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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

#41

Post by pm90 »

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.

NYC is a large city, consisting of 5 boroughs (divisions); each of which is larger in population than many US states. Its also the financial capital of the world. So just going by population alone, the NYC City Government represents more people than several state Governments. The economy of the city is also very high tech, high income etc. Although the Mayor does not have the same powers as Governor (e.g. they can't pass tax laws), he still has a lot of impact.

Re: Mamdani Hires Lisa Gelobter as Chief Tech Officer

#42

Post by pm90 »

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.

If they've been invisible, they are doing their job right.

Re: Mamdani Hires Lisa Gelobter as Chief Tech Officer

#43

Post by 650 »

This is a bad puff piece article. Jeffrey C Mays the author is not technologically adept. She was a software engineer for a year. She was director of program management at Macromedia, which anyone who works in tech knows is more like a secretary type of role asking for project updates and timelines.

I take issue with the title: `Groundbreaking Computer Scientist` in the NYT article, I challenge anyone to show me proof that she has done anything noteworthy technically. She jumped from management job to management job.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_Gelobter - Her wikipedia states she took 24 years (enrolled in 1987, graduated 2011) to graduate with her computer science degree, claiming "financial hardship", but she had already been a PM at many companies by then. I challenge anyone to show me technical depth or proficiency by her.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_Amnesia_effect

Re: Mamdani Hires Lisa Gelobter as Chief Tech Officer

#44

Post by js2 »

ChrisArchitect wrote: post #14

What is this business about her role in GIFs? She helped invent Macromedia Shockwave.... Not remembering any kind of connection between those things... I mean, animated GIFs were already a thing that popularized on their own.... nothing to do with Shockwave really. Just both contributing at the same time to popularizing or encouraging the use of animation on the web, yeah?

̶N̶e̶t̶s̶c̶a̶p̶e̶ ̶a̶d̶d̶e̶d̶ ̶a̶n̶i̶m̶a̶t̶i̶o̶n̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶G̶I̶F̶s̶. Edit: Netscape added looping to animated GIFs per reply. She apparently led that effort. The press is misreporting her actions as having invented GIF in the first place, which is wrong. That happened at CompuServe in 1987.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIF#Animated_GIF

Re: Mamdani Hires Lisa Gelobter as Chief Tech Officer

#45

Post by triceratops »

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…

Why do you think she doesn't have an high-level knowledge of AI? Like what's a NN, a transformer, how they're trained? Anyone can pick that up over a weekend. She doesn't need to have experience training models or designing new architectures for this job.

EDIT - someone posted a link to her Wikipedia article (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_Gelobter), which states:

"Gelobter enrolled in Brown University in 1987, eventually graduating in 2011 with a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science with a concentration in artificial intelligence and machine learning."

Re: Mamdani Hires Lisa Gelobter as Chief Tech Officer

#46

Post by GauntletWizard »

indoordin0saur wrote: post #27
ch4s3 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every tech person I know who tried to work in NYC government burned out rather quickly. The government is so sclerotic and shackled to laws meant to break up the Tammany Hall machine that its impossible to do anything good or fast.

Sort of off-topic but fun fact: Tammany Hall is now a dogfood and kitty litter store! Source: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Petco/@40.7364792,-73.9890...

That's their post breakup HQ - they moved in there in 1929. The Boss Tweed days were in 190 Nassau Street and 141 East 14th Street (demolished)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tammany_Hall#Headquarters

190 Nassau Street - https://maps.app.goo.gl/3zjkd2mC6PwAYVB26?g_st=ac

Re: Mamdani Hires Lisa Gelobter as Chief Tech Officer

#47

Post by anvuong »

tossandthrow wrote: post #38
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

At every companies I've worked at the CFO always has a large presence at every townhall, after all they are the one who is responsible for sending your paychecks on time. As for CTO, yeah it's a mixed bag in my experience, I mostly see them as just another layer between the CEO/COO and the principle engineers. Maybe that's exactly what they want though.

Re: Mamdani Hires Lisa Gelobter as Chief Tech Officer

#49

Post by staticassertion »

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.

This is state by state, city by city. In some places, a mayor has broad powers over agencies, taxes, etc. That isn't quite the case in NYC. It's up to the state to delegate these powers, just as the federal government delegates powers to the states.

NYC is explicitly restricted (relative to other cities in NY) by the state in terms of what it can do. It can't independently pass its own tax laws (in many cases, at least), which other cities can, for example. Multiple agencies that would often be municipal are handled by the state or require state approval/ explicit delegation.

The city also gets exceptions for more power, including taxation powers. It's all case by case.

The NYC mayor's powers are complex for this reason. On the one hand, no one cares much about other mayors, so you have a ton of political power. On the other hand, you're not exactly empowered to do a lot without asking someone else to sign off.

Re: Mamdani Hires Lisa Gelobter as Chief Tech Officer

#50

Post by vlovich123 »

drcongo wrote: post #32
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

> In September 1995 Netscape Navigator 2.0 added the ability for animated GIFs to loop.

> To enable an animation to loop, Netscape in the 1990s used the Application Extension block (intended to allow vendors to add application-specific information to the GIF file) to implement the Netscape Application Block (NAB).

VS from the article:

> Lisa Gelobter, a computer scientist who helped shape the modern web by leading the team that developed the animation technology used to create GIFs.

So this person worked on looping the GIF at best, not the animation technology itself. This is a bad look taking credit away from the person who actually did the hard work behind GIF, Steve Wilhite & his team at Compuserve. Netscape certainly made GIF animations popular by introducing the loop - prior to that basically no one used the animated GIF for the prior 6 years before the loop.

The annoying part of the article is making it seem like a technical accomplishment instead of a UX / product / marketing one.

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