wenc

10 ms·

91.
by wenc 1y ago
> There is always something for a large class of intelligent achievers to do. The failure to put them to work is more of a societal failure than it is an indictment of the education system. This doesn’t quite resonate with me, because I’
92.
by wenc 1y ago
NY to Toronto actually doesn't make sense because there is a border. I took that train ride and it took 2 hours to clear the border. Even today the guideline is 90 mins - 2 hours. The whole trip took 15 hours. Never again. I could have
93.
by wenc 1y ago
Not quite. Embeddings are a form of latent variables. Attention query/key/value vectors are latent variables. More generally, a latent variable is any internal, not-directly-observed representation that compresses or restructur
94.
by wenc 1y ago
Leland McInnes is amazing. He's also the author of UMAP.
95.
by wenc 1y ago
You’re correct in a mathematical sense: linearity and Gaussian are restrictive assumptions. However I meant it colloquially in that those assumptions are trivially satisfied by many generating processes in the physical and engineering world
96.
by wenc 1y ago
A lot of relationships are (locally) linear so this isn’t as restrictive as it might seem. Many real-life productionized applications are based on it. Like linear regression, it has its place. T-SNE is good for visualization and for seeing
97.
by wenc 1y ago
PCA (essentially SVD) the one that makes the fewest assumptions. It still works really well if your data is (locally) linear and more or less Gaussian. PLS is the regression version of PCA. There are also nonlinear techniques. I’ve used UMA
98.
by wenc 1y ago
A lot of interesting possibilities lie in latent space. For those unfamiliar, this means the underlying set of variables that drive everything else. For instance, you can put a thousand temperature sensors in a room, which give you 1000 tem
99.
by wenc 1y ago
The problem with heat isn't only temperature, but in many places, it's the accompanying humidity. Heat and humidity are energy sapping and drains you of the ability to do highly focused intellectual work. You pay a price in produc
100.
by wenc 1y ago
I stayed in a older building in Tuscany Italy once and the walls were thick, so it felt cooler inside. That said, the air is still muggy so even though the temperatures were bearably, the humidity was not. I slept with a fan on and still wo
101.
by wenc 1y ago
Energy costs are much lower with heat pumps. But cost of heat pump is higher up front.
102.
by wenc 1y ago
The conversation has also moved on -- I have a heat pump (split unit) in my apartment, and my monthly power bill has always hovered around $40 in the summer here in WA. Now, arguably the capex for a heat pump is substantial, and that's
103.
by wenc 1y ago
When I worked at a Microsoft shop, I used Azure DevOps. To be honest, it's actually not bad for .NET stuff. It fits the .NET development life cycle like Visual Studio fits C#.
104.
by wenc 1y ago
If we want US manufacturing, it has to: 1) Meet or exceed spec (this shouldn't be a problem) 2) Lower TCO than competition -- labor, automation (this is where the US is current uncompetitive on the lower-end, very competitive on the hi
105.
by wenc 1y ago
I subscribe to all 3: ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini. In terms of humanity, Claude is the best and probably the best fit for Apple audiences. It’s the emotionally friend who is level headed. The NYTimes did an article on Claude which captures t
106.
by wenc 1y ago
I pay for both. iCloud for photos and Mac backup. Dropbox for files. iCloud is somehow not good for low latency file syncs. Even for photos it’s not excellent. It takes a while for photos on my phone to show up on my macOS Photos app. But I
107.
by wenc 1y ago
Yes. I’ve been paying for Dropbox for years. I also have iCloud for photos and Google Drive from my Gemini subscription. iCloud sync really doesn’t work well for files. I tried using it for logseq once and it messed it up. Google Drive I ha
108.
by wenc 1y ago
I didn't know BK stopped offering veggie burgers. There used to be the Veggie burger and the Impossible Whopper, and they were two completely different products. As a meat eater, I'm a big fan of the Impossible Whopper. It does ta
109.
by wenc 1y ago
I've been doing intermittent fasting (16:8) since 2016 (9 years). I have a belly and am what you would call "a little chubby". I don't exercise that much (once a week). I drink one black coffee in the morning. After all
110.
by wenc 1y ago
This one is a whisper-based Python package https://github.com/primaprashant/hns
111.
by wenc 1y ago
Demand response is very common indeed. I used to work for a company that did load curtailment in anticipation of power demand peaks, because if you could lower (or eliminate) power usage during those peaks, the power producer would give you
112.
by wenc 1y ago
I usually listen at 1.5x passively. But what you said made me curious. I listened to this podcast at 3x. I was able to understand all the words, but my conceptual understanding decreased. I also have to listen actively -- not passively. ht
113.
by wenc 1y ago
I've also found that structure is key instead of trusting its streams of consciousness. For unit testing, I actually pre-write some tests so it can learn what structure I'm looking for. I go as far as to write mocks and test class
114.
by wenc 1y ago
Pure math people probably don’t reach for calculators. But engineers do all the time. Back of the envelope guesstimating is bread and butter. The modern equivalent of a calculator is Excel.
115.
by wenc 1y ago
Volvo is still primarily Swedish. https://www.gunthervolvocars.net/who-makes-volvo-cars.htm The Volvo EX90 (in the article) is made in Charleston SC.
116.
by wenc 1y ago
> Volvo sadly no longer stands for Swedish quality and safety. > What you’re buying is essentially an overpriced Chinese car with Volvo stickers. > And I’m saying this as a Swede. Buy German cars, specifically within the Volkswagen
117.
by wenc 1y ago
Especially useful for phone calls -- don't need to hunt for an empty phone booth or book a room. I used to have my own office working for an older industrial company. Now that I work for a tech company, it's all open concept. I ha
118.
by wenc 1y ago
I feel TCM's empirical roots probably did stumble on some real remedies (many people I know, including myself, have definitely benefited from certain aspects of TCM, especially acupuncture), but there's a problem. It's a kind
119.
by wenc 1y ago
That is known as a "cartel," which is also prosecutable under the Sherman Act. It applies to not just monopolies. But that doesn't seem to be the case here.
120.
by wenc 1y ago
“Dithering” is the key — except this seems to have been done by hand. When I was a kid, I owned a monochrome display that could only display at CGA resolutions “640x400” 1-bit (and 320x200). Many games and art and didn’t support that showed

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