Eric Farr

Technical leader. Software developer. Skeptical optimist. Christ follower. Miami Hurricane.

[Eric Farr @efarr]

Compliance & Risks is now Adherent!

[Rahul Sachdev @rahul_sachdev]

A new era of product compliance: Compliance & Risks is now Adherent https://t.co/gjSu0ooIL9 via @LinkedIn

#AI #Compliance #ProductCompliance #RegulatoryIntelligence #SaaS

[Eric Farr @efarr]

https://t.co/iL1t3mSiBV

[Eric Farr @efarr]

Is it just me or did Pluribus start out strong and then get slow and boring?

[Eric Farr @efarr]

That was the most stirring rendition of the national anthem I’ve heard in a while. I hope the game lives up to it!

[Eric Farr @efarr]

This is such important advice. If you aren't creating a break for the other person to respond within 40 seconds, you are no longer having a conversation. You are monologuing.

[Harvard Business Review @HarvardBiz]

Try not to go on for more than 40 seconds at a time. https://t.co/cEeOUQANH5

[Eric Farr @efarr]

Unpopular opinion: Adjusting our clocks twice a year so we get up closer to the sunrise is a small price to pay to enjoy considerably more sunshine during our waking hours.

[Eric Farr @efarr]

de Tocqueville couldn't have said it better...

[Konstantin Kisin @KonstantinKisin]

For my British and European friends who are "shocked" and "surprised", here are 10 reasons you didn't see this coming.

Read this short post and then read the replies from our American friends who will confirm what I'm saying.

1. Americans love their country and want it to be the best in the world. America is a nation of people who conquered a continent. They love strength. They love winning. Any leader who appeals to that has an automatic advantage.

2. Unlike Europeans, Americans have not accepted managed decline. They don't have Net Zero here, they believe in producing their own energy and making it as cheap as possible because they know that their prosperity depends on it.

3. Prices for most basic goods in the US have increased rapidly and are sky high. What the official statistics say about inflation and the reality of people's lives are not the same.

4. Unlike you, Americans do not believe in socialism. They believe in meritocracy. They don't care about the super rich being super rich because they know that they live in a country where being super rich is available to anyone with the talent and drive to make it. They don't resent success, they celebrate it.

5. Americans are the most pro-immigration people in the world. Read that again. Seriously, read it again. Americans love an immigrant success story. They want more talented immigrants to come to America. But they refuse to accept people coming illegally. They believe in having a border.

6. Americans are sensitive about racial issues and their country's imperfect history. They believe that those who are disadvantaged by the circumstances of their birth should be given the opportunity to succeed. What they reject, however, is the idea that in order to address the errors of the past new errors must be made. DEI is racist. They know it and they reject it precisely because they are not racist.

7. Americans are the most philosemitic nation on earth. October 7 and the pro-Hamas left's reaction shocked them to their very core because, among other things, they remember what 9/11 was like and they know jihad when they see it.

8. Americans are extremely practical people. They care about what works, not what sounds good. In Europe, we produce great writers and intellectuals. In America they produce (and attract) great engineers, businessmen and investors. Because of this, they care less about Trump's rhetoric than you do and more about his policies than you do.

9. Americans are deeply optimistic people. They hate negativity. The woke view of American history as a series of evils for which they must eternally apologise is utterly abhorrent to them. They believe in moving forward together, not endlessly obsessing about the past.

10. America is a country whose founding story is one of resistance to government overreach. They loathe unnecessary restrictions, regulations and control. They understand that freedom comes with the price of self-reliance and they pay it gladly.

[Eric Farr @efarr]

Inside Out 2 is evidence that @Disney can still make clever, funny, touching entertainment for all audiences. It was such a delight!

[Eric Farr @efarr]

Natural language processing with LLMs in one of the few spaces where the phrase "We're ahead of [the competition] because we started later" makes sense.

[Eric Farr @efarr]

This is so true. Climbing the Pacaya volcano in Guatemala and roasting marshmallows over the lava was one of the most physically grueling days of my life. Also one of my fondest memories.

