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_5659

2 karma · joined January 13, 2022

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_5659··on Dropping in on Gottfried Leibniz (2013)
"omnibus ex nihilo ducendis" Everything can be derived from nothing.

A side note, from some discussion of ethnomathematics over the years, many are surprised to hear that one of Leibniz's contributions as a state philosopher was proposing policies such as the "Egyptian Plan" to Louis XIV with addendums bearing titles that speak to a particular world-view.

Example : "A Method to Institute a New, Invincible Militia That Can Subjugate the Entire Earth, Easily Seize Control over Egypt or Establish American Colonies". Essentially he wanted to take remote islands, clear them of their population, inhabit them with what he considered to be "a fine bunch of subhuman beasts" - being people orphaned from their respective regions and raised in military tradition towards perfect subservience to their masters.

_5659··on Valonia ventricosa
I love seeing submissions like this on the front page. I come for the post-mortems of severe outages and I stay for the discussion of algae.
_5659··on Ask HN: Is Macbook Pro or Gaming Laptop Better for Machine Learning?
Don't prematurely optimize.

ML these days has all sorts of scale and scope. For instance, what used to take a few days baking on a GPU server can now be run in a few lines of codes on a CPU. The ecosystem moves very quickly, so it's better to be adaptable than to consign yourself to a specific paradigm of computation.

That being said: Yeah, a lot of stuff is in CUDA or nvidia world. AMD and OpenCL support is usually late and usually lackluster.

These days you can do a lot free to get started. Get started with Kaggle kernels and Colab for free. They give you access to nice GPUs. Learn a little bit of how to do things on AWS/GCP, because almost always people are just trying to burn their free credits as part of their investment package or something.

If you're utterly concerned with performance, most workstations I know of usually run Ubuntu. Performance is far superior. Owning or building a GPU workstation is still remarkably cheaper than renting to some degree. A key idea I'd like to highlight here is that with ML/AI, regardless if your data is small or your batch processes "doable", you should be automating your pipeline so you don't have to worry about it. In the same sense that a GROUP-BY SQL statement is also machine learning speaking roughly. Being able to get your data into workable shape is more important than having nice hardware. Get the data to work for you first before you think about performance or speed.

_5659··on Walking Stewart
From Apocalypse of Nature:

"Truth is dangerous to be displayed.

This is the detestable axiom whose exposed falsehood will produce the solution of the problem, and the consolation of human sorrows."

Love it.

_5659··on You are not Google. You are not Netflix
One impression that occurred to me from reading this article, is this excerpt:

"Why try to be like others if you are condemned to being yourself" Link: https://mutterichbindumm.tumblr.com/post/92142897112/funeral...

_5659··on Three Thousand Years of Algorithmic Rituals
I vaguely recall reading a paper about oracle bones and hunter-gatherers, with the central theme being a study of generating randomness by the means of an "algorithm". I recall it was on arxiv but that doesn't seem to be the case anymore.

Algorithm being defined as: take a bunch of animal bones, burn them until they are essentially cremated, and then interpret the ashes somehow to point you in a random direction away from your village.

The idea was that this is such a noisy and chaotic system that you get decent enough randomization to distribute your hunter-gatherers into wilderness. The reason this is economical is it allows you to distribute away from concentrating too much effort into just one particular zone. A key idea here is that while maybe a certain river or patch of grass might have been historically lucrative, eventually the population will be exhausted. Without doing ample surveys of the wilderness all the time, hunter-gatherers have scarcely a clue that they are exhausting its resources.

So a simple strategy is to randomly distribute your collection of resources to allow areas to recover. At the same time, the model of relying on an oracle bone also makes it simpler than doing an exhaustive search of your "food-space" and if anything goes awry, it's because you've misinterpreted the divine spirits or you've done something wrong or bad. It's easy to cooperate if you all blame the same thing.

I think the article's tone is a bit on what I would wholeheartedly dismiss as outlandish numerology mysticism - were I to read this when I was just beginning to study mathematics. Now that I've read a bit more history, I have a better appreciation that humans by nature have always tried to impose order, symmetry and harmony upon the universe and have codified that language of understanding as poetry in all forms. I think the article is ambitious towards grasping at the scale and scope of mathematics not merely as a tool of human will, or a language science, or philosophy of philosophies, but something that is very palpably and tangibly human in form. There is a decent treatment towards the ambiguity of what an "algorithm" even is.

