Never take notes again with the #1 AI Meeting AssistantProduct Manager - AI$120K - $145KLocationUS / AU / Remote (US; AU)ExperienceAny (new grads ok)Apply to Fathom and hundreds of other fast-growing YC startups with a single profile.Apply to role ›About the roleAbout Fathom: We think it’s insane that so many people and businesses rely on notes to remember and share insights from their meetings. Notes are time-consuming and stressful to create while trying to hold a conversation. Even when done well, notes are a poor solution compared to hearing something first-hand. We started Fathom to rid us all of the tyranny of note-taking, and people seem to really love what we've built so far: 🥇 #1 Highest Satisfaction Product of 2024 on G2 🔥 #1 Rated on G2 with 1,900+ reviews and a perfect 5/5 rating 🥇 #1 Product of the Day and #2 AI Product of the Year 🚀 Most installed AI meeting assistant on both the Zoom and HubSpot marketplaces 📈 **We’re hitting usage and **revenue records every week We're growing incredibly quickly, so we're looking to grow our small but mighty team. Role Overview: As an AI Technical Product Manager at Fathom, you'll be hands-on with LLMs, prototyping and refining our features. Your work will directly shape our product by generating practical specifications that steer our engineering team towards impactful updates and novel capabilities. This role is open to the US only, with a time zone preference for the West coast. What you’ll do: By 30 Days, you will have Upgraded existing features to be smarter and/or faster by combining your prompt engineering experience with the latest available models. Improved or created new evaluations for our existing features. By 90 Days, you will have Prototyped new AI features that address valuable use cases. Fine-tuned models for our specific needs. Developed new processes to speed-up how we migrate to new AI models. Show off in your application! (Important) When applying, include a quick demo of something you made with LLMs that you’re really excited about. It should showcase your fit for the role. Include it in any form you’d like (such as a a link to a short video or a repo). Requirements: Hard Skills: At least hobbyist experience with prompt engineering – able to prompt LLMs to achieve outstanding and reliable outcomes. Proficient in Python and able to hack together end-to-end prototypes. Foundational analytics (able to manipulate data in Python or SQL). Soft Skills: Attention to detail, and a high level of scrutiny for impactful applications of LLMs. Curiosity-driven and pragmatic with a focus on delivering results. A generalist mindset with the ability to dive deep into a wide range of challenges. Resilience and an ability to grind through complex problems. Openness to disagreement and commitment to decisions once made. Strong collaborative skills, with the ability to explain complex insights in an accessible manner to both technical and non-technical a...

aka “Github Actions for Fun and Profit!”Jackson Component DependenciesJackson project consists of over 30 distinct components: there components depend on each other in a layered fashion, forming a dependency tree.Most well-known are the three “core” components:jackson-core: Low-level reading and writing of JSON as token streams (and basic API for other(non-JSON) format modules): defines types like JsonParser, JsonGenerator, JsonFactoryjackson-databind: Functionality for reading/writing Java Objects and JSON Tree (JsonNode) from/to token streams; builds on jackson-core (deserializers operate on JsonParsers and serializers on JsonGenerators). Best-known type is ObjectMapperjackson-annotations: Annotations used to configure aspects of jackson-databind (like matching names in JSON to Java class property names)Core components have simple dependencies:jackson-core and jackson-annotations do not depend on any external package (Jackson or otherwise)jackson-databind depends on both jackson-core and jackson-annotationsBut there are also many extension modules:Dataformat modules like jackson-datatype-xml that implement support for other formats, exposed through streaming APIs (JsonParser, JsonGenerator, JsonFactory subtypes) to work with format-agnostic databind (ObjectMapper)Datatype modules like jackson-datatype-joda that add JSON (and other supported format) read/write on 3rd party types so that you can — for example — read and write ImmutableList<LocalDateTime> values from/to YAML (by registering Joda and Guava datatype modules and using XmlMapper from jackson-dataformat-xml module)JAX-RS/Jakarta-RS providers for Jersey, RESTeasy for integrating Jackson into web-service frameworksJVM language support (jackson-module-kotlin, jackson-module-scala) for Kotlin/Scala types (and notations)Misc other modules from JAXB annotation module to Afterburner optimizer moduleall of which depend on some or all of core components (data formats mostly on jackson-core and datatypes on jackson-databind, for example).So we have a (subset of a) dependency tree like:where dependencies are depicted by arrows from dependent packages to their dependencies: jackson-databind depends on jackson-core, jackson-datatype-joda depends on jackson-databind and so on.Jackson Github Repository Structure (multi-repo)Unlike some other projects that use so-called mono-repo structure (a single Github repository for all components of a library or framework), Jackson components are split across multiple Github repos — some in a repo of their own (like all 3 core components), others bundled together (like jackson-dataformats-binary which contains format modules for Avro, CBOR, Ion, Protobuf and Smile formats) in a multi-module repo.We can call this a multi-repo setup.All Jackson Github repos have Continuous Integration (CI) workflows implemented using Github Actions, to build and test (for all branches and PRs) components, and to publish SNAPSHOT versions of code pushed to branches. T...

Fur & Loathing | Project BrazenDead Man Running | BBC Sounds/BBC ScotlandAbout the Boys (BBC Radio 4) | BBC Sounds Vanessa Feltz | LBCYet more new investigative podcasts last week. First up, Fur & Loathing from Nicky Woolf, an excellent internet-and-beyond journalist, whose previous series tracked down both the likely Q from QAnon and the sound of the Havana syndrome. This time, he’s looking at something that initially seems a little dafter. Fur & Loathing’s starting point is a 2014 convention of furries, in Rosemont, Illinois. Furries are people who like to dress in cartoony animal costumes – a bit like mascots at sports matches. A particularly cute penchant; the furry community is larger than you might imagine. Anyway, back in 2014, on the final night of the Midwest FurFest convention, everyone was having a lovely time, drinking, dancing and socialising, when they became aware of a terrible chlorine smell. Properly strong stuff that burned their eyes and throats. Someone had let off deadly chlorine gas inside the hotel hosting the convention. Nineteen people were hospitalised, but nobody was charged.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTen years on, Woolf is clever enough to acknowledge the dichotomy at the heart of this story. This was a major chemical weapons attack, but because the people affected were wearing funny costumes, it’s never really been taken seriously. “Nobody died, all’s well that ends well, it’s probably just a prank, anyway, it’s just those weird furries being weird,” is how he summarises it. And there definitely is an innate silliness to the case, which the podcast itself makes use of in its title and with an upbeat soundtrack. But Woolf being Woolf, there’s also some proper in-depth investigation here. He teams up with Patch, a furry news blogger who’s been on the case for years, and they start unpicking all the original federal investigation’s mistakes. Because, yes, the costumes are funny, but this is big stuff. The 2014 FurFest attack was the biggest chemical weapons attack on US soil in 50 years. And those costumes don’t offer much protection. A strangely gripping show that uncovers more than you might imagine (and, no, that’s not a furry joke).The second investigative show is hosted by Myles Bonnar, who won a deserved gold for best news coverage at the Arias last week for the excellent series Shiny Bob. His new podcast, Dead Man Running, kicks off in 2019, when a Scottish man disappears while swimming off the California coast at Monastery Beach in Carmel. A huge rescue operation is put in place… until a few days later, when it’s revealed that not only does the swimming story fail to hold up, but the same man is wanted for serious sexual offences. The rescue turns into a manhunt.Catherine Carr talks to teenagers in About the Boys on BBC Radio 4. Photograph: Shafiullah Kakar/AFP/Getty ImagesDead Man Running is a good show, but less appealing than Fur & Loathing, simply b...

