2023-08-21

Another day, another dollar. I’m trying a new thing today - I’m writing in the evening. We’re in that false sense of quiet stage in the lull about half an hour before bed, when the kids are largely winding down and into a screen or quietly playing solo.

I wish I could say that it was because of some well intentioned effort to optimize the writing time. But it is not that. This morning was a hard start. The motor was cold, and I practically well asleep upright on the sofa before I had a chance to make the coffee. Had the little one not been so insistent on being fed, then another hour could have easily slipped on by. But alas!

Anyway, a curious day. So much like so many others, and yet completely different. We are in an odd impermanence with big’un. Summer camp has ended, but school doesn’t start until next week. And well, I say “next week”, but they have 2 staff training days at the school - I guess the teachers need to easy back into it as well. So really big’un starts on Wednesday that week. Thursday and Friday this week are the company retreat, and little guy has no daycare either as they deep-clean ahead of the new year. so I can’t pretend to half work during the day and cover what I didn’t get around to in the evenings, as I’ll be doing tonight.

However, the big’un has been asking me nicely for the last 6 months or so to see my office, so today was his lucky day. We dropped his brother off at daycare, then heading off to the most exciting form of transport, the metro, for a jaunt to the office.

I don’t really know what he was expecting from it all. I mean to me it’s just an office. But to him he left saying that “it was the best day ever”. I mean, he saw a couple of conference rooms, a kitchen loaded with snacks, played some foosball, sat with a bunch of people happily having lunch together, and I guess some giant TVs (these ones also come with cameras).

After a thrill ride of a day, we even took a bus home! Crazy!

But from a different world view, he got to play with an iPad almost all day. Ate pizza for lunch. Spent some quality time with his old man. And got to ride on a subway train and a bus, all in one day.

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2023-08-19

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2023-08-22

What distinguishes you from other developers?

I've built data pipelines across 3 continents at petabyte scales, for over 15 years. But the data doesn't matter if we don't solve the human problems first - an AI solution that nobody uses is worthless.

Are the robots going to kill us all?

Not any time soon. At least not in the way that you've got imagined thanks to the Terminator movies. Sure somebody with a DARPA grant is always going to strap a knife/gun/flamethrower on the side of a robot - but just like in Dr.Who - right now, that robot will struggle to even get out of the room, let alone up some stairs.

But AI is going to steal my job, right?

A year ago, the whole world was convinced that AI was going to steal their job. Now, the reality is that most people are thinking 'I wish this POC at work would go a bit faster to scan these PDFs'.

When am I going to get my self-driving car?

Humans are complicated. If we invented driving today - there's NO WAY IN HELL we'd let humans do it. They get distracted. They text their friends. They drink. They make mistakes. But the reality is, all of our streets, cities (and even legal systems) have been built around these limitations. It would be surprisingly easy to build self-driving cars if there were no humans on the road. But today no one wants to take liability. If a self-driving company kills someone, who's responsible? The manufacturer? The insurance company? The software developer?