left alone to have nearly unilateral control of their jurisdiction. New York City has some unique challenges with key infrastructure (like all of the trains) being controlled by New York State and the Federal Government.
- js2 8mo ago
  It varies by city. In some cities, mayor is barely more than a figurehead. But regardless of power, what the NYC mayor does is widely reported and it's often a political stepping stone (if not always successful) to something greater. Mamdani in particular is a celebrity right now, and with the reputation of the Democratic party in shambles, many eyes are on him.
  - InitialLastName 8mo ago
    > But regardless of power, what the NYC mayor does is widely reported and it's often a political stepping stone (if not always successful) to something greater. The only "greater" things any recent NYC mayors have done are bankrolling presidential campaigns and failed coup attempts. Looking back at it, the last NYC mayor who held a notable political position after their mayoral term was Robert Wagner.
    - InitialLastName 8mo ago
      In fact, the last mayor I can find who served in a superior political office after their mayoralty was John T Hoffman, who was mayor from 1866-1868 and then NY Governor from 1869-1872.
650 8mo ago
This is a bad puff piece article. Jeffrey C Mays the author is not technologically adept. She was a software engineer for a year. She was director of program management at Macromedia, which anyone who works in tech knows is more like a secretary type of role asking for project updates and timelines. I take issue with the title: `Groundbreaking Computer Scientist` in the NYT article, I challenge anyone to show me proof that she has done anything noteworthy technically. She jumped from management job to management job. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_Gelobter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_Gelobter - Her wikipedia states she took 24 years (enrolled in 1987, graduated 2011) to graduate with her computer science degree, claiming "financial hardship", but she had already been a PM at many companies by then. I challenge anyone to show me technical depth or proficiency by her. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_Amnesia_effect https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_Amnesia_effect
- 650 8mo ago
  As most people who have worked in engineering at large companies can attest, there are entrenched dinosaurs who have worked themselves up the management chain due to inertia. This is such an example. They are almost always out of their depth technically, and are great at taking credit for the work of others. There are people in this comments section, and online claiming she invented Adobe Shockwave. This article claims she invented Adobe Shockwave while holding the title of "Director of Program Management". https://www.govtech.com/workforce/tech-and-gif-pioneer-lisa-gelobter-takes-over-as-nycs-cto#:~:text=Gelobter%20has%20played%20a%20big,platform%20that%20helped%20birth%20GIFs. https://www.govtech.com/workforce/tech-and-gif-pioneer-lisa-... There are disparate sources online from Facebook and Instagram claiming she invented GIFs. There are (incorrect) AI summaries when searching her name on Google that claim she invented Adobe Shockwave and GIFs.
  - AnimalMuppet 8mo ago
    The Director of Program Management may have had the initial, vague idea. Is that "invented"? It almost certainly wasn't "implemented the first working prototype"...

77 points by leephillips 8mo ago

https://archive.is/fM36L https://archive.is/fM36L

https://archive.is/fM36L https://archive.is/fM36L Lisa Gelobter, whose work helped shape the modern web, was also on the launch team at Hulu. Ms. Gelobter was the director of program management at Macromedia where she helped develop Shockwave into a web plug-in that allowed for video games and animation on the web, turning still images into moving GIFs — animated images known as a graphics interchange format. Notably absent on resume and in the news article is proficiency in AI or machine learning, so I am curious to see how she plans to weave that into the portfolio of work and help transform NYC.

