[HN Gopher] Move Slow and Make Things
___________________________________________________________________
Move Slow and Make Things
Author : mkrazzledazzle
Score : 336 points
Date : 2021-04-02 03:33 UTC (19 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (multithreaded.stitchfix.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (multithreaded.stitchfix.com)
| fortyrod wrote:
| "Move slow and make things" is no joke. I mumble that every
| morning as I fall out of bed.
| [deleted]
| deadA1ias wrote:
| Disappointed this was an April fool's. I think I might use this
| slogan anyway.
| [deleted]
| dstick wrote:
| I know it's an april fools joke. But I've recently "discovered"
| why this is nevertheless very true. If you move slow, you have a
| higher chance of meeting the right customer, of actually allowing
| your idea to grow and improve over time. Without being locked
| into it in one form or another. Moving slow allows you to work on
| it as a side project first. Which means no financial stress.
|
| And then making things. To me this means no paper prototyping.
| Not selling people on your idea without having anything tangible.
| Some may call it smart. To me it feels like gambling with your
| believability / integrity. There are only so many times you can
| do this before people get tired of you and your stories / dreams
| / business ideas. Just make something, show it to people when
| it's actually useful. And feel good about actually having made
| something people liked. Instead of selling something people liked
| and then suffer the feeling of non-stop pressure, constantly
| _not_ being where you've told others you are.
|
| Happy april fools :)
| konschubert wrote:
| I think even when moving slow, you can still work with
| prototypes and get feedback as long as you're open about it and
| you're not taking people's money.
|
| For example, I have https://www.invisible-computers.com up as a
| website. You can read about the product and you can sign up to
| be notified. But I won't take a cent until I have a product
| ready to ship.
| dstick wrote:
| I agree, but the general consensus in startup pop-literature
| (is that a thing? :D) is that you can never be sure unless
| you ask money and people are willing to pay. Otherwise people
| can just say they like / want / need it, without risk. I have
| to say that I agree. Too many times I've experienced that
| people _say_ they'll pay, but never actually do when push
| comes to shove.
|
| But when someone does agree to pay (meaning you've somewhat
| validated your idea) then you're left empty handed and have
| to backtrack with your first customer. Not a great start. But
| that's just me :) YMMV
| konschubert wrote:
| Agreed
|
| Of course a newsletter signup is not a sale. Not even 1%.
| But it's still a signal.
|
| And selling something you don't have is borderline fraud in
| my book. Even if you backtrack and refund, it was still a
| lie and a waste of the customer's time.
|
| Also if one is selling something one should be aware that
| now you will have to support it for the next 10 years, even
| if it turns out to be an unprofitable business.
| lupire wrote:
| Cool product.
|
| 1. Why "Invisible"?
|
| 2. Why such a thick frame? I hope you expand frame choices,
| or offer a minimal version that customer can frame.
|
| 3. I guess you are building a custom UI layout for the
| calendar data, but please allow any URL to be loaded in the
| frame, so the community can build custom data views.
| toyota86 wrote:
| Relevant to your process of discovery
|
| > There once was a Master Programmer who wrote unstructured
| programs. A novice programmer, seeking to imitate him, also
| began to write unstructured programs. When the novice asked the
| Master to evaluate his progress, the Master criticized him for
| writing unstructured programs, saying, "What is appropriate for
| the Master is not appropriate for the novice. You must
| understand Tao before transcending structure."
|
| ~~The Tao of Programming
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| This pretty much defines how I work.
|
| I "move slow," taking the time to test carefully, and leave
| clean, concise, well-documented code, but I'm told that I
| actually move at a blistering pace.
|
| I have found there is _absolutely no_ substitute for having an
| operational, full-feature implementation (I hesitate to call it
| a "prototype," because it needs to be fully functional, not
| just eye candy). I am not a fan of lash-up prototypes, because
| they _invariably_ become ship code, and starting on a
| foundation of sand is a very, _very_ bad idea. I short-circuit
| that, by writing _everything_ as ship code; even my A /B
| experiments. I can often recycle the rejected code for other
| projects. It also saves a _lot_ of testing time, as the code is
| being constantly tested from the start, and being tested while
| still in scaffolding (meaning more complete testing, overall).
|
| For example, in the app I'm developing now, I'm working on a
| dropdown screen that allows the user to define search criteria
| for a database lookup. It's a complex and fraught operation,
| and I've already had to make a number of changes, based on
| actually _using_ the facility, as opposed to _thinking about
| using_ it. If I had simply solidified my original design, it
| would have been a mess.
