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joshgev

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joshgev
·قبل 3 سنوات·discuss
Seems to fail on Desktop Firefox (I'm on Linux) as well.
joshgev
·قبل 3 سنوات·discuss
Seconded, lived in the Bay Area for years and Paris for two years so far. Not even vaguely the same ballpark.
joshgev
·قبل 3 سنوات·discuss
I'm more excited about StableHLO and IREE than about their integration into Pytorch, Tensorflow, etc.

I want to see a DSL that can be used to describe models elegantly and then export them either to a shared object or to something that can be run with a runtime (in this case IREE). Things like ONNX and TorchScript promised this but I've had little luck getting these to work well enough to trust them in large scale production deployments.

I understand that PyTorch is an awesome tool for researchers, but it doesn't necessarily fit into a prod environment.
joshgev
·قبل 3 سنوات·discuss
I'm sorry but you are wrong. I am describing how physics works and it is at odds with many of the claims made regarding our understanding of what is a very, _very_, complex system. You can't just claim there is "consensus that it's going to be bad" without having the sort of scientific discussion I am trying to have. Let's discuss what we know, what the limits are of that knowledge, etc, before we declare that the sky is falling.

I do think you make a great point, which is that the risks and rewards need to be considered. The problem is that analyzing the cost is also a pretty complex problem and there are very real arguments to be made that going green could end up being very costly.

FWIW, I actually came into the climate science debate on your side and have been won over by paying attention to a broader set of sources. One of the things I really can't stand about the climate change disaster is that even if you accept all the claims from the IPCC, it pales in comparison, in my opinion, to other issues that seem a bit simpler to me. The collapsing insect populations, for instance, can have a pretty direct impact on human health and happiness. The climate discussion seems takes all the attention even though no one has made a credible argument as to why it is more dangerous than other problems we face.

edit: I'll add that scientific modelling is _very_ difficult in general, even for much simpler systems than what we are talking about here. These models have tons of simplifying assumptions baked into them and they can be made to spit out just about anything, depending on what values for certain parameters are chosen. The tools aren't particularly trustworthy.

edit: I'll add a bit more. I do think climate change is happening and I do think that humans might have a big part in why it is happening. What I don't find compelling is why this is necessarily an end-of-the-world scenario. The typical argument is: "there has already been warming and there will be further warming. Then there will be runaway effects, then the warming will become extreme and life will become very difficult for most people in most places." Well I do agree with the first part, but it is _really_ hard to predict what happens afterwards, i.e. are there going to be runaway effects. There are reasonable arguments that there won't be. The arguments that there will be tend to focus on a few scientific facts and ignore the complexity of the system at large (i.e. they ignore negative feedback mechanisms and focus only on positive feedback).
joshgev
·قبل 3 سنوات·discuss
The problem with this is there do seem to be quite legitimate physicists who disagree with the "sky is falling" conclusion that all popular discussion is premised on. I recently heard an interview with Dr. Richard Lindzen that, for instance, provides what sounds like a very reasonable counter to the prevailing attitude.

Anyone who says "the science is settled, the laws of physics cannot be violated" fails to realize what physics is even about. The vast majority of victories that physics has had since Isaac Newton are based on incredibly simplified models that strip out all of the complexity from a system. Basically everything interesting is treated as linear (as in f(x) ~ x) and a lot of the other stuff is just thrown into constants. After a few decades of working with that, both in theory and with experiments, you might get comfortable enough to add some small corrections to your theories. In this way you step closer and closer to "truth" but we are still very far off, even with our best physics, from fully understanding anything of even moderate complexity. This is not to say that we don't get incredibly useful results from physics (just look at our technology!), but it does mean that we need to constrain statements about how much we really understand and where our "laws" really are applicable. Take for instance the equation for kinetic energy, k=.5 * mv^2. Hugely useful, but dead wrong if you try to apply it to things moving at relativistic speeds.

