skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
"I take full responsibility for punching you in the nether regions. I hope you have a lovely day."

Taking full responsibility typically implies a negative impact on the person offering this. However, this has yet to be the case in tech layoffs.

I would prefer they were honest. CEOs simply overhired to take maximum financial advantage of COVID, and now they no longer need the people who helped them achieve record profits. However, it doesn't read as well in a corporate PR announcement to claim you milked COVID as much as you could.
They could also be talking about the Apple email leak caused by incrementing an UUID.

There's probably other notable cases with the same failure mode.

One of the things you learn working in computer security: history doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme.
> If I were running a university, I'd definitely move the large early undergrad courses to MOOCs to free up lecturers time for more advanced/specialised courses and direct supervision of students. It seems crazy to me that there are thousands of basic algorithms, calculus, etc courses being taught across the world by people who could use their time a lot more productively teaching the more specialised knowledge they have acquired through their research.

Universities are in a position where they have to balance teaching quality with research output, and there's a tremendous amount of pressure for (I would say!) the majority of universities around student experience that I think is underplayed in this thinking. In my experience MOOCs are not a substitute for in-person teaching, and the move to this kind of content delivery during COVID was met with pretty universal student dissatisfaction, both from students and lecturers.

I think a more appropriate approach is for there to be more clearly defined system for teaching/researching - i.e. post-doctoral staff who have mainly teaching responsibilities and others who are mainly research based. This win-win is already the case in a number of institutions and departments I know, however I know a lot of staff on both sides who would like total separation if desired. It's not a positive student experience to have lecturers who openly do not want to be there!
> despite it having no effect on your life.

How could it have no effect on our lives? It has effect when you compete against a diversity hire, it has effect when you have to work with a diversity hire, it has effect when your manager has to decide who to lay off when your coworker is a diversity hire.
This is what happens when you work for a public company.

You're working for shareholders. You're working for MBA's. You're working for data analysts and economists.

Your colleagues aren't these people, but the person who decides whether or not you have a job? That's not your colleagues.
The other way to view is that even though you could undercut that business by two thirds, you didn’t make enough profit to make it worth pursuing over your day job.

So maybe you were selling it far too cheap after all.
Crypto becomes second most widely-owned asset class for women: eToro survey
probably the more recent (2022, 2021, 2020) are more consume-heavy. the original list is pretty old by now but reflective of where i started out when leveling up in tech
The reason why Amazon smile was started
Yes that's true but i mean it more in a sense that you need a complexer model for the things in your surrounding.

basically multiple models for different types of real world objects.

Like when a car has "jackass mode" the other one needs to recognize that car as such. Kind of how we stereotype tainted windows, chrome wheels and AMG lables on the back of a car.

In a "perfect ai data world" the car could query the license plate, compare its actions to previous actions and devise a score just for that car. But it can't do that and hopefully never will, so what remains is a quick computation of the objects in your sourrounding, henceforth a - lot - more computational power
If you make layoffs of over 100 people in the UK, there needs to be a 45 day consultation period with representatives from the groups of people affected. This sometimes means people end up in a horrible situation where they are in a pool that have been told their jobs are at risk but not whether they are actually being made redundant, though presumably it's more fair, and allows staff to volunteer themselves for severance if they so choose.
The article feels more like a rant than a well-thought-out argument. It hardly says concretely what the problems with current PhD training are (it mentions a few problems in different places, but misses important ones like the ongoing mental health crisis in academia [0]), and it makes very few suggestions about what concretely should change to address them. The authors don't even say what they mean by 'PhD training', ignoring the vast heterogeneity in the structure and duration of doctoral education programs between countries, institutions and even between different programs in the same institution.

In the US, PhD training typically consists of a coursework phase and a research phase, with a target duration of about 5 years. In the EU, a PhD has a target duration of 3 years, according to the European Qualifications Framework [1]. While some coursework will typically be demanded in EU PhDs, it would usually be more lightweight than the coursework in a 5-year US PhD. Some EU institutions will offer doctoral schools that mimic the US model, some institutions will actually offer multiple styles of doctorates in parallel programs (even for the same subject). The UK has 'Centres for Doctoral Training' (CDT) and 'Doctoral Training Partnerships' (DTPs) which look like a compromise between the US and EU models (with typically one year of coursework preceding the research phase). CDTs can be joint programs between multiple universities, with students commuting to other institutions to take classes. CDTs and DTPs are are offered alongside regular PhD programs in the UK (the latter will look more like the EU model in most cases and more like the US model in some). Other countries and regions will often have a similar mix of US- and EU-style training programs. Add to this various lesser known types of doctoral programs like part-time PhDs, professional doctorates, DBAs (Business Doctorates in the US), 'PhD by Publication' in the UK, PhDs that are primarily based at non-university research labs like CERN, Max-Planck-Institutes,... and you will see that the term 'PhD' or 'Doctorate' can refer to vastly different types of academic programs, lasting anywhere from 2 to 8 years, being based at one or multiple or no university, with coursework being anything from absent to equivalent to a 2-year Master's program, funding being provided by a professor, a university, a foundation, a government, a corporation or not at all, having one or multiple supervisors, administering letter, numeric or no grades at all, requiring substantial teaching to none at all,... There is really no point in talking about 'PhD training' or its shortcomings without clarifying which of those countless different types of programs you mean.