|
| I will also be making sure that the facility works for
| different regions and languages, despite the first
| implementation being only for the US. It has been my experience
| that this kind of thing should be built in from the start, as
| retrofitting it is a nightmare (and bug farm).
|
| My approach does mean that I often need to rewrite a lot of
| finished, tested code, or throw out big chunks (which is one
| reason I have a bunch of small, polished, standalone package
| projects). It's taught me to design and implement very flexible
| code (which is actually dangerous, so I often go back, and
| remove flexibility, once I have settled on an implementation).
| Nevertheless, I have found it's the best way to end up with a
| usable, relevant, high-quality, finished product, that meets
| the customer's needs, in a remarkably short time.
|
| _DISCLAIMER:_ This is a viable way to design UX (the kind of
| code I usually write), but may not be the best approach for
| "engine" or algorithm code.
| NateEag wrote:
| To prevent a prototype or proof of concept from shipping, you
| need to leave it feature-incomplete.
|
| The mistake people often make with such things is building it
| thoroughly enough that it _can_ be shipped.
|
| If you hit that problem, you didn't build a proof of concept
| - you built sloppy production code.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Good point, but I have found that just doing it right the
| first time works for me. In fact, I'm doing it right now.
| In the Xcode window, I'm building a test release that the
| team will run and review for usability issues and bugs.
|
| If they find any bugs or issues, I fix/address them before
| moving on to the next function implementation.
|
| The significant advantage that this confers, is that the
| app is constantly in "release-ready" form; although
| incomplete.
|
| Useful, for when we want to ask people to give us money. We
| just get an NDA, loop them into the TestFlight group, and
| let them have at it. No need for chaperones from Marketing,
| or sacrifices to the demo gods.
| NateEag wrote:
| Perfectly reasonable workflow.
|
| I lean towards POCs these days because I have experienced
| the requirements turning out to be all wrong far too
| often. It's hard for people to know what they want or
| need before they can try something sort of real.
| exabrial wrote:
| The fact they think that individual customizations of clothing is
| a joke, when that's exactly what they advertise, says a lot about
| the company. You're just cattle, and they think it's hilarious
| you're actually falling for their marketing wank.
|
| I'd _highly_ recommend M-Tailor however as an alternative. It's
| not a subscription box, but the clothes are extremely well made
| and the "body scanning" technology actually works (especially for
| someone of an odd body size like myself: 6'5", 205lbs, athletic
| build).
|
| Another good company, but I don't know much about other than
| they're based in Southeast Asia is iTailor. They'll build you
| -exactly- what you want, to a fault in my experience. Get
| measured professionally by someone with experience if you're
| going this route.
| mseepgood wrote:
| This is good advice.
| dtjohnnyb wrote:
| They're on a roll for April fool's, this other one is the
| geekiest one I've seen in a while!
| https://multithreaded.stitchfix.com/blog/2021/04/01/fault-in...
| valuearb wrote:
| This would have been a great slogan for Steve Jobs. Apple was
| rarely first with anything, but often first with something useful
| and special.
| loceng wrote:
| A good example of this wise type of management: Apple let music
| platforms mature before learning from them to create their own
| offering to then easily market to their hundreads of millions
| of users - with the advantage of customers who 1) are generally
| willing to pay a higher, and 2) Apple gives the App Store fees
| to themselves.
|
| Their watch, and next the car - will be the next arguably
| iconic products.
| clevergadget wrote:
| will be the next arguably iconic products - yeah I mean if
| apple released a rock someone would argue about how iconic it
| was
| rapnie wrote:
| "A Mere April Fool's Joke for One, is the Solid Revenue Model for
| the Other"
|
| The 'move slow an make things' movement is a much-needed niche to
| be explored, and a place where I'd love to be.
| halfmatthalfcat wrote:
| It's interesting because moving "fast" is very relative to the
| circumstances you're currently in. If you have an army of
| engineers, it's very easy to move fast (sometimes, depending on
| the organization) but moving fast for an individual is
| objectively slow in comparison.
| fxtentacle wrote:
| I know this is supposed to be a joke, but I feel like it's too
| close to reality to be funny.
|
| I recently ordered a custom tailored set of shirt, trousers, and
| belt. Their site was bragging about their great AI technology,
| but sadly I didn't notice that red flag early enough.
|
| The results were nothing short of disastrous. I sent in my
| measurements and they sent me a trouser with wrong measurements
| and a postcard that said that they adjusted my measurements with
| AI for a better fit. The belt they included was a completely
| different size than the trouser and I'm still waiting for the
| shirt to arrive. And now I'm fighting the usual uphill battle to
| talk to a human and get this mess fixed or get a refund.