rich_sasha 8mo ago
I so totally read this as "Hooli" on first reading.
NoImmatureAdHom 8mo ago
Hilarious
SilverElfin 8mo ago
Macromedia was a great company
CalRobert 8mo ago
Gell Mann amnesia hitting hard on this one.
deleted 8mo ago
[deleted]
bob001 8mo ago
The job is 99% program management and 1% tech. It’s the government. Anyone focused on tech will burn out in 2 weeks and quit loudly via twitter. You know, like DOGE.
- ch4s3 8mo ago
  Every tech person I know who tried to work in NYC government burned out rather quickly. The government is so sclerotic and shackled to laws meant to break up the Tammany Hall machine that its impossible to do anything good or fast.
  - steveBK123 8mo ago
    A lot of stuff gets bid out, and the procurement process is overly burdensome... Which results in a limited number of qualified bidders collecting rents, and then subbing out the work to subs who then sub it out further.. such that its all done offshore for peanuts while we pay real money to some schmuck who ticked the right boxes in order to collect said rents.
    - ch4s3 8mo ago
      Briefly in the mid 2010s the NYC Department of City Planning tried to build some stuff in house and hired some good people, but the old ghouls in the city ruined it by obstruction and everyone left by the end of 2017. City government in most US cities is so fucked, it's really wild. Another guy I know who graduated from NYU Wagner as a planner got hired by the city to do some mapping work but his boss miscoded his job in a way that precluded him from ever being promoted, so he quit. As of 2023 at least there were people working in city planning who didn't have computers and refused to use them, professional staff.
  - indoordin0saur 8mo ago
    Sort of off-topic but fun fact: Tammany Hall is now a dogfood and kitty litter store! Source: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Petco/@40.7364792,-73.989044,20z/data=!4m6!3m5!1s0x89c259a212f7bdad:0xaf44b237dcb0c4c5!8m2!3d40.7363801!4d-73.9888543!16s%2Fg%2F1tdng52x!5m1!1e4?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI2MDIwOC4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D https://www.google.com/maps/place/Petco/@40.7364792,-73.9890...
jordanb 8mo ago
This made me laugh but then I remembered I'm on HN and you're probably serious.
- averysmallbird 8mo ago
  The response to GP is a credit to HN though too.
CharlieDigital 8mo ago
CTO is typically an executive position, not an IC position. The CTO at my $500m, YC, series-C startup is not the most technical member of the staff, does not have the broadest technical knowledge, is not the most experienced, nor is he the best in any single technical field in our team. You misunderstand the role of the CTO in most orgs. His job is to guide technical strategy based on where business is headed. Manage staffing levels, general technical org operations, manage people, be the final arbiter on some org-level technical decisions based on business strategy alignment.
- hobs 8mo ago
  It really depends on the size, it can span from the lead programmer to the lead architect to the lead technical manager to the strategic technical partner and/or technical visionary for the company.
  - CharlieDigital 8mo ago
    Sure, but we're talking about NYC here, not a 3 person startup.
- andsoitis 8mo ago
  > You misunderstand the role of the CTO in most orgs. His job is to guide technical strategy based on where business is headed. A great CTO not only guides the technical strategy based on business direction BUT ALSO shapes the business strategy informed by technology direction.
  - reverius42 8mo ago
    And someone with experience in jobs like Director of Program Management should definitely be able to do that. "technology direction" is not the sole domain of people who write code.
Finnucane 8mo ago
>Notably absent on resume and in the news article is proficiency in AI or machine learning, You say that like it's a bad thing.
- JPKab 8mo ago
  Yeah, we wouldn't want someone who understands the most revolutionary technology in 100 years to be the technical advisor to the mayor of the largest city in the United States or anything. That would be silly.
  - triceratops 8mo ago
    Why do you assume she doesn't understand it? From her Wikipedia article: "Gelobter enrolled in Brown University in 1987, eventually graduating in 2011 with a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science with a concentration in artificial intelligence and machine learning."
  - Finnucane 8mo ago
    >the most revolutionary technology in 100 years That remains to be seen. And the job is to make city services work better for residents. It is far from clear that current Ai tech will make that happen.
jihadjihad 8mo ago
There's still time to add the /s
fillskills 8mo ago
Unnecessarily being voted down. Post is adding some information. Doesnt violate any HN rules. cc @dang
- giraffe_lady 8mo ago
  HN doesn't have rules it has guidelines https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html I don't know what the difference is intended to be but the guidelines also don't have anything to say about voting on comments except not to complain about it. The comment sucked so I downvoted it. Yours too.
  - andsoitis 8mo ago
    > The comment sucked A great CTO not only guides the technical strategy based on business direction BUT ALSO shapes the business strategy informed by technology direction. We know that AI has to form part of that story and so you want a CTO who can steer clarity and vision, without resorting to keyword soup and hype. To be clear, I have no signal where this CTO is likely to fall on that spectrum, so I’m very much looking forward to the difference she will make.
Larrikin 8mo ago
Good? Seems like she was there when Hulu was great and when Macromedia was great.
triceratops 8mo ago
Why do you think she doesn't have an high-level knowledge of AI? Like what's a NN, a transformer, how they're trained? Anyone can pick that up over a weekend. She doesn't need to have experience training models or designing new architectures for this job. EDIT - someone posted a link to her Wikipedia article (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_Gelobter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_Gelobter), which states: "Gelobter enrolled in Brown University in 1987, eventually graduating in 2011 with a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science with a concentration in artificial intelligence and machine learning."
- andsoitis 8mo ago
  I’m not thinking granular low-level knowledge, but rather a strategic point of view to shape the tech strategy and organizational goals of NYC. We know that AI has to form part of that story and so you want a CTO who can steer clarity and vision, without resorting to keyword soup and hype. To be clear, I have no signal where this CTO is likely to fall on that spectrum, so I’m very much looking forward to the difference she will make.

