blagie

64 ms·

811.
by blagie 4y ago
You're confusing being poor with being financially stressed. The two are not the same.
812.
by blagie 4y ago
People in Kenya do have a choice, and they pick the best choice for themselves and for their families. The set of choices for people earning $2/day is different than $20 or $200, but not smaller. Your aggression is better targeted towa
813.
by blagie 4y ago
Why do you think Kenya's economy is any less robust? The per-capita GDP has increased fivefold in the past two decades. It's a fraction of the income level of the US, but it's a robust, dynamic, and growing economy. (And I th
814.
by blagie 4y ago
The basic argument is a little bit different. There is a huge population in Kenya living, or in some places, failing to live for under $2/day. Most of these people are independent -- for example, street-side sellers in an urban slum, o
815.
by blagie 4y ago
For the long tail of ML uses, $Y dominates. That's actually most of the market. AMD will do fine for 3d gaming, stable diffusion, and a few similar uses. And price/performance wins for giant data centers doing something specialize
816.
by blagie 4y ago
> I was surprised when I started playing around with Stable Diffusion a couple of weeks ago and it just kind of worked with ROCm. Stable Diffusion is literally the single highest-profile application of machine learning. There has been ex
817.
by blagie 4y ago
I wish this were so, but I'm very, very sceptical. Everything I use is built to CUDA. Nothing actually works on non-NVidia hardware. "Actually works" is different from "theoretically works." A lot of what I use theo
818.
by blagie 4y ago
Yes, but it's because submodules are a badly architected, badly implemented train wreck. There are many good and easy solutions to this problem, all of which were not implemented by git. git is a clean and elegant system overall, with
819.
by blagie 4y ago
Elite universities insider. People lie in elite science just about as much as in politics. A lot of data from schools like MIT and Stanford is intentionally baked to lead to politically-popular but incorrect results. By "politically-po
820.
by blagie 4y ago
Tail recursion isn't just an optimization technique. It enables a broad range of algorithms to work. Anything where the stack grows O(n) can't be done without tail recursion because of stack overflows. There are two camps of progr
821.
by blagie 4y ago
> I understand that nonstandard analysis is a firm footing on which to build calculus, but is it totally equivalent to real analysis? This is a bit of a philosophical question which hinges on what the word "equivalent" means. I
822.
by blagie 4y ago
That's the historical progression, not the teaching progression. That's the point. Integrals were conceived over 2000 years ago. Derivatives came Newton-ish. Formalism with limits came last.
823.
by blagie 4y ago
I like async/await, but I haven't seen any language do it well. Doing it well would involve: 1) Not crashing-and-burning on simple "Hello World" level use-cases (e.g. working in a Python terminal, a 3-liner script, etc.)
824.
by blagie 4y ago
That's a misread. If I collect the dust from your car, I can (in abstract) place where it's been with 99% accuracy too. For example, I can pick of pollens, and sequence them down to a specific tree. That doesn't mean if it ha
825.
by blagie 4y ago
Now, as a genuine follow-up question, start asking it about how that social construct is defined: - How was race constructed in the US in 1850, and what was the hierarchy? - In Germany in 1940? - In Japan in 1940? - In colonial Britain? - E
826.
by blagie 4y ago
In many cases, the pattern-matching algorithm does better than intelligent sources. For example, in my area of research, if I ask GPT for a lit review, GPT is about as good as a newly-minted PhD in a junior research position. There will be
827.
by blagie 4y ago
The "however" part bugs the heck out of me, not in this context, but in general. Whenever I ask anything unaligned with mainstream progressive US culture, I can get an answer, but I can't get one without a disclaimer. It make
828.
by blagie 4y ago
I don't have a solution -- which is why I called for a discussion -- but in this specific context, I think a lot of this comes back to framing this with regards to local value systems. This is a good starting point: https://
829.
by blagie 4y ago
I actually hate the language of "more equitable model that is realistic given widespread values in the region." Ending slavery isn't controversial. Western notions of equity are, in both gross and subtle ways. If I: - work ha
830.
by blagie 4y ago
US culture has victims in cages on the border with Mexico, victims in Gitmo, victims being locked up in prison due to racism, and about a million victims in Iraq/Syria. Not to mention most of global warming is from rich people. Are you
831.
by blagie 4y ago
No, I am talking about things like job loss, followed by loss of ability to pay mortgage, followed by child losing school district. You have no idea who I am, or what my life position is. There are places I'm willing to stick my neck o
832.
by blagie 4y ago
I'd love a discussion of a (serious) solutions. A lot of Western solutions sound like variants of Simpson's Paradox, where equity is increased locally, and decreased globally. This is, for example, true if one provides people with
833.
by blagie 4y ago
My advice: Have one or more side projects going all the time. If you get laid off, immediately start doing a startup, open-source project, or volunteering full time. A year of unemployment? Lonely, depressing, and not good on a resume. A ye
834.
by blagie 4y ago
My experience is that goods from before mass manufacturing are objectively higher-quality and more repairable. That's before cheap consumer goods of 1970, though. There are at least two issues at play: 1) If I build something, I can do
835.
by blagie 4y ago
I gave this serious thought. The core problem is I'm not sure my child will want to use a graphing calculator much. All of these things feel like relics, compared to Python, Desmos, and similar tools. The HP Prime has a 320x240 display
836.
by blagie 4y ago
This is a place with significant cultural differences. I can't imagine my parents wanting me to be locked out, and I can't imagine wanting my children to be locked out. Things like personal correspondence usually stop being privat
837.
by blagie 4y ago
Yes, we are relics of a bygone era. I really enjoyed my HP48 as a child. I don't think anything since had the same ability to rapidly script operations. << 1/ SWAP 1/ + 1/ >> 'PAR STO .... and 11 keystok
838.
by blagie 4y ago
I was the same way. My child isn't. My child trusts me, asks me for advice, and wants me to make a lot of choices for him when he's unsure. (he's not like that with other adults) Personalities differ.
839.
Best Calculator for a Nerdy Child
7 points by blagie 4y ago|12 comments
840.
by blagie 4y ago
Easiest: Find a random industry. You'll see job openings for programmers. You'll probably be wildly overqualified. Get a job there. Make sure it's a job where you can keep your head up and learn to industry (and not be isolat

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