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Mamdani Hires Lisa Gelobter as Chief Tech Officer

nytimes.com

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Re: Mamdani Hires Lisa Gelobter as Chief Tech Officer

#32

Post by drcongo »

woah wrote: post #28

> It was at Netscape Communications where Gelobter first began working on the development of the GIF. > Lisa Gelobter, a computer scientist who helped shape the modern web by leading the team that developed the animation technology used to create GIFs. Looks like the GIF was invented by CompuServe in 1987? > CompuServe introduced GIF on 15 June 1987 to provide a color image format for their file downloading areas. Th…

Non-animated though - there's a section on animated gifs coming out of Netscape in your link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIF#Animated_GIF

Re: Mamdani Hires Lisa Gelobter as Chief Tech Officer

#35

Post by JPKab »

Finnucane wrote: post #16
andsoitis wrote: post #2

https://archive.is/fM36L Lisa Gelobter, whose work helped shape the modern web, was also on the launch team at Hulu. Ms. Gelobter was the director of program management at Macromedia where she helped develop Shockwave into a web plug-in that allowed for video games and animation on the web, turning still images into moving GIFs — animated images known as a graphics interchange format. Notably absent on resume and in…

>Notably absent on resume and in the news article is proficiency in AI or machine learning, You say that like it's a bad thing.

Yeah, we wouldn't want someone who understands the most revolutionary technology in 100 years to be the technical advisor to the mayor of the largest city in the United States or anything. That would be silly.

Re: Mamdani Hires Lisa Gelobter as Chief Tech Officer

#36

Post by yieldcrv »

ksynwa wrote: post #34

Can an American please help me comprehend how much power a mayor has? I am supposing a NYC mayor would be more influential than that of a less important city. But I still don't understand how that would make an appointment like this significant.

It's only interesting because 8 million people live there, and many more pass through the city

This population size is greater than most countries, and the density and speed of commerce there is fairly unique, so it's a constant coordination problem and experiment on a large scale that people look to.

Think of NYC more as one of the Free Cities in the old world.

They aren't a top level government by any means but they're mostly left alone to have nearly unilateral control of their jurisdiction. New York City has some unique challenges with key infrastructure (like all of the trains) being controlled by New York State and the Federal Government.

Re: Mamdani Hires Lisa Gelobter as Chief Tech Officer

#37

Post by js2 »

ksynwa wrote: post #34

Can an American please help me comprehend how much power a mayor has? I am supposing a NYC mayor would be more influential than that of a less important city. But I still don't understand how that would make an appointment like this significant.

It varies by city. In some cities, mayor is barely more than a figurehead.

But regardless of power, what the NYC mayor does is widely reported and it's often a political stepping stone (if not always successful) to something greater.

Mamdani in particular is a celebrity right now, and with the reputation of the Democratic party in shambles, many eyes are on him.

Re: Mamdani Hires Lisa Gelobter as Chief Tech Officer

#38

Post by tossandthrow »

vjvjvjvjghv wrote: post #26

I am always confused with the role of CTO. I don’t recall any company I worked at where it seemed the CTO had much of an impact. They were just thee, some of them were good at demos, but overall I just didn’t notice what they were doing.

You could say the same about a cfo, if the company does not use financial engineering, etc.

The CTO role is to be invisible to the business, and do that by ensuring that the tech org is working

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