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George Hotz is my canary for the question "is there still adventure to be found in computing". I hope he finds some, because if he can't, then there is probably

George Hotz is my canary for the question "is there still adventure to be found in computing". I hope he finds some, because if he can't, then there is probably none.

thejackgoode 4y ago
That’s one huge projected canary
deltree7 4y ago
I'm a fan of George Hotz. But don't be a cult
- serf 4y ago
  Excited to see what Hotz gets into next. An ounce of humility might do him some good, but i'd be hesitant to recommend it to someone like that and ruin his whole edge -- similar to Musk, I think that attitude is huge with regards to their personal effectiveness. now a short story that your cult comment conjured in my head: the year is 2122. the Muskalonian robotic death squad approaches the last cave hold-out of Hotzite believers.. thankfully the killer robots pass by peacefully, blind to the possible engagement because the squad lacks radar and lidar, and the cave is dark.
  - lawrenceyan 4y ago
    You should get into sci-fi. I'd read this.
- generationP 4y ago
  You're reading my post too optimistically. I am far from convinced that computing is a good volcano to leap into these days. The last innovations that have made me wow were the Wikipedia (2001), python (1991-) and mid-2000s progress in game engines. Over the last 15 years, all the changes have been rather incremental (languages, security, some OSs, game engines again) or disappointing (cryptocurrencies, social networks), with the exception of ML. Now, ML is a fresh breeze but it is lacking the "garage-ability" that computing has been famous for; good luck competing with the bigshots on that field. And there is still a great potential for disappointment as it is unclear how well it scales beyond the type of problems that have lots of data to train on or allow for automatic reward (RL).
  - jodrellblank 4y ago
    I like your canary; it reminds me of the Terence McKenna quote "The artist's task is to save the soul of mankind; and anything less is a dithering while Rome burns. Because if the artists - who are self-selected for being able to journey into the Other - if the artists cannot find the way, then the way cannot be found.". If the hackers - who are self-selected for being able to journey into the Machine - cannot find the adventure, then the adventure cannot be found. Things which have made me wow in more recent years: - Large scale aggregation of data, specifically when Google started using data from phones around the planet to overlay live road traffic data on Maps, or when individual businesses are typically busy on different days of the week. Live map views of lightning ( https://lightningmaps.org/ https://lightningmaps.org/ ) or weather ( https://www.windy.com/ https://www.windy.com/ ). Things a skilled programmer might build (a map on a website) but which can't work without a global network of sensors. - More continuously active sensors, brought about by specialist circuitry and low power systems, e.g. a phone with raise to wake, step tracker, and which silence incoming calls when they detect unusually stressful manouevres in a car. - JSLinux and v86 browser-based virtual machines. I know the tech of running a VM isn't particularly knew but the ability to boot a Linux/Windows VM with one click in a browser almost everyone has without needing a cloud/container instance behind it feels like it will bloom into a lot of new things over time. - The first app to run on