Let's entertain this idea: They have much better behavioral and sentiment analysis tools than anyone else (this is why they are so much better at ad targeting! Their ads work and everyone in marketing says are worth this extra cost). And if they knew he will (obviously not certain, just with a high enough probability), wouldn't they try to play a bit safer for him to avoid an immediate retaliation?

Sometimes I use nicotine gums / patches as a dieting aid (effective appetite suppressant).

And I want to warn against this premise of short half life. This is not true in general. There are active metabolites like cotinine with elimination half life of 20h+, depending on your liver enzymes, gender, ethnicity.

If I chew a nicotine gum around noon, I have trouble sleeping the whole following night with my brain unable to calm down, mild jaw clenching etc.

So yes, moldafinil is a terrible stimulant due to too long half life, but so is nicotine (for many). I definitely don't recommend for that purpose. Maybe for extreme (crash) dieting, but this is unhealthy in general.

The issue is that people and companies exploit it, "better ask for forgiveness than permission", and after years they clean up evidence, their CEOs say they "don't remember", and even if they get fined - it's too late and will not save destroyed, monopolized market. All those gig economy "disruptors" are the worst, but probably all the biggest companies do this.

I wish that there could be a possibility of a retribution payment - a monopolistic payment destroyed an $xyz bln competitor? They need to pay this amount of money, maybe to some publicly owned alternative/open source competition if it's too late.

I recall his interviews and annoyed tone at uncomfortable questions - made me laugh, just like people on speed.

And absolutely avoid selegiline for "productivity", especially with amphetamines, this will turn anyone into a pathological compulsive person (e.g. a gambler).

Many practices of gamedevs - like designers literally just exploring stuff without any plan for years before commiting to any feature - would make SV directors and PMs (not to mention investors) scream. :) This is a double edged sword. On the one hand, this aimless exploration is needed in pursuit of real fun (as opposed to compulsive loops of mobile games). On the other hand, this leads to crunch, games being buggy and always delayed, and how most fun games always had very troubled production and sometimes literally destroy the studios/teams.

More organized companies I worked at (Ubisoft) had less crunch but also less fun games (cookie cutter AC formula). The messy toxic crunch workplaces (CD Projekt Red) I was at produced amazingly fun cult games...

IMHO, that exploratory attitude is needed to make any innovation at all. Without it, you get a bunch of cookie-cutter junk aping something else.

Which unsurprisingly, is a lot of what silicon valley does. Years ago it was social, last couple years it was crypto, now it's generative AI, etc. Almost all the talk about innovation is just hype and marketing.

If you need solid estimates, you'll never stray too far off the path others have already blazed.

I do agree the bean counters at Ubisoft seem obsessed with the idea of running the franchise until the wheels fall off anymore.

Like maybe being flexible on deadlines but strict on overall process, to-dos, and separation of work?

Basically a mix of people with different attitudes, different seniority levels, working great together, being curious, exploratory, but also responsible and keeping deadlines when pushed. I worked on some teams like this - like Marc Levoy's HDR+ team at Google, it was amazing. We had unlimited freedom to explore, but the team had very senior, responsible, and accountable people and when a deadline was approaching (sometimes self-imposed) were becoming very disciplined.

But one thing I am sure - if your goal is something creative and delightful - never let the business side, VCs and other "money squeezers" decide your process, features, goals.

"There was no crunch, as long as we don't count all that crunch before the launch, and all that crunch after the launch..."

There's no need to be so defensive. We can rightfully criticize any employer who mistreats their employees, without giving a free pass to ones that might mistreat their employees slightly less than others. There was exactly one pre-existing comment in this thread that mentioned CDPR at all; nobody is targeting them unfairly.

I worked there for 3y and can give "on the record" statement that it was the most toxic company I ever worked for. 80h work weeks, management shouting at people and calling their work "shit", constant lies, firing people on the spot for minor disagreements and many many more.

Generally, people don't care if the phone uses expensive 5x lens or not. I don't really know who does. :) They are at some position and want to quickly take a picture - phone refusing to take a photo or taking an out of focus one would be terrible for them and cause outrage. Image Quality is somewhat important, but 1000x less important than capturing the right moment. If you miss the moment - it's gone forever.

I worked as a researcher at the Google HDR+ team, developing algorithms for Pixel 2/3/4/5/6 camera. And consistently we would get both user studies/bugs/feedback, as well as guidance from PMs that responsiveness/latency and "taking any usable photo at all as fast as possible" was more important than the Image Quality. I'll admit, we didn't always deliver and often compromised (doing in software what everyone else was doing in hardware back then is HARD), but this principle blocked some cool IQ improvements from launching - and I think was the right call, even if some of those were mine (like high quality multi frame super res in every photo).

The author didn't claim that iPhone has it wrong, just that their personal expectation and preference is different.

> Generally, people don't care if the phone uses expensive 5x lens or not. I don't really know who does. :)

That's a strange claim. I know many people who value decent quality zoom, even if they're not otherwise photography geeks.

> we would get both user studies/bugs/feedback, as well as guidance from PMs that responsiveness/latency and "taking any usable photo at all as fast as possible" was more important than the Image Quality

What I don't like about these studies is that it collapses different user groups and different use cases into one average "taking any usable photo at all as fast as possible". The reality is much more colorful and often depends on a situation. When taking a photo of an animal then quick shutter speed is indeed important. But when I'm taking a photo of a static subject, esp. in challenging light conditions, I care more about quality.

We were not conflating user groups, just that if one group is literally 95% of the market and all photos taken, then you optimize the default app and the default mode for them and make the experience super polished. The remaining 5% of power users can use dedicated apps...

I'm not sure if this is directly relevant to the original problem of camera switching on its own, but to bite - there's certainly something possible in between super quick photos and those which need multiple seconds.

> The remaining 5% of power users can use dedicated apps...

One thing to consider is that for those 5% of power users the camera is a more important consideration in their buying decisions than the rest.

Another issue here is that you can't really use a different app without losing a lot of the Google Camera specific functionality.

They also never claimed that what they want is the ideal behaviour for everyone. Wanting a different behaviour from the "good enough, works for most people" solution is perfectly valid, and doesn't necessarily imply that you think the default is bad.

> Generally, people don't care if the phone uses expensive 5x lens or not. I don't really know who does

I'm not sure the author does really. They just want the option to be able to chose to step back to get a higher quality photo. Camera quality is a big selling point for iPhones, so it's not too surprising that some people think their phone should help them take higher quality photos instead of letting them make bad choices.

They said that they want the 5x option to only use the 5x lens, but their bigger complaint is that they can't see what it's doing until too late. I'm sure they would be satisfied with an option to turn on an indicator of which lens is being used, or an unobtrusive message which says "move back 10cm for a better photo".

Heck, the google camera even does this, when prompting you to turn on night sight if it's too dark for the normal mode. That's a very similar trade-off.

Two of my close friends who don't have partners and still use Tinder said that in the last few years, they became useless unless you are a spending whale (enshittification). Full of bots, full of people keeping to make new accounts to take advantage of boosts at the beginning of the profile, needing to spend money to get any matches after this start period. Basically bait-and-switch model and pay-to-win, but with romantic life and self esteem - sounds absolutely cruel.

Hopefully they work at the same company, but if they don't - it's not your problem to solve, but VPs and above.

But yes, it can be frustrating if you're junior and take your work personally and attribute its success to its (and even worse, your own) value. After a few years of career, you learn to look at it from a distance.

Google publishes amazing stuff, people are paid great salaries, they have a ton of fun doing it, work life balance is way better than at startups - what's not to like?

Compared to AI startups, neither of these is true.