|
| The core of Stitchfix is personalization, as they say. But that
| means an individual solution for each individual customer, and
| not AI for memorizing generic trends in a huge dataset.
| FalconSensei wrote:
| I don't get it... If you send your measurements, why adjust the
| measurements. I would understand using AI to guess measurements
| based on a photo - let's say you want to give a surprise gift
| to someone, so not asking their measurements - but otherwise,
| it's just unnecessary
| mromanuk wrote:
| > I sent in my measurements and they sent me a trouser with
| wrong measurements and a postcard that said that they adjusted
| my measurements with AI for a better fit
|
| Whoa.
|
| customer: Please, I need a trouser size 34"
|
| AI: Thank you sir, but according to my data, a 33" will better
| suit you
| jelling wrote:
| "Vanity sizing" is a real issue in clothing. Sizes were
| always abstractions but now measurements are an abstraction
| as well.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Indeed!
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanity_sizing
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| And sometimes they would be right; speaking for myself, I've
| worn baggy clothes for a long time, but at some point I
| finally managed to lose some weight and got down below 90
| kilos, and was able to go down a size pants and shirts (size
| L), which fit and looked a lot better. Great confidence boost
| at the time, didn't change anything for my er, relationship
| prospects though.
|
| It's WFH time now though, I'm wearing 2/3XL shirts (good cut
| though, they don't look baggy) and pajama pants and have done
| so for over a year now. I am here for the comfort.
| [deleted]
| hodgesrm wrote:
| To err is human. To really foul things up requires a computer.
|
| - Bill Vaughan (https://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/12/07/foul-
| computer)
| plumsempy wrote:
| I had a similar problem with StitchFix way back when; after
| finding out about my profession they truly pigeonholed me into
| a generic software engineer's fashion, almost caricature-esque.
|
| I switched to Bombfell and I had been very happy until my
| cancellation.(canceled cause I wanted to explore fashion
| myself)
| murphyslab wrote:
| I'm envisaging those cliche stock photos of a robotic hand
| engaged with a shape sorter toy being used widely on that
| company's internal presentations.
| fxtentacle wrote:
| Me, too. I'm also guessing they will have one of those huge
| bulky laundry folding robots [1] when a well-trained human
| could do it much faster [2].
|
| I kind of get where they are coming from, though. I myself
| also love over-engineering solutions ^_^
|
| [1] https://youtu.be/dTcPxzK0c2g?t=156
|
| [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uz6rjbw0ZA0
| [deleted]
| GoblinSlayer wrote:
| It's a homage to Rambo II, classic.
| bambax wrote:
| > _I sent in my measurements and they sent me a trouser with
| wrong measurements and a postcard that said that they adjusted
| my measurements with AI for a better fit_
|
| That is nothing short of hilarious. The machine knows best! Who
| are you, human, to pretend you are able to measure yourself?!
|
| > _AI for memorizing generic trends_
|
| It's possible "AI" may be just a pretext to sell mass-made junk
| and pretend it is adjusted to each individual.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Generative Adversarial Customer Support!
| bckr wrote:
| I laughed out loud at this
| numpad0 wrote:
| Something similar happened in Japan with Zozosuit, they tried
| to use 3D reconstruction from smartphone camera for basically
| two piece business suits in $399, and the end result
| resembled texture file for your body in ugliest posture
| stitched together.
|
| Maybe it could be considered class of fallacy, a kind that
| one would say the most popular choice of integers between 1
| and 2 is 1.5000001.
| toxik wrote:
| "Regression to the mean" is the technical term
| antoniuschan99 wrote:
| They announced the release of v2 (might not be available
| yet though) the first one was a disaster.
|
| Was excited to see how the pants and shirts fit (on the
| site it looked awesome, but then the actual user reviews on
| some were so bad lol)
|
| Also, the founder is the Japanese guy going to the moon.
| fxtentacle wrote:
| I guess I forgot to write
|
| "I, For One, Welcome Our Robot Overlords"
|
| into the comments field when ordering :)
|
| > It's possible "AI" may be just a pretext to sell mass-made
| junk and pretend it is adjusted to each individual.
