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cosmicradiance

76 karma · joined December 16, 2022

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cosmicradiance··on Open-source Microsoft Excel, PowerPoint, and Word replications
Internet decentralized the data. Now, AI has decentralized software. Next, we need decentralized AI.
cosmicradiance··on Writing Efficient C++ Code (2013)
Bumblebees shouldn’t be able to fly; they do anyways.
cosmicradiance··on Everything Is Chrome (2023)
The article in context is not just about Chrome, but the various avatars it has manifested into.
cosmicradiance··on Everything Is Chrome (2023)
So no. Same menu/web-pages; but served differently as per individual needs.
cosmicradiance··on Torvalds: You can avoid Rust as a C maintainer, but you can't interfere with it
Who's taking the baton?
cosmicradiance··on How to do distributed locking (2016)
System Design Interview I and II - Alex Xu. Take one of the topics and do it practically.
cosmicradiance··on Unlearning LeetCode
The same though goes into working with languages.

I was a fan of Python’s list compressions, C#’s LINQ expressions, ORMs and functional/object-oriented abstractions.

Now, I have started appreciating simple procedural languages like Golang.

cosmicradiance··on Closing factories will not be enough to save Volkswagen
China didn't look like a competitor until they were miles ahead.

"Appear weak when you are strong, and strong when you are weak" - Sun Tzu

cosmicradiance··on Scaling Rails and Postgres to millions of users at Microsoft
They are definitely not on the cloud.
cosmicradiance··on Ask HN: Why Is Stack Overflow Fading Away?
People who crave karma points will continue do so. The game isn't for the faint hearted. SO still has the best gamification model and there isn't any competitor.
cosmicradiance··on Ask HN: Why Is Stack Overflow Fading Away?
Why will SO be gone? They are now partners with OpenAI - https://stackoverflow.co/company/press/archive/openai-partne...
cosmicradiance··on Artificial intelligence is losing hype
Wrong. As per the article - a part of our brain is a prediction machine. A human body is more than the sum of its parts.
cosmicradiance··on Artificial intelligence is losing hype
On the current state of AI - do you believe it has "intelligence" or is the underlying system a "prediction machine"?

What signs do you see that make you believe that the next level (biological intelligence) is on the horizon?

cosmicradiance··on EVs are starting to overtake gas-powered cars in Ethiopia
Not really, you first have to catch up the vehicle ahead, before you start overtaking. At present, they are miles behind.
cosmicradiance··on Just use Postgres
1. With the recent developments at CockroachDB one may like to bundle it along with MSSQL and Oracle.

2. Like the author, I will like to understand "Why not MariaDB? (a free variant of MySql)".

cosmicradiance··on Miss your flip phone? people are ditching the smartphone for 'dumb phones'
Back to simplicity - your contact list is your filter. If the phone doesn't identify the caller - send to voicemail.
cosmicradiance··on Google's former CEO on why the company was caught off guard by OpenAI
Google settled for the status quo.

After covid, like many other organizations, they went too lean, concentrating on sustainable operations, expecting a tough market.

WFH was an effect of their adopted work-culture and not a phenomenon in itself.

cosmicradiance··on Verso – Web browser built on top of the Servo web engine
I mean AI transformers. I understand we have pre-embedded STT, though I will like the option to include my own - say an English grammar GPT and expose it by an API for progressive enhancement of content.
cosmicradiance··on Verso – Web browser built on top of the Servo web engine
If anyone is willing to put an effort in building a new browser, I have just one wish - allow embedding open-source transformers in the browser; available for both the user and websites/extensions.
cosmicradiance··on There's Just One Problem: AI Isn't Intelligent
It would have been better if the term used was Prediction Machine, rather than Artificial Intelligence.

One may argue, what's in the name? AI is a catchier term and covers the umbrella under which terms like - statistics & predictions, ML, NLP AGI, etc can be grouped.

* As an engineer it makes sense since the ultimate aim should be to reach AGI.

* As a salesperson it makes selling the technology easier.

* As for the rest of the world, the term has a varying meaning, one that is limited by only the individual's imagination.

  - My wife, who has a PhD in Biotechnology believes AI to be more like a sentient being.

  - My sales director feels AI should be able to act like a real salesperson, taking vague instructions, researching and churning presentations to hit the customer's heart. 
The author is right here - the term is misused and misunderstood by most folks, and we should expose the system for what it actually is rather than what it can be.
cosmicradiance··on After a deacade of using SQL it "clicked" for me
No doubt the tools are here to stay and I am not opposed to that. My only advice for young programmers is - when something just works like magic, dig deeper until it becomes science.
cosmicradiance··on What happened to blogs
How we live is so different from how we ought to live ... - Machiavelli
cosmicradiance··on After a deacade of using SQL it "clicked" for me
Anyone who started programming in the early 2000s would know that intrinsically. Now there are so many tools and frameworks which abstract SQL. It's no surprise that the newer generation has eureka moments discovering structured-query-language as a comprehensive program to interact with databases.
cosmicradiance··on Why So Many Bitcoin Mining Companies Are Pivoting to AI
Doing whatever is necessary to get money from VC's
cosmicradiance··on Today's Cheap AI Services Won't Last
I feel that a specialized AI becomes too niche to be useful for the common folks.

A general LLM model, that is "jack of all and master of none" may remain the go-to choice for the masses. These systems leave the last bits of intelligence to be filled by humans.

cosmicradiance··on Today's Cheap AI Services Won't Last
> Yes, the VC funding will dry up, but hardware and algorithmic advances will decrease running costs by equal amounts. The author said the same - "The current reliance on expensive GPU clusters may give way to more specialized, efficient AI hardware. This could help mitigate some cost pressures."

As with the cloud, prices increase once competition dries out. Even if hardware becomes cheap, the services will cost more because shrewd and greedy boards run most businesses.

cosmicradiance··on Why Use Clojure for Machine Learning?
I agree. Python also satisfies the principle of lease power. Adapting Atwood's Law[1], for ML projects - "Any ML project that can be written in Python, will eventually be written in Python."

[1] https://blog.codinghorror.com/the-principle-of-least-power/

cosmicradiance··on SEQUEL: A Structured English Query Language (1974)
It would still be SEQUEL if not for the trademark dispute -

"SEQUEL was later changed to SQL because "SEQUEL" was a trademark of the UK-based Hawker Siddeley aircraft company."

cosmicradiance··on [dead]
Further reading - https://www.amazon.com/How-Lie-Statistics-Darrell-Huff/dp/03...
cosmicradiance··on Another open-core project rejecting PR citing paid feature
Open source; Closed contribution
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