lambdatronics

7 ms·

31.
by lambdatronics 4y ago
But they're generally not actually beliefs, in the sense that they wouldn't stake any substantial value on them. They are "performative" beliefs that are indicative of belonging to a certain subculture. What's inter
32.
by lambdatronics 4y ago
I did the same thing (looking at the negativity in subreddits) when I was daydreaming about moving to a different country. It's quite effective.
33.
by lambdatronics 4y ago
>HN equivalent of physics or "real" engineering Where's that? :D
34.
by lambdatronics 4y ago
Have a look at this study for a tokamak-based system: "The cost of the fusion-specific technologies accounts for approximately 75% of the total direct costs of constructing the plant" [0] They also conclude that "The model le
35.
by lambdatronics 4y ago
Working on nuclear fusion. Debatable whether that's ultimately the best way to tackle climate change given how well solar is doing these days, but hey...
36.
by lambdatronics 4y ago
For me, it was approaching it from the information-theoretic perspective. E. T. Jaynes' paper was what made it all click for me: https://bayes.wustl.edu/etj/articles/theory.1.pdf Edit: but that was only after
37.
by lambdatronics 4y ago
Interesting to get some fusion nerd specs on the Trenta machine: 10 MJ stored energy, ~100us shot duration, merged plasma temperature ~ 1keV (pre-compression), 10 minute shot cycle, multiple MA coils in the compression region. If the illust
38.
by lambdatronics 4y ago
Just going back and look at GPT-2's output, it's amazing how much better this system is. It still doesn't "understand" anything, but the coherence of what it spits out has gone up drastically. https://the
39.
by lambdatronics 4y ago
There's always General Fusion.
40.
by lambdatronics 4y ago
Uhhh... it's definitely being used for "stockpile stewardship." The fusion crowd went splitsies with the weapons folks to get this funded in the first place.
41.
by lambdatronics 4y ago
The bigger the target, the more energy is needed to compress it. So it would require more laser energy to get to 100 MJ or 1 GJ, I think. But maybe only a few times more powerful. (Pity they didn't build in some head room!)
42.
by lambdatronics 4y ago
I think Jevon's paradox is also hitting to some extent, coupled with the ecosystem getting bigger, so a typical project may have more transitive dependencies behind it. The functionality is going up, and the speed of compilation is goi
43.
by lambdatronics 4y ago
I would say there have been a handful of important milestones this year, but this I would consider a breakthrough. Most of the other stuff is overhyped for sure.
44.
by lambdatronics 4y ago
Yeah, either heavy-ion beams or electrically-pumped excimer lasers seems like the path forward for the driver. Higher efficiency, higher repetition rate, possibly more robust. They also need to do away with holraums and switch to direct dri
45.
by lambdatronics 4y ago
Last time, they got something like 80% return on the laser energy input, now it's over 100% apparently. And, they had trouble repeating that last record, so people were questioning how meaningful it was if it couldn't be repeated.
46.
by lambdatronics 4y ago
Yeah. Super interesting concepts I hadn't come across before, but it's hard to see the motivation for the design choices, in light of the stated goal (which is itself a bit 'out there'). OTOH, it's in general a hard
47.
by lambdatronics 4y ago
Humans can think; humans are machines; therefore machines can think.
48.
by lambdatronics 4y ago
Edsger Dijkstra: "The question of whether Machines Can Think (…) is about as relevant as the question of whether Submarines Can Swim."
49.
by lambdatronics 4y ago
>we need to pair generative models with verification systems >code and math are easier to verify I would love to see a two-stage pipeline using a LLM to convert natural language specifications into formal specifications for something
50.
by lambdatronics 4y ago
Agreed. You can be a decent manager with mediocre tech skills provided you work really hard on the soft-skills part, but greatness only comes from excellence in both soft & 'hard' skills.
51.
by lambdatronics 4y ago
"Managers are hubs of communication, the better they communicate across these sphere boundaries, the more people they can communicate with, the more data they have, which, consequently leads to better decision making." "As a
52.
by lambdatronics 4y ago
I like it. Some restaurants hand out little pagers, this could substitute for those.
53.
by lambdatronics 4y ago
https://dilbert.com/strip/1995-02-17
54.
by lambdatronics 4y ago
“A technology that works 70% of the time is a bad one.” https://missiveapp.com/blog/life-and-death-of-read-tracking
55.
by lambdatronics 4y ago
With enough dimensions, everything is on the Pareto frontier: https://erikbern.com/2016/10/25/pareto-efficiency.htm
56.
by lambdatronics 4y ago
> people believe is true, but cannot build upon because they don't fully understand it. OK, maybe it doesn't help people build on the proof, but does it help computers build on the proof? Why does it have to come back to
57.
by lambdatronics 4y ago
Interesting thought. One could do Monte Carlo simulations to estimate the probability distribution of time-to-finish. I considered something like this [0] to explain the empirical log-normal distribution of project completion times [1], al
58.
by lambdatronics 4y ago
From the introduction: "On the other end of the spectrum, formats such as HDF5 and BLZ address problems with large data sets and distributed computing, but don’t really address the metadata needs of an interchange format. ASDF aims to
59.
by lambdatronics 4y ago
Good question. I think historical designs supported the fuel elements on material structures that ended up absorbing a large fraction of the fragments, leading to inefficiency & overheating the fuel. Here's an outside-of-the-box id
60.
by lambdatronics 4y ago
The power density is much higher than traditional photovoltaics (more in line with concentrating photovoltaic power), so in theory the cost should be low, although one probably needs more sophisticated cells to achieve reasonable efficienci

More ›