ChrisArchitect 8mo ago

What is this business about her role in GIFs? She helped invent Macromedia Shockwave.... Not remembering any kind of connection between those things... I mean, animated GIFs were already a thing that popularized on their own.... nothing to do with Shockwave really. Just both contributing at the same time to popularizing or encouraging the use of animation on the web, yeah?

deleted 8mo ago
[deleted]
jtokoph 8mo ago
I don’t have access to the article, so I’m basing this response solely on your comment. I wonder if the author thinks all animations on the web are called GIFs. So being part of creating one of the early methods of publishing animations on the web (Shockwave) confused the author.
- mbrumlow 8mo ago
  I think somebody is trying to push a narrative. A now deleted post was pointing to this https://seattlemedium.com/lisa-gelobter-the-trailblazing-computer-scientist-behind-the-creation-of-the-gif/ https://seattlemedium.com/lisa-gelobter-the-trailblazing-com... And I can see how maybe the author of the post this entire thread is about could see this and just roll with it. For the record the link I post seems to be entirely and completely wrong, and if I had such a post written so factually wrong about me, all while trying to take credit where none was owed, would be so embarrassing. But we live in a strange new world where we can just fabricate anything we want and back fill websites and probably pollute AI with nonsense just to push political agenda and gain favor in the masses who ether are ignorant or don’t care to ever know the truth.
  - lkbm 8mo ago
    It's interesting to poke around and see how the game of telephone works. The first mentions I saw on Twitter were from February 2018[0]. Subsequent Black History Months[1] would reiterate how she invented GIFs or sometimes animated GIFs. You even get crazy things like how she invented the animated GIF while working with the Obama administration[2]. (That post references an article that talks about her working with the Obama administration that doesn't mention GIFs[3]. The author just merged the two things she's credited with.) In 2024, the story is that she invented the GIF at Netscape[4], which obviously makes little sense. It could be a reference to GIFs looping, but I see no evidence for that, especially since her LinkedIn[5] doesn't say she worked at Netscape. She worked at Macromedia, which involved work with Netscape, and I suspect the genesis is her work on Shockwave during that time (2005-2010), and that was taken to be a precursor to animated GIFs (obviously false, but an easy mistake for someone young and non-technical. Maybe it's a cultural precursor to modern animated GIF usage in people's minds?) Overall, though, this is a pretty dumb thing for them to claim, even if the claim is widespread across the Internet these days. She was roughly 17 when animated GIFs were first developed. As I said, it's interesting to see how the game of telephone plays out. I don't think anyone involved in this was intentionally spreading false information, and I don't really expect random Twitter users to fact-check carefully. I would like NYT to put some effort into it. As it is, we now have a NYT touting an obviously-false claim when she actually did a lot of really important and impressive stuff they could focus on instead. There's no need to spread fake accolades for her. Her actual contributions stand on their own. [0] https://x.com/Reel365/status/960288180447694848 https://x.com/Reel365/status/960288180447694848 [1] https://x.com/search?q=%22Gelobter%22%20%22gif%22%20until%3A2020-01-01&src=typed_query&f=live https://x.com/search?q=%22Gelobter%22%20%22gif%22%20until%3A... / https://x.com/search?q=%22Gelobter%22%20%22gif%22%20until%3A2022-01-01&src=typed_query&f=live https://x.com/search?q=%22Gelobter%22%20%22gif%22%20until%3A... / https://x.com/search?q=%22Gelobter%22%20%22gif%22%20until%3A2024-01-01&src=typed_query&f=live https://x.com/search?q=%22Gelobter%22%20%22gif%22%20until%3A... [2] https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:share:7034543821229084672 https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:share:7034543821... [3] https://theblackwallsttimes.com/2022/08/18/computer-scientist-lisa-gelobter-is-the-gif-that-keeps-on-giving/ https://theblackwallsttimes.com/2022/08/18/computer-scientis... [4] https://seattlemedium.com/lisa-gelobter-the-trailblazing-computer-scientist-behind-the-creation-of-the-gif/ https://seattlemedium.com/lisa-gelobter-the-trailblazing-com... [5] https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisagelobter/details/experience/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisagelobter/details/experience/