Susie Alegre is an international human rights lawyer and author, originally from the Isle of Man, whose focus in recent years has been on technology and its impact on human rights. As a legal expert she has advised Amnesty International, the UN and other organisations on issues such as counter-terrorism and anti-corruption. Her first book, Freedom to Think, published in 2022 and shortlisted for the Christopher Bland prize, looked at the history of legal freedoms around thought. In her new book Human Rights, Robot Wrongs, she turns her attention to the ways in which AI threatens our rights in areas such as war, sex and creativity – and what we might do to fight back.What prompted you to write this book?There were two triggers. One was the sudden explosion of ChatGPT and the narrative about how everyone can be a novelist now and there’s going to be no need for human creators, because AI will be able to do it all for us. It felt utterly depressing. The second was the story about a Belgian man who took his own life after a six-week intensive relationship with an AI chatbot. His widow felt that, without this relationship, which distorted his worldview, he would have still been there for her and for his children. That triggered me to think – well, this is absolutely about the right to life; to family life, to freedom of thought and freedom from manipulation. And how are we thinking about AI and the really severe ways that it’s impacting our human rights?You don’t give much credence to the threat of an AI apocalypse.I think that’s a distraction. What we need to be worried about is putting limits on how AI can be developed, sold and used by people. And ultimately, there are people behind the technology, in the design phase and particularly in the marketing, and also in the choices that are being made about how it’s used.Everything we’re hearing about AI suggests that it’s advancing at incredible speed, and that the models operate at levels of complexity that even their creators can’t grasp. How can regulators ever hope to keep up?I think there’s an awful lot of smoke and mirrors. It’s like in The Wizard of Oz, when Toto pulls back the curtain and we see what’s going on behind. So we don’t need to believe that it’s all inevitable and omnipotent. We can still make choices and ask questions. Also, if something is so complex that it can’t be explained, then there are certain areas where it shouldn’t be used.Do you think the existing legal systems and human rights charters are up to the task of dealing with AI, or do we need to create a new framework?I don’t think we need a new framework, but what we really need is access to justice. There may well be certain legal avenues that need to be developed. But one of the really fundamental challenges is, how do you push back? How do you enforce regulation? And that’s what we’ve seen in relation to some big tech companies: their activities are found to be unlawful, they’re is...

Where to start with the Mackintosh building of the Glasgow School of Art? With its fearless originality? With its ability to run many gamuts – dark, light, massive, intimate, crafted, industrial, refined, rough, its spaces long, narrow, high and wide, its conversion of Glaswegian manufacturing wealth into a hilltop castle of art of Scottish baronial might and Japanese-inspired delicacy? Its handling of the things that make architecture beautiful – materials, proportion, detail, ornament, structure, light, contrast – was consummate. It worked magic with stone, iron, oak, stained glass and bent tin, enamel and electric lights, with engineering borrowed from shipyards and with skinny tendrils of plant-like ornament that teetered on the edge of kitsch. It had the nerve to be completely different on every elevation, confident that it would cohere by force of the imagination.It was designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh, who was 29 when he started work on it, and built in two phases from 1897 to 1899 and 1907 to 1909. There has never been another building like it, in Scotland or indeed the United Kingdom, for combining invention with impact, for leading rather than following international architecture. Unlike many of our historic monuments, it still performed the purpose for which it was designed: it combined exquisite craftsmanship with plain boarding on its studios’ walls that could take the battering that art students would inflict on it. It was, as Brad Pitt told the BBC, “an artistic building where art is made and art is learned”. In Peter Capaldi’s words it was “an exotic place of the imagination… a part of me, and of all Glaswegians.”The first fire, in 2014. Photograph: Robert Perry/EPAIt was all these things, until fires in 2014 and 2018 wiped out its interiors, first partly and then (as repairs from the first fire were nearing completion) totally, a double tap of disheartening brutality. Despite a three-and-a-half-year investigation by the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service, the cause of the second fire is not known; an electrical fault on the construction site is one possible culprit.Timber, plaster, glass and metalwork, apart from a few fragments, were scorched away. What stands now, wrapped and temporarily roofed and stabilised with vast amounts of scaffolding, is the masonry shell, cavernous and impressive, saved by the heroic efforts of engineers, contractors and staff, in the days and weeks after the second fire. There should be no doubt that, like the cathedral of Notre Dame, the Teatro La Fenice in Venice (rebuilt after a fire in 1996) and, one hopes, the Copenhagen Stock Exchange, which partially burned down last month, it should be reconstructed to its original designs. This is not an elitist position. Consultations with the local community, say the school, found overwhelming support for rebuilding.This should not be a fuzzy, will-this-do, approximate sort of job. “A value-for-money, market-friendly, project-manage...