My overall impression of the article is that it is trying to describe something beautiful about how the process of mathematics has acted upon itself. Models such as cellular automata or recursive processes show how complexity arises from simple rules - order from chaos, chaos from order.

At the end of the day, I love to nitpick the treatment of technical subjects and their sort of phenomenal attributes in society - but it's posts like these on HackerNews that make me happy that anyone even bothers to write about this topic at all.

_5659··on US Senate report on Equifax breach [pdf]
The specificity of the chapter titles seem almost comical as if generated by a Markov Chain but unfortunately they are real and terrifying in their negligence.
_5659··on Von Neumann’s critique of automata theory and logic in computer science (1947)
If you literally want a visual representation, there are systems of differential equations that model biological/chemical reaction-diffusion. Roughly speaking, this gives you a bridge between cellular automata, reaction-diffusion and morphogenesis by defining chemicals, states, species - whatever - as a system of differential equations. These produce organic and natural looking patterns!
_5659··on Ask HN: What tools/methods do you use to focus your time well?
The most optimal strategy I can consider towards making efficient use of my time is to spend absolutely none of it researching methods or techniques to do so.
_5659··on Ask HN: Good, experienced engineer but suck at interviews. Looking for a coach
I'll leave a comment here in case anyone else is curious:

Hi, I'm a mathematician. I've made some hiring puzzles and problems. I didn't think it was particularly useful heuristic for hiring a good programmer, so when I stopped feeling like it was a fun project I did not continue.

I hire, I get hired. I do this often, I know what people want to think they see, aaand what they think they want to see. Big difference.

More than happy to mentor anyone taking on these problems or getting through the interview process. They're not that different in my experience from math olympiads or Putnam problems in a computer science flavor. An entire industry has risen overnight to acquiesce to the demand in the form of books, courses, tutors and schools. You can try all of these, and you will learn to 100% the test and successfully get the job you've always wanted. Cool.

That's not what I'm offering. I'm here to teach you how to study, how to manage your time, and how to learn how to learn to do these problems so you don't need me or the test. When I feel like administering one of these problems, sometimes I want to know how they handle themselves. Whiteboard quizzes do not tell me anything about a person's humanity, character or soul. 100% is disappointing to me. It ultimately betrays that programming is something they regard as a preptest. The 100% people are guilty of premature optimization which is the root of all evil. I'd prefer someone who can't whiteboard for their life but has ample examples of "dirty" code that I can read and play with. The 100% people do not seem like the people who take failure, rejection or mistakes very gladly.

Please reach out to me if this sounds interesting to you. I'd love to take on a few students. Doesn't matter how much experience you have, we are all always learning something new about technology.

Contact: info@odomojuli.com

_5659··on Ask HN: What are good OSS projects for beginners/students to contribute to?
Their own!

I often place beginners, very beginners, and maybe some reluctant junior developers into a room and give them some exercises. I like to include some open discussion on side projects, OSS projects they use, the fact that GitHub is also a social network and things like Glitch and Repl.it exist to be shared. OSS is not just "open", it is social. Good open source software to me begins with a discussion of what they consider to be in good taste.

1. Set up a bunch of accounts on GitHub or GitLab, or whatever. It's better if they have a preference for one and don't use the other - make them use the one they're least familiar with. Get them used to using things they're not familiar or comfortable with doing. Sound familiar?

2. Divide the group into equal sizes if you can. If the group is prime, then it is also abelian (bad joke). I let groups assimilate and trade with each other. The macrocosm of tech's demographic tends to reify itself in microcosms as well, so you'll notice some groups get larger than others but some reach peak efficiency at specific sizes. This is good for you to know if you're in management. It's okay to let a bunch of beginners be without anyone in their group who has experience, sometimes they end up being the dark horse in the race.

3. So you have a bunch of groups, give them an exercise that has nothing to do with whatever they're supposed to be doing. Main idea: You're trying to show them how good practices can be interdisciplinary or better, that they know how to think, organize, and collaborate their efforts on new things. If it's a bunch of quants, make them use Figma or Sketch and design a layout. If it's backend, make them do frontend. If they're UI/UX give them a bunch of problems from https://projecteuler.net/

4. Now, the task for all groups is to present something by the end of the session whether it is finished or not. A lot of the time is spent teaching other how to set up their account, doing basic version control, picking a language to choose, how they're going to architect the whole thing - a lot of time is wasted trying to optimize their time. This is a good lesson and also shows people how they lack fundamentals. Junior devs tend to try to assert authority and have it backfire almost immediately. That's why they're junior developers still.

