I so totally read this as "Hooli" on first reading.

Hilarious

Macromedia was a great company

Gell Mann amnesia hitting hard on this one.

Headline- > "Mamdani Hires Groundbreaking Computer Scientist as Chief Tech Officer" ...... "who is credited with helping create the technology behind GIFs, will be charged with improving New Yorkers’ digital access to essential"

"Ms. Gelobter, an entrepreneur, was also on the launch team for the streaming service Hulu and founded tEQuitable, a company that uses technology to make workplaces more equitable."

Im sure shes fine -- to be fair its a chief technologist for a city mayor. They don't really need to have heavy hitting credentials....

The job is 99% program management and 1% tech. It’s the government. Anyone focused on tech will burn out in 2 weeks and quit loudly via twitter. You know, like DOGE.

This made me laugh but then I remembered I'm on HN and you're probably serious.

CTO is typically an executive position, not an IC position.

The CTO at my $500m, YC, series-C startup is not the most technical member of the staff, does not have the broadest technical knowledge, is not the most experienced, nor is he the best in any single technical field in our team.

You misunderstand the role of the CTO in most orgs. His job is to guide technical strategy based on where business is headed. Manage staffing levels, general technical org operations, manage people, be the final arbiter on some org-level technical decisions based on business strategy alignment.

>Notably absent on resume and in the news article is proficiency in AI or machine learning,

You say that like it's a bad thing.

There's still time to add the /s

Unnecessarily being voted down. Post is adding some information. Doesnt violate any HN rules. cc @dang

Good?

Seems like she was there when Hulu was great and when Macromedia was great.

Why do you think she doesn't have an high-level knowledge of AI? Like what's a NN, a transformer, how they're trained? Anyone can pick that up over a weekend. She doesn't need to have experience training models or designing new architectures for this job.

EDIT - someone posted a link to her Wikipedia article (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_Gelobter), which states:

"Gelobter enrolled in Brown University in 1987, eventually graduating in 2011 with a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science with a concentration in artificial intelligence and machine learning."

I don’t have access to the article, so I’m basing this response solely on your comment. I wonder if the author thinks all animations on the web are called GIFs. So being part of creating one of the early methods of publishing animations on the web (Shockwave) confused the author.

̶N̶e̶t̶s̶c̶a̶p̶e̶ ̶a̶d̶d̶e̶d̶ ̶a̶n̶i̶m̶a̶t̶i̶o̶n̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶G̶I̶F̶s̶. Edit: Netscape added looping to animated GIFs per reply and GIF wikipedia page[^1]. She apparently led that effort. The press is misreporting her actions as having invented GIF in the first place, which is wrong. That happened at CompuServe in 1987.

[^1]: "By default, an animation displays the sequence of frames only once, stopping when the last frame is displayed. To enable an animation to loop, Netscape in the 1990s used the Application Extension block (intended to allow vendors to add application-specific information to the GIF file) to implement the Netscape Application Block (NAB)." which cites [^2].

[^2]: https://web.archive.org/web/19990418091037/http://www6.uniov...

The misinformation around this is ridiculous. There's a bunch of articles, written more recently than not, that all make some kind of unfounded claim that Shockwave lead to GIFs or GIF animation. One of them is the source for the line in the Wikipedia article that makes a similar claim. The Wikipedia doesn't even mention her working at Netscape ever either. Brutal.

You could say the same about a cfo, if the company does not use financial engineering, etc.

The CTO role is to be invisible to the business, and do that by ensuring that the tech org is working

If they've been invisible, they are doing their job right.

Non-animated though - there's a section on animated gifs coming out of Netscape in your link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIF#Animated_GIF

Huh?

And what has Mamdani lied about?

Interested to hear you cite some examples!

It's only interesting because 8 million people live there, and many more pass through the city

This population size is greater than most countries, and the density and speed of commerce there is fairly unique, so it's a constant coordination problem and experiment on a large scale that people look to.

Think of NYC more as one of the Free Cities in the old world.

They aren't a top level government by any means but they're mostly left alone to have nearly unilateral control of their jurisdiction. New York City has some unique challenges with key infrastructure (like all of the trains) being controlled by New York State and the Federal Government.

It varies by city. In some cities, mayor is barely more than a figurehead.

But regardless of power, what the NYC mayor does is widely reported and it's often a political stepping stone (if not always successful) to something greater.

Mamdani in particular is a celebrity right now, and with the reputation of the Democratic party in shambles, many eyes are on him.

NYC is a large city, consisting of 5 boroughs (divisions); each of which is larger in population than many US states. Its also the financial capital of the world. So just going by population alone, the NYC City Government represents more people than several state Governments. The economy of the city is also very high tech, high income etc. Although the Mayor does not have the same powers as Governor (e.g. they can't pass tax laws), he still has a lot of impact.

This is state by state, city by city. In some places, a mayor has broad powers over agencies, taxes, etc. That isn't quite the case in NYC. It's up to the state to delegate these powers, just as the federal government delegates powers to the states.

NYC is explicitly restricted (relative to other cities in NY) by the state in terms of what it can do. It can't independently pass its own tax laws (in many cases, at least), which other cities can, for example. Multiple agencies that would often be municipal are handled by the state or require state approval/ explicit delegation.

The city also gets exceptions for more power, including taxation powers. It's all case by case.

The NYC mayor's powers are complex for this reason. On the one hand, no one cares much about other mayors, so you have a ton of political power. On the other hand, you're not exactly empowered to do a lot without asking someone else to sign off.

NYC is a special case, because it’s at or near the center of the universe: the US financial hub, the center of theater, dominant in all entertainment media, the UN headquarters, the most important historical entry point for all immigrant groups, the most important city for book publishing, advertising, etc. It’s one of the five most important, powerful cities in the world. It has its own foreign policy and diplomatic relationships. Its mayors have frequently, and for many decades, been interviewed for their opinions on world affairs that would seem, at first glance, to have nothing to do with city government.

He has control over city agencies, budgets, personnel. Has little or no power as it relates to laws or infrastructure (like the MTA)--that's all state level.

As most people who have worked in engineering at large companies can attest, there are entrenched dinosaurs who have worked themselves up the management chain due to inertia. This is such an example. They are almost always out of their depth technically, and are great at taking credit for the work of others. There are people in this comments section, and online claiming she invented Adobe Shockwave.

This article claims she invented Adobe Shockwave while holding the title of "Director of Program Management".

https://www.govtech.com/workforce/tech-and-gif-pioneer-lisa-...

There are disparate sources online from Facebook and Instagram claiming she invented GIFs.

There are (incorrect) AI summaries when searching her name on Google that claim she invented Adobe Shockwave and GIFs.