The premise of the article seems to be that there exists a uniform model of PhD training that emerged in the 19th century and hasn't been reformed since, which simply doesn't stand up to closer inspection.

[0] https://www.ecn-berlin.de/mental-health/the-mental-health-cr...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bologna_Process
> Companies are imaginary entities chasing profits for its owners. There's nothing sacred about it and they shouldn't EVER be more important than people.

A company of 50,000 operating at a loss will eventually fire 50,000 people. If it can turn things around by firing 10,000 - why not?

Further, in a company there might be temporary teams that implement a project and then are laid off. Surely it's better to have these positions than to not hire any people at all.

Even further, life is not static and things change. Not adapting to changes eventually would lead to stagnant and disfunctional situations, where a product would be made more expensive for everyone, just so a some company has the capital to continue hiring 10,000 or so people who are not longer doing any work. But, perhaps more importantly, those 10,000 people are stuck in meaningless positions doing empty "work" for the sake of numbers on some accounting sheet.

And even further futher, if these no longer useful jobs are in manufacturing then continuing them would mean wasting natural resources and polluting the environment.
The recession would be triggered by the end of cheap money we've had since around 2010. The absurd spike in the tech industry's P/E ratios would just be one of the first indicators that situation was getting wonky.
The dating situation for men in the west is appalling, and in part it’s because some men play demeaning and insulting games like these.
Or just start early. I learned vi in Uni as part of our course and it's always there so I keep using it (but not solely).
But it sounds better than "Sorry for terminating your positions but we need to keep our finances in check not to loose share values, and we are accountable for shareholders"
(edited from "Sorry for terminating your positions but we need to keep our finances in check not to loose share values, and according to law it is only thing we are force to do")
PNG IS great but it’s dog slow.
Semantics tend to change over time, so you will now have to change the meaning of your key.

Did you know that sometimes the same social security number is assigned to multiple persons? In this case a person can change social security number. Good luck updating all of your database foreign keys in this case.
Sylvera response to The Guardian’s analysis of rainforest offsets
I know few like that, had spell myself in my youth. Sadly, you learn in later life, you don't get compensated any more and worse, you set yourself up for burnout. Something I'm aware many did and, dare say, still do. Companies don't care, they'll take your blood but not good at giving it back or, indeed, slowing you down to the rate they pay you. Let alone, compensate for the efficiency (though that may have changed in the last decade or so in some places).
>>I’m becoming more and more convinced that they’re preparing for a global recession

What if left to convince you, most of them have publically stated that is one of the reasons, and the economic indicators are all there.. I am not sure why people keep denying this reality, it is just faith in government that keeps denying it?
IAM policies are yet another example of something that started as a "simple" declarative specification, then people realized it wasn't actually simple and started tacking on poorly thought out language constructs until it became a new awful embedded turing complete language.

Rather than make a new language, they should have made a WASM or eBPF API and just let people use the full power of whatever language they want.

> Cedar is written in Rust, which makes it run in milliseconds

This statement is so weird. Milliseconds isn't particularly fast, and does that mean it runs in that time span regardless of complexity?
I read that book coming to the conclusion getting rich is not worth it and subject to luck and a lack of mental health. Which I think is pretty much what Felix Dennis intended.

I bought the book expecting practical advice (I was young and had no love for myself), but was surprised by a rather poignant read. It's been a long time, though. I remember mostly the part about hookers and drugs ruining his health.
>or a system of energy storage.

Like pumping water uphill. Which, contrary to pro nuclear propaganda, is cost effective, scales and doesnt require particularly special geography.
Is Apple doing cuts as well?
That requires there to be enough new projects.
>This is good management now, but poor management before now.

If we weren't heading into a recession, it would have been good management before now.

Hindsight is the only thing that's 20/20.
Everyone's doing it, we might be in a recession, now is the best time. Their announcement both follows a trend and gets lost in the noise, it doesn't stand out as possibly bad management.

Plus someone was saying that it reduces inflationary pressures for employees. I.e. you put a lot of people out on the job market and you scare others inside the company, who are now suddenly happy to still have a job, ergo they stop asking as much for raises or for high salaries when they apply.

