As the car is sold outside of North America (with a promise of FSD) , you don't think it's fair to expect it to recognise the speed limit signs in the country that the car is sold?
I had never heard the term before but Wikipedia says this:
> There were two main types of company that provided services digitally: companies that applied for their own banking license and companies in a relationship with a traditional bank to provide those financial services. The former were called challenger banks and the latter were called neobanks.
That (as well as this article) seems to suggest that neobanks are by definition companies that do not have a banking licence. But I have no idea if that is the correct or current usage. Wikipedia also describes N26 (for example) as a neobank - N26 originally launched without a banking licence but now has one.
I'm on board with assuming that the intent of Google / the engineers who built the classifier is not racist. However the outcome — labelling a black person as a gorilla — certainly is racist. What makes you think otherwise?
The reason I don’t think the actual act of the program bugging is racist is I imagine it’s just some stupid rule based on shape (primates have a similar shape) and skin color and isn’t smart enough to distinguish humans vs gorillas vs Gumby toys with black/grey skin closer to a gorilla.
I think intent is important for labeling something racist and a function doesn’t have intent. And it doesn’t seem like the programmer had intent.
So I agree that a human seeing a person and labeling it as a gorilla is racist, it’s because the human is making an inappropriate value judgement.
The reason I don’t think the actual act of the program bugging is racist is I imagine it’s just some stupid rule based on shape (primates have a similar shape) and skin color and isn’t smart enough to distinguish humans vs gorillas vs Gumby toys with black/grey skin closer to a gorilla.
But this is AI -- so the stupid rule is not pre-programmed, but rather curve-fit to the data (uh, "learned").
So ultimately it's a matter of (1) failing to find the right training data (or procedure) and (2) more fundamentally, choosing not to correct the problem after 8 years.
I was generalizing the bug but my basis is an assumption that the programmer didn’t make some conscious or unconscious racist decision, but just something basic like “match shapes and colors” and the training data had a bunch of gorillas for one reason or another.
I think this gets fixed by better training data and more pictures of really dark skinned people. So with more supervised labels of dark skinned people to people, properly so the matching doesn’t think people are closer to gorillas.
Comically/sadly, we’ll know we get closer to fixing the training sets to be more inclusive when google starts labeling gorillas as people.
I think there are some systemic reasons why there aren’t more diverse populations in training data. And those are more society issues than AI issues (ie, rich people are more represented, rich people are certain races, therefore races are more represented).
And finally, I’ve worked in software that people just test what they are and know so I’ve seen so many test plans that are too simple and only test the programmers dob and address. This doesn’t mean racist because all the programmers are Asian males. It just means the quality review wasn’t thorough enough to include proper test conditions.
I might be inappropriately conflating software bugs from different areas but this is what makes me think “stupidity or weakness more likely than racism.”
The racism comes from the fact non-white people were not properly considered when the model was developed and trained. This comes up time and time again in AI, ranging from face ID that only works on white people, to porn classifiers that associate black people with NSFW images.
No matter how good or well trained on good data with good representation of all skin colors a classifier is, it’s going to misclassify people and things periodically, and it’s definitely going to misclassify black people as gorillas more often than other races.
But, white people get misclassified as animals by the classifier too. Typically white people aren't misclassified as gorillas but as other animals. So i don't think the cause is as simple as non-white people not being considered during training.
If a system consistently misclassifies persons black persons far more than white persons -- and does so in a way that's obviously provocative and offensive -- then by definition it's racist in its effect (regardless of intent). The fact that the smartest company in the world cannot seem to get a handle on this problem after 8 years is also not unreasonable grounds to suspect that something's up.
Like that they don't appreciate the gravity of the problem, for example.
These are dangerous grounds to discuss, but I don't think it's racist (colloquially) at all. If gorillas were like yetis and covered in white fur and it started labeling anglos as gorillas, it's not racist either. Racism (colloquially) comes from bad people's intentions. Who would've thought that a creature that is very similar to us humans and has a color that matches some humans would accidentally classify something poorly.
What would be racist from this outcome is if it kept doing this and no one did anything. Clearly it hurts people's feelings and that is a very valid issue. Googles option to just nuke it is a great start until they can hammer out the kinks.
Isn't the point of the article that it just refuses to recognize gorillas outright? That prevents exactly what you're talking about. And I made that point in my post. It is hurtful so Google prevent google photos from classifying anything as a Gorilla is a good bandaid. Some things are just too risky to solve for little gain.
Racism isn't an objective order existing in the universe separate from us. It's part of human experience and exists where humans experience it.
