Blog author here. There's two parts to get it working on Postfix:
To enable MTA-STS for inbound email: Add DNS entries for the MTA-STS record and mta-sts.<domain>. Run a web server that serves the mta-sts.txt file (or use static hosting, like GitHub pages/Netlify/AWS S3/etc). Set up HTTPS on the web server. The repo in the post shows an NGINX approach with Let's Encrypt.
To enable MTA-STS for outbound email: you'll need to configure https://github.com/Snawoot/postfix-mta-sts-resolver. Be sure to read through the DANE related challenges in the README as there are some tradeoffs.
Incredibly impressive on a technical level. The Carter avatar seems to swallow nervously a lot (LOL), and there's some weirdness with the mouth/teeth, but it's quite responsive. I've seen more lag on Zoom talking to people with bad wifi.
Honestly this is the future of call centers. On the surface it might seem like the video/avatar is unnecessary, and that what really matters is the speech-to-speech loop. But once the avatar is expressive enough, I bet the CSAT would be higher for video calls than voice-only.
Agreed. I've been frustrated by the proliferation in AI with technical support. Sometimes it's can't answer a question but thinks it can, so we go round and round in circles.
A couple have had a low threshold for "this didn't solve my answer" and directed me to a human, but others are impossible to escape.
On the other hand, I've had more success with a problem actually getting resolved by a chatbot without speaking to someone more recently... But not a lot more. Ususally I think that because I skew technical and treat Support as a last resort, I've tried everything it wants to suggest.
This presumes the AI has the same level of problem-solving agency of a real human, which I think is really asking for AGI. Until then I expect AI chatbots will mostly succeed at portraying care and gaslighting customers without actually finding solutions.
That really depends on the type of call center we're talking about.
Many (most?) call centers won't do much more than telling you to turn it off and on again, even when you're talking to a real person. (And for many cutomers, that is really all they need.)
And AI operators in those call centers wouldn't even need to be better than humans, just cheaper. Not just for saving on human hiring: no building rent, no insurance, no this and that; everything would live within a cluster somewhere.
Yeah, could be. Most of the time when I contact customer service, there is no problem-solving necessary, and very little agency demonstrated. But I know call centers get a lot of complicated technical or billing questions that would be tough.
They work with different tiers usually? The first does the easy questions and they can write down the issue. If something happens regularly you can write a calling script for it. The question is if the ai can find the right script fast enough.
Helping the customer is not really the goal. They provide feedback that gives valuable insight into the dysfunctional part of the company so that things can improve. Maybe even generate an investor report from it.
This feels like retro futurism, where we take old ideas and apply a futuristic twist. It feels much more likely that call centers will cease to be relevant, before this tech is ever integrated into them.
Missed opportunity. I would argue that the only way they CAN make these smaller models competitive is to make them openly available. As a developer, I'm not going to choose an unknown startup's model over bigger closed models from OpenAI or Anthropic. And if I really need something smaller and faster, I'd prefer to run the model myself for better control and no risk of the model being "upgraded."
I agree—I've used the analogy in the past, but I don't anymore. The reason is: with new home construction, there's a very clear move-in date. You can make additions or renovations, but most people are not constantly changing their house.
However, in software, you need to continuously work on the product—and it's not just routine maintenance analogous to cleaning the gutters or changing the air filters. In software, it's possible to launch ("move in") before most of the rooms have been built. In software, you can use a library or API and start with a skyscraper on Day 1.
The analogy just doesn't work. It tells clients/stakeholders "this is a tough project but it'll be over someday, and you'll never have to think about construction again."
Oh, the analogy does work. Every construction needs to be adjusted at times. Sure, not as often as software, but new regulations and the passing of time is eating at the substance. After a couple of decades most buildings tend to need major overhaul and that's not much different than software. Even the reasons are similar (e.g. new building codes, energy efficiency standards, obsolote tech stacks - think asbestos and lead pipes). Especially if you live in an area where the city scape needs to be preserved for historical reasons, houses behave very similar to software - just on a different time scale.