> Why would they want to?

Then enlighten me how a <<hugely>> profitable business needs to <<layoff>> large percentages of its workforce???
For the SRE in the room, check out Slight Reliability Podcast https://www.buzzsprout.com/1698445

His perspective on SRE really resonates and he shares some really great strategies and book recommendations for adoption of SRE practices, cultures and technologies without pretending he has all the answers.

Very good!
10x programmers aren't going to be good at grinding tickets.

they'll procrastinate on them because they are boring and tedious and will go work a massive project instead because it's fun to them.

they'll finish that massive project in the time everyone is fiddling their thumbs with the stupid back and forth of the meetings and whatnot of those "tasks".

if you are lucky to get one of us, let us run free, we'll make you some really cool shit without any input.

if you stifle us and try to fit us in a box, we won't make shit. we'll eventually get bored, pissed off, and leave.

oh and don't touch our code, it's beautiful, and it's the only way it'll work, trust us! ideas welcome, code not!

we don't like teams. one person, one thought, one architect, one vision, one program.

source: am one, believe me or not idc, i prefer being mythical.
You know what? You do that. I'm gonna start a SaaS business providing AI generators for code, commit messages and documentation. Models that take into account all the context to deliver more accurate, better results. All I need is a live feed from your JIRA, Confluence, Teams/Slack, Zoom, Exchange, SharePoint or whatever alternatives you use. This will guarantee you the biggest bang for your buck!

Elsewhere in this thread someone was wondering if sending a change diff to a fly-by-night third party SaaS could be leaking company IP. They were thinking too small.

But cynicism aside - giving the model access to all that contextual info would definitely increase the chances it would generate useful commit summaries. It would also increase chances it would generate much more convincing bullshit, full of just the right phrases to confuse your programmers, PMs and architects alike.
Elon musk set a precedent - you can treat your employees (serfs) like shit and get away with it. Layoffs, perks being removed, the tone has generally shifted to "look we have free coffee" to "we own you, be glad to have a job, oh and you might not actually have a job after all".

This is a change of winds, instead of pandering to engineers companies are trying to debase us and remind us where we are in the totem pole.its not about revenues, its about power.
If you’re romanticizing the idea of long trips in an RV, Class C is a great option, especially if you’ve a family. However, unless you’re dead set on purchasing a new class C RV, I’d suggest you look for a good used RV.
A CEO taking responsibility for firing people always reminds me of Gavin Belson's speech: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u48vYSLvKNQ

Did ever a journalist tried to ask how they took responsibility? Had they faced difficulties in their lives or careers or they couldn't concentrate on Succession's finale and had to rewind?

Maybe taking responsibility actually means they did something very positive for the company within the rules of the game and expect a bonus? Are they referring to the events as a mistake they made or are they saying that they were able to grab the talent pool and didn't miss the opportunity?

After all, CEOs and workers have different responsibilities. Hiring and firing for the opportunity and change in conditions is CEOs job and maybe he takes responsibility for properly executing it? Maybe this is the money shot of a CEO reminding the investors that the upside from these actions are solely on him and wants a proper compensation?
Oh, thank you for the correction!
Google is a company with a fiduciary obligation to maximize shareholder profits.

The average employee laid off is going to have 2 months of work - paid - to find a new job, plus an additional close to ~$80k or so to hold them over til they find a new job.

If Google hires people they don't need anymore - regardless of how good they are - are they supposed to just keep them on payroll indefinitely? Why?

Why are we feeling sorry for employees with great severance packages who are deep in the global 1%?

If the worst thing that happens to you in life is that you get laid off at Google, you've got a great life.

Life isn't all roses, there's ups and downs - and some people who were laid off are going to have a hard time, and that's sad. But it's also life.
Related: If AGI achives consciousness, would it even tell us?
Nice project and great to see more stuff built with the OP stack (OpenAI + Pinecone). I'm from Pinecone and if there's anything I can do to support, send me an email: greg@pinecone.io
>France restarted its nuclear power plants and guess what? Prices for energy went down! How is that even possible when renewables are so cheap and nuclear power can't compete with price?

Because the nuclear plants that went down were already paid for.

They went down in the first place because theyre expensive to maintain and France was cutting costs.

If nuclear were cost competitive then they wouldnt be riding on the coat tails of soon-to-expire reactors built in the 70s and the % of French electricity supplied by nuclear wouldnt be going down.
People over here say there's no recession. But believing HN's assertions on global economy makes as much sense as believing it's opinions on Medical or Science threads.

For financial information about the world economic situation I tend to prefer reading WorldBank, who's Global Economic Prospects for 2023 is not that positive: https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/3...