Given the recent history of equating black people with non-human primates, and using that to deny them rights & full participation in society, making this error is going to be experienced as racist. It's not a matter of individual malice or taxonomic classification, but of history and social relations.
I think we can all agree that the classifier is horribly broken.
But it seems like if nobody is working on this, how will we ever fix this gaping hole in image classifiers? And don't we want to fix it? And to fix it, research will continue to get it wrong until they get it less wrong and more right, but can only iterate without a massive backlash. It seems like being stuck between a rock and a hard place.
I am rhetorically asking, wouldn't we have to allow researchers to iterate on this problem to fix it? That simply won't happen until we are able to allow them leeway understanding that this is an incrementally improving model. Otherwise what we have is just a sledgehammer solution (just banning all primate classifications) which actually never addressed the problem, that these models do have a race-based bias (probably in their input datasets.)
I'm simply answering the question of how it is racist, not currently trying to tackle the appropriateness of fixing the racism or the technical hurdles involved in that. It's outside my expertise and not particularly relevant to the comment I was responding to.
Because racism is about harm, not an estimation of a thing's motivations and prejudices -- which it's why it's still racist even if you didn't mean it or didn't know. It doesn't actually require a mind at all. Anything that confers, amplifies, or perpetuates harmful stereotypes or negative associations with people of a specific race is racist.
The thing you're calling racism is actually hate speech as it's typically defined in law.
Leaving the current situation aside, it's an interesting philosophical point. In law you have the concept of "mens rea" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mens_rea
That's a good question. The ML bias this isn't necessarily due to one prejudiced person doing this on purpose. It's connected to systemic racism where history and culture added up to the status quo that is biased.
The fact is that training sets usually contain many more white men than black women, especially if they're just scraped off the web. People who guided the training may have just used datasets that reflect their own culture and demographics of their own country, and didn't see a problem with that. The opposite would have been be seen as "pandering to diversity" in their country, so they've ended up with a biased dataset and a biased algorithm.
The title is editorialised to be clickbait. The original title is "Scaling up the Prime Video audio/video monitoring service and reducing costs by 90%".
They changed a single service, the Prime Video audio/video monitoring service, from a few Lambda and Step Function components into a 'monolith'. This monolith is still one of presumably many services within Prime Video.
The subtitle is "The move from a distributed microservices architecture to a monolith application helped achieve higher scale, resilience, and reduce costs."
And the article itself mentions the 90% cost reduction.
So the title seems pretty much in-line with the original intent.
Prime Video has hundreds of teams, VQA is a tiny team that owns a very specific QA service. Omitting that distinction from the title absolutely is clickbait.
Keep in mind that while we had cell phones for a while, it’s only within the past 10 years that the whole “distraction economy” became a thing, so while people may have used phones to communicate back in the day, nowadays they might be using the phones even more just to attend to those distractions.
That's a good point, although the phone usage could have a multiplier effect and cause proportionally more trouble in the US due to the bigger cars and more-car-oriented environment.
A Ford F150 is most dangerous to small pedestrians (i.e. your kids or the kids of those you visit) in the driveway which you can't see over your hood due to its size.
Plus, modern US trucks are as big (if not as heavy) as WW2 tanks. Photos taken from the infamous DailyMail, but they look correct to me, that is [1] and [2]
I've been working on a geospatial application, and one of the use cases was finding intersections between large sets of polygons. For some use cases you might not need a separate data store like this.
I used an in-memory RTree in Golang [0]. It's super fast and efficient.
I was quite surprised that the 75 percentile salary is highest in Amsterdam.
Anecdotally it seems that the top end of salaries is much higher in London than in Amsterdam, but maybe that doesn't show until the 90-95th percentile.
This may be unpopular here, but be really clear what you want out of your job.
If you're just talking side gigs be really clear this doesn't interfere with your own job performance. The first target you hit because of your "side gig" will be your downward spiral.
Now .. running your own business is another option. For me I encourage my staff to have "side gig" of their own business, but will not sign off on them contracting on the side.
One is a valuable option where you learn new skills - the other is...
It's a simple legal ass cover. Should the manager / lead care if there's a side gig in play while all other needs are being met? No, of course not. However, what if the side gig becomes a bit more than planned and now your team member isn't delivering, gets sick more often, or is otherwise grinding themselves into the ground (and doesn't recognize the need to get out of that situation)?
You can care about your team member's welfare and support them 100%, but part of that support should be defining the rules of play so that all parties know what the agreement is.
If they stop delivering, you do what you do if they stop delivering. Coaching, performance discussions, reassignment/termination. Whether it's because of a side gig or not is irrelevant.
