I know some people don't re-read. But I do. And I have read Moon is A Harsh Mistress well over 20 times. Yes Paul, it ages well.
What I Worked On
161–170 of 421 posts
Re: What I Worked On
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
Holy low effort comment, batman! The first sentence offers no proof of how any of these individual languages address what you're trying to communicate. I'm not saying you're incorrect...it's just, like, offer something . The second sentence is unnecessarily snarky and adds 0 value.
The burden of proof is generally on the positive, not the negative. If someone thinks there's something in Bel that's not in those languages, they can say what specifically they think that novel thing is. Otherwise there's no basis on which to have a discussion beyond "Bel is really cool!"
The GP comment was a shallow dismissal, which breaks the HN guidelines: "Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
The novel thing about Bel is that it attempts to express a full programming language in the same axiomatic way that McCarthy's Lisp expressed computation. I thought pg explained that pretty clearly.
Re: What I Worked On
#163Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why do people feel entitled to "usable" ML at all? In the last 5 years, we have made incomprehensibly huge improvements in power and usability. It's an active field, and improvements are still coming at a steady pace. We have already revolutionized search, natural language processing & machine translation, image/audio/video processing, robotics, game AI, and advertising (for better or worse). And on top of all this,…
> Why do people feel entitled to "usable" ML at all? Yeah, people are annoying, with their demands to use software themselves. It would be much easier for everyone if computers were controlled by an elite group of engineers who could hide the complexity from the rest of us. Perhaps they could wear labcoats. > What the fuck more do you want? If I knew the answer to that, life would be a lot simpler.
You can say, with your voice, “who won the Super Bowl last year?” to a device that fits in your pocket and it responds with its own voice with the correct answer. That’s pretty accessible.
Re: What I Worked On
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are a lot of things that look incredible, but don’t constitute much progress scientifically. For example, a rocket landing on moon looks incredible. But I don’t think physicists would consider moon landing notable progress. So, with data and compute you could do applications.
Do you have any idea how many areas of science were opened up by our attempt to get to the Moon? The range is literally from discovering that unit tests are good in software to discovering the Van Allen belts to learning about the geology and history of the Moon from the rocks that we brought back. Could we have learned more science by doing something else with the money? Of course. But it is a dramatic overstatement…
Yes, and I tell you very few if any.
If you don’t believe an anonymous person here, see what prominent physicists say clearly on this topic, e.g., Steven Weinberg.
This is not to dismiss experimental research which is quite important, but to distinguish (experimental or theoretical) science from product development.
Re: What I Worked On
#165> One of the most conspicuous patterns I've noticed in my life is how well it's worked, for me at least, to work on things that weren't prestigious. You might be able to reinterpret this through the lens of the old saying about how, during a gold rush, the people who "made shovels" made most of the money while a few miners got all the press. We don't usually hear about the folks making provisions or shovels. If you d…
> If you're not a local, you'd never hear and probably never care about such things. Regardless of whether or not you're a local, the Underground Seattle tour is definitely a must-do if you ever find yourself there.
The tour is not entirely scripted. Each guide seems to have their own favorite anecdotes that they will offer. You could probably take that tour every few years and learn something every time.
Re: What I Worked On
#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure, but many people disagree that ML itself is revolutionary. The basics of it were known (referred to, quite appropriately, as 'data mining') as early as the 1990s and perhaps earlier. We've added a smattering of new techniques since then, and compute power has been expanded via GPGPU, but there was no "revolutionary" shift in the field. Even multi-layer ("deep") neural networks are very old tech.
Come on, really? Electric motors and lithium batteries aren't new either. So much for the EV revolution, nothing to see here.
I assume you're being sarcastic, but there actually isn't anything to see. Plug-in hybrids blow any EV out of the water and will do so the foreseeable future. They're cheaper, lighter, just as efficient on short trips, and much more practical on long trips.
Hybrid vehicles are the practical option today. Pure gasoline vehicles are outmoded and EVs are all hype.
Re: What I Worked On
#167Earlier quoted context omitted.
An alternative that seems to work is chasing grants, or defense contracts. But then the choice becomes "build something usable, or only work for someone who hired a 'grant writer' that is making 125-250% of your salary"
I don't have the skill to be a grant writer, so I don't begrudge their pay. Grant writer isn't a job you get through nepotism.
I knew someone who worked at a defense research group. Their head grant writer was pulling in 3x of the senior developers because he tried to quit and they had to make an offer he couldn't pass up.
Usually you don't counter-offer at all, and you don't throw money at someone like that unless there's a damned good reason.
Re: What I Worked On
#168This essay is very long. It would benefit from at least a summary at the top of each paragraph so you could scan through and read what you found interesting if you didn't have the time to read the entire essay.
Quick check over 13500 words. At 500 word per page that's 27 pages.
I am coming up (again quick check) with 45 minutes to read this (including footnotes). [1] [2]
Are 'Trevor Blackwell, John Collison, Patrick Collison, Daniel Gackle, Ralph Hazell, Jessica Livingston, Robert Morris, and Harj Taggar' reading that many draft pages?
[1] Could have used wc -c but used this: https://wordcounter.net/website-word-count
[2] For reading time used this: https://capitalizemytitle.com/reading-time/27-pages/
Re: What I Worked On
#169I'm not a huge fan of PG's essays in general, but this was a really interesting read. It's sobering how the tiniest details of someone's life can be so much more interesting than what they think of as their most important and original thoughts. Perhaps PG will be another Samuel Johnson (who's remembered primarily not for his work, but for Boswell's descriptions of his everyday life and conversation).
Re: What I Worked On
#170This is a well-written essay even if it's a bit long and somewhat navel-gazing (it is, after all, written for pg himself). However, I was continuously struck by just how ridiculously privileged and serendipitous pg's early life was to the point where I just can't even relate to it.
He basically meandered his way from an expensive (today) college to an even more expensive (today) grad school, then to art school because he felt like it, and only stumbled into an actual job because he was basically broke. Then he magically found an incredibly affordable NYC apartment and finally was in the right place at the right time to take advantage of the dot com boom and again lucked his way into leaving at the right time, mostly because he was burned out.
Don't get me wrong, pg obviously worked hard on both Viaweb and Ycom, and self-taught a lot of the startup lessons that are now common knowledge. But if I wrote this story as fiction with pg as the main character, people would laugh at the absurdity of it. For people who don't think luck is one of the biggest factors of success, just read this essay.