TBH this is looking more like an acqui-hire (Im sure they don't want the key people of Statsig to go away....), similar to Windsurf. Consider the fact that the CEO of Apps at OAI worked closely with the CEO of Statsig at Meta.
It's interesting that he signs off with "So long, and thanks for all the fish," which is a quote from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy:
Just before the Vogons demolish Earth to make way for a hyperspace bypass, the dolphins, knowing what’s coming, leave the planet and their farewell message is “So long, and thanks for all the fish.”
Yes. I've also used this when leaving a job, albeit with a slight modification since the job did not provide fish. I suppose you could read it with the subtext that the dolphins are saying "see ya suckers" but I think it's more appropriate to read it as the dolphins actually saying "thank you" even though things didn't entirely work out.
One of my reports was a hardcore HHGG fan, including carrying a towel on towel day. He signed off with the "so long and thanks for all the fish", and I don't think anyone read anything negative into this.
In fact, while that was some years ago, it was a tight-knit team and we still meet up for dinner with the original team members about 2-3x a year :)
I had a coworker say this when quitting. Most people that knew the reference interpreted it in a negative way. I would not recommend using it because of how ambiguous it is
tbh I had never thought carefully about it until now. I always got excited hearing it from other people thinking "Oh another person who likes Douglas Adam's book!"
I'm kind of glad I read this thread though, I can see why it could stress people out.
If I remember correctly, the dolphins had tried to warn humanity without success and eventually gave up and left, so the “see ya suckers” reading doesn’t quite track.
Vogsphere is the home planet of the Vogons, and features an especially fascinating type of flora that can read one’s thoughts, and anytime it detects an original thought, it jumps out of the ground and swiftly smacks said thinker square in the face. It’s a world that punishes novelty and intelligence.
My home wifi network has been named Vogsphere for some time now…
well, the rest of it, at least from the BBC TV series:
so long and thanks for all the fish, so sad that it should come to this, the world's about to be destroyed, there's no point getting all annoyed, lie back and let the planet dissolve
He is probably just trying to sound cool after years of being an "AI" apparatchik. GitHub stole our code under the pretense of "democratizing" software development (while people in poor countries cannot afford the plagiarism machine).
The reference likely hints at GitHub's transformation under Microsoft - the dolphins (Thomas and team) foresaw changes coming (AI integration and corporate direction) and are gracefully departing before the "demolition" of what GitHub originally stood for.
I've been doing this for years with my meetings and I wish Google Calendar had it built in. I have to keep manually adjusting start times and it's a pain.
Oh man, I got excited to use this with our kids, but then saw that it requires a " mobile device management (MDM) solution and Managed Apple IDs." I hope they consider the family use case in the future.
In this size class, Chromebooks and ChromeOS tablets could be a better fit.
Perhaps Samsung's tablet could be more polish, but for many use cases Chrome OS is more flexible and will "just work". And to the subject at hand, user switching is pretty decent, all the more so if you keep nothing local.
Is it actually balanced? With huge documents like these, the tendency is to add in artificial balance to placate various government factions, interest groups, etc. Often the document still has a preferred view that you can distill once you brush aside the filler.
Edit: just read the foreword (what would be called the “executive summary” in an American document). Seems like the Twitter thread describes that pretty well. And since the document authors know that the foreword is what most of the readers will read, that’s pretty indicative of their views.
Love seeing more innovation in this space! I know Oleg (former Webflow eng) has been working on https://webstudio.is for a while; also open-source and visual editing for React apps. How does Onlook compare?
Webstudio is very good! I didn't know it produces React.
Onlook has less abstraction between code and the visual editor. It works with your existing React codebase with no migration. Everything is written into code in real-time so you wouldn't import or export the code from Onlook. You can use it anytime and stop anytime like an IDE.
Does this make sense? I'd love to hear Oleg's thoughts on this as well :)
We are generating React/Remix app atm, but our architecture is designed to support other frameworks as well.
It is achieved by using data as a source of truth, not the code. Web tooling is very fragmented. People have too many opinions on how to write components and that makes it nearly impossible to have components written by hand and then synced back into the UI without enforcing a huge amount of constraints. You will end up writing code in such a way that the UI can handle.
I'm a fan of the Red Hat font family, i.e. Red Hat Display, Red Hat Text, and Red Hat Mono. They are available via CDNs, font providers, and directly from Red Hat:
To be fair, the person could still use Google Fonts, but just download the font and host it themselves. The font licenses allow this.
You get the upsides of being able to pick a nice font from Google Fonts while not having the downside of tracking. It also helps with caching! And also prevents the font from disappearing for no reason.
