I just re-read the Atavist piece the other day, as Le Roux made one of his first public appearances at a hearing. A truly awe-inspiring piece of journalism about a man who seems to have already lived multiple lives in his 46 years.
His message board and mailing list comments were especially fascinating to me, as I spent time lurking on those lists and others as a teen. Cannot recommend Mr. Ratliff's work enough.
Stories like these are the ones that inspire me the most. People using technology in a way that helps them in their everyday lives, or in a hobbyist fashion. I feel like many of the things I pick-up at work are out of career necessity: the latest framework, bits of an up and coming language that is going to be "the future", semi fluency in a stack so I can aid in a project,I enjoy it, but I don't enjoy it like in the same way I once did.
Probably my favorite programming memory was teaching myself Java as a teenager and building games for my friends and I to play. No responsibility, if they worked...great, if not oh well. It was exhilarating. I do not think programming will ever become a lingua franca, as stated in other places here. I think hobbyist programmers may pop up more and more,or people who know enough to build small tools for themselves (not to scale) and I don't think that's a bad thing.
As one of those hobbyists, I can say that the thing I wish most for was an easier way of "getting started". I mostly hack around in python, or arduino c, but I really wish that it was easier to write a script and actually give it to someone else, and actually have it run.
The feature I like most about excel, is that it is practically ubiquitous. If I give someone else an excel toy workbook that does something, they can run it without needing to "manage the environment". If I write something in Python/numpy/pandas/Jupyter, it is actually pretty difficult to make it useful to anyone. Portability just makes the whole hobby programming thing much more fun.
yeah, I hear that, and I also know in my heart that it's right, but I have no business running access control/distributing my code/or hosting it for public consumption. Mostly a "hey, look at this data analysis" or "this is a good way to do this process" kind of things. emailing someone a file was a pretty good workflow for the low-volume script problem. I wish I could just get a python sandbox for GitHub and have them run it all for me.
Not sure about the overall ideas in this one. I am currently writing apps in Angular using Python on the backend. Just got a new contract. My career started years ago with only HTML and CSS.
Being experienced, I would agree with the thesis here, except for the fact that we hire several junior devs here at my new office with only HTML and CSS knowledge and then gradually teach them frameworks and tools they will need.
Other places I have worked have taken this approach too. Don't know Angular or ember? That's okay...if you are teachable and really want to learn. Those are the real skills you need.
I worked for UPS for a long time, and if I am understanding what you are saying then no, you must be a due-paying member of the IBT to benefit from contractually-negotiated benefits and pay. UPS corporate has a totally different set of benefits, pay, and expectations from their Teamster counterparts.
I have had Amazon folks in my neighborhood: leave packages on the sidewalk, throw packages over fences and ask me for a tip.
These are antecdotal, but if Amazon wants to catch up to a company like UPS, they have a ton of ground to make up. Delivering packages is really hard work, believe it or not, and underpaying someone to do it isn't going to bring about the results you're after, guaranteed.
Was coming here to post the same thing. The vans in my area are unbranded, the employees unprofessional and the delivery is sloppy. "Soft" expenses such as uniforms and paint make a difference on perception, as would better supervision and training.
I also wonder, in the drivers' defense, if the delivery schedule is unrealistic. I can better understand lobbing a box on the lawn if you're 10 deliveries behind.
An unmarked van isn't too welcome in some parts around me. Some people are downright defensive about visitors on their road. On the other hand, a recognizable UPS or FedEx is likely to get a friendly wave.
Amazon would do well to paint their logo on the van, but maybe it isn't their van.
I can't answer for the grandparent, but it's not an uncommon situation in the eastern Washington/northern Idaho area. Much of it is rural enough that there's very little reason to be on many roads unless it's a delivery driver or something illegal. They're not roads you'd even end up on if lost -- it's a deliberate choice.
Sounds like contract work done by the lowest bidder. No coherent chain of a command, just get stuff to people's houses no matter what or lose your contract.
Amazon used to use ONTRAC to deliver packages to me that did the same thing (complete with the unbranded vans). They stopped after the sixth package was stolen.
Ditto. I think Amazon is used to having complete supervision of people in their warehouses, where any slip-ups are found and fixed quickly before a package goes out. The delivery driver, on the other hand, needs a certain level of street smarts and people skills and has to be able to function with minimal supervision. That kind of person isn't going to work for you for minimum wage.
When I order from Amazon and see that they're going to try to ship it on their own, I just groan. It's going to be painful for sure.
Sounds pretty similar to my two experiences with Amazon Fresh. First guy shows up and goes into a long story about how his leg is broken and how terrible his day is going. Not to be unsympathetic, but clearly this guy was just trying to solicit a tip, which I was planning on giving anyway, but decided against after the experience. Second time around I just pick the "leave it at the door" option, and they dropped it off at the wrong building, and when I found it, it was also the wrong order.
Same. I've personally ran into amazon delivery people lost in our apartment complex, badged them into the building, and walked them to where they should drop off packages. I'd feel like it was a one time thing, but it seems like every week they've got a new guy delivering here, and its a tossup whether they're properly trained to know what to do. Meanwhile, the same USPS guy has been coming here for 3 years.
That is a problem. Our UPS driver has his own map of the area because there are so many addresses that don't map. I doubt gigster type is going to put in that much effort.
I wish there was larger adoption of a system like what3words for these rural areas. Something like if Amazon is unable to geocode your address give you the option to specify lat/lon location or 3x3m grid.
