“Opportunity for alternatives” is not free. There will be a trade off to enabling it, and my perception is that it’ll negatively affect those who are happy with the status quo.

FWIW I use Linux on my desktop computer, believe in open source, etc. Since mobile phones have become much more than phones and are now a sort of master key to your entire life, I am happy to have that key reside in as high a trust environment as I can find.

I feel the same way. Developments in computing have evolved and improved incrementally until now. Networks and processors have gotten faster, languages more expressive and safer, etc but it’s all been built on what preceded it. Gen AI is new-new in general purpose computing - the first truly novel concept to arrive in my nearly 30 years in the field.

When I’m working in Python, I can “peer down the well” past the runtime, OS and machine code down to the transistors. I may not understand everything about each layer but I know that each is understandable. I have stable and useful abstractions for each layer that I use to benefit my work at the top level.

With Gen AI you can’t peer down the well. Just a couple of feet down there’s nothing but pitch black.

> Both employee owned companies I worked for the board made those sorts of decisions without any say from employees.

If there was 100% (or majority) employee ownership, would the employees not have the ability to use the general meeting process to eject board members they didn’t like? Aren’t employees voting for nominees to the board, allowing them to use a write-in process to bypass a hostile board?

JUnit

He mentions swapping out components from last season a couple of times, so lack of integration is probably a feature.

Do you mean PDFs for correspondence such as bills or invoices? That is not common for me.

Anyone over 65 would be on Medicare. It’s not exactly free, but it’s also not private.

https://github.com/microsoft/DiskANN

In something like new auto sales, all of the information is available online and is usually more comprehensive and accurate than that offered by a car salesman. YouTube probably sells more cars than car salesmen these days (in terms of locating a product that meets your needs and convincing you to buy it)

Operation, innovation and maintenance. Pick any 3.

Better if done by the same team or teams that are very close to each other.

Ideally, all done to varying degrees by each person on the team because that’s where inspiration for improvement comes from.

We can split the 3 functions up into 3 groups, with 3 sets of management hierarchy. Often the result is mediocre and the people are unhappy (especially those stuck on the maintenance team - thankless but crucial work, that).

We can try to make teams responsible for all 3 functions, but often hire managers who overfit on one of them (coincidentally the one that leads to better rewards next quarter). It’s hard to champion operational excellence, diligent maintenance and hammock time in a single culture.

No wonder it’s hard.