If they get sick more often, you...? What would you do normally? Hopefully the answer is "support them." If this is cover for "they're saying they are sick but I think they're just working on their side gig" then refer to #1 but you better be right about it.
> You can care about your team member's welfare and support them 100%, but part of that support should be defining the rules of play so that all parties know what the agreement is.
I agree with this 100%. The agreement is that they're paid a full-time salary for full-time work (whatever that means whether it's ass-in-seat for 40 hours, or WFH or whatever). Whatever they do outside of that time isn't the company's business unless they're directly competing with them.
It's not imaginary, it's called copyright. In many jurisdictions (including the US, FAFAIK) your employer retains the copyright of things you produce in your free time that fall within your job description (e.g. if you might have done the same thing on company time).
So if you have a side gig that matches your day job and your work output is covered by copyright: yes, you need your employer's sign-off.
The US is not a single jurisdiction, there are at least 50 with regards to employment law. I've worked in several and at no point has any employer held any copyright to things I product in my free time.
> if you have a side gig that matches your day job
Well this is competition, isn't it? That's completely different.
This is illegal in Washington State and California, explicitly, and is not the default by far. Certain employers (such as Facebook) demand this, but, it's certainly not the default state of affairs!
I will provide a concrete example, even though I am not the parent commenter. I work for a FAANG company in a reasonably senior role. I have carveouts in my employment contract that I negotiated when I started a few months ago, because in addition to my day job, I co-own a coworking space with my wife (and she owns other businesses that I do some light tech work for - site maintenance, office network, etc).
My day job is very demanding, but my leadership team are aware, and the HR folks at my employer have documentation that supports me having a side business, and so if I say things like "I have to go the bank/lawyer stuff for my business", no one bats an eye as long as I am hitting my targets for the day job.
The expectation is that I will largely be available and focused on my day job during the 9-5, and where needed, provide support on escalations/on-call.
If I started taking on consulting contracts or was regularly juggling contracting or side-job related tasks against my day job, then it wouldn't be a good fit for delivering on that 9-5.
You're chasing pennies with a side-gig. If you're already at the top of market in terms of pay, it's unlikely a side-gig is going bring in enough to satisfy your ambitions.
Why not start your own business? The upside is much better. Yeah, it might fail, but you can decide to start another one what you learned.
Yeah, it seems like I had an idealistic view of what a side gig would be, whereas it's a lot more work than I wish to spend on it.
I'm happy in my day job; it's secure, I'm paid well and I get a lot of time with my family. Starting my own business would put family time in jeopardy which isn't an option, especially as I'd have to give up my main income.
I did this last year. I work full time for ~100/hr, and someone I've worked with before, recommended me to an early stage startup in the US. They paid me ~130/hr just to be part of the meetings with their EU based dev team. Monthly I was making 2-3k extra but the context switching, startup rollercoaster, dev team not performing turned out to be stressful. In the end they secured funding and assembled an in house dev team, so they didn't need me anymore. I suggest you try it, but not for the extra money because the extra stress is not sustainable long term, do it for the learning experience and maybe that will help you in the future.
tried both full time and contractor years back, too stressful, can't deal with both with kids, I since focus on one of them, not both at the same time, for the sake of my own health.
By full time with 100/hr I meant that I'm a contractor working for a company for 40hrs a week. Since we started to work remote I picked up a second assignment of a few hours extra a week. But all in all it becomes more stressful.
Unless both jobs are doing very similar things on the tech stack(so our brain does not context switch too heavily), but they're not competing in the same market(an ethical issue), I might still consider it, the chance is too low, so far I do one job and I actually can have a life.
I think you're probably right. Every now and then I've had something fall in my lap from someone I knew. I've done a few focus groups (though those are during the day.) And so forth.
But, perhaps not unsurprisingly, there really isn't a general source for short side gigs paying a few hundred dollars an hour--especially for asynchronous tasks you can do nights or weekends.
Specially if you factor in the marginal tax you'll pay on the side gig, it's almost never worth it imo. I know that was a turn off for me at least, so starting a business if you have the energy will have way more upside
I often get pings for research consulting interviews, that pay very well, and take an hour or so. Maybe thats something to look at.
That said, be cautious about conflicts. If you work for a mega corp like a hyperscaler it is going to be very hard to avoid the appearance of conflict.
This is my pet peeve - why so many people here in the UK strive for mediocrity? Do we really got rid ourselves of any ambitions? When you admit to earning more than £35k you are supposed to feel sorry and apologise for trying and if you are over £80k people look at you as a privileged money pinata, that ideally should be taxed at 100% and keep head down in shame.