|
| Actually, I wouldn't mind that too much. It is difficult for
| me to find well-fitting trousers, so if they can supply those
| for me, I'm happy as long as the quality is acceptable. Plus
| their price is roughly half of what a proper tailor would
| cost me, so I kind of expected them to cut some corners.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _It 's possible "AI" may be just a pretext to sell mass-
| made junk and pretend it is adjusted to each individual._
|
| It's also an internal distraction. They'd achieve something
| much closer to what they promise if they just threw some old-
| school regression analysis at the problem. But that's not
| cool these days, plus it's hard to relabel as AI even for the
| marketroids these days, and would involve actual work :).
|
| This applies to many "AI companies" - so many want to either
| have easy process (throw data at some random Kaggle model and
| hope it sticks) or just a buzzword to bullshit investors
| with. Sometimes both.
| [deleted]
| ampdepolymerase wrote:
| Yes, see https://shoesize.me for how it is properly done.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| What problem is there to apply regression at? You get the
| measures, and make the cloths fit to those measures. If
| there is any measure missing, you can't just go and guess
| it, because you are not fitting a population.
|
| Talk about distraction...
| lupire wrote:
| People probably have a measurable bias in self-
| measurement, on average.
| lostcolony wrote:
| Sure, but just like people's measures tend toward a
| distribution, an "on average" bias is still going to be
| distributed. Trying to throw statistics at it is still
| going to lead to off the rack style sizing, and NOT
| individually tailored clothes.
| minikites wrote:
| >Who are you, human, to pretend you are able to measure
| yourself?!
|
| A lot of people do not in fact know how to measure themselves
| properly for clothes (many people measure the wrong part of
| their body for the "waist"). Perhaps even more people think
| they're a certain size, but have never actually measured
| themselves, they just go by the measurements on clothes they
| already own, which are frequently "vanity sized" to make
| people feel better. I don't envy solving this problem between
| two sets of users: people who actually have the correct
| measurements and people who believe strongly that they do,
| but are quite wrong. Imagine how far off you would be if you
| went by your Old Navy pants:
| https://flowingdata.com/2010/09/30/advertised-vs-actual-
| wais...
| crocsarecool wrote:
| You're right! I sew infrequently as a hobby. I always
| thought my waist was just above my hips. When it comes to
| sewing, it's actually closer to my belly button.
|
| The size of the clothes also need to account for the fabric
| type. If it stretches x%, then you'll want to maybe make it
| smaller, so it stretches to fit, or it will look frumpy. If
| the fabric doesn't stretch at all, you'll need to make sure
| there's enough ease in the garment so you can bend and move
| your arms naturally.
| hardwaresofton wrote:
| There are two areas of technology I avoid these days --
| blockchain and AI.
|
| It may very well be to my own detriment (there is a _lot_ of
| promise in either) but fortunately there are lots of
| interesting problems outside these areas and I can just treat
| the mention of either of those topics as red flags.
|
| That said, I want to note that I have had good results with
| Stitchfix but that was due to entering professionally-taken
| measurements. I got even better results however, from a local
| to-order suit maker and bought the full suit there, but basic
| shirt(s) from Stitchfix
| fxtentacle wrote:
| I also had a good experience with shirts, which is why I
| decided to give the trousers a try.
|
| And yes, my measurements were also from a professional
| tailor. But the resulting trouser has (among other issues)
| been "corrected" to a 15cm shorter outside leg length, so I
| wonder if a professional vs. an amateur measuring it would
| have made much of a difference.
| anticristi wrote:
| No startup is disruptive enough nowadays without 5G and IoT.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Add Quantum to the list.
| Sodaware wrote:
| My new startup uses machine learning built on Quantum
| Blockchain technology (patent pending).
|
| I'll take my VC money now, please.
| romanows wrote:
| They're clearly taking a reinforcement learning approach. Just
| a few thousand more returns and you'll be good to go!
| tomxor wrote:
| > they sent me a trouser with wrong measurements and a postcard
| that said that they adjusted my measurements with AI
|
| This brings a whole new meaning to "over fitting"
| agnosticmantis wrote:
| I find it amusing that this new meaning is exactly the
| opposite of the way it's used in statistics. (Discarding an
| individual's particular measurements as noise sounds like
| under fitting in this problem.) I wonder if this discrepancy
| has caused any misunderstandings between the AI team and
| customer service.
| raverbashing wrote:
| > they adjusted my measurements with AI for a better fit
|
| Cool, what they mean is they probably have some (barely) linear
| fits of people to some dimension, but of course that breaks
| down quick as the USAF found out in the 40s
| https://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2016/01/16/when-us-air-...
| zdw wrote:
| Gives new meaning to Overfitting being a problem in AI
| research.
| economusty wrote:
| How much did they get you for?
