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swaysonon Turns out half the internet has a single-point-of-failure called “Cloudflare”

I enjoyed the analogy to gardening. Made me think of the terrific principles portrayed in the book The timeless way of building.

swaysonon Tired of note-taking apps

https://github.com/foambubble/foam

Roam-like note taking app using VS Code. Still early days but has momentum.

Been using it for a week for some project docs, and so far I like it.

swaysonon OpenAI's GPT-3 may be the biggest thing since Bitcoin

Wow, first time I come across the concept. Fascinating, and a bit eerie when we start drawing closer relationships between AI and nuclear tech.

Interesting times.

swaysonon OpenAI's GPT-3 may be the biggest thing since Bitcoin

Yeah think your intuition makes sense. Probably won't bias it all to much and perhaps, they can filter it as they probably log what is going through the API.

swaysonon OpenAI's GPT-3 may be the biggest thing since Bitcoin

Nope, OpenAI didn't release the weights to the public, only a web API which is in private beta.

swaysonon OpenAI's GPT-3 may be the biggest thing since Bitcoin

It is ironic as those who now post GPT-3 generated content, is essentially biasing the next version of GPT's web training data

swaysonon I lost my boyfriend to cancer 'conspiracy theories’

Appears intelligence agencies also investigated it

https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/1229817-vault-7-leaks

swaysonon US citizens warned they face arbitrary arrest in China

I made no claims. Purely posted a picture that illustrates the complex geo-political landscape surrounding China. Context ...

swaysonon US citizens warned they face arbitrary arrest in China

http://cdn.images.dailystar.co.uk/dynamic/1/photos/730000/Co...

swaysonon Classifying 200k articles in 7 hours using NLP

This reminded me of a great OSS tool I discovered the other data for data labelling. It is called Label Studio (https://labelstud.io/playground/) and support quite a variety of different task formats. Works well

Disclaimer: No affiliation, only sharing for those who are curious

swaysonon Notes on The Timeless Way of Building (2018)

Brilliant book. Thought provoking. It is one of those books that when you read it again, new insights emerge. The principles apply far beyond architecture. Fun to introspect and apply socratic thinking methods to see how it relates to aspects in our modern day life.

swaysonon Ask HN: Deep learning enabled GUI automation tools?

this is great thanks!!!

swaysonon Ask HN: Programs that wasted you 100 hours?

Minecraft has potential to develop creativity though :D It's a hard one to quantify, but I think sometimes things like MineCraft, lego can boost cognition if used in a deliberate way and one actually takes some learnings from it.

swaysonon Ask HN: Deep learning enabled GUI automation tools?

I have been looking into pyautogui, wondering how I can hookup a custom backend then for the boundary box detection, which appears is not supported.

guess wrapping pyautogui might be the way to go, is my understanding correct?

atbswp looks very valuable, thanks for sharing.

swaysonon My tech lead is an idiot

Top athletes appear to have a general perspective on progress and self-development. Instead of comparing oneself to others, rather compare yourself today, relative to yourself yesterday, as a gauge on deliberate and precise progress towards the desirable outcome.

swaysonon My FOSS Story

Video can be costly, especially in countries where data is still expensive. It can be a barrier to allowing more diverse communities to also contribute unfortunately.

swaysonon My FOSS Story

As somebody who works with data a lot, the need for analysing and transforming CSV files comes up and I recall, how I needed something fast. Then I discovered `xsv` about a year ago, and since then I still use it on a weekly basis. since then also discovered ripgrep.

It was also for me a gateway in the sense I see rust come up on HN, but only when I started using these tools I realised how fast and light those little apps can be. It made me want to learn Rust and seeing the community around it I realise, it is a very wonderful thing.

swaysonon A Sad Day for Rust

Agreed, we have a responsibility as a community to not cause harm and even take effort to prevent it. That is what I like about HN, it is a place where these things are discussed and as a collective, positive outcomes can manifest.

swaysonon A Sad Day for Rust

That is a false equivalence, roller coasters have far more material risk given human lives are at stake.

swaysonon Ask HN: Ever worked with a service that can never be restarted?

Unfortunately, the national power provider has a monopoly on energy, and is a political mine field. So independent power producers are ready to integrate massive solar and wind power capabilities, but due to politics they keep delaying the negotiations and contracts. Many private businesses are trying to produce their own power through solar and alike, but its expensive as that technology needs to be important and the rand is one of the most undervalued currencies.

swaysonon Ask HN: Ever worked with a service that can never be restarted?

In South Africa the citizens are facing a crises of such a service and its our electricity system. Predominately coal power plants, that are at end of life, and rolling blackouts is a common occurrence. It is necessary action, to avoid a blackout, given it would take weeks to get the system going again. Furthermore, high inequality and unemployment, makes it paramount to grow the economy, so these rolling blackouts have a huge impact socio-ecomically. It is a service that can't simply be restarted.

Transitioning risky services which can't be restarted, is clearly complicated, especially for complex systems. I wonder if there is body of knowledge with principles that could apply to not only to these massive nationwide scale, but to that of web-services and alike. Does anybody have resources in this respect?

swaysonon Ask HN: What Technologies to Learn in 2020?

Totally agree. Such a useful set of tools. Here is an insightful talk about the application of UMAP to learn embeddings for the folks who are interested:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OtVR_ZnXLu4

swaysonon Ask HN: What Technologies to Learn in 2020?

Instead of learning a new bespoke technology, How about learning more fundamental, lateral concepts, that potentially could apply across technologies. e.g. https://brilliant.org/