5. So some time rolls by. About the halfway mark I check in on their repositories not their team. I want to see what work they've committed to more than what they plan to do. It's also good for me to know how they catalog their mistakes and what sort of basic documentation they provide themselves out of utility rather than obligation.

6. Time's up. Let's present. Says a lot about how a team works by who does the presentation. You'll notice some people have become part of projects where they know they'll shine rather than try to struggle with a team where they know they won't succeed, even if there's nothing to risk. This says a lot about the person's appetite for code.

7. Now, the optional flavor for this exercise is to have them develop a competing app in an hour. This is obviously a questionable and risky thing to ask your team to do. My opinion is that I've hired the right team and I believe in our culture and I already know our competition so its fine. But let's say, we want our team to build a competing app - how would they do it? They already know what they hate about our company or the work they do. This exercises lets them call the shots and give themselves fake titles and lets them dream a bit. Good, I want to foster their growth here, not extract work out of them like some kind of time vampire. I like to have them pitch to each other and just try on the shoes of someone who will be someday more than what they are.

_5659··on Ask HN: What are common questions new programmers ask you?
"What security should I know?"

Which initially horrifies me and I give an exasperated reply somewhere along the lines of "All of it. None of it. It's easiest to learn how something works once you realize it is the very thing causing your entire system to break." And then I smile.

They're going to make a lot of mistakes in their career and ultimately what's important is that they have the right attitude to learn from them.

_5659··on Ask HN: As a creative developer what are your sources for inspiration?
Nature. Nature never hacks, because nature already owns everything. Every bug is a feature.
_5659··on Ask HN: What questions would you ask someone to assess their maturity?
Speaking from the perspective of someone who entered the industry relatively young and had the opportunity to grow into management roles: I'd say the hallmark of maturity is willingness to adapt to change, take necessary risks and overall maintain their individual interests in projects responsibly. Maturity is in fact, just survival. That is, do you think this person can hold their own, choose their tactics and strategy wisely and pick their battles? Passion is good, maturity is nice to have, but I'm consistently surprised by what young and old people can do given the right opportunity, the right management and the right culture.
_5659··on Ask HN: How to Teach Coding?
“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.” - Antoine de Saint-Exupèry
_5659··on Facebook, Instagram go down around the world in an apparent outage
Looks like the status page is down for me as well.
_5659··on Ask HN: What Are Some Startup Red Flags from a Candidate Perspective?
"If it sounds too good to be true – it ain't"

I like to ask if I'm replacing someone. Why did they leave?

If the interview process to acquire talent takes too long / too short – what's the rhythm of management / hiring. If there's obvious issues in this department, what makes me think their products are any better?

I go through a methodology:

1) Do they offer routine / standard perks? If not, that tells me they're not competitive and out-of-touch. This includes things like a sane salary expectation and PTO.

2) Are they overselling on perks / mission / culture? I'm getting paid GOOD money to do this job, I really don't care if it means I get a "Free Lunch" or I get to "solve hard problems".

3) Do the people I talk to seem like people I'd work with? Would I trust these people with my money, moreover my space/time/privacy?

4) What's their presence look like? Do they open-source popular tools? Do they publish books / articles / papers? Do they maintain a healthy social media presence / blog? Do their employees do publicity?

LAST AND MOST IMPORTANT: Can they even put up a decent website?

_5659··on Ask HN: What is your best passive income 2019?
I think I talked to him once? I don't remember what either of us said. Anyways he's probably lovely.
_5659··on Ask HN: What is your best passive income 2019?
I run a clothing store online.

All of the order processing and fulfillment is handled automatically.

I do no marketing or advertisement beyond social media.

It's pretty nice. Sometimes I sell meme shirts that generate $3k in a month if I'm feeling particularly clever.

I was able to bootstrap this business for like $12 for a domain name and a free trial of Shopify which gave me enough runway to scale.

Been doing this for over a year, I still basically do nothing.

https://odomojuli.store/

_5659··on Artificial data give the same results as real data without compromising privacy
Is this akin at all to random sampling with replacement ie bootstrapping?
_5659··on Ask HN: What's an important problem that more people should work on?
Whatever interests them the most.
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