I've been using it and I really like it. The cars are always clean and comfortable, you can choose the music, and you don't need to talk to anyone. A couple bucks more than Lyft/Uber though, and there was one time it got stuck negotiating a two way one lane road when another car was coming, but people have trouble with that situation too.
The first time you take a ride in one is really amazing, it really makes you think "I'm living in the future." I recommend anyone visiting SF take one.
I'm at Meta, I like using it for the most part. The chat could be improved upon but overall I really like having Facebook-like Groups and I don't think any other platform has something like that.
In my mind, "move in a straight line due east" can be interpreted as "for as long as you are moving, your movement should be due east". In that case, your latitude will never change. In the northern hemisphere, you will constantly be making a leftward adjustment to maintain a due east heading.
I'm a SWE at Meta and do technical interviews. I'd say you're right on most things except down-leveling. There are some very specific things interviewers are looking for in the behavioral and system design interviews and I believe they accurately predict how an engineer will perform at a given level within Meta, which may be different than how they would at the "same" level at another company. In my experience and from speaking to other FAANG engineers, Meta expects engineers to do a lot more than just code past E4. E5+ ("senior") should be able to do some of what a PM does, generate impactful projects on their own, and be able to be a team lead (although that's usually for E6+), plus some more stuff. I know at least I was definitely leveled fairly, and even struggled a bit to get used to the expectations when I first started out.
Thank you for responding! Would you say the leveling criteria has changed in the last year? I ask because, while the current criteria could very well be legitimate, candidates weren't down-leveled nearly as often until the downturn.
There's no official policy or guidance that has changed on the expectations for the behavioral/sys design interviews I know of, which is fairly transparent. I saw your stat for 55% self reported down-levels, do you have a stat from before the downturn?
One thing I have noticed is that in my experience (around 70 interviews total since I started giving interviews in 2021) the average performance on the coding portions dipped sharply around the time that our stock did. My theory is that the more talented candidates focused on companies with a better outlook and so it was weaker candidates that were making it to the technical interview stage. I've noticed that in the last few months I'm seeing candidates do better on the coding interviews which supports my theory.
I wish we did. Honestly it's not something we collected because we didn't hear about it happening from our users.
That's a cool hypothesis. I think we can actually pull something similar: grab average performance in Meta-themed mock interviews on interviewing.io over time and graph it against the stock price.
There's something there... but it's not a very strong connection. Of course, mock interview performance isn't necessarily in lock step with how all candidates are performing in real interviews at Meta.
My impression is that AMD has always had technically competitive products, but lagged in software and ecosystem and marketing. (It had a long line of dud CEOs.)
Lisa Su (Jensen's cousin, btw) seems to have turned the ship around.
they're a fast follow that competes for the middle and low end of the market. they won't produce anything that competes with NVIDIA's topend any time soon. Will take some outside competitor like LPUs or something that comes and changes the game to make a dent, that will take a while though I reckon. Hardware revolutions take years to scale.
I'd predict Amazon and MS. A huge portion of Nvidia's revenue is from data centers run by amazon/MS, and they both have at least some experience in designing their own chips (more on Amazon's end with Graviton). I'd expect that they are both motivated to try to design something in house that is more suited to their needs and cuts out the nvidia profit margin.
Yes, AMD (which has great GPUs, but sucks at software), Intel (that's improving rapidly on GPU side), and possibly Google with their Tensor. Also, AWS has their dedicated AI chips, aptly named Trainium and Inferentia.
Theoretically even Apple could start producing AI chips based on their Neural Engine.
The better NVIDIA's results are now the more that encourages the competitors to try and take some of the cake for themselves.
Model inference can be done with any GPU, AMD, Nvidia, Intel. Can even be done with CPU in many cases.
Training is largely done on Nvidia cards, but there's nothing mandating that.
Google trained Gemini on their own in-house TPUs, and according to their published stats it exceeds ChatGPTs performance.
There's a collective delusion right now that somehow CUDA entitles Nvidia to a forever monopoly on GPU compute. There's no way they will maintain ~90% gross margins on their hardware sales. It's far too economically inefficient for purchasers in the long run.
The ones who figure out how to use competitor cards at less than half the cost will have a huge advantage
Right now it's fevered money pouring into what they see as the fastest way to get their feet into the game. Nvidia will do well, but that's already more than priced in right now.
First, this is a cool project and I'm glad they're doing it, for the people who want this thing.
However, I see it as combining the main downsides of film and digital. The reason most people shoot film these days is the look that film gives the image which digital just can't seem to reproduce. People shoot modern digital cameras primarily because of the huge amount of features and improvements over film cameras. This gives you neither.
The main reason I can see for someone to want one of these is that you really want to shoot using a film body but you don't want to pay for or deal with the hassle of film. I wonder how many people that's actually going to end up being when this ships.
I don't shoot film anymore because there's gelatin in the film and I don't care for that one bit.
At a certain level of hobby, the aesthetics are personal preference and it more becomes ergonomics and - very important - lenses! A lot of old glass is on mounts that are a pain (or impossible) to mount on most cameras.
So this can let you use cameras and lenses you assumed were done for good, if you got off the film train.
PS: I'm also not sure why the image would be that bad? M4/3 is a wonderful sensor that caught gorgeous images. With old glass that has character, it could be real neat!
So this is just me, I don’t speak for all film shooters.
I actually really prefer the interface of a film camera. It’s hard to explain, but I feel like there’s an additional layer of abstraction between me and the final image. I spend less time thinking about the camera and more time thinking about the photograph.
But I don’t see myself spending $650 on a m4/3 sensor to digitize that process. If I wanted a new digital camera with a similar experience I’d rather put that money towards a film-like digital, e.g. a Fuji XPro3.
Sony user here, but my understanding is that Fujifilm cameras have a much more analog look & feel. I had someone ask me to take a photo for them in the spring on one, and there were the typical film knobs and a feeling of solidity I'd quite forgotten in cameras. It sounds silly, but pressing the button felt like such a clear solid action, had such great feel.
Yup! I have an X-E1 and I love it to death, but it’s quite long in the tooth these days. I’d love to get a modern X100 or Xpro but Fuji is still recovering from supply chain issues and prices are through the roof.
No shade re Sony’s mirrorless cameras, btw. Great cameras.
I’m pragmatic about what I shoot and, honestly, the number one reason why I pick up a mirrorless instead of my rangefinder is because I often don’t want to spend my weekend processing and scanning 10+ rolls of film. :-)
check out the new nikon zf, unlike the fijifilm retros, The zf has a full frame sensor and can hold its own with any of nikon's other professional cameras.
There's a lot of effects that this would have on society but I think one of them would be that more partner-less men that are "satisfied", by that I mean not willing to do things that "decay your country" from the inside like violence and rape due to sexual frustration (which is what I believe the author is implying). The increasing prevalence of porn probably also contributes. Further evidence is that violent and property crime have plummeted over the last few decades: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2020/11/20/facts-abo...
"Decay" of the country might come in other forms though. Lower testosterone also increases risk of depression, which is well known to be on the rise.
