I wish we (the people who contributed to the sum total of human knowledge up until 2020) had strengthened our defenses against these weirdos stealing everything so they could package it up and sell it back to us for the last few years we can make a living.
Growing up in rural Illinois in the 1980s meant a large number of the books I read came from places other than bookstores.
We did have a Waldenbooks in the mall that was 45 minutes away that we went to 4x/year, but the local library was tiny and I read everything worth reading there probably before I was 10.
The local grocery store had a small section of mass-market paperbacks, and it was my primary place to get books. I know it had lots of Stephen King novels, and I think my first copy of Dune may even have come from there.
(Hardcovers were something that libraries had, not anything normal people would buy, as far as I knew.)
Interestingly, Waldenbooks in Mission Valley Center, San Diego, was one of my favorite vendors for software for my VIC-20 and Commodore 64. I still recall the “book smell” in that place as Grandma brought us there, and I would come home with Ghostbusters, or Zork III, and Compute!’s Gazette.
There were a lot of variety stores that could get away with a section for software or video games in those days.
Came to the comments to see if anyone was talking about Becky Chambers - thank you for not disappointing me! I picked up Monk and Robot with an intention to save it for an upcoming vacation, but started reading the first few pages early and couldn't put it down. I'm really looking forward to her next book in October.
Yeah, good point, I remember the first time I travelled to countries that default to water and wondering how to use the pitcher they had in public toilets, and I know some ultralight backpackers who just use a smartwater bottle with no attachment.
But for someone starting out, I do think having something to propel the water upwards helps a bit.
Not the original commenter, but in my view as a crusty old software engineer, the reason to learn how transistors is because they're interesting and the key to how all computation is implemented. Once you learn how transistors work, you can learn how logic gates work. And then how CPUs and memory work. Bit by bit, computers stop being magic boxes and start being something built from technologies you understand.
Now, for most software careers (including my own), that knowledge isn't directly practical. BUT, the most important things for a successful, fulfilling career are curiosity and a willingness to dive into subjects _without_ necessarily knowing how (or even if) that knowledge will yield practical applications. That drive is what's going to lead to insights and breakthroughs over your career that wouldn't happen if you just let abstractions be abstractions.
I would guess that it's hard to compete with Google without a consumer component. Most enterprises already have contracts and policies with Google, so anything driven from the top-down is likely to prefer Google.
(And failing that, there was a real risk for OpenAI to be the default for enterprises.)
To defeat that, you need to frontline employees the chance to experience better tooling and models which is where the subsidized subscriptions come in.
It's all cultural. It's pretty bonkers that you can tell who someone voted for in 2024 with a high degree of accuracy just by the shape of their sunglasses lenses.
> why did you put it up for a human review at all then?
This seems to be the crux of the issue.
I'm guessing the most of the time, the answer is "because that's a mandatory gate to getting these changes into production". If the PR author doesn't see the value in review, it's going to be hard to convince them to write reviewable PRs.
If they're actually looking for human feedback, telling them how to submit PRs in a way that's amenable to human feedback is going to be a lot more successful.
I would back up. If leadership is not committed to real reviews, it’s not your job to make them happen. Don’t try to fight an impossible fight no one cares about.
Personally, I would leave. But that’s not always an option for everyone.
Pretty much this. In OSS, review is mostly about convincing the others that your change is good and useful enough to merge. In corporate, it's seen as a blocker to change the ticket status to done. The vibe of the latter is mostly "it's working on my computer, approve it so that we can reach the quota for the sprint".
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