When digital computers were invented, the first task was to instruct them to do what we wanted. The problem was that the machines didn’t understand English – they only knew ones and zeros. You could program them with long sequences of these two digits and if you got the sequence right then the machines would do what you wanted. But life’s too short for composing infinite strings of ones and zeros, so we began designing programming languages that allowed us to express our wishes in a human-readable form that could then be translated (by a piece of software called a “compiler”) into terms that machines could understand and obey.Over the next 60 years or so, these programming languages – with names such as Fortran, Basic, Algol, COBOL, PL/1, LISP, C, C++, Python – proliferated like rabbits, so that there are now many hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of them. At any rate, it takes quite a while to scroll down to the end of the Wikipedia page that lists them. Some are very specialised, others more general, and over the years programmers created libraries of snippets of code (called subroutines) for common tasks – searching and sorting, for example – that you could incorporate when writing a particular program.For more than half a century, therefore, an arcane, exclusive priesthood evolved, of people who had mastered one or more of these specialised languages and were able to make computers do their bidding. Membership of the priesthood gave one an intoxicating feeling of absolute power. In software, remember, you can program a set of pixels to move endlessly in a circle, say, and they will continue to do that for ever if you leave them to it. They need neither fuel nor food, and they will never complain. “In that sense,” I once wrote when writing a history of this technology, “being a programmer is like being Napoleon before the retreat from Moscow. Software is the only medium in which the limits are exclusively those set by your imagination.”This is why, when large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT emerged, many people were flabbergasted to discover that not only could these machines compose coherent English sentences, but they could also write computer programs! Instead of having to master the byzantine intricacies of C++ or Python in order to converse with the machine, you could explain what you wanted it to do and it would spit out the necessary code. You could program the machine in plain English!How was this possible? Essentially because, in its training phase, the machine has ingested a lot of published computer code – just as it has also ingested virtually every examination paper that has ever been published. And although the computer code that it produces often has flaws in it, they can often be ironed out in successive iterations. The technology is already pretty good, which is why programmers have been early adopters of it as a kind of “co-pilot”. And it will get steadily better.So are we seeing the twi...

