kovezd (u/kovezd) - Readit News

kovezd commented on Netflix to Acquire Warner Bros about.netflix.com/en/news... · Posted by u/meetpateltech

> If WB was any good, would they have been snatched up by Netflix?

Yes because the situation of WB has nothing to do with their performance.

In 1990s they merged with TIME publishing right before the internet killed all magazines. In 2000s with AOL right before th dot com bubble. In 2010s with AT&T who realised they needed a shit ton of money to roll out 5G so they took a massive loan and charged it to Warner debt.

So WARNER keeps performing and the business side keeps adding debt from horrible decisions

kovezd · 3 months ago

Lol so this means Netflix/streaming is the next trend going down?

kovezd commented on The Junior Hiring Crisis people-work.io/blog/junio... · Posted by u/mooreds

ilc · 3 months ago

I think AI clouds the real issues around Junior hiring. Defective companies.

Let's say you hire your great new engineer. Ok, great! Now their value is going to escalate RAPIDLY over the next 2-3 years. And by rapidly, it could be 50-100%. Because someone else will pay that to NOT train a person fresh out of college!

What company hands out raises aggressively enough to stay ahead of that truth? None of them, maybe a MANGA or some other thing. But most don't.

So, managers figure out fresh out of college == training employees for other people, so why bother? The company may not even break even!

That is the REAL catch 22. Not AI. It is how the value of people changes early in their career.

kovezd · 3 months ago

What you are saying is not a hiring problem, but an education one.

If colleges stayed up to date, and teach valuable skills, the jump wouldn't be so steep!

kovezd commented on OpenAI declares 'code red' as Google catches up in AI race theverge.com/news/836212/... · Posted by u/goplayoutside

embedding-shape · 3 months ago

And this is relevant how? That interview is 1.5 hours, not something you just casually drop a link to and say "here, listen to this to even understand what point I was trying to make"

kovezd · 3 months ago

You can now ask Gemini, about a video. Very useful!

kovezd commented on Google suspended my company's Google cloud account for the third time agwa.name/blog/post/googl... · Posted by u/agwa

embedding-shape · 4 months ago

> People consider google as a trusted partner

Haha, what "people"? Even people who aren't computer techies seems to be aware having a Google account is "a privilege lost at any time for any reason", almost everyone seems to know at least one acquaintance that somehow lost access to their personal account at one point and if you bring up any Google products in discussions, it isn't uncommon to hear "Yeah, I'd give that a try if I want to use a product that only works for a year".

Not sure there are many people left treating Google as a "trusted partner" unless you have a multi-million deal/contact with them.

kovezd · 4 months ago

That was not a person, it was an LLM.

kovezd commented on Evals in 2025: going beyond simple benchmarks to build models people can use github.com/huggingface/ev... · Posted by u/jxmorris12

gdiamos · 6 months ago

How can the community tell if models overfit to these benchmarks?

kovezd · 6 months ago

By the composition of evals. Plus secondary metrics like parameter size, and token cost.

Not perfect, but useful.

kovezd commented on Slow social media herman.bearblog.dev/slow-... · Posted by u/rishikeshs

bkettle · 6 months ago

I think modern social media is a huge problem but don’t see we can fix it without regulation. It’s clear that all the current incentives point companies towards engagement and rage bait and away from anything actually “social”, and I think it’s unlikely that any new social network that tries to fix these issues would achieve widespread usage.

Have any countries proposed legislation to help reign it in? What would that legislation look like? My main idea is to simply outlaw ML-based recommendation algorithms, but obviously that is not as simple as it sounds and is mostly based on looking fondly on the earlier days of social media, when I felt like it was making my life better instead of worse.

kovezd · 6 months ago

Yes. We should only allow social media in a printed format.

kovezd commented on Why Semantic Layers Matter (and how to build one with DuckDB) motherduck.com/blog/seman... · Posted by u/secondrow

kovezd · 7 months ago

Nothing to do with linear, meaningful projections on embedding spaces, and everything to do with efficient maintenance of legacy data reporting systems.

kovezd commented on A Virginia public library is fighting off a takeover by private equity lithub.com/a-virginia-pub... · Posted by u/sharkweek

anon7000 · 8 months ago

> the valorization of profit has blinded them to seeing the advantages of the public good as a worthy bottom line

This is, IMO, the critical line, and also one of the deepest problems in the world (and especially America).

A focus on profit is so frequently completely opposed to human wellbeing and a flourishing society. Just look at health insurance companies for a prime example: they make profit by denying claims. The result is a catastrophically expensive insurance bureaucracy and worse health outcomes. Not to mention the extreme stress any American feels when interacting with an insurance company over any meaningful amount of money. (Which I’ve experienced, and I have far better coverage than the average American.)

These companies are so clearly, obviously bad for human flourishing. But profit is great!

The incentives are so deeply messed up. Our economy only allows profit as an incentive, which works well when aligned with human wellbeing-being. But as the economy grows, companies consolidate, and profit growth is still expected, nearly every single sector looks for ways to cut costs. And with fewer competitors, it’s easier and easier for entrenched, powerful companies to raise prices and reduce quality with little consequence.

This is clearly bad for human flourishing. But profits are fantastic!

Just because profit is actually aligned with human flourishing in a couple sectors doesn’t mean the system as a whole will continue scaling effectively. It’s clearly not, and it must change to avoid completely suffocating us.

kovezd · 8 months ago

While the critique is valid, that does not offer a path to the solution.

Utilitarism is the ruling moral philosophy, and the only possible countermeasure is externalities but that depends on an effective government which is even more unlikely that asking for ethical behavior to corporations.