> he came up with thousands of elegant and surprising results, often without proof. He was fond of saying that his equations had been bestowed on him by the gods
And somehow this guy is remembered as a 'genius'...
How could it possibly be (a better solution) when there are X different ways to do any single thing in html(/css/js)? If you have a website that uses a canvas to showcase the content (think presentation or something like that), where would you even start? People are still discussing whether the semantic web is important; not every page is utf8 encoded, etc. IMHO small LLMS (trained specifically for this) combined with some other (more predictable) techniques are the best solution we are going to get.
Ilya's name might be the reason they got into the conversation about the money at the first place, but given that AI is very capital intensive business, $1B is not an insane amount imho. It will give him and the team a decent amount of time to do the research they want to do, without having the pressure of customers and what not.
Second and third paragraph talk about using a vector as an underlying storage, but mention that 'if you store data in a vec its address might change all the time'. If you hold indexes instead of references to the vector cells, what does it matter if the vector changes its location?
As some other commenters here noted, most of these questions are uncomfortable when coming from strangers. But! I can imagine (asking and) being asked (some of) these questions by someone whom I already met/spent some time with and am interested in becoming closer with them (being asked and not getting uncomfortable, that is to say). Like if you meet a person in a group settings (once or multiple times), spend some time with them, they seem interesting and fun, and then you meet that person but without the group. One more important thing to note, as some other commenter below noted, the questions from the articled should be adapted to the context - instead of flat out asking "Tell me, how did you parents meet?" like a weirdo, what about first mentioning something about yourself and your parents and only then asking something about their parents (like where are they from, or something alike).
Additionally, if you just keep asking these personal questions, one after another, without taking time to give away something about yourself (and also reacting to the environment; conversations don't happen in a vacuum), that is not "getting to know someone" that is interrogation. There are no shortcuts in making friends. It just takes time (and effort, obv).
No, the updates are not slow. I've been running Librewolf for years now, no major complaints. FYI I'm on a rolling release (linux) distribution, but I doubt that changes much. If you are comparing it to stock Firefox, there is no competition (Librewolf is imho just more enjoyable experience); if you are comparing it to Chromium (and other Chromium-based browsers), in my experience the biggest 'problem' is the lack of support for pwa's. Anyways, give it a try.
Related to "I don't entirely understand what I just read, but I loved it" from the article - some time ago (I'd say it's been years now), there was a submission on HN (at least I believe I found it on HN, though I'm not 100% sure) about rules for critiquing art (again, I'm not 100% certain, but this is how I remember it). Unfortunately, I think I didn't finish the whole article, but at the start it said that if you want to critique art, you have to understand that:
1. There is art you love that is also actually good.
2. There is art you don't love but is actually good.
3. There is art you love that is actually bad.
4. There is art you don't love that is also actually bad.
If you know which article I'm talking about, please let me know. I've been trying to find it on and off for what seems like years now.
I sometimes have the following thought (disclaimer: cringe is not the most adequate word for the concept in my mind, but since you've already used it, I guess it's okay): If I look back at my 10-year-younger-self and cringe (at the things I did/said/created/liked/hated/etc. and I obviously do cringe), does that mean that I am being cringe right now? Or at least, how can I have some level of confidence that I'm not being cringe right now and that in 10 years I'm not going to reject everything and anything I'm saying today? And if I was cringe 10 years ago, and if I'm cringe right now, will I be also be cringe in 10 years too? What about 20? 30? Will it ever stop? Will I ever reach a point in which I will not cringe?
Another one is like this: There are people who I respect/admire for the things they did, and now they are doing something obviously completely stupid. Were those things they did just random results I got to see, compared to a bunch of other stuff they probably did I did not get to see, thus creating this sort of false image of their intellect (or character, or something like that), or are they actually right in believing in this new thing, and I'm just being oblivious? How come some really smart people do some really dumb stuff (while believing they are doing the right thing)? I believe I'm somewhat smart, but what does that even mean if it doesn't prevent me from doing some really, really dumb stuff.
At some point, my friend told me something like (or at least this is how I understood it) - it is good that you realize that good/smart people do bad/stupid things, and vice versa; the fact that you start from this belief that you might be wrong gives you a greater chance of being less wrong, at least in the long run.
And somehow this guy is remembered as a 'genius'...