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prolly97

105 karma · joined December 4, 2023

Previously working with ML/data science/statistics. Now it's data engineering, in order to hopefully enable the former. https://askhviid.com/
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prolly97··on Anthropic S-1
Adding a zero to revenue every year is wild. Regardless of whether you like Anthropic.
prolly97··on AfD Leak: What 421,179 Hacked Emails Show about the German Far Right
>Just like calling everyone commies and nazis I don't think it's helpful to put extreme labels on >everyone<. As it waters out the meaning of extreme labels.
prolly97··on AfD Leak: What 421,179 Hacked Emails Show about the German Far Right
Did they also publish the prompts and models they used for the summaries? It'd be nice to test this on some examples :)
prolly97··on AfD Leak: What 421,179 Hacked Emails Show about the German Far Right
>This use of language waters out the meaning. Just like calling everyone commies and nazis... also I think it'll have the opposite effect you hope.
prolly97··on AfD Leak: What 421,179 Hacked Emails Show about the German Far Right
It's fair that you disagree with AFD, even disagree a lot. But could we please rethink the use of "far", when they have 20% of the seats in parliament?

Their views, are the views of 1/5 people you'll meet in Germany, on average. If we mirrored this logic, the SPD should be "far-left", Grüne should be "far-left pro" and Links should be "ultra far-left pro max".

This use of language waters out the meaning. Just like calling everyone commies and nazis... also I think it'll have the opposite effect you hope.

prolly97··on Tesla Roadster
DHH: >I put $50,000 on this thing 18 months ago. Not knowing it was going to fucking fly! When it was already years "late". Because investing in whatever Elon does next is not just a great bet, but the most inspiring and fun one too.

https://x.com/dhh/status/2110983188910923926?s=20

Why the second hand outrage. If you didn't buy a car and feel bad about the wait time, just enjoy the demo! :D

prolly97··on Vi Hart's Big Navier-Stokes Post
Some of the smartest people I know are also some of the people that use AI the most. They use their time and energy on solving hard problems. Either in the abstract (research) or more practical problems (entrepreneurship). I completely fail to see how anyone would want to equal researchers and entrepreneurs to criminals.
prolly97··on Ask HN: What do you run on a $5 VPS that's worth keeping online 24/7?
Hehe, I started out with good and frugal intentions but my $5/month Hetzner VPS has turned into a $100/month bill. I love exploring all kinds of data, but obviously, if you just do that on an ad hoc basis, the data gets stale. So I just setup some continuous workers and nighly batch jobs that ingest and keep certain data up to date :)

I've opened some of the data up to the public: cvrdb.dk for danish companies (working on granting users access to 'full' extracts of certain parts). ratemyaisite.com which is just a tiny subset of a larger project that I've dubbed commoncrawl-explore (cc-explore), which is run on a subdomain of my personal website, but purely for my own sake.

Making your own devex pleasant is the real game changer imho, not the VPS. I've made it easy for myself to deploy new projects using Dokploy (also tried Coolify).

I don't find the maintenance to be a problem - but part of that is not treating hobby projects as something that has to be enterprise-ready :)

prolly97··on Why were Victorian elites so effective?
I'm currently reading Andrew Carnegies autobiography. Highly recommend it! He lived around the same age.

He benefitted from his employees ideas and initiatives. But that was by design. Both design of the organisation, design of the incentive structures, and the filters used for hiring.

Companies are just a collective of people trying to accomplish something. The idea that an incompetent boss, could attract talent that would be willing to force great outcomes, without due compensation/incentives, doesn't sound like a credible explanation for the mean story of success.

prolly97··on Updated Google Maps shows destruction of the city of Rafah
idk if it's the same "playground" we found, but honestly just looks like an site prepared for building: https://earth.google.com/web/search/31%2e297226,+34%2e243649...
prolly97··on Intellectuals Are Fucking Idiots
It's definately an article written with emotion - so I think one has to separate underlying arguments from rhetoric. As I read the technological take, it may be framed optimistically, but otherwise directionally correct. Solar power for instance have a very steep adoption curve as we've gotten better at producing solar panels. And batteries allow for async electricity production and consumption, which solves some of the issues that renewables have traditionally had.
prolly97··on Intellectuals Are Fucking Idiots
And without specifying why the claims are outrageous, you yourself is guilty of not providing any proof.

