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Phillipharryt

535 karma · joined December 20, 2015

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Phillipharryt··on Language models as compilers: Simulating pseudocode execution
Correct me if I'm wrong here, but I am under the impression they're only non-deterministic in the practical sense (i.e, it produces this output on my machine, I can't know what minute differences there are on your machine), but that's not non-deterministic in the truest sense. If you have completely identical inputs you will get the exact same output, ergo, deterministic.
Phillipharryt··on Are Product Hunt's featured products still online today?
You said ' “Funding raised” is completely uncorrelated with how successful the company is. ' I showed you this statement is wrong, by providing you a statistic that proves they are correlated. We were not talking about any specific case, I don't know why you've opened with that. The coin flip statement is true but also completely unrelated to our discussion.
Phillipharryt··on Are Product Hunt's featured products still online today?
This is just patently untrue. The failure rate of ventue-backed startups is 75%. The failure rate of all startups is 90%. Funding is correlated with a lower failure rate.

https://www.failory.com/blog/startup-failure-rate

Phillipharryt··on IBM’s Watson Health is sold off in parts
From the paper Deep Blue by Murray Campbell et al (people who worked on Deep Blue) "The initialization of the feature values is done by the “evaluation function generator”, a sub-program which was run on the master node of SP system." Which would suggest it generated the heuristic itself. The features may have been hardcoded, but assigning values to them wasn't. In addition to this, feature values could be static or dynamic, meaning it would update dynamic ones depending on the board state. It not only generated the heuristic values (feature values) it could modify them to reflect their relative change in impact throughout the game.
Phillipharryt··on IBM’s Watson Health is sold off in parts
That is a form of machine learning. It uses an algorithm with an enormous ability to look ahead, and selects the moves according to a heuristic that have been shown previously to be most likely to create the desired end state.

Chess is not a solved game from the starting state, so it has to make assumptions based on the data it has. This is machine learning. Please don't make such definite statements. You even say it in your own comment "selects the best possible true of outcomes", how do you think it selects this? It uses heuristics to assign values to different board states, and in the case of Deep Blue these values were created through previous game analysis. If a knight to c2 on turn 8 is rarely seen in the same game as a winning board state, then this is valued lower. Looking through the tree wasn't the ML part, but knowing how to pick the best node on the tree was. Deep Blue is ML.

Phillipharryt··on Analog computers were the most powerful computers for thousands of years [video]
I certainly agree with the idea of not being better in an absolute sense, not sure I agree with both use cases. Graphics are built around digital representations of colours and shapes, Vectors are incredibly easy ways to represent 2d graphics, and are very easy to manipulate for digital computers. Polygons were quickly discovered as a memory efficient way of doing the same things in the 3d space. Analogue graphics representation or manipulation became outdated very quickly. For example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wxc3mKqKTk&ab_channel=VICET... shows how much old analogue machinery is required to replicate what could currently be done by most phones. I don't know enough about your other possible use case to comment on it.
Phillipharryt··on Analog computers were the most powerful computers for thousands of years [video]
Doesn't the inclusion of the digital accuracy checkers then decrease the efficiency, and mean you might as well use a completely digital computer? Just supposing here, but interfacing digital with analogue probably is a poor middle ground between the versatility and ubiquity of purely digital computers (countless existing systems exist to do whatever you want, with optimised algorithms and chips to work with) and purely analogue (presumably gain efficiency advantage by not having to cater to versatile use-cases).
Phillipharryt··on Analog computers were the most powerful computers for thousands of years [video]
Very interested to watch the second part to this video, off the top of my head I can't come up with a situation in which analogue computation or signals are better than digital ones. Digital's versatility means we are making 2 signals represent an infinite number of other possible values, so there is certainly an inefficiency there, but the analogue signal's propensity to degradation and uncertainty is another hurdle I would find hard to overcome and produce a better computer with.
Phillipharryt··on SEC Set to Allow Bitcoin Futures ETFs
There are many options backed ETFs, these are essentially tracking the right to buy x product at y price. Sure if you trace it down long enough there is an asset there, but realistically you're buying an ETF tracking a number of contracts. The ETFs tracking oil futures aren't going to cash in on these options and collect the oil, so the assets are never going to change hands. They'll sell them at a determined date. Making them essentially contract ETFS. Is a contract for a good you're never going to buy in any other way more 'imaginary' than an electronic currency when compared to hard assets? I guess that's up to the consumer to decide.
Phillipharryt··on America has a drinking problem
Saying Australian culture demonise alcohol is a laughable claim. Australian summers are about BBQs and beers on the beach.
Phillipharryt··on America has a drinking problem
Australia allows drinking in parks unless it's a designated no-drinking area (usually any area outside an alcohol store). That being said different states in Aus handle alcohol differently and some are very strict. The major states of NSW and Vic are pretty chill though.
Phillipharryt··on Truly unified inbox – BlackBerry got it right and nobody has since
Sadly phone companies cannot exist in a vacuum. In the book "Losing the Signal" there's great evidence that Blackberry faced far more pressure than merely losing market-share. Their push-based email service (the back end) previously existed as the only of its kind for phones, then Microsoft updated their version in 2006 so all other phones could have it. Blackberry lost a key differentiator.

Then there was Verizon pushing them to release phones that would work well on their new 4G networks, while Blackberrys were being optimised for 2.5G as one of their CEOs was determined to preserve the selling point of great battery life.

The companies they relied on were not letting them fall into a niche product-producer role. They would have been pushed out of the market, not even by their competitors, by their partners.

