Yodeller

Ever wondered why when they show previews of upcoming movies before that actual movie begins they are called trailers?

When these previews were originally introduced in 1913 they were actually shown after the film ended. After a while they however realized they weren't that effective promoting new upcoming movies as people tend to leave the theatre and not stick around to see the credits or the trailers. So they were moved to be shown before the actual movie begun. But the name stuck and that's why they are still called trailers in these days.

In the past there has also been movies that show bloopers from the making of the movie during, or after the end credits to keep the audience sitting a while longer. I don't know how effective those have been, but apparently that's still something the studios want.

The most effective method for that has probably been the recent invention that especially Marvel uses where they show some previews of their upcoming movies after the end credits. These post-credit scenes should hence be actually called trailers as they are pretty much what the term originally meant.

The winter arrived this year woth a bang. In the morning I was wondering how long did I sleep because it was not so dark outside. Opening the blinds (and checking the clock) revealed the truth: everything outside was covered with a few centimeters of snow.

It's a big difference. Last night I was driving in the rain and it was really dark even where there was street lights. The wet asphalt and ground really suck all that light. Now it's all white and the ground is almost like a mirror reflecting even the faintest light.

The downside is that it's just barely below zero degrees and the ground is still warm so the falling snow is quickly turning into slush making everything wet and dirty.

I doubt this first snow will remain on the ground until spring. It's usually back and forth between snow, slush and just wet darkness during this time of the year.

Being primarily remote makes my days more predictable. I live by the calendar and save the few urgent matters there aren't much of any ad hoc things happening during my workdays. Even if it's not meetings I tey to schedule my tasks in my calendar as well to keep on track of what I need to do. Reserving slots for important tasks also ensures I actually have time for those as otherwise people would see a free slot in my calendar and book a meeting there.

At the office it's quite different. Sure I do have meetings on those days as well, but I try to prioritize meetings that are face to face at the office for those days. Other than that it's all ad hoc things. Talking with people, catching up or helping them out. I feel like many of those things don't happen online. It rarely happens that somebody ask if I have a moment to talk with them when I'm at home. It's always calendar invites and people don't usually bother to book those for small things. Of course the smallest things can usually be dealt with via chat. But ot would be nice to have something in between as well.

The say there is no free lunch, but sometimes that's down to semantics. We often arrange team days for our teams together with customer including lunch a d sometimes even dinner.

As a team member that's pretty close to free meal as it gets. Sure you are required to show up, but mostly it's an extra thank you for doing your job. There is no other expectations from the regular team members in these events.

I'm also often invited to these gatherings, even if I'm not really a member of the team anymore. It's more of a show of appreciation towards the customer that our higher ups also meets the customers. It's also a great opportunity to discuss the customers future plans and chance to upsell them some new work.

Those responsibilities are pretty much listed in my job description. So whereas regular team members just participate to the lunch as a reward, being there for me is pretty much doing my job. Even though there are expectations from me when invited to join in this kind of events I'd still consider it as a free lunch for me as well.

The Open Source Initiative has released the official definition of open source AI. A lot of companies have been promoting their models as open source, but even before this official definition it was clear they were not in fact open.

Most of the released "open" model have been just the model. It's a good start and the most useful thing for most users. They don't really care about how to train their own model as long as they can use these "open" models freely for their needs.

But there are many benefits of having a truly open source AI. Even if you are not going to train one by yourself. The usage terms are just one thing. The most important thing, and what I'm glad OSI included in their definition is the requirement of the source data used to train the model must also be openly available.

There has been a lot of debate about the usage of source data that the big companies have been using to train their models. Including that to the official definition could be a big step forward considering that there are already many legislations that treat open source models differently and which the big corporations have been able to exploit due to the vague definition of what open means in the context of AI.