[Sketchplanations @sketchplanator]

The fun scale: all fun is not created equal

[Eric Farr @efarr]

This is sadly too true. The best litmus test: Ask your team why it does something (a meeting or practice). If they quote a handbook to you instead of describing how it makes the team or work better, you have work to do.

[Aaron Erickson @AaronErickson]

51 years on this planet, and the only manifesto I've seen get mass adoption and then in turn mass-enshittification as it got watered down was Agile.

It also was one of the most memorable worker movements, at least in tech. It would be hard to understand this unless you spent time doing software development before about 2005, but back in the day, you had project managers that ruled everything and would fire people or at least make your life very, very uncomfortable if you got estimates even a little wrong.

After a few years of senior engineers putting up with that nonsense, a. bunch got together and decided to declare what (at the time) was a more reasonable way of working. And amazingly, 10 or so years later, it became... how most organizations at least aspire to deliver software.

Of course, it got weaponized. SAFE is basically Agile with Waterfall Characteristics, made SAFE for people for whom any level of ambiguity gives them existential dread. Scrum is SAFE but for middle aged dudes who wear hoodies to fit in. And even agilists managed to turn Agile into some sort of weird cult religion where it's priests will get big mad if you don't conform to the orthodoxy.

I've seen unions get less mad at management flouting union work rules than Dedicated Agilists (particularly of the Scrum sect) who find someone doing standups wrong.

If we get anything from our new austerity era in tech, at least we have an opportunity to reinvent how we work, and remove the BS that we do because "some book written 20 years said to do it", but without any real, defensible not-from-authority argument.

[Eric Farr @efarr]

Incredible insight from the founder of one of the most successful companies of all time... If I had known then how hard it would be, I'd never have started NVIDEA.

[Eric Farr @efarr]

As a young man, @jimmybuffett's music taught me a love of the sea and not to take myself too seriously. Gone but not forgotten.

[Eric Farr @efarr]

If you were moved by Sound of Freedom and want to do something about the scourge of modern-day slavery, join my family and me in supporting the work of @IJM. In 2022 they rescued 9,295 victims and convicted 1,179 perpetrators.

[Eric Farr @efarr]

@eric_mabbott They Smell Like Sheep by Lynn Anderson is an underrated resource for communicating the life of a shepherd serving under the Great Shepherd. https://t.co/bgoWPjDW5x

[Eric Farr @efarr]

Love this quote from The Power of Moments by Chip and Dan Heath: "Beware of the soul-sucking force of ‘reasonableness’ otherwise you risk deflating your peaks. Speed bumps are reasonable. Mount Everest is not reasonable." Interesting contrast to the piling on over #OceanGate.

[Eric Farr @efarr]

Sure sounds like Zuck reads @benthompson.

[Peter Yang @petergyang]

Zuck's remarks on Apple Vision Pro:

[Eric Farr @efarr]

@AndrewYNg is correct. Trying to put the #AI genie back in the bottle has all the same challenges of gun control in the US. The dangers increase as the power increases, but we can't wish it away. We'll need sensible controls and counter-measures to ensure we minimize the harm.

[Andrew Ng @AndrewYNg]

1/The call for a 6 month moratorium on making AI progress beyond GPT-4 is a terrible idea.

I'm seeing many new applications in education, healthcare, food, ... that'll help many people. Improving GPT-4 will help. Lets balance the huge value AI is creating vs. realistic risks.

[Eric Farr @efarr]

This thread is an excellent example of how @waitbutwhy brings clarity to the current crisis in our culture in #WhatsOurProblem. We'll never solve our problems arguing left-vs-right if the real struggle is liberal-vs-anti-liberal.

[Tim Urban @waitbutwhy]

Why "centrist" is often used incorrectly:

Imagine that liberalism (in the classic sense: free speech, free markets, equality of opportunity, etc.) is a house. There are lots of people in that house, but let's simplify it to liberal progressives and liberal conservatives.

1/

[Charly Wargnier @DataChaz]

#ChatGPT, through the lens of the Dunning-Kruger effect. Most users are still on the left side of the curve.