WingNews logo WingNews GitHub [2]

vorhemus's comments

vorhemus | 3 years ago | on: Bullshit Jobs

I used to think corporations strive to reduce costs and therefore keep their workforce to the minimum necessary. Now my theory is that managers in a company try to maximize their influence and standing and this is mostly done by making sure they have as many people below them as possible. Therefore they hire consitantly for their teams and create new sub-hierarchies below them.

If this is the case, the obvious side effect is the emergence of bullshit jobs as the purpose of hiring is not primarely to finish work but to increase power of managers in corporations.

vorhemus | 3 years ago | on: Google engineer put on leave after saying AI chatbot has become sentient

Some of these answers seem to be too good to be true and certainly need to be verified by others.

Beside that, even if the interview is not manipulated, it is not a proof for human-like sentience. Human emotions are based on neurochemical processes. If emotions can actually arise on the basis of electromagnetism as well, that would be a groundbreaking discovery. But an "interview" of a part-time researcher with a computer program is not enough evidence to seriously claim this.

vorhemus | 3 years ago | on: What’s in Which Python

Some popular packages are Python version dependent. For example, I was using Python 3.10 early and no Python wheels for 3.10 were released for PyTorch back then. The only thing you can do in this case is to either wair for the publisher to provide these packages or use a lower version Python interpreter.

vorhemus | 4 years ago | on: Ask HN: Are Web3 and DApps the Future?

The difficulty in making accurate predictions here is based on the fact that we humans tend to think the status quo linearly into the future, which is why many wrong predictions have been made regarding the adaptation of computers or the Internet or other technologies. However, it has been shown that certain unpredictable ideas may be developed based on these technologies, leading to mass adoption of the respective medium.

Long story short: If you don't know which horse will win and you have enough money (time), bet a certain amount on the most promising ones.

vorhemus | 4 years ago | on: I advised a student to not publish evidence of reverse racism

Critics might now argue that the goal of the diversity movement was never to create equal opportunities for everyone but to promote specific groups.

Anyway, the illogic of this movement already starts with the fact that only certain characteristics are seen as a source of discrimination, while others are not. Skin color and gender are known to be factors of discrimination. But what about "beauty," "social origin" or "age"? It is known from studies that attractive people are considered to be more competent or more successful and are promoted more often - less attractive people therefore suffer an unfair disadvantage. Shouldn't this therefore also become part of any effort to stop discrimination?

vorhemus | 4 years ago | on: Ask HN: What caused the Olympics to become so terrible?

Olympic Games have been used before to underline the power and greatness of a nation - look at how the 1936 Games were used propaganda-wise, so I don't think this is a new phenomenon. What has definitely changed is the importance of live events on TV. In the German speaking area in the 80s to the 2000s, Saturday night shows were popular that gathered the whole family in front of the TV (I'm just saying "Wetten Dass..?"). Due to on demand entertainment that can be perfectly tailored for the desired target audience on Youtube or similar platforms, such TV events have simply lost their importance.

vorhemus | 4 years ago | on: Amazon Pip Horror Story

The idea that there are KPIs that can be used to objectively measure the performance of an SE and that the worst performers will be fired is an illusion. In reality, the direct manager has it in his hands: If he wants to get rid of one of his employees, he will find means and KPIs to do so. It is a political and human decision, KPIs only serve to justify his decision.

vorhemus | 4 years ago | on: People don't work as much as they say

I don't think people who say they work 14 hours a day are lying. They just count in everything that is somehow related to their job, like reading about their business in the newspaper or thinking about work in the shower. And that's the crux of the matter, in jobs that don't have clearly assigned shifts or where attendance is measured, the boundaries between work and leisure become blurred. And then again, comparisons of who works how long are completely useless.

vorhemus | 4 years ago | on: Ask HN: Gmail account security

Most big tech companies now use "conditional access" for their login with the hypothesis that this increases security. Even if it does, it leads to a drastic reduction in user-friendliness as OP has seen. It is like saying: The best way to prevent unauthorized access to our servers? Let's just turn it off!

vorhemus | 4 years ago | on: Why isn't there a universal data format for résumés?

This is a how things are handled at companies that get 500+ applications for each open position and/or are just incompetent. At smaller companies it is very likely that actual humans read a résumé without the keyword matching bullshit.

vorhemus | 4 years ago | on: It’s not still the early days of blockchain

To me, the most promising use cases for a blockchain would be activities that are today carried out by government agencies, states or lawyers. Anyone who has ever bought a property in central Europe knows how much money has to be spent on trustees and notaries. If such transactions can be carried out in a secure way between buyer and seller without an intermediary, that would be a huge win. However, the lobby of lawyers and notaries is big, the connections to politicians are tight and they will not give up this business easily. Additionally the public sector is not known for its fast technology adoption.

vorhemus | 4 years ago | on: Github Copilot Wants to Play Chess Instead of Code

I have a smiliar feeling. Humans have certain wishes or desires and use language as a vehicle to express their feelings. Language models in turn just predict the next best tokens based on a large corpus of training data without an agenda behind. Even if the result (the produced words) are the same, there is a fundamental difference if it was produced based on statistical data or with a goal in mind.

vorhemus | 4 years ago | on: Web3/Crypto: Why Bother?

Decentralization and taking power out of the hands of large corporations is no guarantee of success - otherwise Napster would have to dominate the music streaming market today and not Spotify.

> prior to the Bitcoin Paper we literally didn't know how to have permissionless

Simply not true. Torrents allow you to store and retrieve objects from a decentralized object "database" without an individual having control over it.

page 1
more