I fail to see how this moves the debate in a productive direction.

For a meaningful exchange of viewpoints to take place, I find it useful to establish what facts we agree on- and disagree on, and figure out their sources, before we heat up a debate, that is simply downstream of missing or poor evidence. If two opposite parties in a debate, holding strong opinions, but both show up with strong evidence for either side, then both would ideally benefit from being exposed to the other. Closing your eyes to the other sides evidence, while denying them of yours, accomplishes neither your and their goals - if the goal is the get closer to some resemblance of truth.

prolly97··on Intellectuals Are Fucking Idiots
Making an antithetical statement doesn't invalidate anything by definition. If you have a rebuttal, do as the author, and express it. State specifically what you're opposing, and give your best rebuttal. Then we can consider what set of arguments and data best predict reality.
prolly97··on Winning the visa lottery
Thank you! That's actually really interesting reading. Some of the effect sizes are small though - would have been interesting to see a greater variety of benchmarks. Like what's the effect of different incentives given to the human controls (does 20 VS 100 USD change anything? etc.). Anyways, thanks for the links!
prolly97··on Winning the visa lottery
Sounds really interesting! Do you have a link to that research? Unless you're an AI, then I'll just accept your statements as fact ;)
prolly97··on Winning the visa lottery
I agree, if we limit the statement to the quoted piece. But I think the full line is true as it stands. > The danger is when/if people selectively choose studies, that just so happens to repeat what their ideology would dictate. I.e. that the danger doesn't come from being selective based on methodological soundness as you say, but based on e.g. ideology.
prolly97··on Winning the visa lottery
That's funny :) Though when presenting facts and studies, it's also worthwhile to think about how much of the world these studies are accurately able to explain. For physics this number is high. " For social sciences there's good reason to be skeptical. Even if (big if) a study is directionally replicable, the total proportion of the world, that can be accurately and consistently be explained isn't great.

"Economist X says there's relation R between variables P and Q" Meanwhile another economist might have found a different result.. or not have published a non-effect. Or have found the effect to be non-existent given confounders.

The danger is when/if people selectively choose studies, that just so happens to repeat what their ideology would dictate.

prolly97··on XCancel service is suspended until further notice
ITT. Non-X users complaining that they can't use X. If you don't like the content on X enough to make an account, I don't see how this is a big loss.

And yes I've on occasion had the same thought with TikTok - it'd be nice to see the vids that people send me, without making an account. But I'll just have to live my life without having seen that one super funny/interesting/enlightening video, or have to ask for a summary :)

prolly97··on Mistral raises €3B
haha, yes, this is 100% just me overfitting then!

And it's not as if there aren't a bunch of somewhat arbitrary regulation in the US either. But the general sense I got from the US, was that people still feel agency to improve their reality, and that there's fewer artificial barriers to that end. (Except for building houses in California. omg. That sounds like a horrible horrible process. At least for those I spoke to).

prolly97··on Mistral raises €3B
He's stating a fact that you don't dispute. You follow up with hyperbolic language; "eating rotten food" (as if anyone would purchase their goods from purveyors known to disregard food safety).

In a market that has been designed to let people take part in voluntary transactions, we also design methods for making sure that the counterpart takes responsibility, and delivers the agreed amount quality of product.

If you purchase a car that won't turn on, you're in your good right to make a claim against the producer. Same for all the other things you mention. And people do.

You're making a point about negative externalities. Agreed that a factory shouldn't just be able to poison a river, because there's no tangible cost to piping your dirty water to one. Here it makes sense to make artificial interventions, in my opinion.

prolly97··on Mistral raises €3B
Awesome! But, looking at the numbers the decrease in totals are due to fewer registered "street crimes", less fraud and legalization of cannabis (removing a 183k comparable from 2016). Violent crimes however went from 193,542 to 212,335. With rapes almost doubling, going from 7,919 to 14,454 (82%). Murders remained stable though.

We can debate which of these crimes have a greater impact on the feeling of safety. Personally I don't really feel unsafe due to people being caught stealing a sweater or smoking weed (when that was illegal).

