drosophila

drosophila , 7 days ago

Elephants are wonderfully kind creatures

So long as they’re not a bull in musth.

drosophila , 22 days ago (edited 22 days ago)

The thing about real world processor design though is that all those abstractions are leaky.

At higher levels of design you end up having to consider things like the electrical behavior of transistors, thermal density, the molecular dynamics of strained silicon crystals (and how they behave under thermal cycling), antenna theory, and the limits and quirks of the photolithography process you’re using (which is a whole other can of worms with a million things to consider).

Not everyone needs to know everything about every part of the process (that’s impossible), but when you’re pushing the limits of high performance chips each layer of the design is entangled enough with the others to make everyone’s job really complicated.

EDIT: Some interesting links:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=U885cIhOXBM

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljZt_TQegHE

www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdlZ8KYVtPU

drosophila , 1 month ago

It’s funny you use Woz and Jobs as an example when Jobs regularly emotionally manipulated and abused his employees and stole Woz’s money.

I wonder why schmoozers have a bad rep 🤔

drosophila , 1 month ago

“Asshole” is the word for a guy who likes to cut people off in traffic. I think there’s probably a more appropriate word for someone who emotionally manipulates you over the course of years so you’re continually a nervous wreck and can be destroyed any time it’s convenient for him. Seriously if you haven’t watched the interview I linked at least look at the first couple of minutes.

And at the end of the day, who did this behavior actually benefit? Steve helped make Apple a lot of money, sure, but where did most of that money go? It didn’t go to the employees he abused, that’s for sure. But maybe Apple products ended up benefitting society as a whole, and without Steve we wouldn’t have had that? Well you already said that more often than not Apple’s success didn’t have anything to do with technical superiority.

The fact that people like this (Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, etc) often head successful companies isn’t an example of how beneficial they are, it’s an example of how broken our system is.

drosophila , 1 month ago

In my personal experience I’ve had to go out of my way to find every quality product I’ve ever purchased, from dishwasher detergent to heat pumps, and none of them were the ones with the highest advertising budgets. You’re right that we all have limited time and can’t possibly evaluate every single thing that exists, but hype men don’t help with that. The professional liars and manipulators that work in advertising only add to the noise and make it take longer to arrive at a conclusion. For example the fact that there are the 12 different brands of space heaters that come in different sizes and shapes and at different price points despite all performing the exact same way. It’s like that with literally everything, from bar soap, to maple syrup, to sunscreen.

I think this way because I am autistic. I honestly cannot imagine feeling the need for hype men. The phrase “you need hype men” sounds to me like “you need your abuser, you cannot live without them”.

Something like 35% of autistic people attempt suicide because of what the original post describes (and not just in science, but in every aspect of the world). And yeah, I think if I had to work for someone like Steve Jobs or Elon Musk I would as well.

drosophila , 1 month ago

Agreed. I’m not going to pretend it’s a good thing though.