29 September 2022
14 September 2022
Evolution of Photography
Photography has been a dark art at times. These days anyone can pick up a camera and take a snap. Even deep fakes have enabled boundless forms of creativity. The dying art of professional photography is truely over for most photographers whose struggle for work is likely to grow even more and the evolution of digital photography is eclipsed by AI and Computer Vision. Computational photography apps will likely enable any individual to have the skills at their disposal within a few clicks of a button. An agent inspired photographic lens could also be an option. However, to this day the trickiest aspect of photography has been the embodiment of colors in imagery. At times, colors can transform themselves like deep below the ocean where red color is no longer visible. Capturing emotions and imagery in the stillness of time then looking at it decades later has been the very essence of preserving memories which is very efficient in terms of storage. Perhaps, quantum information may be explored through storage of data in images that could come alive as they are explored and processed through a virtual world.
Evolution of Acting
The old days of acting are long gone where one has to be present physically on set. The Covid period has challenged the way people work remotely across industries. It so happens that virtual, mixed, and augmented reality with AI will set the scene for a more cohesive and flexible work environment for actors. One should be able to join a virtual conference call and practice their scripts. And, where stunt doubles are required they could be superimposed with computer vision models. Actors should be able to virtually connect and run their scenes under a camera without leaving the comfort of their home. All that is then required is to embelish the acting with background ambience and to set the scene in motion which could be done using editing techniques. Voice overs could also be superimposed to enable crisper sound performances. The Metaverse may itself provide an alternative virtual environment for actors. Eventually, full repacement of human actors for AI agents will completely transform Hollywood and Bollywood. Multiagents acting in a situational scene environment like a virtualized form of puppetry. Affective Computing could set the scene for ambient emotions and sentiments. The end to human actors is in the mist.
2 September 2022
Women in IT
The reality of hiring for diversity is that one will have to work with people who are unqualified, ill-mannered, and unprofessional. Increasingly, there are stories abound about how it is difficult to work with women in IT. Women in workplace expect men to help them in every possible way, just because they are women. And, yet expect equal pay. More and more women are only interested in hiring women and exposing their biases. On other occasions they are rude, racist, and unprofessional to male colleagues. Women make bully bosses in workplace and they enjoy it. They even enjoy acting that way over other women. One can say that it is a touch an go. But, on most cases a woman can be a man's worst nightmare in the workplace. At times, one can even see women avoiding to talk to non-white colleagues completely to the extent that it starts affecting their work. There are cases where female interviewers just refuse to shake hands with candidates after the interview. Women harassing and abusing men and even women in workplace has been growing since diversity initiatives came into play. Manipulations through false allegations where even the use of CCTV as evidence is blocked. All this breathes toxicity and questionable ethical practices in the workplace. And, it is only going to get worse as women hide behind the victim card and play the differential gender disparity myth.
1 September 2022
Hypocritical Practices in IT Industry
There are many odd practices in IT industry that spell hypocrisy. The following highlight a few of these practices that are not applied in other roles.
- Interview Tests
- Silly Interview Puzzles
- Pair Programming
- Using Notebooks to build models that instil bad practices
- Using lots of ceremony in an Agile team
- TDD - Test-Driven Development (what other roles expect to derive test first before development?)
- Infinite Scrolling
- Gone Fishing pages
- Software Engineering Sweatshops and Xtreme Programming
- Using statistics to explain a process or method
- Using statistics to reason about a solution that itself is seeped in uncertainty
- Avoiding everyday commonsense logic in favor of statistics to derive practical solutions
- Using statistics to increase the complexity of a solution rather than working towards simpler solution that reduces uncertainty
- Calling something deep when deep down it is just statistics
- Using statistics to build everyday things that even humans don't use statistics for
- Using all the wrong methods that a university degree teaches one not to use
- Rejecting qualified candidates in favor of unqualified Phd candidates who don't even have a formal or practical IT background
- White, black and gray hacking where they all use the zero sense of discipline of hacking
- Using racist jargon like blacklists and whitelists
Why Recruitment Tests Are Pointless
- When you hire an accountant do you test them first with sample accounts?
- When you hire a lawyer do you test them first with a sample case?
- When you hire a construction team to build you a house do test them first with a sample house?
- When you hire a plumber do you test them first with a sample water leak?
- When you hire a carpenter do you test them first with a sample woodwork?
- When you hire a bricklayer do you test them first with a sample brickwork?
- When you hire a mechanic do you test them first with a sample car fault?
- When you hire a ceo do you test them first with a sample business?
- When you hire a gardener do you test them first with a sample garden?
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Why test candidates in IT??!!
Employers should be asked to pay candidates if they want to test them. Some hypocritical practices are simply weird in IT field.