vjvjvjvjghv 8mo ago

I am always confused with the role of CTO. I don’t recall any company I worked at where it seemed the CTO had much of an impact. They were just thee, some of them were good at demos, but overall I just didn’t notice what they were doing.

tossandthrow 8mo ago
You could say the same about a cfo, if the company does not use financial engineering, etc. The CTO role is to be invisible to the business, and do that by ensuring that the tech org is working
- anvuong 8mo ago
  At every companies I've worked at the CFO always has a large presence at every townhall, after all they are the one who is responsible for sending your paychecks on time. As for CTO, yeah it's a mixed bag in my experience, I mostly see them as just another layer between the CEO/COO and the principle engineers. Maybe that's exactly what they want though.
  - tossandthrow 8mo ago
    Yeah, probably in the US, where workers protection are mostly non existent - you need to be friends with the money!
pm90 8mo ago
If they've been invisible, they are doing their job right.

woah 8mo ago

> It was at Netscape Communications where Gelobter first began working on the development of the GIF. > Lisa Gelobter, a computer scientist who helped shape the modern web by leading the team that developed the animation technology used to create GIFs. Looks like the GIF was invented by CompuServe in 1987? > CompuServe introduced GIF on 15 June 1987 to provide a color image format for their file downloading areas. This replaced their earlier run-length encoding format, which was black and white only. GIF became popular because it used Lempel–Ziv–Welch data compression. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIF https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIF

drcongo 8mo ago
Non-animated though - there's a section on animated gifs coming out of Netscape in your link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIF#Animated_GIF https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIF#Animated_GIF
- vlovich123 8mo ago
  > In September 1995 Netscape Navigator 2.0 added the ability for animated GIFs to loop. > To enable an animation to loop, Netscape in the 1990s used the Application Extension block (intended to allow vendors to add application-specific information to the GIF file) to implement the Netscape Application Block (NAB). VS from the article: > Lisa Gelobter, a computer scientist who helped shape the modern web by leading the team that developed the animation technology used to create GIFs. So this person worked on looping the GIF at best, not the animation technology itself. This is a bad look taking credit away from the person who actually did the hard work behind GIF, Steve Wilhite & his team at Compuserve. Netscape certainly made GIF animations popular by introducing the loop - prior to that basically no one used the animated GIF for the prior 6 years before the loop. The annoying part of the article is making it seem like a technical accomplishment instead of a UX / product / marketing one.
  - 650 8mo ago
    She was Director of Program Management, which is different from Product Management as well. You can google what a program manager usually does, and its usually not inventing things or technical work.