| bachmeier wrote:
| > they adjusted my measurements with AI for a better fit
|
| I'm trying to think of a way this makes sense. Do they have
| access to some big database about you that they can use to
| predict how you'll screw up your measurements?
| sumtechguy wrote:
| Oh good I am not the only one. Direct measurement would
| produce the best result here. Not a guess that AI has with
| 83% confidence level. I usually find a tailor and buy
| something from them and in the process they will give me all
| the measurements for everything else.
| kd0amg wrote:
| My guess would be their system decided OP's measurements
| were unrealistic and adjusted them towards their more
| "typical" body shape.
| bachmeier wrote:
| I thought that at first, but it doesn't make any sense,
| because:
|
| You don't have any way to know which of the measurements
| is wrong.
|
| You don't know what correction to apply. The best you can
| do is shrink along one or more of the dimensions in the
| direction of a mean of something, which may or may not be
| relevant to that customer. In return you intentionally
| mess up the orders of many customers, wasting their time
| in the process.
| npongratz wrote:
| I wouldn't give their system that much credit -- the belt
| OP received doesn't even fit the trousers.
| ;laskdfjls;adkfasd;lfj
|
| That incomprehensible line above was written by my
| advanced AI. Or I was just lazy and wanted to sell
| something with a cool marketing buzzword, and without
| regard to ethics.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Your AI seems to have two hands on a standard QWERTY
| keyboard :)
| npongratz wrote:
| Looks like I'll have to feed it a few million more data
| sets to train it on.
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| I want my small-batch artisanal data analytics on tap.
| ehnto wrote:
| A pint of the facial recognition dystopian pale ale please.
| jmjanzen wrote:
| You joke, but there's some truth to this. Better to have a nice
| tailored report that shows only what's needed to make a
| decision, than a dump from Looker, Heap, or just a 200MB of
| CSVs.
| rectang wrote:
| "Move slow and make things" seems like a credo for developer-run
| Open Source software projects. The software ships when it is
| ready, not when a commercial entity needs it to.
|
| For a tech business, "move slow and make things" can only be a
| joke. But for a developer collective, it can be real.
| lupire wrote:
| Yes. Build the best ideas for posterity.
|
| This is GHC / Haskell philosophy. Golang tries too.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| It's really great to read this article: the contrast of text
| against the background is optimally low, it lets our eyes take
| its sweet time to recognize letter forms. Sit back, relax and
| poke your eyes out in pain. What more do readers want! Illegible,
| dysfunctional and decorative design is the future!
| RhodoGSA wrote:
| >our staff of mathematicians who will perform all computations by
| hand using pencil and paper
|
| This part is about when i started dying laughing at every
| sentence, before i was a bit confused. But only after checking
| the comments did i realize it was on 1 april.
| samueladam wrote:
| This is the way I build cybersecurity opertions centers and
| ingest data for mining.
|
| Every log structure is analyzed by hand. Every log structure data
| behaviour is verified with statistics by hand. Every log data is
| normalized by hand. Every parser is done by hand. Every log is
| documented and gets unit tests.
|
| What has not gone through this process ends up in the "automatic
| extraction" bucket waiting to get human love.
|
| April's fool or not, you may laugh at me. My L3 security analysts
| don't.
| lmarcos wrote:
| On a more serious tone: what would take to the IT industry to
| switch from "move fast and get shit done" to "move slow and make
| things'?
|
| Geninuosly asking. If it becomes a thing, it would only be
| because the developers push it further... and HN is full of devs.
| I doubt such a perspective would ever come from "lean" managers
| and the like.
| imhoguy wrote:
| This already comes from regulators, e.g. "right to explanation"
| laws which require any automated legaly binding decisions to be
| explained.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_explanation
| pdimitar wrote:
| I feel that at this point nothing except very severe regulatory
| fines would help.
|
| It's just that the current way of doing things is financially
| incentivized.
| bovermyer wrote:
| My thoughts on this were a little too long for a comment, so I
| posted them on my blog: https://benovermyer.com/blog/building-
| things-slowly/
| solarmist wrote:
| I'm sad this is an April fools joke because a lot of the
| sentiment rings true and I love the slogan "move slow and make
| things."
|
| Artisans make beautiful things and software artisans make
| beautiful software, but it's hard to do it and still be a viable
| business.
|
| And artisans moving slowly isn't arbitrary. They move slow on the
| things that matter. The things that shine when attention was paid
| to the details.
| jiofih wrote:
| Same feeling here - instead of laughing I was disappointed when
| the second paragraph laid out the April fools joke.
|
| I would love to see "small batch data science" where people
| actually understand the results. Black box recommendations
| never feel really right.