A Chinese citizen journalist who has been in prison for four years after reporting on the early days of the Covid-19 epidemic in Wuhan is due to be released on Monday.Zhang Zhan, a former lawyer, travelled to Wuhan in February 2020 to document the Chinese government’s response to what became the start of a global pandemic. She shared her reports on X (then known as Twitter), YouTube and WeChat. She was one of the few independent Chinese reporters on the ground as Wuhan and the rest of China went into lockdown.In one video, recorded in February 2020, Zhang said: “I can’t find anything to say except that the city is paralysed because everything is under cover. That’s what this country is facing now … They imprison us in the name of pandemic prevention and restrict our freedom. We must not talk to strangers, it’s dangerous. So without the truth, everything is meaningless. If we cannot get to the truth, if we cannot break the monopoly of the truth, the world means nothing to us.”In another video, she showed a hospital that was overflowing with patients on trolleys in the hallway.Zhang was arrested in May 2020 and later sentenced to four years in prison for “picking quarrels and provoking trouble”, a charge often used against activists. She has been held in Shanghai women’s prison ever since.During her time in prison, Zhang, who turned 40 in September, has engaged in periodic hunger strikes to protest against her conviction and treatment. One of her former lawyers, who has since been struck off, said that when he saw her in the winter of 2020 she was very thin, had a tube up her nose for force feeding, and had her hands tied, so that she could not pull out the tube. “People asked me to convince Zhang Zhan to eat something, but she insisted,” the lawyer said.Her weight reportedly dropped from 11st 8lb (74.8kg) to less than 6st 4lb (40.8kg) at one point, although she is thought to have been in better health in recent months.Zhang’s former lawyer said that her case was treated “particularly harshly”. “The judge said that her crime was going to Wuhan to do interviews and investigations. But in fact, what the judge didn’t like was that she collected those materials and put them on Twitter … and received interviews from so-called enemy media,” said the lawyer, referring to publications such as the US government-funded Radio Free Asia.Maya Wang, the associate Asia director at Human Rights Watch, said: “It’s a relief to know that Zhang is being released, given her very poor health in prison, but she shouldn’t have been imprisoned in the first place. Her imprisonment should remind us all that the Chinese government is yet to be held accountable for covering up the Covid-19 outbreak, or for the abuses associated with its draconian pandemic restrictions.”Wang said that there were fears that Zhang would not fully regain her freedom after release.Zhang’s former lawyer said that there were likely two outcomes after he...

When Barack and Michelle Obama visited Ireland in 2011 they drank Guinness, visited the birthplace of the president’s great-great-great-grandfather and made pitch-perfect jokes and speeches. The reception was rapturous.Their current foray into Irish culture is proving more divisive. The Obamas are not here in person but as executive producers of a comedy drama series, Bodkin, set in Ireland, which launched this week on Netflix. Reviews have been polarising.“Yet another entry in the worst genre ever – the Irish rural picaresque where booze flows, nuns scowl,” said the Irish Times. “A deeply annoying show that thinks it is critiquing cliches about Ireland when actively adding to the stockpile. Let’s ignore it and hope it goes away.”It was an eviscerating verdict on the first foray into scripted television by the Obamas’ production company Higher Ground, which signed a deal with Netflix in 2018.The seven-part series features American true-crime podcasters – and a rude, cantankerous Guardian reporter – who travel to the fictional Cork village of Bodkin to investigate ritualised folk horror killings. Starring Will Forte, Siobhán Cullen and Robyn Cara, its whimsical style has drawn comparisons to Only Murders in the Building.The Irish Times credited the former first couple with good intentions. “In keeping with the thoughtful and socially conscious Obama brand, it sets out to critique our obsession with true crime podcasts and to have fun with Americans and their misty-eyed vision of Ireland.”Bodkin trailerBut the show had recreated Father Ted without the jokes or self-awareness, it said. “If the locals in Bodkin are gradually revealed to be putting on a sly act in front of the naive American, the series nonetheless plumbs the depths of diddly dee twaddle.”The panning, albeit for a show he did not write, was a far cry from 2011 when Obama delighted audiences with a joke skewering American quests for Irish roots: “My name is Barack O’Bama and I’ve come home to Ireland to find my missing apostrophe.”The Irish Independent review started with a warning. “We know from bitter experience what the result can be when Netflix rubs up against rural Ireland: dross like Irish Wish [an Ireland-set romantic comedy]. At first sight, Bodkin looks like it might be about to plummet into the same dark pit of paddywhackery.”A west Cork coastal town with a funny-sounding name populated by folksy eccentrics augured poorly, it said. “If this isn’t enough to set your Oirish bullshit-detecting antennae twitching, then the fact that the animated opening titles feature a pint of Guinness, a nun and a St Brigid’s Cross should be.”The review then swerved. “But wait — don’t run away, because Bodkin is not what you might have feared. It’s clever, funny and properly gripping stuff: a deliciously offbeat concoction of the (intentionally) silly and the sinister that delights in setting up more shamrock-laden cliches than you can s...