The problem of climate science, from my perspective, is that we can't strip it down like we do for simple systems like a ball moving in space. Climate is inherently very complex; if you try to ignore how oceans interact with vegetation, how vegetation interacts with clouds, how clouds and rain are connected, etc, then your models can be interesting and might reveal something, but they can't be used to predict what will happen with any degree of confidence because they are too far removed from the real thing. And if you don't strip something out of the system when doing your modeling, well then good luck: you'll never understand anything at all because the thing is too complex to be used to calculate anything of interest.

edit: added some words.

edit2: more words.
joshgev
·قبل 3 سنوات·discuss
Yeah I came here to say this as well. I gave up on LaTeX for my resume something like ten years ago. Since then I use HTML/CSS and render it with wkhtmltopdf.

edit: grammar
joshgev
·قبل 4 سنوات·discuss
Well what does that even mean if you don't follow that up with some good 'ol R&R?
joshgev
·قبل 4 سنوات·discuss
There were some reasonable bits in here, but there is just enough typical, ridiculous Silicon Valley nonsense to largely turn me off from the article.

> I actually got a lot done

In an article that seems to be promoting the idea of relaxing and taking a break once in a while, the author couldn't resist sneaking in nod to the typical fetishistic obsession for constant productivity that is endemic in this crowd. It seems like we're told that it is possible to relax AND be productive. Is it so unreasonable to disconnect from work every once in a while without worrying about being "productive?"

> Metrics are useful

No they aren't, not for this. There is something seriously wrong with someone if they need a $300 piece of equipment (+ a few hundred more $ for the phone to connect to it) in order to understand something so fundamental about their bodies. We aren't talking a diagnostic imaging to find a suspected tumor here. We're talking about being tired. This is absurd.

EDIT: Small typos
joshgev
·قبل 4 سنوات·discuss
Damn, that was a really cool talk. Nice work and thanks for sharing.
joshgev
·قبل 4 سنوات·discuss
I don't understand. In this article we are imaging widespread and frequent failure of critical infrastructure and we are supposed to further imagine that we're still interested in working on our relatively unimportant software? I suppose there are critical software systems out there, but they're already written so we don't really need to think about what languages they'll be work on with.
joshgev
·قبل 4 سنوات·discuss
Yes same here. I really go crazy when technology that takes us further away from each other is presented as some sort of progress. Why don't we look around at how isolated we've become? Is it any wonder that our stupid little factions (right vs left, black vs white, etc) are pulling further and further away from each other when so much effort is being put into limiting our contact with one another?
joshgev
·قبل 4 سنوات·discuss
No offense intended, but what you describe sounds pretty dismal to me. We have what you describe where I live (France), but I prefer to go to the markets where I know the butcher/green grocer/cheese person/dried fruits and nuts person/fish monger/etc. and they know me. I stand in a line, sometimes for a while, and finally they get to me and ask me how I've been doing recently. Then they ask me for my order and frequently tell me something interesting or useful about what I'm ordering (e.g. where it comes from, how it was grown, etc). They might tell me how to prepare something or offer a suggestion as to what I could buy that I don't usually buy. They might even tell me something about an event happening in the community soon. It's pretty rad.
joshgev
·قبل 4 سنوات·discuss
My favorite place to bike is Parc naturel régional de la Haute Vallée de Chevreuse (French people aren't into the whole brevity thing). I can't speak to hiking but I have to assume there are nice walks to be had in the area because I frequently see people with hiking gear on. You can get there from Paris on the RER B: just take it all the way south to Saint-Rémy-lès-Chevreuse. Île-de-France is, by and large, quite flat, but Chevreuse is a nice valley so you can get some really pretty scenery.

EDIT: I'll add that last fall I was biking around there with my wife and we found some most righteous porcini mushrooms growing on the side of the road. It really is nice out there.

I should also add that nearer Paris is Forêt domaniale de Meudon, which is in the direction of Versailles. Nice forested area. I can't speak to the walking/hiking but I assume it is not bad (I've only been out that way on bike).
joshgev
·قبل 4 سنوات·discuss
Attitudes vary from person to person, but I don't really think being 20 minutes from nature really counts. I lived in Paris until recently and had a really rough time for a few reasons, but the biggest one is was the lack of green places to walk. Whenever I brought it up to anyone, people would say "oh, what about Bois de Boulogne or Bois de Vincennes?" Both were inaccessible by foot from where I lived due to distance and would take 30 minutes to get to by public transit. So what's the idea, then? We should budget an hour in a subway tunnel each day so we can spend some time in a park? That's no way to live; nature isn't something we should treat like a museum. It is something we should feel a part of.

For me, thankfully, there was an easy solution: I moved to one of the towns just outside of the city. Now I have ample access to lots of trees, birds, flowers, etc. If I get on my bike, which I do frequently, I can be in some really beautiful regional parks within 40 minutes or so, and the ride there ain't too bad either.