smartphones which did OCR of the camera, translation of the text, and live overlay of the translated text back on the picture on screen. I forget its name now, and now it's builtin to cameraphones. - Going back about 15 years, but when content aware scaling came in - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seam_carving https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seam_carving - Something else which is scale related but not ML, when a cloud storage program like DropBox can hash a file on your local machine, send the hash to their servers, notice that someone else has already uploaded that file, and tag it into your account so you can 'upload' non-unique files without the time or bandwidth of actually uploading them. - When DropBox live recompress JPGs using a lossless compression to save tens of petabytes of storage, then decompress them back into JPG as people access them. https://blog.acolyer.org/2017/05/01/the-design-implementation-and-deployment-of-a-system-to-transparently-compress-hundreds-of-petabytes-of-image-files-for-a-file-storage-service/ https://blog.acolyer.org/2017/05/01/the-design-implementatio... - Internet traffic highjacking by 'bitsquatting' domain names which are one memory-bit-flipped-bit away from the correct name, and then using the incoming traffic to estimate the global amount of flakey memory and cosmic ray events happening: https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=squatting%20memory%20bit%20flip%20domains https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=squatting%20memory%20b... - Deepfakes; they appeared as hype and then faded from hype, but the ability to synthesize another person's facial appearanace and vocal mannerisms on someone else is impressive. - Drone FPS flying with VR headsets. Coordinated light-drone displays in the sky instead of fireworks. - ML related, but iPhone accessibility features can describe pictures, live while using the camera ( https://youtu.be/UnoeaUpHKxY?t=39 https://youtu.be/UnoeaUpHKxY?t=39 ) or in the photos app or on websites. Or apps like Audible Vision (e.g. https://youtu.be/QiEKMTTwTZg?t=377 https://youtu.be/QiEKMTTwTZg?t=377 ). - ML related, Stable Diffusion, being able to generate visual scenes from text descriptions. > "Now, ML is a fresh breeze but it is lacking the "garage-ability" that computing has been famous for; good luck competing with the bigshots on that field." Doug Miles is trying with LogicMoo ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdG6GVCwJrw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdG6GVCwJrw ), trying to build an AI that learns inside a virtual world instead of using big data and ML techniques.
mikewarot 4y ago
There is PLENTY of adventure to be found in programming. You can start by building a Twitter clone that doesn't do moderation at all, but rather ranks things in a vector space. Scalar go/no go ratings are passe. Imagine ranking a tweet you read by any scale of your choosing, True/False, Funny/Not Funny, Interesting/Boring, Incriminating/Proof of Innocence
- generationP 4y ago
  People are too lazy to rate tweets already if they don't pique their emotions (usually by controversy). Also the best innovation around Twitter would be to destroy it, which Elon Musk is thankfully doing right now.
cheriot 4y ago
The moods of a manic personality might not be a good canary.
paxys 4y ago
This reminds me of all the "born too late to explore the world" people, who in reality have never left their house. There is limitless adventure right across the street if you actually want to go seek it out.