Shame that the company that uses the system seems really protective of the idea and might try to sue if someone were to come up with their own similar implementation. It's one of the places I believe that the profit motive actually gets in the way of innovation (the idea itself is simple enough that you could probably engineer a system to use it in a few weeks).
It got so bad with the AMZN delivery company that we finally requested they ship to us with anyone but them.
- Delivery dates constantly getting pushed back 1-3 days (why even have prime?).
- Delivery notifications for packages that were never delivered, and not even attempted to be. Someone is almost always home and we have a security camera on all approaches to the house, they don’t even try.
- Completely lost packages.
- Our stuff getting delivered to the neighbors, and vice versa.
Amazon’s delivery has been an unmitigated disaster in our neighborhood.
This will be no change for me. Where I’m at UPS and FedEx just toss the package at the porch/doors and then bolt. Very unprofessional and NEVER once ring the door bell. I don’t expect them to wait, but FFS how much extra work is it to hit the damn doorbell?
It's probably the "performance optimization" and such described below having an effect. This stuff happens in a lot of the traditional types of companies that are labor and equipment heavy. The new bosses in middle gotta push productivity up, costs down. They might mandate performance standards or with the time optimization allocate the "right" amount of hours for each job. The workers might get fired for not meeting specific numbers.
They probably don't have many better options either given they were doing deliveries for UPS and FedEx. The employees responding to that environment will either accidentally or intentionally in spite do stuff like that. I've seen quite a few of those companies. You also get to experience more spite the less the company or customers care about them. The jobs that require slaving away for nothing under assholes are the most consistent in generating that effect.
Unfortunately it’s not an improvement because theft of packages is rampant in my neighborhood. So despite someone working from home we still end up with packages stolen.
These days I just have my packages kept at UPS and go pick them up.
Seems like a lot of room to innovate with technology, and I bet Amazon is banking on that.
This reminds me a lot of Amazon marketplace, where they took the core service (Amazon e-commerce) and opened it up to others without holding inventory. They can use other people’s orders to gain even more scale and drive costs down lower in the distribution network, commoditizing the complement layer (delivery, in this case UPS and FedEx).
Just this week, I've once again found Prime -- on multiple packages -- to apparently mean "when we get around to it".
I'm going to finally watch "The Wire" and a few other of their streaming offers that have been on my todo list, and then consider not renewing. (And... I'm wondering how onerous the process of effectively disconnecting them from my credit card will be.)
Thanks for that advice. However, the inconvenience outweighs such savings, for me. I've also found Amazon support to be becoming less and less generous with respect to "making things right".
So I read this and cannot help but wonder if we really are 5 years away from a massive sea change. People think truck drivers could be obsolete in 5 years time, the bullish ones anyway.
The tech is still developing. We may be in a bit of a hype bubble, but it is as real and clear as it has ever been. I think even as the tech advances rapidly, public acceptance will be way further out than 5, 10 or 15 years. I would venture to say self-driving cars and truck fleets being normalized is 30 years away and in no way because of the tech, but due to all the red tape and public debate that will encase the issue.
If you think all truck drivers are going to be displaced in 5 or even 10 years, you may be living in an HN bubble. Sure jobs will be automated away, but this is going to take more time than lots of people think. For instance, one article like this could delay acceptance for months or years, in my opinion.
Even once the problem is "solved", there's still an entire industry, one of the biggest, to turn around. Right now we still don't even get software updates for our head units in our car in most cases. As technology improves, how will self-driving cars adapt?
We change out our phones every couple years, but may car is five years old and I'm just about to finish paying it off. With a decade being a reasonable replacement cycle for a car, how will the car technology keep pace? Surely people aren't going to start buying iCars as often as they replace iPhones. Even if you adopted a service-only module for the industry, it's not like driving services will want to replace their entire fleet every two years.
Will cars have some sort of "technology package" including the computer and some of the sensor modules that can be made plug-and-play removable so you can upgrade your car?
> People think truck drivers could be obsolete in 5 years time, the bullish ones anyway.
I'm not sure how many people _really_ think that; it's pure fantasy. To be honest, I wouldn't be surprised if they're not obsolete in 20 years. AI stuff has a tendency to get nearly good enough quite quickly, and then improve very little more for decades afterwards.
>AI stuff has a tendency to get nearly good enough quite quickly, and then improve very little more for decades afterwards.
What tends to happen is that some approach, deep learning in the current case, turns out to be very effective for a class of problems. But it turns out that it only gets you, say, 90 percent of the way there to being truly useful in the real world. And there isn't an obvious way to get you the other 10 percent.
My take on it as far as truck drivers is that the pay for truck drivers (as they are today) will likely drop as the skill required to drive one drops from partial automation. Similar to how airline pilots of today's advanced jets are typically only "needed" during taxi, take-off, and landing.
I lived on one of the streets they mention in the article while attending college. The hardest thing one would see was malt liqour abuse or the occasional nodded off opiate user.
I was just in the area last week, and it is arresting how different things are. Boarded up houses, handwritten signs for suboxone treatment with phone numbers, addled users staring into space on many corners - things have changed.
Stories like this give me a bit of hope because people do recover, I know that. But what is the longterm solution here? The causes of the opioid epidemic are debated ad nauseum, but it seems much harder to put a finger on the pulse of a solution. It's wrecking lives at an increasing rate, that much is for sure.
I believe he is also on the Dart lang team at google. He has a pretty awesome blog and is super insightful when it comes to programming languages. His Github projects inspired me to research language design further.
Yep his blog and books are great. Incidentally I started looking into Dart yesterday. Seems like a comfy language, more so than Typescript in my opinion.