For instance, I have been working on a product in my spare time and I don't want to finance it through loans or giving up equity. Having £200k job (only £9,500 net per month) would get me closer to get the required tools, inventory, securing a rent for the workshop and storage, but that still not really too much money for that kind of endeavour. Unfortunately I am coming from a poor working class and I don't have a rich daddy to fund my start up, yet when people learn how much I earn they think I am rich, but reality is that kind of money is not enough to make anything sensible with it (you still have to save for years and live modestly), but people think it's the level of private jets and heated pool in a large back garden of a mansion.
Making a value judgement on someones financial ambition is a little ... weak.
Does it really matter? I'm on £200k gross in the UK, outside London ... but i'm not done climbing that mountain. Of course £200k is "enough" for anyone, but that doesn't mean you can't aim higher.
I might agree with this depending on what the specific goal is. But why should ambition be generally celebrated?
There is certainly ambition that has brought about improvement in life. There has also been ambition applied to the wrong ends or failing that has brought suffering. I'm not sold on the idea that the goal of continually increasing comp above an already luxurious level is meaningful or worth a third party celebrating. I especially feel this way about our industry where comp seems detached from the contributions are not easily attributed/calculated.
It is perfectly valid to believe that OP is probably overpaid in their day job, and also to believe that they are entitled to seek a side gig if they prefer.
Ok... that has nothing to do with my comment. Of course they're entitled to want a side gig. But why is ambition something to be celebrated, especially in the context of this example?
From 168 hours that we all start with in a week, if someone wants to spend 20 of them making their and their family's lives better, why wouldn't we generally encourage that? I certainly wouldn't discourage it and I could be neutral on it, but if I think about, I'd rather they work on a side gig than watch Netflix, doom-scroll, or watch TikToks.
I think the part we're disconnected on is "better". Will a couple extra grand a year make their family's life better beyond the amount they already have? Perhaps physical exercise or relaxing provides more benefit. Of course we probably can't answer this as it's specific to each individual.
I suppose I'm in the camp that finds it skeptical that it would be much benefit at that level. I might also view it as a negative to society as that gig could go to someone who needs it more. Granted we would then be admiring the ambition of the lower earner, which brings me back to me saying that the specifics matter more than generally celebrating ambition.
Most every tech job in the world could go to someone who needs it more. That doesn't make me discourage people from taking tech jobs, nor do I plan to retire when I have the minimum amount needed for a modest retirement.
"Most every tech job in the world could go to someone who needs it more."
Based on the struggle to hire qualified candidates, it seems this is an unrealistic view. Also, there is a difference between someone having a single job, and someone double dipping.
In theory (and in a well functioning system), ambition in a populace leads to GDP growth as ambitious people seek ways to make more money by doing higher value work. This in turn leads to a higher standard of living, possibly for everyone if you redistribute some of the surplus via taxation schemes.
Personally (and more selfishly), I tried to raise my salary to be able to afford not working for extended periods of time.
That makes sense. I'm wondering more about net benefit. Is it really a benefit if our GDP rose if we spend increasing amounts on stuff like healthcare and have shorter lives due to the constant grind of work? I'm not sure we can answer these questions, but I agree with you that as long as the ambition is properly placed and the system works well that it would be good.
It’s a fair question. There is evidence that working increases your life expectancy, at least among men[1], and under the regime of western societal norms.
Working with “ambition” could result in more stresses that counteract this gain. Hard to say.
Also possible that the gain would disappear outside of a culture that places so much value on jobs and wealth.
I'm just genuinely intrigued as to why someone on £200k would want to work more. maybe there's a good reason, like they're an "earn to give" person, or some actual ambition the money will help fulfill, or some expensive health need etc. Maybe they'd like to spend less time with their family. Just wanting to exchange more of your life for more money seems weird to me, if you're already in a position to be able to live in luxury.
In the neighborhood of New York City I live in, buying a 2 bedroom apartment requires you to have a higher yearly income than $250k (~= £200k). The simple desires of (a) wanting space for family and (b) wanting to live in a specific place, can push you to want to earn higher salaries.
Yeah you're right actually, glancing at Rightmove (UK property site), and going by the standard 4.5x mortgage test, you're probably not going to get a decent family home in Central-ish London on £200k. Shit's fucked up.
Edit: To be clear the repayments on a £1m mortgage would "only" be like £60k a year, you only need £>200k to initially buy the place.