frumplestlatz 8mo ago

> In 2016, Gelobter founded and took on the role of Chief Executive Officer of tEQuitable, a start-up that provides an independent and confidential platform to address issues of bias, harassment, and discrimination in the workplace. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_Gelobter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_Gelobter

lunias 8mo ago

[flagged]

throw7 8mo ago

[flagged]

enraged_camel 8mo ago
Huh?
sjm 8mo ago
And what has Mamdani lied about?
tbrockman 8mo ago
Interested to hear you cite some examples!

ksynwa 8mo ago

Can an American please help me comprehend how much power a mayor has? I am supposing a NYC mayor would be more influential than that of a less important city. But I still don't understand how that would make an appointment like this significant.

yieldcrv 8mo ago
It's only interesting because 8 million people live there, and many more pass through the city This population size is greater than most countries, and the density and speed of commerce there is fairly unique, so it's a constant coordination problem and experiment on a large scale that people look to. Think of NYC more as one of the Free Cities in the old world. They aren't a top level government by any means but they're mostly left alone to have nearly unilateral control of their jurisdiction. New York City has some unique challenges with key infrastructure (like all of the trains) being controlled by New York State and the Federal Government.
js2 8mo ago
It varies by city. In some cities, mayor is barely more than a figurehead. But regardless of power, what the NYC mayor does is widely reported and it's often a political stepping stone (if not always successful) to something greater. Mamdani in particular is a celebrity right now, and with the reputation of the Democratic party in shambles, many eyes are on him.
- InitialLastName 8mo ago
  > But regardless of power, what the NYC mayor does is widely reported and it's often a political stepping stone (if not always successful) to something greater. The only "greater" things any recent NYC mayors have done are bankrolling presidential campaigns and failed coup attempts. Looking back at it, the last NYC mayor who held a notable political position after their mayoral term was Robert Wagner.
  - InitialLastName 8mo ago
    In fact, the last mayor I can find who served in a superior political office after their mayoralty was John T Hoffman, who was mayor from 1866-1868 and then NY Governor from 1869-1872.

650 8mo ago

This is a bad puff piece article. Jeffrey C Mays the author is not technologically adept. She was a software engineer for a year. She was director of program management at Macromedia, which anyone who works in tech knows is more like a secretary type of role asking for project updates and timelines. I take issue with the title: `Groundbreaking Computer Scientist` in the NYT article, I challenge anyone to show me proof that she has done anything noteworthy technically. She jumped from management job to management job. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_Gelobter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_Gelobter - Her wikipedia states she took 24 years (enrolled in 1987, graduated 2011) to graduate with her computer science degree, claiming "financial hardship", but she had already been a PM at many companies by then. I challenge anyone to show me technical depth or proficiency by her. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_Amnesia_effect https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_Amnesia_effect

650 8mo ago
As most people who have worked in engineering at large companies can attest, there are entrenched dinosaurs who have worked themselves up the management chain due to inertia. This is such an example. They are almost always out of their depth technically, and are great at taking credit for the work of others. There are people in this comments section, and online claiming she invented Adobe Shockwave. This article claims she invented Adobe Shockwave while holding the title of "Director of Program Management". https://www.govtech.com/workforce/tech-and-gif-pioneer-lisa-gelobter-takes-over-as-nycs-cto#:~:text=Gelobter%20has%20played%20a%20big,platform%20that%20helped%20birth%20GIFs. https://www.govtech.com/workforce/tech-and-gif-pioneer-lisa-... There are disparate sources online from Facebook and Instagram claiming she invented GIFs. There are (incorrect) AI summaries when searching her name on Google that claim she invented Adobe Shockwave and GIFs.
- AnimalMuppet 8mo ago
  The Director of Program Management may have had the initial, vague idea. Is that "invented"? It almost certainly wasn't "implemented the first working prototype"...