mkolodny

22 ms·

181.
by mkolodny 7y ago
If Chinese people want to access censored information, they have Baidu.
182.
by mkolodny 7y ago
> For regular people in China, does the addition of Google with some censorship make their life better? I don't think so. If Chinese people want to use Google, then they have to use a VPN. And if Chinese people use a VPN, their sear
183.
by mkolodny 7y ago
The only way I've thought of so far is to create a not-for-profit. Your not-for-profit can still make money. But since no one owns equity, no one has incentive to optimize for profit over values.
184.
by mkolodny 7y ago
Thanks for explaining that perspective. I was seeing things a little too narrow-mindedly for sure. Based on your phrasing of the issue, it seems like we could think of the problem as: can we reduce the number of parameters in an ML model to
185.
by mkolodny 7y ago
Say you're building a self-driving car. You need to take an image of what the car sees, and figure out whether/where there is a pedestrian/car/bicycle/etc in the image. So your input/variable is the image itsel
186.
by mkolodny 7y ago
That sounds a lot like a non-profit.
187.
by mkolodny 7y ago
To be clear, I don't think the issue is that people leave Google on unfriendly terms. I think there are a few other issues: - Once a for-profit company gets to a certain scale, you're going to have people who care more about profi
188.
by mkolodny 7y ago
Why not apply this to first-level managers, too? I've seen more than one first-level manager who wanted to build an empire. I think all of the issues mentioned here about VPs also apply to managers.
189.
by mkolodny 7y ago
For anyone who hasn't seen it yet, there's an article on the second page of HN right now (458 votes last I checked) by Google's former Head of International Relations about why he left the company. I think it's very wort
190.
by mkolodny 7y ago
Causing discomfort in a respectful way is one thing. Causing discomfort by encouraging employees to call someone racist and homophobic names is a very different thing. But again, the main point isn't the diversity exercise. It's t
191.
by mkolodny 7y ago
He's not suggesting anything like breaking up big tech. He's suggesting government oversight: "Although the causes and the implications are worth debating, I am certain of the appropriate response. No longer can massive tech
192.
by mkolodny 7y ago
To me, the issue here isn't (just) that someone felt extremely uncomfortable with a diversity exercise - it's the way their concerns were handled. Rather than empathizing with the person and learning from the experience, HR ignore
193.
by mkolodny 7y ago
The original title gives a very different impression than the posted title. Here's the original: "I Was Google’s Head of International Relations. Here’s Why I Left."
194.
by mkolodny 7y ago
The "free money" that Wired article [0] is about isn't for all Native Americans - it's only for the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. That tribe splits their casino's profit evenly. Their profit came out to about $1
195.
by mkolodny 7y ago
I disagree. There are a lot of books (especially self-help books) that I feel that way about. I think every chapter in this book is worthwhile, and I plan on re-reading it at least once.
196.
by mkolodny 7y ago
I can't stand books that "sound deep while saying nothing". This book definitely does not fall into that category. It's one of the books (if not the book) that has had the biggest impact on my life since reading it. It&#
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by mkolodny 7y ago
Source?
198.
by mkolodny 7y ago
Verifying sources has always been important. I recently learned about Stanislov Petrov - he helped prevent a nuclear war in 1983 by ignoring a false alarm reported by Russia's early warning system [0]. The system reported that the USA
199.
by mkolodny 7y ago
If anyone's curious about why tracking pixels use a gif, here's a great explanation: https://stackoverflow.com/a/6639140
200.
by mkolodny 7y ago
Why is that a good thing? Do you feel the same way about engineers and startup founders who help with shows like Silicon Valley and Mr. Robot? Would it be a good thing to get stop them from "cosplaying", and only allow full-time e
201.
by mkolodny 7y ago
They're both meaningful. GCP still exists because they eventually dismissed the idea of shutting it down. But the fact that they discussed the idea means that shutting it down was a real possibility. I think it also means that if GCP&#
202.
by mkolodny 7y ago
From the article: > The group [which included Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Alphabet chief financial officer Ruth Porat and then-CEO of Alphabet Larry Page] even talked about—and eventually dismissed—the idea of leaving the market entirely I
203.
by mkolodny 7y ago
I think in that case your supervisor should be fired. You followed company policy, but your supervisor didn't.
204.
by mkolodny 7y ago
Not necessarily. If it's your job to add notices to internal tools, and you've added notices to tools before without approval outside the engineers on your team, then I wouldn't expect someone to get more approval than that i
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by mkolodny 7y ago
From the article: > all the stuff we trained in our Google Data Center — the carbon footprint is zero. Because … basically, all of our energy usage comes from renewable sources.
206.
by mkolodny 7y ago
I have a pretty extensive .vimrc, and use VSCode as my primary editor. Since VSCode didn't have .vimrc support when I set it up, I ended up translating my .vimrc into VSCodeVim's settings.json. It took a bit to figure out how, but
207.
by mkolodny 7y ago
There are ways to keep the lights on without showing ads. Example: Offer a "premium" search experience. They could let people customize what types of results they'd like to see. When I'm searching for a software engineer
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by mkolodny 7y ago
One possibility is that, as in the US [0], the London taxi industry has a lot of sway in politics. I'd guess that the taxi lobby had a lot to do with this decision. “Any London politician wants the black cabs on their side. They carry
209.
by mkolodny 7y ago
Sites with likes/voting rank things for you based on what they think is worth looking at. So as long as you're not on HN/reddit's "new" sections, you're not randomly clicking in the dark. You're seein
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by mkolodny 7y ago
The article mentions 170k QPS, not 170.

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