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Joined November 2008
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Willy Pell retweeted
It’s autonomy day, running the fully autonomous @JohnDeere 8RX
Willy Pell retweeted
read it, share it, save the city: a san francisco voter guide for people who aren't insane piratewires.com/p/a-san-fran…
Willy Pell retweeted
The ratio of predicted problems with AI to actual observed problems is pretty wild.
Willy Pell retweeted
Why is it ‘cancelled’ in the U.K. but ‘canceled’ in the U.S.?
Because we gave them that L in 1776.
Willy Pell retweeted
One thing I learned from experience is that those who do solidly well in life never, practically never, do anything in bad faith. Reduce bad faith from, say, that tiny 5% bit to 0%, and see how it works wonders. Simple advice, @__paleologo.
I remember Taleb saying somewhere in the distant past, when he was still exceptionally sane, something like "When you can do a few thing very well, you can afford a lot of mistakes". I came to appreciate this heavy-tailedness of positive payoffs only later. *Every single firm* I have worked at was dysfunctional, in the precise sense that goals that were part of their core mission were obviously, scandalously fumbled. Stuff like "let's start a business in <X>, for which were are completely unsuited!" or "let's fix the risk department by doubling its size!" and so on. All of this, by executives who were also obviously very intelligent and well-intentioned. How can this be? Because they had a core at which they were among the top three in the world. Even when they ignored that core competency, it saved them over and over again.
Willy Pell retweeted
It is uncanny in this era to be grateful for a politician, but Lurie is an exception. The West Coast has its Bloomberg and, yes, most people chalk up the city’s turnaround to the energy he brought to the Mayor’s office.
His tenure emphasizes just how much his predecessors squandered their time there.
The last three dinner parties I’ve been at in SF, with completely non-political people, have all at some point descended into everyone exclaiming some version of “so thankful for @DanielLurie”
Willy Pell retweeted
Another masterpiece from Mikaela Shiffrin! 🇺🇸💥
#FISAlpine #WorldCupLevi
Willy Pell retweeted
After years of dinners with FAANG friends, you experienced the progression of from being seen as nobody to a tier one AI company.
They always joked, “Are you still working on Full Self-Driving?” Then you sat there quietly eating your own food.
For many, top AI companies means hosting the biggest parties at CVPR, writing lots of papers, and have well known AI “god parents” in the org.
We have none of these. Quietly, we just want to solve singular most difficult problem on Earth.
This year they all have recognized Tesla is doing AI as good, if not better, as any other frontier companies, not because numbers of papers or podcasts being published, but a solid product that delivers the magic.
Willy Pell retweeted
The hidden cost of enterprise .NET architecture:
Debugging hell.
I've spent 13+ years in .NET codebases, and I keep seeing the same pattern:
Teams build fortress-level abstractions for problems they don't have.
IUserService calls IUserRepository.
IUserRepository wraps IUserDataAccess.
IUserDataAccess calls IUserQueryBuilder.
IUserQueryBuilder finally hits the database.
To change one validation rule, you step through 5 layers.
To fix a bug, you open 7 files.
The justification is always the same:
"What if we need to swap out Entity Framework?"
"What if we switch databases?"
"What if we need multiple implementations?"
What if this, what if that.
The reality:
Those "what ifs" don't come to life in 99% of cases.
I've seen exactly zero projects swap their ORM.
But I've seen dozens of developers waste hours navigating abstraction mazes.
New developers are confused about where to put a new piece of functionality.
Senior developers are debugging through the code that has more layers than a wedding cake.
The end result?
You spend more time navigating than building.
Look, good abstractions hide complexity.
Bad abstractions create it.
Most enterprise .NET apps have way too much of the second kind.
Willy Pell retweeted
Socialism is like polio, it comes back when people forget about the horrible damage it did last time.
Willy Pell retweeted
ANDOR is the first ever TV show to have five episodes in a row with a 9.5 or higher rating on IMDb
Willy Pell retweeted
It is absurd that Palo Alto School district just voted to remove honors biology for all students & already removed honors English. They call it de-laning. I call it an assault on excellence. I took many honors classes at Council Rock High in PA.
Willy Pell retweeted
I didn't realize this till recently, but when big, bureaucratic organizations create incubators, the startups that come out of them are damaged from the start by focusing on big customers instead of the scrappy early adopters that successful startups usually sell to.
Willy Pell retweeted
The first John Deere autonomous tractor is in Wisconsin! Check out this 8R 410 and 2660VT running autonomously!
#JohnDeere #autonomous #farming #RandS
Willy Pell retweeted
Farmers in Kiowa, Kansas lined a highway on Saturday to honor Bob and Lori Schrock, a beloved couple who died in the January 29 Black Hawk helicopter and Flight 5342 collision, as their families returned from DC.
Video by Ashley Unger
