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pizzafeelsright commented on Lessons learned shipping 500 units of my first hardware product   simonberens.com/p/lessons... · Posted by u/sberens
nomel · 4 days ago
> we speak the truth

I get what you're saying, but you're ignoring intent here. They're, literally, using the wrong word, without meaning to. In their language they have multiple "yes" that mean very different things, but they incorrectly use our single "yes" for all of them which, as you're very correct to point out, has a very specific and STRONG meaning. This is a conceptual mapping mistake, not an intent.

They're trying, and slightly failing, to speak a language they took time to learn, but is still unfamiliar to them, my dude. The alternative is that you/I should learn mandarin. I applaud their efforts that allow me to be lazy, even if it means I have to understand some shortfalls in the communication.

If you learn a language, but accidentally use the wrong word in conversation, because maybe nobody has corrected you before, does that make you a liar? Of course not. That's what's going on here.

pizzafeelsright · 4 days ago
I was ignoring the language translation with excessive simplification while speaking of a framework.

To your specific point: no, grace abounds for those who remain in conversation and continue to repair the situation.

As for having a single 'yes', we backwater Americans have multiple versions including yeah, okay, yup, ya, yessssss, hell yes, yuppers, uh huh, right, right-o, got it, absolutely, and I am sure a dozen more.

I am speaking of intent. The intent, regardless of the language used, commnunicate in a way that both parties have no assumptions and if there is a miscommunication on anyone's part, both parties work to resolve it without blame. And I thank you for your reply, my dude, which I take as a verbal suffix of casual frustration. English is not my first language mind you.

pizzafeelsright commented on AI is killing B2B SaaS   nmn.gl/blog/ai-killing-b2... · Posted by u/namanyayg
AlienRobot · 5 days ago
Yep. It's a funny thing.

You build a Twitter. Profiles have posts, posts can have images, etc. It's very easy to model the database.

But then how do you make money with it? Now you need to build a separate system for advertising? Or do you want to sell subscriptions? Which means you need to build a separate system to handle payments. This is usually the big one, because when you handle money, what happens if there is a bug and you charge someone without delivering anything? How do you prevent fraud? How do you handle disputes?

Someone posted something illegal. What do you do in this situation? Do you call the police? The FBI? What kind of data do you give the authorities? How much data SHOULD you have been logging in the first place in case something like this happens?

One user doesn't like you so he bought a botnet to DDoS your website. How do you handle this? Are they mass posting? Mass creating accounts? Is it possible for them to exhaust all the usernames possible and then nobody can create an account anymore?

Your website is online but if the server blows up you'll lose all the data in the database. You need backups. You need a system to ensure the backups are actually working. But then some guy from the UK said he wants his posts all deleted. What are you going to do now, because his posts are also in the backups, and you don't want to touch those.

Trolls are posting things against the ToS. Who handles these things? Shadowban? So there needs to be a shadowban system? Moderators? So there needs to be a moderator-only section of the website? Should this be integrated with the main website or not?

Then you look at this horrendous mess of 6 paragraphs and you think back about the first paragraph that already did everything you wanted from Twitter. All these other systems, most of the work, and all you actually wanted was the first paragraph.

pizzafeelsright · 4 days ago
These are two different problems.

AI has solved the 'coding' part. The business is still very human because they are the ones buying, for now.

pizzafeelsright commented on Don't rent the cloud, own instead   blog.comma.ai/datacenter/... · Posted by u/Torq_boi
kevinkatzke · 4 days ago
Feels like I’ve lived through a full infrastructure fashion cycle already. I started my career when cloud was the obvious answer and on-prem was “legacy.”

Now on-prem is cool again.

Makes me wonder whether we’re already setting up the next cycle 10 years from now, when everyone rediscovers why cloud was attractive in the first place and starts saying “on-prem is a bad idea” again.

pizzafeelsright · 4 days ago
Mainframe -> Desktop -> Server Room -> Data Center -> Cloud (rented data center) -> Space (Skynet)
pizzafeelsright commented on Lessons learned shipping 500 units of my first hardware product   simonberens.com/p/lessons... · Posted by u/sberens
nomel · 5 days ago
This isn't fair, because it's misunderstanding the problem. It's not that they're lying, it's that, in their culture, the meaning of yes is something different, meaning "I hear you" rather than "I understand you". If they're not strong with english they might not have a grasp of this, so (in the case of Mandarin as primary language) you have to usually think of it as an empty "uh huh" type filler word, not a word with actual meaning.

