Posts in category 'technology'
Strava Lost The Plot
Strava began rolling out a new beta feature where an LLM provides commentary on training activities, and in doing so provided a perfect example of how tech companies both cannot resist climbing aboard this latest bandwagon while having no idea how to make it useful beyond replacing their own jobs.
If you’re not aware, Strava is a social media platform disguised as a fitness tracking application. For years they’ve carved out a nice little niche for themselves in the space, first by offering some truly unique and value-added features like their heat map and route planner, which uses real user data to find routes where people cycle, run, and so forth, and second, by incorporating a number of social features to allow athletes to interact, whether it’s liking each other’s activities, commenting, organizing group events, and so forth. Notably, quite a few professional athletes use the platform, including legendary riders like Jonas Vingegaard and Tadej Pogačar, which allows fans to follow their activities and so forth.
Strava opts for a freemium model, with a number of key features included in a paid tier, and as I’ve become more serious about cycling, I’ve found those paid features to be worth the price. As part of those packages, they include things like additional analytics, which provide various statistics about activities, a route planner with automated route suggestions based on their heatmap data, and leaderboards which, I have to admit, I kinda enjoy as they gamify community-defined segments for sprints, climbs, and so forth.
All of these features do one of two things: connect athletes to each other, or give athletes access to data, either about themselves or supplied by the community, that they can use to enhance their activities.
Unfortunately, recently it seems Strava has caught a nasty cold that is infecting companies the world over: AI. And in doing so I’m afraid Strava is demonstrating why tech companies ultimately fail to understand basic concepts like trust and empathy.
By the way, just a brief interlude: if you want to disable this mis-feature (for now), in the app you have to pick “Show More” on one of the AI generated callouts, select “Give Feedback”, and from there you can leave the beta. Given how difficult that option is to find, I’m comfortable calling this a dark pattern.
Alright, let’s get back to it, shall we?
Continue reading...One Year
Somehow, despite running a blog (sometimes quite intermittently) for the past twenty years, I never knew August 31st was World Blog Day. So it seemed as good a day as any to finally write a long-overdue post looking back on this break I’ve been on, and looking forward to what comes next.
Folks who know me, or who have been following my posts here or on social media, know that, after a lot of years of hard work, good planning, and truly monumental luck, last year I found myself in a position to take an extended break from my career. As a decision it was probably one of the most significant ones I’ve ever made, and it was far from an easy one, as I knew I’d be walking away from a lucrative career working with some of the most brilliant people I’ve ever met. But after twenty years at the same company, and a lot of soul searching, I knew that it was time for a change, and rather than immediately jump into a new opportunity, I decided it was better to take some personal time to unwind, reflect, and eventually re-enter the work force with more purpose and intention.
Now, well over a year in, it feels like I made that decision only yesterday. Certainly, fairly early on I noticed just how quickly time can fly, but even then I don’t think I appreciated how short this break would feel fourteen months in. And while, yes, I went in with a lofty list of goals and only achieved a few, I can honestly say there’s little I would do differently.
At the beginning I genuinely assumed I’d eventually get so bored that going back to work would feel like a relief. Certainly, during past extended periods of time off (e.g. over Christmas), that was my experience.
And yet, rather than boredom, I discovered how freeing it is to spend time doing things both meaningful and yet outside any traditional definition of work, and how our western sense of self as being inherently tied to the work we do prevents us from seeing the many other ways that we can build and create and have a positive impact on others outside that narrow perspective.
Continue reading...- (https://b-ark.ca/Aw62GO)
From Jenny Odell in “How to Do Nothing”, on the power of what she calls “manifest dismantling”, or the intentional dismantling of the artifacts of “progress” as part of recalibrating our relationship with both our environment and each other:
“When we pry open the cracks in the concrete, we stand to encounter life itself–nothing less and nothing more, as if there could be more.”
- (https://b-ark.ca/goCIko)
I kinda feel like we’re just too inured to the modern miracle that is SQLite. That a fully featured relational database supporting much of the SQL standard can be packaged up in less than 1MB of portable code is incredible. And they guarantee to support the current (open, portable) file format until 2050, which is why it is specifically supported by the Library of Congress!
A Fictional Me By ChatGPT #3
Fake biography #3 about me, written by ChatGPT. Or: What is ‘real’? How do you define ‘real’?.
Yup, I’m still at it, post fake biographies about myself as written by ChatGPT.
Today’s biography is based on the following prompt:
Write an approximately 500 word biography for Brett Kosinski in the first person perspective that includes a brief work history as well as unusual or outlandish personal details. In case you are not aware, Brett Kosinski had a career as a Software Developer before transitioning to Product Management 10 years ago. He is based out of Edmonton Alberta, Canada. He is known as the person who reverse engineered the compression algorithm used to encode assets in Sonic the Hedgehog 2, and as a result, the scheme has been dubbed “Kosinski Compression”.
(By the way, that last part is also true, much to my chagrin).
Continue reading...A Fictional Me By ChatGPT #2
Fake biography #2 about me, written by ChatGPT. Or: How anything can be real now.
If you recall from my previous post, I’m amusing myself by posting fake biographies of myself as written by ChatGPT.
Today’s biography is based on the following prompt:
Write an approximately 500 word biography for Brett Kosinski in the first person perspective that includes a brief work history as well as some tall tales of his fantastic exploits. In case you are not aware, Brett Kosinski had a career as a Software Developer before transitioning to Product Management 10 years ago. He is based out of Edmonton Alberta, Canada. He is also known for his well-regarded port of NetHack to the Nintendo DS.
(By the way, that last part is true).
Continue reading...