nilkn

21 ms·

151.
by nilkn 1y ago
I'd say execs getting hired for substantial seven- and eight-figure packages, with performance-based bonuses / equity grants and severance deals, absolutely do have a lot more in common with superstars than with most other profess
152.
by nilkn 1y ago
There are plenty of established performance management mechanisms to determine individual contributions, so while I wouldn't say that's a complete nonissue, it's not a major problem. The output of the team is more important t
153.
by nilkn 1y ago
Either Meta makes rapid progress on frontier-level AI in the next year or it doesn't -- there's definitely a feedback loop that's measured in tangible units of time. I don't think it's unreasonable to assume that wh
154.
by nilkn 1y ago
Top AI researchers are about the closest thing to celebrity status that has ever been attainable for engineering / CS folks outside of winning a Nobel Prize. Of course, the dopamine cycle and public recognition and adoration are nowher
155.
by nilkn 1y ago
There's limited or no evidence of this in other domains where astonishing pay packages are used to assemble the best teams in the world (e.g., sports).
156.
by nilkn 1y ago
It's not the end of observability as we know it. However, the article also isn't totally off-base. We're almost certain to see a new agentic layer emerge and become increasingly capable for various aspects of SRE, including
157.
by nilkn 1y ago
What this tells me is that xAI / X / Grok have together become a much bigger threat to OpenAI than they anticipated. And I believe it's true -- Grok's progress has been much faster than ChatGPT's over the past yea
158.
by nilkn 1y ago
That's a crazy statement. It is clearly not true that every single person in the US capable of making board games now or in the future is instead already making high-grade aerospace and medical components.
159.
by nilkn 1y ago
Depends -- do you want the US to become a vassal state of China? That's the trajectory we were on. China is going to catch up rapidly on technology, AI, and services, and before a few months ago the US was going to continue falling beh
160.
by nilkn 2y ago
I believe the point is power, and from that lens everything makes perfect sense. Trump is exercising available levers of global influence -- for good or for bad -- in a way that hasn't occurred since Hitler initiated World War II. Tari
161.
by nilkn 2y ago
> It still remains an awesome tool, but a limited one. And that's enough to drive significant industry-wide change. Just because it can't fully automate everything doesn't mean companies aren't going to expect (and, i
162.
by nilkn 2y ago
I don't have much sympathy for this. This country has long expected millions and millions of blue collar workers to accept and embrace change or lose their careers and retirements. When those people resisted, they were left to rot. Now
163.
by nilkn 2y ago
They're not bragging. They're pointing out that the ceiling is dramatically too low, which has caused elite universities to spend decades creating more and more elaborate and more and more detached and meaningless gatekeeping mech
164.
by nilkn 2y ago
Just because it doesn't surprise you doesn't mean it's okay. You have to acknowledge that as an admissions consultant you're part of a small gatekeeping community bubble. Even though I attended one of these schools, I ca
165.
by nilkn 2y ago
The reshoring efforts you're talking about will not come remotely close to restoring what was lost and what could have been. We're so far behind outside of software and finance it's almost unfathomable. To grasp the full cost
166.
by nilkn 2y ago
I don't know how I feel about this overall. But I do want to recount something from my childhood. I'm American. I grew up in the rural Midwest. The truth is that much of this country is a depressing shell of its former self. The t
167.
by nilkn 2y ago
This comment is good, yet it also reflects a lot of what I dislike about political discourse online. You've identified a potential severe negative consequence of a change or new policy, but you write as if this is a guaranteed logical
168.
by nilkn 2y ago
I've encountered and used em dashes regularly for the last 20 years. If most of your reading and writing are associated with social media, I could see the trend you're describing appearing real within that limited context. But em
169.
by nilkn 2y ago
I've used FSD a lot. Supervising it is a skill that you actively develop and can get very good at. Some argue that if you have to supervise it, there's no point, but I disagree. I still use it for much of my daily commute even tho
170.
by nilkn 2y ago
In finance, this would be more like a managing director (e.g., in Two Sigma, one of the engineering leaders reporting directly to the CTO). You're totally right that "VP" just refers to more like a mid-level or senior enginee
171.
by nilkn 2y ago
Many of OpenAI's announcements seem to be timed almost perfectly as responses to other events in the industry or market. I think Sam just likes to keep the company in the news and the cultural zeitgeist, and he doesn't really care
172.
by nilkn 2y ago
I think for at least the next several years at minimum we’re going to see people continuing to integrate large language models more deeply into more aspects of their workflow. Many people will become used to what’s only possible with the ab
173.
by nilkn 2y ago
Company valuations don’t just take into account the current state, but also projections of the future state. Anthropic has a reputation of consistently being right on the cutting edge. Their products continue to get better and better and ga
174.
by nilkn 2y ago
I made a lot of sacrifices and experienced some serious personal pain to achieve modest financial independence by age 35 (not "FAT" by any means, but well beyond the average American), and it was worth it. I'm still working,
175.
by nilkn 2y ago
The NYT says the Texas facility will open in 2026: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/24/business/apple-tariffs-jo...
176.
by nilkn 2y ago
xAI is not trying to make an immediate profit -- ironically, just like DeepSeek. They will undoubtedly use more efficient training processes in future runs and they will scale that across their massive GPU cluster. Just because they didn&
177.
by nilkn 2y ago
I think the value of low performers becomes much more obvious when you separate out the concept of a toxic employee. Toxic employees hurt the team or organization whether low performing or high performing, and with rare exceptions it’s almo
178.
by nilkn 2y ago
1. Operating a heavy, dangerous piece of machinery in the field without learning how to operate it first is most certainly the operator’s fault. That’s careless, irresponsible, and endangers others. If they had hurt or killed someone, they
179.
by nilkn 2y ago
At the risk of sounding snarkier than I actually intend, this is great example of why so much Tesla criticism online should be ignored or at least taken with a huge grain of salt. I could criticize your coworker for driving a vehicle off in
180.
by nilkn 2y ago
This must be frustrating to see for all the actual physicists out there. What work in physics got ignored so that a prize for AI could be shoehorned in? I do think work on neural networks does rise to the level of a Nobel Prize. So I don&#x

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