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| It's called statistics, to be fair.
|
| In general, if your DS's can't explain the model then
| something has gone horribly wrong.
| fxtentacle wrote:
| People usually just call it AI then and pretend that it's
| not a problem.
|
| For example, there's been plenty of issues like racial bias
| with the computer vision algorithms that police uses, which
| effectively is data science on pictures. But nobody knows
| why the issue occurs and nobody can specifically fix it
| without the risk of breaking a thousand unrelated other
| things.
| shakna wrote:
| > But nobody knows why the issue occurs
|
| Sure we do. Photography itself has a racial bias. [0]
| Different skin tones produce different levels of detail,
| and it has been an uphill battle to be able to capture
| those details since the advent of photography.
|
| So long as facial recognition relies on photography, and
| photography is flawed, then every dataset is biased.
| Which will exacerbate the bias of the AI, which already
| has its own set of problems from where those datasets are
| formed.
|
| [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/25/lens/sarah-lewis-
| racial-b...
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| > _But nobody knows why the issue occurs_
|
| They do know why that occurs. It's because the data set
| is biased.
| tremon wrote:
| No, you don't "know" that your dataset is biased until
| you perform the statistic analysis explicitly. It might
| be that your neural net has a non-uniform weight
| distribution in some dimension (e.g. in time, or in the
| ordering of the training data), so dismissing any
| unwanted results by claiming "your dataset is biased" is
| a form of appeal to (artificial) authority.
| marcinzm wrote:
| It's not an appeal to artificial authority. It's a very
| likely root cause and comes with a solution even: get a
| different data set or adjust your existing data set. Your
| response rings of No true Scotsman to me since you can
| argue any analysis is not rigorous enough or doesn't
| cover all potential issues.
|
| edit: And a statistical analysis isn't some sort of magic
| data genie. Statistics can give rigorous results because
| it makes strong assumptions. If those assumptions don't
| hold then the results aren't rigorous anymore. A trillion
| parameters model can pull interactions out of your data
| that almost no statistical analysis of the data would
| identify ahead of time. So what you need to analyze is
| the model and try to infer why it's predicting different
| certain results and then work backwards from there.
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| Is it a case of BAME have less stable families, are
| poorer, commit more crimes and therefore are more
| represented in the data which lead to even more
| incarcerations?
| mauvehaus wrote:
| First: I don't think you can claim that without also
| doing some very rigorous statistics. I'm not asking you
| to, but if you're going to base policy on that statement
| rather than merely arguing on the internet, you'd need
| to.
|
| Second: even if you do, you're going to have a hard time
| controlling for the fact that the police and criminal
| justice system has a long history of disproportionately
| enforcing the law against people of color. The base data
| about who commits crimes, gets convicted, etc. for well
| over a hundred years is going to reflect this bias.
|
| I'm not claiming to have done my homework here either,
| same disclaimer applies. I suspect you could find
| somebody who does study this if you wanted to look.
|
| All of the above assumes we're discussing the US, btw.
| alexashka wrote:
| Funny, I remember thinking the questions were biased,
| every time they weren't the ones I studied to answer in
| my exam preparations.
|
| Too bad I wasn't a data scientist or else I could just
| get a passing grade by claiming the questions were chosen
| from a biased data set, or retake the exam until the data
| set matched the questions I studied for, at which point
| the data set would no longer be biased, lol.
|
| Funny line of work, this data 'science' where you only
| use the results that fit the narrative you wanted in the
| first place.
|
| We're in full doublethink mode, just keep repeating data
| 'science', 'science', 'science'. :)
| jjgreen wrote:
| I did a geography O-level (the UK exams for 16-year olds
| at the time) which included a map-reading exercise. It
| just so happened to be a couple of miles from where I
| lived, and I knew it well. Still only got a B though.
| marcinzm wrote:
| >In general, if your DS's can't explain the model then
| something has gone horribly wrong.
|
| With modern ML models data scientists can generally explain
| why the model should work but not exactly how it gives any
| specific prediction. Explaining how a model with a trillion
| parameters comes up with an answer is not a trivial task.