> After a couple of decades most buildings tend to need major overhaul and that's not much different than software
Respectfully disagree. Software is like building a house, and then needing to build more rooms every month forever, and every few years having to tear it all down or completely rework the foundation.
Guess it depends on the software. I have seen enough business critical software that was built 15 years ago with the developer having long left the scene and nobody having any idea on how it works internally (much less skill to actually change something).
“Fifth, the board determines when we've attained AGI. Again, by AGI we mean a highly autonomous system that outperforms humans at most economically valuable work. Such a system is excluded from IP licenses and other commercial terms with Microsoft, which only apply to pre-AGI technology.”
I hear ya. But with great open source models like Llama 3.2 dropping near-daily, I wonder if/when we’ll reach a point where free models are good enough for 99% of tasks.
If llama achieves valuable strides, it will definitely be put behind paywall. The play has always been the same, release something semi-polished until you gain mass adaptation, then build a paywall infront when people are reliant on it and attrition is expensive. Look at the twitter API for example, or reddit or what not.
This is the problem with “all or nothing” systems or routines. In fact, it’s the reason streaks don’t work for a lot of people in the long term. Once you miss one day you think “well, I’m hopeless, might as well give up.”
The point is not to build a habit, it’s to make progress in the direction you want to move. If you walk instead of run one morning, is that a fitness failure? If you pay attention to your body and take a rest day, doesn’t that allow you to make progress the rest of the week?
People really need to remember that all these “systems” are there to serve you, not the other way around. Do what’s workable, and just keep moving in the right direction.
I highly recommend the book Picoeconomics for a deep dive into this paradoxical negotiation with oneself: “I must have a expectation of myself in order to succeed but not so high that failure indicates a total inability to do the thing.”
The simple answer is that product managers are not asking for quality. They're asking for cards/stories to be completed. "Quality" has been redefined as "meets requirements" or "passes UAT." Actual quality is just not in anyone's KPIs or OKRs.
That's why it's way easier for indie developers to deliver high-quality software—their incentives are directly aligned with the user.
Note that passes UAT could actually be nearly enough if UAT are properly written, your merge rules are strict enough and you do a minimum of complementary testing on release.
The issue is that the people writing the UAT generally have no incentive to write good UAT. They want to ship. They don't want to get code blocked because it doesn't meet requirements. Amusingly and to get back to the core of the discussion, AI is generally pretty good at helping write good UAT.
I love this model… It said "Hello, how can I help you?" and I paused, and before I could answer it said "It's really hard. My job is taking up so much of my time, and I don' know when I' going to have a break from all the stress. I just feel like I'm being pulled in a million different directions and there are no enough hours in the day to get everything done. I feel like I'm always on the brink of burning out."
We’ve finally managed to give our AI models existential dread, imposter syndrome and stress-driven personality quirks. The Singularity truly is here. Look on our works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Not even close, a lot of places are hybrid and there's a valid concern that we'll see more tech companies (large and small) follow in Amazon's lead just because Amazon did it first.
Currently trying to leave Amazon and it's been a slog to even get an interview for anything fully remote despite a decade of experience.
While I agree with the "are you serious?" part, there are plenty of other companies that are backtracking on remote work, including quite a few small and/or early-stage startups that I see posting in the monthly "Who's Hiring" threads here on HN.
I know of no studies that show that RTO mandates improve any measurable statistic for a company, and remote work has done wonders for my commute and well-being, so I will no longer consider working for a company who does not have a majority of its employees working remotely. I'm a staff engineer with a couple decades of experience. My current company is 100% remote and it's lovely.
Everyone in the industry knows Amazon has very poor work life balance (and a brutal on call load). It's even in that letter you get from Jeff Bezos when you apply: "You can work smart, hard, or long. At Amazon you don't get to pick just two."
If you are fresh out of college, get a couple years in to get it on your resume.
For anyone else, if you are in the Seattle area I don't see why you wouldn't just work for Microsoft. Microsoft does pay the worst out of all the big tech companies (until you get to L67+), but the work life balance is so much better, and allows fully remote.
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