tech_ken

25 ms·

271.
by tech_ken 3y ago
High rate of success generalizing learnings to inputs which are well outside the training space.
272.
by tech_ken 3y ago
Yeah quite a lot! Kicked off years back when I had a short period of interest in Marxist labor theory of value and I started thinking of commodity goods in terms of labor-hours required to convert it from raw inputs to a finished product. I
273.
by tech_ken 3y ago
"No operation"; in machine language it's an instruction that doesn't do anything, in broader tech lingo it's something that's moot or which requires no work. Commenter is basically saying that nothing actionabl
274.
by tech_ken 3y ago
Are you just not familiar with the concept of a community college or what? I’m only lightly familiar with higher ed and even at this distance the problem is clearly not that nobody’s been “daring” enough to try and float a slimmed down high
275.
by tech_ken 3y ago
> Maybe if they came from industry their skills can be argued but the majority of those administrators don't have any experience outside of academia. So you're annoyed that the highly paid professionals have lots of experience
276.
by tech_ken 3y ago
Ok sure I'm on board with it. Now convince the millions of students who vote with their wallets to stop attending these all-inclusive campuses.
277.
by tech_ken 3y ago
> Harvard pays their president over $1million one year. This is simply the free market though. Consider that, for its top executive roles, Harvard is recruiting people who are coming from or comparing the offer to C-suite positions. Harv
278.
by tech_ken 3y ago
I mean I don’t disagree that the way we finance higher ed has led to this outcome, but also there absolutely is the demand from both state governments as well as state citizens to provide this level of service. I agree that we should not be
279.
by tech_ken 3y ago
People talk a lot about the bloat at universities, but I think that they don’t often think about that bloat as being the rational response to a system that is increasingly pushing them to (a) provide collegiate credentialling to basically t
280.
by tech_ken 3y ago
Any reading recs for actual info on bird brains?
281.
by tech_ken 3y ago
Main discussion happening here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39512684
282.
by tech_ken 3y ago
Gotcha, seems like you’re of more a “dunker” than a “discusser”. You might get more value from X or Reddit than HN, where the commenting policy encourages actually steelmanning people you disagree with, being curious and open, etc. Have a g
283.
by tech_ken 3y ago
Hm okay fair enough, I'll check out the podcast I do think that's a better format for communicating some of the details of this type of criticism. > It was an unforced error that they must have seen coming. To some extent this
284.
by tech_ken 3y ago
I don't think it's "better" or "worse" to "say" anything, LLMs don't have 'speech' or 'moral opinions' they're just text-generators. As I said above, it's not a ques
285.
by tech_ken 3y ago
You're missing the point (either on purpose or accidentally). LLMs give wrong answers to questions all the time, because they don't have the ability to actually internally reason. Whatever your moral platform, even simple ethical
286.
by tech_ken 3y ago
>I understand saying “we put it out early, sorry there are a few bugs and it looks rough”. But there has to be a line somewhere. And to me harm is on the other side of that line. Very true, I'm definitely unenthused about the rush t
287.
by tech_ken 3y ago
Sure I guess I meant "entirely on the conversation history" in the sense that a prompt is a sin qua non of an outcome, and the outcome is dependent on the specific prompt(s). I was using the word informally as an emphasizer of &qu
288.
by tech_ken 3y ago
Sure okay "early access" then. Basically just trying to say that if you're expecting a stable build right now you're in for a bad time, IMO
289.
by tech_ken 3y ago
Good point, dev is a bad word. "beta" or "early access" might have been a better term. I don't really believe that this is causing harm, however. GenAI is still so new, and Gemini in particular, that I don't th
290.
by tech_ken 3y ago
LLMs don't have an internal representation of "facts", they generate text based entirely on the conversation history. If it's properly tuned it will remain consistent with facts it's stated earlier in the conversati
291.
by tech_ken 3y ago
This seems histrionic for a product which is effectively still in d̶e̶v̶ early access. So Google rolled out something with some hasty and bad guard-rails to avoid a ton of backlash on a fledgling product - and thus...their leadership is kne
292.
by tech_ken 3y ago
> The other ... decided he would not stop until he had data indicating a rate of cures definitely greater than 60% I believe that "definitely greater than 60%" is supposed to imply that the researcher is stopping when the p-val
293.
by tech_ken 3y ago
Never considered a cigarillo before…but it’s an intriguing idea
294.
by tech_ken 3y ago
While one might expect this to be true, in my experience of wearing ballcaps and moving at above-walking speeds it's actually the forward orientation that holds best. A backwards bill often presents a larger surface to the wind, espe
295.
by tech_ken 3y ago
Cigars are a lot of commitment and make me feel sick, though. Hitting a little under one dart a month after my designated club night is a real sweet spot
296.
by tech_ken 3y ago
Sure, I've basically just accepted that I'll need to trash and rebuild my various Linux daily drivers every 1-2 years because of environment decay. All solutons I've seen (Qubes, Nix, etc) come off as a massive PITA given tha
297.
by tech_ken 3y ago
Nice work!! It's extremely motivating to see someone succeeding on this route, and especially with a hardware product. Did you start with any hardware foundations? Or was it something you had to learn as you pivoted? As an aside, this
298.
by tech_ken 3y ago
The one thing holding Python back from completely eating my workflow of utils, glue, and hacks is environment isolation. Nothing sucks more than when activating some venv breaks a background tool I wrote 3 years ago and forgot about. I reco
299.
by tech_ken 3y ago
Any examples you can share? I personally have never seen or heard of this happening, but obviously that doesn't mean it doesn't. I have no thoughts about who deserves what
300.
by tech_ken 3y ago
Upside: better than Ubuntu. Downside: wait too long to update and your computer is headed for the shadow realm.

More ›