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| > modern ML models
|
| As an aside, this is a hilarious phrasing. What are we
| going to call these methods in a decade? You'd probably
| be better off phrasing it as deep neural networks.
|
| Anyway, this is not really true. There are methods (for
| lots see: https://christophm.github.io/interpretable-ml-
| book/) and the DeepDream paper came out in 2015, so it's
| possible.
|
| It's computationally expensive, and a lot of people don't
| see the value, but my argument is that if you want to use
| the model in the real world, and have non-technical
| stakeholders then you'll need to do this, and in general,
| I've found it to be the best way to actually improve a
| model.
|
| And to be fair, if you just need to see how the
| predictions vary as a function of the inputs, you can
| again hold all but one constant and run a bunch of
| different values through the model.
|
| Again, this _can_ all be done, but I think it 's more a
| question of will than capability (and hence the context
| of my original commment).
| marcinzm wrote:
| >You'd probably be better off phrasing it as deep neural
| networks.
|
| I phrased it the way I did for a reason. Large Random
| Forrest models are also not easily interpretable. Even
| large logistic regression models with feature
| interactions and feature hashing aren't easily
| interpretable. It's not a question of the model technique
| used but rather the amount of parameters and how many
| feature interactions are modeled.
|
| >And to be fair, if you just need to see how the
| predictions vary as a function of the inputs, you can
| again hold all but one constant and run a bunch of
| different values through the model.
|
| This only provides a partial view of the feature impact
| due to non-linear interactions.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| I have been working on a spread sheet on and off for a few
| weeks. The data exists, but you can't google the answer(s) I
| want, so I have been painstakingly putting it together, a few
| minutes here and a few minutes there.
|
| I've been calling it my "curiosity killed the cat"
| spreadsheet. _Small batch data science_ sounds so much more
| respectable while meaning basically the same thing, I think.
| lloeki wrote:
| The best jokes carry a message and use humour as a vessel,
| challenging preconceptions in a lighthearted way.
|
| I chose to take this April's fool that way.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| Thank you for this.
|
| I "move slow and make things" in some sense. I will endeavor
| to use this as a jumping off point for something constructive
| rather than leaving a pointless whiney comment about how the
| world will never understand or appreciate me.
| solarmist wrote:
| Better is "Be deliberate and make (beautiful) things".
| rkagerer wrote:
| Same here. I was disappointed to realize this isn't a thing.
| nicbou wrote:
| One of my favourite articles on the internet is "an app can be
| a home-cooked meal". It's something you can make for your own
| enjoyment, with no plans for scaling on monetisation.
|
| I have started making this sort of software, and I thoroughly
| enjoy it. I target the platform I use, I solve the problems I
| have, and my only metric is pleasure.
|
| I wish we all had more of such projects.
| bovermyer wrote:
| If you like this sentiment, read "The Forever Project":
| https://heredragonsabound.blogspot.com/2020/02/the-
| forever-p...
| lloeki wrote:
| This is the entire premise of Ruby, with Matz openly claiming
| that it being pleasurable to anyone else but him is a happy
| side-effect. Part jest, but also very core to it.
|
| I wouldn't have been able to put so much work in maintaining
| ArchMac for so long without going completely bonkers had I
| not taken it this way either.
|
| So it's entirely possible to build large scale projects this
| way, and I'm wondering how we could make companies work that
| way too. At the very least it should be part of any employee
| sustainability plan.
| ryandrake wrote:
| One of the reasons I left software development as a career
| was I couldn't bear to keep shitting out products that were
| just barely good enough that the customer wouldn't return it.
| That's the quality bar in commercial software and I hated
| having my name on it. I'm more into refactoring it 20 times
| in order to get the perfect architecture, fix every last bug,
| find every performance improvement, make it not just work but
| make the code itself beautiful. Like the Steve Jobs quote:
|
| "When you're a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers,
| you're not going to use a piece of plywood on the back, even
| though it faces the wall and nobody will ever see it. You'll
| know it's there, so you're going to use a beautiful piece of
| wood on the back. For you to sleep well at night, the
| aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all the way
| through."
|
| Obviously, this is totally incompatible with how most
| software is made in the industry, so I just do it as a hobby
| instead.