So I don't think this is as clear cut as the headline number makes it seem. I feel like it's valid if people want to put more weight on the violent crimes.

prolly97··on Mistral raises €3B
Why shouldn't it be possible to completely automate decisions? Imaginary entry level job, where you need to deliver parcels from one business to another. Qualifications: 1. Drivers license. 2: Eyes in your head. Applicant 1: Drivers license? No. Eyes in your head? Yes. Applicant 2: Drivers license? Yes. Eyes in your head? Yes.

Reject applicant 1 and accept applicant 2. Ez.

I'd prefer to work at a place that uses it's ressources on things that provide value. If we're able to conserve ressources by automating hiring, I'm all for it. I don't want to take a pay-cut to hire meat-proxies.

prolly97··on Mistral raises €3B
This!!!

I went to California earlier this year. In our apartment we had a freezer that was clearly made before politicians thought to decide to put a cap on how good a freezer could be. It was fucking amazing at freezing stuff. No freezer I've ever used could freeze this good. It was probably from the 80's - old/sturdy AF.

I wouldn't mind paying for some extra solar panels to feed it.

prolly97··on Mistral raises €3B
>Despite the average european objectively being better off and safer than a decade ago

I'm sure it's true, but do we have some statistics on that, and a comparison to places that doesn't have the same regulatory burden?

prolly97··on Mistral raises €3B
I don't think you're taking my "there's two sides to regulation" comment in good faith.

I gave a pretty clear example of pro-consumer regulation myself.

Saying that the EU is overregulating cannot possibly be that controversial, given that even the European politicians are beginning to admit it.. Draghi, Von der Leyen (even though she passes blame), Merz, Macron.

prolly97··on Mistral raises €3B
There's a big difference between governments regulating to benefit their own control and power, and regulating in favor of consumers. Most regulation in the EU have jack-all to do with consumers. There's a couple of niceties - having all prices displayed in comparable unites (EUR/kg, EUR/liter etc). But apart from that the regulation have broadly served as moats around the largest businesses.
prolly97··on GPU World
I think the idea of "even distribution" is dangerous, as it often assumes equal preferences and views of what needs to be distributed.

Do we want equal outcomes or equal opportunities. What constitute and outcome and an opportunity.

Even in something as harmless as giving people equal access to e.g. internet, we're assuming that the cost of access to internet < than the cost of their alternative preferences.

If people want to live nude in the jungle, that should be their prerogative. Let's just turn it around for a second, where a nude-jungle-living population was majority, and had the ability to force their will on you. Would you like for them to make nude-jungle-living a universal and equally distributed circumstance, in alignment with their preferences? (I wouldn't). I want access to more and "better" compute. I'm willing to sacrifice my time to get access. With my current compute spend, I'd estimate that roughly 1 hour of work per week, goes to purchase compute and related equipment.

It's only fair that those who have worked hard to manifest this compute in the world, also want something in return. I too want something in return for the hours I spend producing things that people want.

The idea that people have a "claim" on things I produce, purely as an artifact of existing, is completely bonkers.

If you want to give something to others, use your free will to do so. I do so, on occation. And I don't expect others to. But I do expect others to leave me and the things I produce alone, unless we've agreed to transact.

Sorry, but these socialist ideas of "those who make things are evil and only does so to get power over others" are so fucking tiring. "The world would be a better place if we just distributed x equal to my preference (y)". Fuck off. I don't want your Lada. But by all means go out and exchange the things YOU produce, for free internet for others. Sounds terrific. Don't force me to do the same. I have other but equal ideas of how to make the world a better place.

prolly97··on Evidence of Fraud in an Influential Study About Procrastination
Not all science has this issue. But to reference Thiel, a lot of the sciences with "science" in the name, seem to.
prolly97··on Terence Tao explains 6 essential mathematical concepts [video]
I've experienced something similar, I still think the quote works - If you can explain difficult concepts well, it's a demonstration of true understanding. Not that poor communication demonstrates lack of it.
prolly97··on How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs
For every time the EU implements a new regulation... and sees it fail horribly... it seems as if their collective minds concludes that the reason is for not having even more central control.

Soon we will have our own, European, Gosplan. Comrades.

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