Things still happen fast. The twitter blue checkmark has been developed in a weekend ;)
Fast
171–180 of 306 posts
Re: Fast
#172Earlier quoted context omitted.
There was a Grand Jury report analyzing the causes of the delay in the Van Ness project. While the unexpected conditions of the underground utilities is cited as the primary cause, it does touch on some project management aspects that you mention as opportunities for improvement: https://civilgrandjury.sfgov.org/2020_2021/2021%20CGJ%20Repo... Ironically, more planning and analysis at the beginning of the project (e.g…
I worked on that report! (Throwaway because, well, my real name is on the second page...) The lack of meaningful technical planning was a big part of it, and so was the contract-awarding math, but I think the most striking - and generally applicable - behind-the-scenes stories were about what happens when trust breaks down at a human level. The city's internal back and forth on approving and then un-approving a subco…
Can I just point out how awesome it is to be discussing a infrastructure failure and one of the postmortem report authors chimes in with their experiences. Sometimes the HN community truly is amazing!
Re: Fast
#173Earlier quoted context omitted.
Impressive for sure, not to knock it. But, as I recall reading, the mini HDD for the iPod was already developed by a vendor's R&D, sitting around for a use case. Which Apple decided to take exclusive advantage of. Thus, that iPod offering seemed kind of "revolutionary". But it's not like Apple started the project, then developed all of the tech for it in this time of 290 days. Which is sort of what the summary reads…
They had to design the software, the UX including the touch wheel, the mac integration and syncing, and everything relating to the design, materials, and sourcing of the components. It’s astonishing that they got it done in less than a year. (And I highly recommend Fadell’s book)
The iPod's OS was bought off the shelf. All of the music library functionality and a lot of the sync functionality already existed within SoundJa...iTunes.
That's not to knock the speed of the iPod's development but it wasn't built totally from scratch. Apple also wasn't a garage startup, peeling some hardware engineers off for the iPod wasn't going to cripple the iMac's continued development.
Re: Fast
#174Back in the early COVID days, an airplane with PPE landed in Prague. Responsible agency has been short handed so the staff of national budget oversight agency came to help in what was a prime example of violation of budgeting discipline and just unloaded the airplane. I could not stop laughing about that for days. Other ministries were literally excusing themselves since "they were not allocated funds to deal with th…
Ordinary employees can't choose to break the rules, the boss can, that's ... how everything works?
Re: Fast
#175> Tony Fadell was hired to create the iPod in late January 2001. Steve Jobs greenlit the project in March 2001. They hired a contract manufacturer in April 2001, announced the product in October 2001, and shipped the first production iPod to customers in November 2001, around 290 days after getting started. Source: Tony Fadell. Just 290 days for the iPod to go from idea to customer is crazy fast
Impressive for sure, not to knock it. But, as I recall reading, the mini HDD for the iPod was already developed by a vendor's R&D, sitting around for a use case. Which Apple decided to take exclusive advantage of. Thus, that iPod offering seemed kind of "revolutionary". But it's not like Apple started the project, then developed all of the tech for it in this time of 290 days. Which is sort of what the summary reads…
Also, don't forget that Tony Fadell had been built many MP3 players before, so for him it was more like an iteration than starting from scratch.
Re: Fast
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's a good point. But Git was initially written by one cranky Finn, in ten days. It totally changed the way we all work.
JavaScript was also famously built in 10 days. I'd say that internally git is more consistent %)
JS on the list is quite interesting, since it being rushed and a prototype ending up getting shipped often gets cited as an explanation for why JS has issues. Given how widespread it is, this is a project I wish had gotten a lot more time. An argument could be made that it succeeded, so it must be good, but given it's the only built-in, full language in the browser just says that it was good enough and now we are kinda stuck with it.
Re: Fast
#177This reminds me of when I interviewed at Stripe, a few years back. It was a surreal experience. We were in a small conference room. I sat at the table on one side, Patrick and Edwin sat on the other side. They asked me questions, I answered them. It was a good discussion. Then there was a brief pause in the conversation. Suddenly, Patrick let off the most absurdly loud fart. I chuckled in surprise. Patrick and Edwin…
what the fuck am i reading
that is fucking hilarious
Re: Fast
#178For a recent infrastructure example, I would point to Beijing's high speed rail expansion. Around 24k miles constructed since 2008, and around ~12k in five years [1]. [1] https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/china-high-speed-rail-cmd...
I was told Delhi built 400 km of subway in the past 20 years. Not shabby.
Re: Fast
#179Fun fact on the Eiffel Tower: during the Chicago World's Fair, they wanted to build something that would rival the Eiffel Tower. After a LOT of proposals, and work, and time, they came up with... the Ferris wheel.
They're making hay of that in London and Dubai ...
(London Eye, for a couple of decades, Ain Dubai, last year I think)
Re: Fast
#180 One day in mid-November, workers at OpenAI got an unexpected assignment: Release a chatbot, fast. The chatbot, an executive announced, would be known as "Chat with GPT-3.5," and it would be made available free to the public. In two weeks. The announcement confused some OpenAI employees.
OpenAI's top executives were worried that rival companies might upstage them by releasing their own A.I. chatbots before GPT-4. And putting something out quickly. So they decided to update an unreleased chatbot that used a souped-up version of GPT-3 which came out in 2020. (snipped)