> it's about the experience/knowledge gained/distraction/self-worth of accomplishing more
To me, a side gig means accomplishing more of what someone else wants, with the trade-off of being less able to accomplish (or learn about, or distract yourself with) what you want. Which seems like an odd thing to want unless you need the money. I suppose for some people having a £200k income and not needing the money seem less synonymous than they do to me.
>I'm just genuinely intrigued as to why someone on £200k would want to work more.
The money outcome isn't a zero-sum game. If someone works more, they can put that towards their children's education fund, retirement or other investments, or anything else at all.
I'm reminded of Margaret Thatcher's response to this: "He'd rather the poor were poorer, as long as the rich were less rich."[1]
Every ethical dollar earned is a byproduct of value creation. Maybe you meant something more like "as long as he's not ripping off his customers," but otherwise that's an odd thing to say in response to someone who makes good money but is still looking for side jobs.
Well it sounds like you got it figured out what's best for everyone's health, ethics, and economics. Thankfully we have wise people to tell us what we can and can't work on...
Oh stop it. Every time we make progress there will be some unequal effect. Some people will benefit and others will lose out. We should do our best to balance the trade offs, but to say someone shouldn’t be ambitious if there is some unequal effect is preposterous and pessimistic.
Why does wage inequality matter? Inequality isn't strongly driven by wages, but is by capital income.
Personally, the way I see it, the more money goes to wages, the better, and if that's because some guy is earning millions a year, I still think it's good.
Income from people starting new companies, that's fine too. What's bad is rent extraction, ossification, monopolies and private institutions that have power over people.
Some people have unique needs and wants. There's also the whole fish growing to fill its aquarium thing. So it's reasonable for them to feel that way, just as it's reasonable for you to feel the other.
That said, I would suggest that at that level of comp, maybe just use the extra time for your own enjoyment - hobby, relaxing, FOSS personal project, etc.
Cant speak for the UK, but all it takes is a disabled child or other complex life situation and the numbers suddenly arent so rosy. I refrain from asking anyone "why do you need more money?" - its their business alone.
Why, though? If you're making that much money, it's unlikely you need more. Fill your time with things that will make you happy, not things that will make you wealthier. You're filling the wrong tank.
I mentioned £200k because it's near the top end for a senior engineer in London (although not the very top). FAANG, some Unicorns, trading firms will pay this to a senior engineer. Bear in mind this is total compensation, so part of that will be in stock or options.
For engineers based in the UK that are shocked by this number I'd recommend reading this [0] article. It's about compensation in the Netherlands but the same principle holds for the UK.
In Boston and NYC I am seeing $150-200k at well-funded startups for "experienced IC" roles. If you have several years of experience, and you're actually a good engineer, and aren't at least above 150k in a market like this, you need to start interviewing, because your current employer is taking advantage of you.
Depends where in the US. 200k is not typical for anyone working outside of a FAANG in SV. I've got almost 17 years exp and not making $200k base, and recruiters who contact me balk when I ask for something in that range - to include someone who contacted me on this very site and put me through a multi-week interview process only to offer me considerably less than 200 (or even my current pay).
And considering the way the economy is going (at least in the West), it's probably smart to work a side gig and make as much money as you can, while you can, because work is going to dry up soon.
I am not working for FAANG. I am not in SV. I am based in the US. Working for an early stage start-up. Earning quite a bit North of $200K. My compensation is based on the value I provide, not where I live. Any recruiter or hiring manager who tries to tell me different is promptly ignored.
> I've got almost 17 years exp and not making $200k base
I am surprised by this. You can check levels.fyi to target the right companies. I guarantee you 100% that you can easily make > 230k base outside FANG for a remote position.
Really? I don't personally know anyone making that much. My mother is a software engineer with an additional 20 years of experience on me and has never made that much (currently makes less than me, in fact).
Probably not as a web dev; senior / lead Java developer, Oracle DBA, managerial level at big companies like banks and insurance might get you closer to that. But to be blunt, you're probably not worth 200K as a web developer.
I found it really hard to find jobs that pay anywhere close to US salaries in EU.
Unless things are very different now, I would plan to move to US to make 'that kind of money'.
I was going to say. Unless you have things lined up, I would hesitate to move to UK without a plan. I am saying this as my sister is attempting this very thing ( and me trying to discourage her since its a business pie in the sky kind of dream ). The days easily obtainable jobs ( especially the low level ones ) for other EU members are over. She did not seem to get that memo. On the high end of the spectrum, banking lost some jobs as a result of Brexit. Dunno about insurance.
US has its benefits, but I would consider age as a factor ( if you are younger, you may be able to worry less about insurance and whatnot ).
