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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

#51

Post by 650 »

650 wrote: post #43

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 proo…

As most people who have worked in engineering at large companies can attest, there are entrenched dinosaurs who have worked themselves up the management chain due to inertia. This is such an example. They are almost always out of their depth technically, and are great at taking credit for the work of others. There are people in this comments section, and online claiming she invented Adobe Shockwave.

This article claims she invented Adobe Shockwave while holding the title of "Director of Program Management".

https://www.govtech.com/workforce/tech-and-gif-pioneer-lisa-...

There are disparate sources online from Facebook and Instagram claiming she invented GIFs.

There are (incorrect) AI summaries when searching her name on Google that claim she invented Adobe Shockwave and GIFs.

Re: Mamdani Hires Lisa Gelobter as Chief Tech Officer

#52

Post by 650 »

vlovich123 wrote: post #50
drcongo wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

She was Director of Program Management, which is different from Product Management as well. You can google what a program manager usually does, and its usually not inventing things or technical work.

Re: Mamdani Hires Lisa Gelobter as Chief Tech Officer

#53

Post by frumplestlatz »

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

GIF89a (1989) already supported animation; the only thing Netscape added was the ability to specify how many times the animation should repeat.

They used the format’s support for application extension blocks to add a uint16 repetition count.

Re: Mamdani Hires Lisa Gelobter as Chief Tech Officer

#54

Post by frumplestlatz »

js2 wrote: post #44
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

GIFs already had animation. Netscape added an animation loop counter.

For a rough idea of the complexity involved, when I wrote a GIF decoder and renderer a few decades ago, implementing the loop counter extension took me about 10 minutes.

Re: Mamdani Hires Lisa Gelobter as Chief Tech Officer

#55

Post by ch4s3 »

steveBK123 wrote: post #15
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.

A lot of stuff gets bid out, and the procurement process is overly burdensome... Which results in a limited number of qualified bidders collecting rents, and then subbing out the work to subs who then sub it out further.. such that its all done offshore for peanuts while we pay real money to some schmuck who ticked the right boxes in order to collect said rents.

Briefly in the mid 2010s the NYC Department of City Planning tried to build some stuff in house and hired some good people, but the old ghouls in the city ruined it by obstruction and everyone left by the end of 2017.

City government in most US cities is so fucked, it's really wild. Another guy I know who graduated from NYU Wagner as a planner got hired by the city to do some mapping work but his boss miscoded his job in a way that precluded him from ever being promoted, so he quit.

As of 2023 at least there were people working in city planning who didn't have computers and refused to use them, professional staff.

Re: Mamdani Hires Lisa Gelobter as Chief Tech Officer

#56

Post by CharlieDigital »

hobs wrote: post #21
CharlieDigital wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CTO is typically an executive position, not an IC position. The CTO at my $500m, YC, series-C startup is not the most technical member of the staff, does not have the broadest technical knowledge, is not the most experienced, nor is he the best in any single technical field in our team. You misunderstand the role of the CTO in most orgs. His job is to guide technical strategy based on where business is headed. Manage…

It really depends on the size, it can span from the lead programmer to the lead architect to the lead technical manager to the strategic technical partner and/or technical visionary for the company.

Sure, but we're talking about NYC here, not a 3 person startup.

Re: Mamdani Hires Lisa Gelobter as Chief Tech Officer

#57

Post by limagnolia »

staticassertion wrote: post #49
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 lea…

While the federal government does delegate some powers to the states, many of the states powers are reserved to the states explicitly in the constitution, with the federal government only having those powers explicitly granted to it. (See the 10th Amendment where this is explicitly laid out.)

Re: Mamdani Hires Lisa Gelobter as Chief Tech Officer

#58

Post by drcongo »

vlovich123 wrote: post #50
drcongo wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

Ahhh, I see. Thanks for clarifying!

Re: Mamdani Hires Lisa Gelobter as Chief Tech Officer

#59

Post by leephillips »

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 special case, because it’s at or near the center of the universe: the US financial hub, the center of theater, dominant in all entertainment media, the UN headquarters, the most important historical entry point for all immigrant groups, the most important city for book publishing, advertising, etc. It’s one of the five most important, powerful cities in the world. It has its own foreign policy and diplomatic relationships. Its mayors have frequently, and for many decades, been interviewed for their opinions on world affairs that would seem, at first glance, to have nothing to do with city government.

Re: Mamdani Hires Lisa Gelobter as Chief Tech Officer

#60

Post by js2 »

frumplestlatz wrote: post #54
js2 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

̶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

GIFs already had animation. Netscape added an animation loop counter. For a rough idea of the complexity involved, when I wrote a GIF decoder and renderer a few decades ago, implementing the loop counter extension took me about 10 minutes.

Thanks, updated comment. I had misread the GIF wikipedia page.
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