The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source - The onset of "Senior Engineer Fatigue" (News)

Episode Date: June 17, 2024

Luminousmen writes about Senior Engineer Fatigue, Microsoft rethinks its AI-based Recall feature, Mike Hoye gives a big shout out to the "diff" program, Thom Holwerda covers ChromeOS' quiet switch to Android Linux subsystems & Mihail Eric tells the inside story on how Alexa dropped the ball on being the top conversational system on Earth.

What up nerds, I'm Jared and this is Changelog News for the week of Monday, June 17th, 2024. After months of sorting more than 50,000 bricks and numerous weekends of building, Paul Vierkant and his son finished their greatest Lego project ever. Seven and a half thousand colorful bricks comprising the fastest hunk of junk in the galaxy. She's fast enough for you old man. This is how we built stuff on a much smaller scale back in my day. Okay, let's get into the news. The onset of senior engineer fatigue.

I'm starting to feel this article by Luminous Men in my old bones. Quote, as you move deeper into your engineering career, a peculiar phenomenon starts to set in. A phase I like to call the onset of senior wisdom. It's the juncture where your career trajectory pivots from a steep upward learning curve to a more nuanced expansion, either vertically into leadership or horizontally across technologies.

But alongside this wisdom comes a less discussed but equally important companion, senior fatigue. End quote. What characterizes senior fatigue? According to the author, one, deliberate deceleration, two, efficiency over activity, three, the question of value versus relevance, and four, the overwhelming desire to start a podcast. Okay, fine, I made up that last one, but did I really though?? Microsoft rethinking recall?

It might be too early to call this a total recall. What about the guy you lobotomized? Did he get a refund? But Microsoft is pumping the brakes on the AI-based recall feature that was coming to Copilot Plus PCs, worst name ever, due to, quote, feedback on, quote, security concerns. Puts on Microsoft press release voice. Today, we are communicating an additional update on the recall preview feature for Copilot

plus PCs. Recall will now shift from a preview experience broadly available for Copilot plus PCs on June 18th to a preview available first in the Windows Insider program in the coming weeks, end quote. I tried recall for myself on the Microsoft Build show floor. It reminded me somewhat of Apple's time machine feature, but on steroids. It was super cool, but also a bit creepy slash concerning. What is strange to me about this announcement is they reference security as the reason for their hesitancy, but it seems that we technologists are far more concerned with the privacy implications.

Here's one particularly cynical take by HN user SegaSaturn, much better name, a take which I have a hard time completely disagreeing with. Quote, every major power broker wants something like recall to become the norm, bosses to spy on their employees, governments to spy on their citizens Quote, It's now time for Sponsored News. Strong, unique passwords for you and your team. Have you ever checked into one passwords developer tools they have so much great stuff you can push pull and sign your git commits secure your ssh keys authorize ssh connections with biometrics and manage it all from the OP command line tool. That's OP for 1Password, but also maybe overpowered? Kind of is. We use 1Password and we think you and your team should too. So here's a deal just for our listeners. Sign up at 1Password.com slash

changelogpod to double your free trial to 28 days versus the 14 days the plebs get. Once again, that's 1password.com slash changelogpod and thank you to 1Password for sponsoring Changelog News. 50 years of diff. Mike Hoy gives a big shout out to a piece of software so foundational to our work that we most likely take it for granted. Diff. Quote, I haven't seen anybody mentioning it or even noticing it. It's just the water we swim in now if we make software.

But this month marks the 50th anniversary of a core piece of free software technology that would quickly become a seminal piece of collaborative software, the bedrock under every version control system, and arguably the single most important piece of social software ever created, end quote. Hard to believe that diff predates merge by three years and patch by a decade. Mike goes on, my friend Greg Wilson has argued, and I absolutely believe that you can divide the entire computational universe into who has diff and patch and who doesn't. It's the seed crystal of all workable open collaboration and people living without it don't even have the language to recognize how bad they've got it. End quote. Happy 50th birthday, diff.

Chrome OS switching to the Android Linux kernel. Tom Hoelder writes for OS News, quote, Surprisingly, quietly, in the middle of Apple's WWDC, Google's Chrome OS team has made a rather massive announcement that seems to be staying a bit under the radar. Google is announcing today that it is replacing many of Chrome OS's current, relatively standard Linux-based subsystems with the comparable subsystems for Android, end quote. I've always thought it was odd, but very googly, that they funded two distinct variants of the

Linux kernel and its related subsystems. The work began with the Bluetooth stack, which now uses Android's Fluoride implementation, which now uses Android's Fluoride implementation, which is written in Rust and has a simpler architecture, according to the Goog. Once it's solid, they intend to split out this Bluetooth stuff into an open-source project named Project Floss and share it with the broader Linux ecosystem. Then later, fire the team that supports it. Okay, I made up that last part, but did I really though? How Alexa dropped the ball. Both Apple's Siri and Amazon's Alexa were poised to become top conversational AI systems, but somehow they let chat GPT and potentially a

wave of new startups steal the ball. In this post, Mahal Eric, who worked on Alexa from 2019 to 2021, tells the inside story on Alexa's failure. Quote, we had all the resources, talent, and momentum to become the unequivocal market leader in conversational AI, but most of that tech never saw the light of day and never received any noteworthy press. Why? The reality is Alexa AI was riddled with technical and bureaucratic problems, end quote. From their bad technical process, to the fragmented org structures, to a product science misalignment, this post shares the gory details from Mahal's perspective. He still thinks it's anyone's game, though, and he lays out how he'd organize a dialogue system effort from the ground up.

In brief, one, invest in robust developer infrastructure, especially around access to compute, data quality assurance, and streamlined data collection processes. Two, make LLMs the fundamental building block of the dialogue flows and 3. Ensure product timelines don't dictate science research timeframes. That's the news for now, but also scan the companion changelog newsletter for more stories, including a Macintosh for under 5 pounds, Elixir 1.17 shipping the first features of their new type system, my co-host Adam joining Oxide and friends, and more.

If you don't get the newsletter, pop in your email at changelog.com slash news and fix that bug. We have some great episodes coming up this week. Jacob DePriest talks securing GitHub with us on Wednesday, and our old friend Daniel Stenberg from Curl on Friday. Have a great week. Give us a five-star review if you dig the changelog and let's talk again real soon.