George Hotz is my canary for the question "is there still adventure to be found in computing". I hope he finds some, because if he can't, then there is probably none.

thejackgoode 4y ago

That’s one huge projected canary

deltree7 4y ago

I'm a fan of George Hotz. But don't be a cult

serf 4y ago
Excited to see what Hotz gets into next. An ounce of humility might do him some good, but i'd be hesitant to recommend it to someone like that and ruin his whole edge -- similar to Musk, I think that attitude is huge with regards to their personal effectiveness. now a short story that your cult comment conjured in my head: the year is 2122. the Muskalonian robotic death squad approaches the last cave hold-out of Hotzite believers.. thankfully the killer robots pass by peacefully, blind to the possible engagement because the squad lacks radar and lidar, and the cave is dark.
- lawrenceyan 4y ago
  You should get into sci-fi. I'd read this.
generationP 4y ago
You're reading my post too optimistically. I am far from convinced that computing is a good volcano to leap into these days. The last innovations that have made me wow were the Wikipedia (2001), python (1991-) and mid-2000s progress in game engines. Over the last 15 years, all the changes have been rather incremental (languages, security, some OSs, game engines again) or disappointing (cryptocurrencies, social networks), with the exception of ML. Now, ML is a fresh breeze but it is lacking the "garage-ability" that computing has been famous for; good luck competing with the bigshots on that field. And there is still a great potential for disappointment as it is unclear how well it scales beyond the type of problems that have lots of data to train on or allow for automatic reward (RL).
- jodrellblank 4y ago
  I like your canary; it reminds me of the Terence McKenna quote "The artist's task is to save the soul of mankind; and anything less is a dithering while Rome burns. Because if the artists - who are self-selected for being able to journey into the Other - if the artists cannot find the way, then the way cannot be found.". If the hackers - who are self-selected for being able to journey into the Machine - cannot find the adventure, then the adventure cannot be found. Things which have made me wow in more recent years: - Large scale aggregation of data, specifically when Google started using data from phones around the planet to overlay live road traffic data on Maps, or when individual businesses are typically busy on different days of the week. Live map views of lightning ( https://lightningmaps.org/ https://lightningmaps.org/ ) or weather ( https://www.windy.com/ https://www.windy.com/ ). Things a skilled programmer might build (a map on a website) but which can't work without a global network of sensors. - More continuously active sensors, brought about by specialist circuitry and low power systems, e.g. a phone with raise to wake, step tracker, and which silence incoming calls when they detect unusually stressful manouevres in a car. - JSLinux and v86 browser-based virtual machines. I know the tech of running a VM isn't particularly knew but the ability to boot a Linux/Windows VM with one click in a browser almost everyone has without needing a cloud/container instance behind it feels like it will bloom into a lot of new things over time. - The first app to run on smartphones which did OCR of the camera, translation of the text, and live overlay of the translated text back on the picture on screen. I forget its name now, and now it's builtin to cameraphones. - Going back about 15 years, but when content aware scaling came in - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seam_carving https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seam_carving - Something else which is scale related but not ML, when a cloud storage program like DropBox can hash a file on your local machine, send the hash to their servers, notice that someone else has already uploaded that file, and tag it into your account so you can 'upload' non-unique files without the time or bandwidth of actually uploading them. - When DropBox live recompress JPGs using a lossless compression to save tens of petabytes of storage, then decompress them back into JPG as people access them. https://blog.acolyer.org/2017/05/01/the-design-implementation-and-deployment-of-a-system-to-transparently-compress-hundreds-of-petabytes-of-image-files-for-a-file-storage-service/ https://blog.acolyer.org/2017/05/01/the-design-implementatio... - Internet traffic highjacking by 'bitsquatting' domain names which are one memory-bit-flipped-bit away from the correct name, and then using the incoming traffic to estimate the global amount of flakey memory and cosmic ray events happening: https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=squatting%20memory%20bit%20flip%20domains https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=squatting%20memory%20b... - Deepfakes; they appeared as hype and then faded from hype, but the ability to synthesize another person's facial appearanace and vocal mannerisms on someone else is impressive. - Drone FPS flying with VR headsets. Coordinated light-drone displays in the sky instead of fireworks. - ML related, but iPhone accessibility features can describe pictures, live while using the camera ( https://youtu.be/UnoeaUpHKxY?t=39 https://youtu.be/UnoeaUpHKxY?t=39 ) or in the photos app or on websites. Or apps like Audible Vision (e.g. https://youtu.be/QiEKMTTwTZg?t=377 https://youtu.be/QiEKMTTwTZg?t=377 ). - ML related, Stable Diffusion, being able to generate visual scenes from text descriptions. > "Now, ML is a fresh breeze but it is lacking the "garage-ability" that computing has been famous for; good luck competing with the bigshots on that field." Doug Miles is trying with LogicMoo ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdG6GVCwJrw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdG6GVCwJrw ), trying to build an AI that learns inside a virtual world instead of using big data and ML techniques.

mikewarot 4y ago

There is PLENTY of adventure to be found in programming. You can start by building a Twitter clone that doesn't do moderation at all, but rather ranks things in a vector space. Scalar go/no go ratings are passe. Imagine ranking a tweet you read by any scale of your choosing, True/False, Funny/Not Funny, Interesting/Boring, Incriminating/Proof of Innocence

generationP 4y ago
People are too lazy to rate tweets already if they don't pique their emotions (usually by controversy). Also the best innovation around Twitter would be to destroy it, which Elon Musk is thankfully doing right now.

cheriot 4y ago

The moods of a manic personality might not be a good canary.

paxys 4y ago

This reminds me of all the "born too late to explore the world" people, who in reality have never left their house. There is limitless adventure right across the street if you actually want to go seek it out.