HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

falconroar

18 karma · joined July 26, 2021

submissionscomments
falconroar··on Why DuckDB is my first choice for data processing
Interesting, I wasn't aware; thanks for that. I will say, Polars' implementation is much more centered on out-of-core processing, and bypasses some of DuckDB's limitations ("DuckDB cannot yet offload some complex intermediate aggregate states to disk"). Both incredible pieces of software.

To expand on this, Polars' `LazyFrame` implementation allows for simple addition of new backends like GPU, streaming, and now distributed computing (though it's currently locked to a vendor). The DuckDB codebase just doesn't have this flexibility, though there are ways to get it to run on GPU using external software.

falconroar··on Why DuckDB is my first choice for data processing
Polars also has all of these benefits (to some degree), but also allows for larger-than-memory datasets. Also has GPU backend, distributed backend, etc. Polars is heavily underrated, even with the recent hype.
falconroar··on Why DuckDB is my first choice for data processing
Polars has all of the benefits of DuckDB (to some degree), but also allows for larger-than-memory datasets.
falconroar··on Why DuckDB is my first choice for data processing
Polars has all of these benefits (to some degree), but also allows for larger-than-memory datasets.
falconroar··on Why DuckDB is my first choice for data processing
Polars has all of these benefits (to some degree), but also allows for larger-than-memory datasets.
falconroar··on How Israeli actions caused famine in Gaza, visualized
Does the food carry bacteria in reality? Why are we talking about bizarre hypotheticals?
falconroar··on How Israeli actions caused famine in Gaza, visualized
Being against genocide isn’t a western standard.
falconroar··on How Israeli actions caused famine in Gaza, visualized
Withholding food from children results in children starving. It’s not semantics.
falconroar··on How Israeli actions caused famine in Gaza, visualized
They will get away with it if we believe we are powerless to change it. Russia has been proven to be pushing defeatist propaganda similar to your sentiment, and I'm sure Israel has been as well.
falconroar··on How Israeli actions caused famine in Gaza, visualized
Are Gazans receiving adequate nutrition? If not, why are we discussing semantics?
falconroar··on How Israeli actions caused famine in Gaza, visualized
Starving infants is justifiable sometimes? When?
falconroar··on How Israeli actions caused famine in Gaza, visualized
Starving infants is morally justifiable if it's possible to make a rocket from their food?
falconroar··on How Israeli actions caused famine in Gaza, visualized
A Pew poll in 2022 found that about half (48%) of Israeli Jews agree that Arabs should be expelled or transferred from Israel. Horrifying statistic.
falconroar··on Anthropic agrees to pay $1.5B to settle lawsuit with book authors
I thought the opposite - they set a precedent indicating that reproduction of a copyrighted text by an LLM is infringement. If authors refuse to sell to them (via legal terms indicating LLMs aren't allowed), it's infringement. No?

I'd be curious to hear from a legal professional...

falconroar··on MIT Study Finds AI Use Reprograms the Brain, Leading to Cognitive Decline
Essential context. So many variables here with very naive experimental procedure. Also "Cognitive Decline" is never mentioned in the paper.

An equally valid conclusion is "People are Lazier at Writing Essays When Provided with LLMs".

falconroar··on Tesla 'self-driving' technology failed to detect a moving train ahead of a crash
Who did Tesla have to pay off to sell a product called Full Self Driving, that is not actually fully self-driving?
falconroar··on AMD may get across the CUDA moat
I don't understand why developers of PyTorch and similar don't use OpenCL. Open standard, runs everywhere, similar performance - what's the downside??
falconroar··on AMD may get across the CUDA moat
Is there any reason OpenCL is not the standard in implementations like PyTorch? Similar performance, open standard, runs everywhere - what's the downside?
falconroar··on Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power
Is the explicit threat of nuclear war by Russia a possible factor here? Ie. Developing nuclear energy would feed into developing nuclear weapons. From what I understand, the anti-war / anti-extinction angle was a primary motivation for at least early Green activists.
falconroar··on Indiana life insurance CEO says deaths are up 40% among people ages 18-64
Pretty likely this is associated with the huge increase in mental illness associated with isolation during the pandemic. The depression rate tripled from pre-pandemic levels, leading to a 20% increase in suicide rates. Obviously drug use and all the associated risks would increase due to that, but there are also a few studies showing a strong correlation between mental health and life expectancy, even after accounting for drug use.

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6... https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/10/depression-increased-during-...

falconroar··on Americans' life ratings reach record high
As mentioned elsewhere, self-reported happiness is notoriously inaccurate, and is not correlated with objective statistics like suicide rate. The suicide rate in 2021 is at an all-time high [1][2]. I think it's more likely that after months of forced self-isolation, people are less willing to show vulnerability and express unhappiness.

Sources: 2021: https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/suicide-rat... since 1999: https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/suicide