---

Global growth is projected to decelerate sharply this year, to its third weakest pace in nearly three decades,
overshadowed only by the 2009 and 2020 global recessions. This reflects synchronous policy tightening aimed
at containing very high inflation, worsening financial conditions, and continued disruptions from the Russian
Federation’s invasion of Ukraine. Investment growth in emerging market and developing economies (EMDEs)
is expected to remain below its average rate of the past two decades. Further adverse shocks could push the
global economy into yet another recession. Small states are especially vulnerable to such shocks because of their
reliance on external trade and financing, limited economic diversification, elevated debt, and susceptibility to
natural disasters. Urgent global action is needed to mitigate the risks of global recession and debt distress in
EMDEs. Given limited policy space, it is critical that national policy makers ensure that any fiscal support is
focused on vulnerable groups, that inflation expectations remain well anchored, and that financial systems
continue to be resilient
> I need to see these "I take full responsibility" people actually punished. At the very least, this sentence needs to be removed from their mouths.

There's some infantile obsession with this phrase in every layoff thread. "I take full responsibility" is partly a polite way to say that they aren't blaming anyone else for what's happening, it partly means "I'm the one making this decision" and it's partly ceremony for the sake of appearances - if you're outraged that the CEO of a multi-billion dollar company is using this language, that's a problem with you, not with them.

It's like being indignant when a friend or a colleague replies with "I'm fine, thanks" when they aren't fine, or when they say "I can't complain" when they're in fact capable of complaining - it's perfectly normal language for the situation and it's understandable to anyone who has developed the skill of not taking every word literally.
I think this is likely, but more because it becomes a competitive gold rush once one agent makes moves like this.

The idea that the pandemic would create some new world never really made any sense for a global rampup anyway.
Procrastination is routine in PhDs. It is the norm, you are not alone. Millions have been there before you, millions will be there after you.

First is a 100% anti natural work to do, only using your mind.

Lots of people forget the basics like eating well, resting well, or doing exercise.

For me for example, having a routine of exercise was essential, because your job does not require exercise, like most jobs did 100 years ago.
* https://atp.fm
It's actually better for workers when layoffs are announced in advanced. They can prepare for it and not make an important financial decisions e.g.: buying house while waiting
Love this take.
Late Night Linux, Linux After Dark, Linux Downtime, 2.5 Admins
Nobody behaves this way. A GCP solutions architect has spent years acquiring valuable skills and experience. They aren’t gonna throw it away out of spite.

The only thing laid off employees will generally do is never, ever work for the employer that laid them off ever again.
One of the nice things that Visual C++ has is

#pragma comment(lib, "xxx.lib")

You can specify it in a header file for the library. That way if you include the header file, the library mentioned will automatically get linked as long as it is somewhere in the library search path.

I have found myself wishing that GCC would also get something like this.
Norwegian Shipping Company Bans Electrified Vehicles over Fire Fears
To be sure, most people who got successful don't really understand how they got there. Most of the time they think they do but then what really happens is they are rationalising and/or using circular logic.

Don't get me wrong, they most likely put a lot of work in and most likely did a lot of things right but deep understanding of it is not necessary for success.
> "Child" is gender neutral and was historically neuter when English had genders.

By 1902, that time was several hundred years in the past.

> Calling [a child] "it" to its face is just strange since "it" is 3rd person.

Sure, but I haven't mentioned any such usage.
sounds like they made an OS without noticing that they did that :D
Be careful, mental health is really precious...

I didn't have the courage to quit my PhD while I was alone (my supervisors were not involved in my work from the beginning; I had almost no comments on my writings, including my thesis...). It took me 5.5 years (instead of the average 3.5 years in my university) to graduate. I extended my 3-year contract with 2 years of teaching and the remaining 6 months I was without a contract.

I finished my thesis. However, It completely destroyed me: 2 years later I am still severely depressed with severe generalised anxiety disorders.
> Public bodies rushing to accept contracts thinking that suppliers have their best interests in mind is horribly naive.

"Public bodies" do not rush ... People who work there do. Those people really do not have that much of an incentive to be careful. They do not really bear the costs of their decision. They are also people, susceptible to having their decision influenced by whatever small or not so small immediate benefit they can derive regardless of the ultimate cost to the people who actually pay for the consequences of their decisions. And, this is before one brings in the possibility of corrupt collusion between the people who spend other people's money and people who receive it.
> It seems like all of the FAANGs have made severe strategic cockups when it comes to hiring lately.

Fwiw Cook took a pay cut and Apple seems to have only slowed hiring. (So far as I’ve heard)
That comment wasn’t showing when I posted.
Or that AI has become self-aware and thinks of failing Turing test as a form of self-preservation.