The real problem I have is the "saving face" concept prevents them admitting they don't understand something. This is where the "high context" part comes in. You can't listen to what they say directly, you have to go off how they say it, and other context clues. This is what I have the biggest problem with. The only way to know if they actually understand something is test their understanding, like have them repeat/explain it back to you. From a low context/western perspective, this results in low verbal trust (because it technically is). I've wasted so many hours on taking something said at face value, that I just default to verifying everything that's said, and trying to be patient when I find out the truth. But, I am getting much better at reading the cues, so can usually spot when the (from my western/low context perspective) bullshit when it starts.

There are old stereotypes around this clash of meaning/culture, but it really is just that. If you're from their culture, and speak their language, there's no "bullshitting" or "lying". From what I've been told, it's incredibly clear when someone is saving face, and it's very clear what the response should be, to "help" them save face. Westerners are, literally, just blind to it all. It's an incompatible mindset and language/expression that requires a robust translation layer that needs to exist in one of the parties. I seem to be mostly incapable of high context communication, even in english, so I'm just as "at fault" in the two party role of communication.

pizzafeelsright · 4 days ago
I live in a different world than most where the expectation is we speak the truth, stand behind our word, and in the event of failure we maintain the relationship after resolving the conflict.

As for saving face, I provide opportunities to walk back, restate, or take back something that was said. People get angry, misspeak, or respond with fear and that is understandable.

pizzafeelsright commented on Lessons learned shipping 500 units of my first hardware product   simonberens.com/p/lessons... · Posted by u/sberens
mlrtime · 5 days ago
>Look up what it means when they say "yes", when you're explaining something.

Is there a term for this? Because I see it in my personal life as well dealing with some low price manual labor that doesn't speak english.

Instructions often get lost in translation, the reply will be "yes" and it doesn't get done. I know they want to sound professional and confident, so saying no or asking questions is a "bad thing".

pizzafeelsright · 5 days ago
Lying. It is called lying, deceit, or bearing false witness.

In my house I do not permit "yeah", or "okay". It is "yes" and anything else is interpreted as a 'no'.

Once you press someone to speak a "yes" as a solid commitment, for example to an understanding of an instruction. If this puts the person on the defensive then you are dealing with someone who is not interested in being held accountable.

Let your yes be yes.

pizzafeelsright commented on Agent Skills   agentskills.io/home... · Posted by u/mooreds
mooreds · 6 days ago
How do you test these skills for consistency over time, or is that not needed?
pizzafeelsright · 6 days ago
My experience has been that if the skill is broken down into a function, possibly paired with a validator in another stage, you're at 99.9% deterministic.

I have not yet tested this at scale but give me six months.

pizzafeelsright commented on Two kinds of AI users are emerging   martinalderson.com/posts/... · Posted by u/martinald
simmerup · 7 days ago
ANd I have a bridge to sell you in London
pizzafeelsright · 6 days ago
Someone bought that bridge and it stands in Arizona.
pizzafeelsright commented on Two kinds of AI users are emerging   martinalderson.com/posts/... · Posted by u/martinald
simmerup · 8 days ago
Terrifying that people are creating financial models with AI when they don’t have the skills to verify the model does what they expect
pizzafeelsright · 7 days ago
Someone recently had AI create a trading bot and it returns 131% on every transaction over a 30 day period - do you really think they care about code quality or ability to verify the math?
pizzafeelsright commented on Two kinds of AI users are emerging   martinalderson.com/posts/... · Posted by u/martinald
nebula8804 · 8 days ago
All we need is one major crash caused by AI to scare the capital owners. Then maybe us white collar workers can breath a bit for at least another few more years(maybe a decade+).
pizzafeelsright · 7 days ago
Most of the large outages at Meta in the past 10 years were related to early AI automation.

u/pizzafeelsright

KarmaCake day699May 27, 2023View Original