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golemarms

16 karma · joined August 28, 2020

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golemarms··on Writing a C compiler in 500 lines of Python
Cool. Now try writing a Python compiler in 500 lines of C.
golemarms··on Ask HN: As non-technical person, how can I tell if AI company is innovative?
Not really symbolic reasoning. I'm thinking more along the line of classic ML techniques like Random Forest/GLMs have long been successfully applied to business problems.
golemarms··on Ask HN: As non-technical person, how can I tell if AI company is innovative?
> I'd also add, maybe controversially, that anyone using "AI" to make some kind of basic prediction (say for personalization, demand planning, medical decisions, really most tabular data) is not going to have a business that lives or dies based on AI.

Unfortunately this rules out the vast majority of business use-cases. ML use-cases on structured data vastly outnumber those of vision/nlp/RL.

Also you seem to be restricting the term "AI" to Neural network-type techniques.

golemarms··on Electrical engineers on the brink of extinction threaten entire tech ecosystems
Yes, backend engineers do get paid more in general. I was just wondering why this runs contrary to OP's explanation that "closeness" to user triumphs job difficulty (when it comes to leverage/salaries).
golemarms··on Electrical engineers on the brink of extinction threaten entire tech ecosystems
Interesting. I wonder if this distinction applies within software as well. For example, systems programmers getting paid less than application programmers because the latter makes software "closer" to the user, and backend programmers getting paid less than frontend programmers for the same reason.
golemarms··on Electrical engineers on the brink of extinction threaten entire tech ecosystems
> If costs get too high Asian companies win

Wouldn't this apply to software companies as well? Yet we see higher pay, rather than imports/outsourcing.

golemarms··on Electrical engineers on the brink of extinction threaten entire tech ecosystems
According to the youtube description, that video was originally aired in 2007.
golemarms··on Electrical engineers on the brink of extinction threaten entire tech ecosystems
> If the Federal Reserve sticks to its guns and gets rates up, and keeps them there, it will be unsurprising to see "hard" engineering jobs be valuable again, while all the CSS people suddenly can't find two pennies to rub together.

I was under the impression that "hard" engineering isn't as financially attractive to investors due to the long payoff period as compared to web software. In that case, won't high interest rates actually hurt "hard" engineering due to a greater discount being applied to future cashflows?

golemarms··on Okular – Universal document viewer
>It's strictly a viewer only, so it doesn't even have rudimentary annotations like highlights or underlines

SumatraPDF supports basic annotations as of version 3.3 https://www.sumatrapdfreader.org/docs/Editing-annotations

golemarms··on I would like a job writing Haskell
> For instance building some state control engine for rockets etc.

Just out of curiosity: are there companies actually writing mission-critical code in a Haskell? My impression is that those normally tend to get written in C++ and the like.

golemarms··on “Is curing patients a sustainable business model?” asks Goldman Sachs (2018)
Agree with your points. However, parent commenter could have specified they were referring to software tech, not technology in general.
golemarms··on “Is curing patients a sustainable business model?” asks Goldman Sachs (2018)
isn't biotech a kind of "tech"?
golemarms··on How I Practice Piano
Imperial College actually used to offer a BSc Physics and Music Performance course[1] (it was suspended recently). This is notable because dual majors, even between similar/adjacent academic fields, are rare for UK undergraduate degrees.

[1] https://www.imperial.ac.uk/study/ug/courses/physics-departme...

golemarms··on How I Practice Piano
Most common non-STEM degree maybe. I'm sure there are a lot more EE/ physics/ math grads working as programmers than music grads.
golemarms··on Accidental Empires by Robert X. Cringely
Links to all chapters on one page: https://golemarms.github.io/accidental_empires/