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| You will like this presentation by Jonathan Blow [1], I
| feel the same. I am in grad school, but since my bachelor,
| I felt more like a craftsman than a student, I always spend
| more time in order to make my code 'look' beautiful to me,
| and be performant. I would like to work somewhere that puts
| emphasis on writing good software instead of chasing
| feature after feature. Speaking of which, speed is an oft
| ignored feature [2]. It is really frustrating to have
| sluggish apps and I often end up avoiding them altogether.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSRHeXYDLko
|
| [2] https://www.enchant.com/speed-is-a-feature
| bckr wrote:
| I think the condition for having this sort of software is
| that people do it on purpose. The condition for having
| jobs where people are paid to make such software is that
| companies focus on areas without competition (otherwise
| the whole blitzscaling thing applies and they will go out
| of business). Competition is for losers, right?
|
| What's missing from my extremely simplified model?
| ryandrake wrote:
| Watched the Jonathan Blow presentation and agree
| completely. There was just another thread[1] yesterday
| about developers always reaching for the most complicated
| tools they possibly can, to the detriment of our industry
| I'd argue.
|
| 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26662972
| LaundroMat wrote:
| Same here. The only thing I still crave is user feedback and
| I have a hard time attracting users without what I feel is
| sleazy marketing.
| jkingsbery wrote:
| I had a similar reaction. It's a nice April fool's joke, but I
| hoped for an actual counter-balance to "move fast and break
| things." The book that taught me the value of moving slow in
| programming was Test Driven Development by Kent Beck, who
| ironically spent several years at Facebook.
| JetAlone wrote:
| Maybe we will have a chance to move slow and make things one
| day, or in little moments, optimizing for the well-being of the
| creator etc. What rings true about it we can mull over in our
| heads at some point and try to implement in some parts of our
| lives, like hobbies, vacation, retirement, family time, etc.
| right?
| XCSme wrote:
| > it's hard to do it and still be a viable business
|
| It's not that hard actually, but you must limit growth. You can
| easily be profitable and make an amazing product if your goal
| is not $1B in revenue, but just to be profitable at a small
| scale, which allows you to run things at your own pace.
| marcinzm wrote:
| The issue is that beautiful software is invisible except in
| open source projects (and even then few people look under the
| hood). So to an end user only the UI/UX/bugs matter while
| everything else doesn't.
| mathgladiator wrote:
| I feel suckered, but I do like the idea of moving slow...
|
| "slow is smooth and smooth is fast" is something that I'm working
| to internalize.
|
| This is why I believe, at core, in 100% test coverage.
| TrispusAttucks wrote:
| The prank is good.
|
| The slogan is pure gold.
|
| "move slow and make things."
| pdimitar wrote:
| I have to admit: if they didn't go overboard with hand-printed
| cards and carrier pigeons, I'd believe the article.
|
| As others have mused here and I'll join them: we can use a lot
| more hand-crafted and "slow" approach. We're chasing our own
| tails -- ESPECIALLY in programming! -- and progress is nearly
| non-existent.
|
| I mean, in 2021, people are still debugging multithreaded shared
| state problems. These should belong to the past -- make it
| impossible on a hardware level as a start, then the programming
| languages will adapt in a matter of a few months at the maximum.
| swiley wrote:
| Shared state is fundamentally hard. I don't think you can make
| it bullet-proof at the hardware level without sacrificing
| performance.
| pdimitar wrote:
| Exactly because it's fundamentally hard, it must be avoided
| -- we the humans simply can't be trusted with it (speaking as
| a former C/C++ dev here).
|
| It should also be hardware-assisted (if it's impossible to
| stop it at the hardware level). Stuff like atomic counters
| were a good first step but the state of the art there hasn't
| moved in a long time (we don't have atomic 512-bit update
| operations, do we? if we did, a lot of kernel data structures
| could be atomically updated; this alone would fix a lot of
| contention problems).
|
| The hardware can also just work in a CRDT/OT-like manner,
| namely accumulate update requests for a memory location in
| small queues (that get flushed after 10 nanoseconds or after
| the mini queue fills up). This could help with a good chunk
| of the buggy scenarios as well.
|
| Not saying we can make it perfect tomorrow -- of course we
| can't. What I am saying is that nobody [who can truly make a
| difference] is even _trying_.
|
| It gets a bit disappointing and grim after you have been in
| the profession for a while, you know?
| lanstin wrote:
| Switch to go and channels. You won't have to worry about
| locking any more, the design of your program becomes a data
| flow design issue. (Speaking as a former C programmer).
| Hardware takes so long to change but more atomicity would
| be great, but 8n the meantime go runtime is fast, generally
| lock less to the per request application code flow, and you
| use all the cores evenly.
| pdimitar wrote:
| Golang's channels and goroutines are only an improvement
| if you are coming from JS / Python or maybe also suffered
| complex pthreads bugs in C/C++.
|
| They are an improvement, absolutely, but not a big one.
| jmull wrote:
| This is the best April fools joke I've seen this year.
|
| The article itself is excellent. But the best part is the title
| is a so much better real credo than the "real" one it parodies.
| lupire wrote:
| What happened to all the social netwoks using the Slow credo?
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