Our deployments are triggered by GitHub Actions, and it is a pain to deploy without it (specifically collecting the credentials and putting them into variables the shell will read).
This is multiple times this month that this has been a problem.
Has GitHub completed it's internal migration to Azure yet? Or is it still ongoing? None of our devs want to switch away from GH, but we will have to at this point.
It's also a first time decline afterany decades of steady increases. We have no basis for determining causality - it might just be that we've finally maxed out the possible gains from the causes underlying the Flynn effect.
"Do you guys think we're going to see a de-evolution of human beings due to technology?"
Not LLMs specifically.
Insofar as I believe there is value in IQ tests, this is a technology-driven effect, most likely due to the impact of distraction and search result immediacy on sustained thinking.
IQs used to just rise, year on year, because living in the world required more and more of the thinking that IQ tests measure. And now they don't.
> According to Pythagoras everything is number, and God is a mathemati-
cian. This point of view has worked pretty well throughout the development
of modern science. However now a neo-Pythagorian doctrine is emerging,
according to which everything is 0/1 bits, and the world is built entirely
out of digital information. In other words, now everything is software, God
is a computer programmer, not a mathematician, and the world is a giant
information-processing system, a giant computer [Fredkin, 2004, Wolfram,
2002, Chaitin, 2005]
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
For some reason I get the same vibe from this as people referring to LLM inference using gendered pronouns instead of "it".
Arguably starts with Wheeler and “it from bit”. Zuse also, who predates Wolfram. For me it’s a little bit like calling the egg you hold in your hand the centre of the Universe while rolling on a skateboard.
> However now a neo-Pythagorian doctrine is emerging, according to which everything is 0/1 bits, and the world is built entirely out of digital information
Can this be true? DNA is the information system of living creatures and as far as I know, it is not coded with 0s and 1s. So, how can we justify that "the world is built entirely out of digital information"?
For all I, a Victorian everyman, know the world is built from small pistons, gears and pulleys.
Every age has their technology which they will project onto the world. A century ago one may have started to talks about everything being electrical wires and switches.
It doesn't matter whether the model assumes bits, pulleys, elves or whatever, as long as it does a better job at describing physical reality than whatever exists at the time anyway. People will try and very probably succeed in providing alternative formalism anyway.
All that matters is whether it facilitates reasoning towards the goal.
At a small company, anyone can damage the company prospects. But product people have outsized negative impact when they are wrong. They can tank the whole company in short order.
Which is maybe as it should be, but it does pit agonized debates over detailed technical work in perspective.
All true but every time I tried to help with an outsider's perspective -- and IMO us as engineers with systems thinking _can_ contribute -- I was told to shut up and stay in my lane (more politely than that but still crystal clear what's the underlying message + a clear show of we-will-not-debate-this-again).
So let them do damage. I do what I am told, I have the strategic thinking but not many have made use of it. OK. It's their right. I still pocket a wage. They could have gotten more for their money but consciously chose not to. Who am I to stop them? (And not like I actually can.)
That's when I mentally tally my stock options at $0 (if they weren't so already) and assess my new TC situation. If I have lost ability to influence the business in any meaningful way, then why am I being paid in company ownership units?
Reminds me of when I, as a UI dev at a very small startup, became subordinate to the new designer (who was a big fan of large fonts and huge whitespace margins in our professional tool) regardless of any UX concerns. My opinion on UI/UX was highly valued as long as it completely agreed with the designer's :-) She is, after all, the professional.
Same. I’m lucky to have some execs who appreciate that product people have a specific point of view (or agenda) and as a result are willing to at least listen to my views, wrt defect rates, availability, etc., but also about the occasional product idea.
At the end of the day, if they choose spend their magic beans on shitty features, I’m still getting paid. Then again, I’m at a larger company, not a startup.
One time I worked for a client who entire idea for a product was "it's going to do the same as <specific popular open source dev tool>, except in Go and with GraphQL!" They literally had zero vision beyond duplicating effort for no reason. During the first meeting I sat in, I asked them directly why someone would choose to use their version instead of the existing one, and they didn't have an answer. Something like one or two years went by before they decided to end the contract with us, and I never learned what they hoped to achieve.
This is multiple times this month that this has been a problem.
Has GitHub completed it's internal migration to Azure yet? Or is it still ongoing? None of our devs want to switch away from GH, but we will have to at this point.