Phillipharryt··on Apple buys a company every three to four weeks
In economic theory there is no benefit to diversification (which is what a company does when it absorbs another company) unless there are organisational improvements shared between the companies. If the acquired company is truly completely unrelated there would be no benefit at all as Apple isn't able to improve the running of an unrelated company. Being bought out by Apple might be a nice outcome for any company's shareholders (as they might get a premium on the their share prices), but technically there would be no improvement to the business in terms of expected revenue.
Phillipharryt··on Ask HN: Why are there no open source 2d printers?
The issue is then speed, you can't engrave at anywhere near the same speed as you can print.
Phillipharryt··on Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums 2003 vs. 2012 vs. 2020
Though funnily enough named after the same Muddy Waters track
Phillipharryt··on Amazon demands we correct an article refering to an Echo as a “microphone”
They have chips in them only looking to match the activation words, which then passes the rest of the request functionality to the full device.
Phillipharryt··on Robinhood Has Gamified Online Trading into an Addiction
You do have to laugh a bit when someone starts their article on addiction by claiming their own addictions have been a net positive on their life, self awareness? What's that?
Phillipharryt··on CashRegister in PyQt5 with barcode logon and 32 programmable buttons
I fully understand that, I also imagine it's really harsh to release something like this then get feedback like mine, so if you want you can send me any messages about things I like and dislike about the system I currently work with if you want any suggestions for your system.

Edit: honestly I think my first message is a bit mean, I wish I could retract it because working hard on a project this only to be met by that is really shitty. But I wanted to highlight that knowing the use cases for your project is really important. I really believe with a few UI changes this could be comparable to the software I currently use, having that as open source would be awesome.

Phillipharryt··on CashRegister in PyQt5 with barcode logon and 32 programmable buttons
Programmer who also works in retail, uh no, this layout highlights all the wrong things. The list of items is half the screen, my current system has it at about 1/4 and buttons are enormous, very easy to use and rarely ever miss a button or hit the wrong one, this looks like that will happen all the time. Also we have a lot of colour in buttons that relate to use (payment buttons red, department buttons green, account buttons yellow), this has grey and grey and grey. It might work but I pity anyone using this system. I think with some more UI considerations for the actual use cases (what do register users need the item barcode for? I might enter it but once the item name pops up I don't need it taking up my screen) this could get good. I also don't need whitespace between buttons, have them as big as you can.
Phillipharryt··on Lemonade files S1
Oh but you haven't heard of the 'Equitable Life Assurance Society'. Not just an organisation but a proper business until the 21st century.

Originally the "Society for Equitable Assurances on Lives and Survivorships", but obviously that wasn't hip enough to survive past the 19th century.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Equitable_Life_Assurance_S...

Phillipharryt··on Lemonade files S1
Decision trees are a type of Machine Learning, no need for the quotation marks.
Phillipharryt··on Jitsi Meet: An open source alternative to Zoom
Adobe is a an English word though. More people are probably now aware of the software than the bricks, but it has a root there.
Phillipharryt··on Beer distribution game
A small movement at the handle of a bullwhip produces an enormous (and oscillating) movement further down the the whip, it's an analogy for movements in customer demand having large effects further down the supply chain.
Phillipharryt··on Trading halted as U.S. stocks plummet
There are actions that stop people behaving in a way they would in a perfect market. Laws prohibiting certain sales, taxes affecting companies and investors, imperfect information disclosure, are a few of the big ones.
Phillipharryt··on Ask HN: Is RSS dead?
I'm in the strong belief if your podcast doesn't have a public feed (even if it's paywalled) and it's only on spotify then it's not a podcast, it's a very long unmelodic song. The feed is essential.
Phillipharryt··on British billionaire Hohn launches campaign to starve coal plants of finance
There are a lot of protests to decrease coal mining
Phillipharryt··on Morgan Stanley to Buy E-Trade for $13B
Company valuation only depends on future cash flows. If an asset is able to produce future cash flows, or can be sold to create cash flows, then this can be accounted for in valuation. In this article their mention of assets is actually assets under management (Link at end of comment). Assets under management still only factor in valuation based on their ability to generate future cash flows, as E-Trade have no claim to those assets. These cash flows have been taken into account, and then used to evaluate a $13 billion price tag. Elsewhere in the thread you can see how money is made from assets under management.

(https://www.brokerage-review.com/investing-firm/assets-under...)

Phillipharryt··on Kickstarter employees vote to unionize
Presumably a maximum pay is set with the intention of allowing that money to go elsewhere in the sport? The NBA knows stars will get paid very well, but they want to ensure not all the money is spent on them so that lesser known players are fairly compensated as well. It seems a smart idea especially because an instituted max is still allowing stars to be paid 8 figures a year.
Phillipharryt··on What DoorDash pays, after expenses, and what’s happening with tips
Their sampling is biased, but DoorDash muddies their own claims by saying that pay is per "active hour". It's possible they're not counting time that drivers still need to allocate towards their work, making it inaccurate. I imagine you at least have to spend time pulled over to look at and accept an order (or break the law) so even that time getting in and out of traffic is probably not counted in "active hours". Imagine working retail and your employer only counting your time actually spent at the till when they say you're paid $20 an hour. You could be doing a whole lot more work than that but they don't consider it in that calculation.
Phillipharryt··on Railroad Grade Pocket Watches
This is some of the strangest logic ever. It will be more accurate because it's less accurate and will be checked more often? Bonkers
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