major4x's comments

Can't help not thinking of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bogdanov_affair

Yeah, one of those machines (either the Palo or the Alto) was put on display near the entrance of the late Xerox PARC on Coyote hill (near VA). I was playing with the idea to power it but was told that it doesn't work anymore, at least the power supply is dead and allegedly there were also missing components... I suppose SRI will toss it soon if not already...

I love this mini article, however, I disagree with the main conclusion that collaborative editing is not an algorithmic but a UI/UX problem. I think that collaborative editing is a semantic problem. To the best of my knowledge (I'm writing this comment without much preparation), all SVN/Git algorithms are based on UNIX diff (Hunt–Szymanski algorithm). UNIX diff (and patch) is purely syntax driven.

Actually, I will make a small deviation here: I think it is a big industry/startup/open source project there, in creating a set of semantic diff algorithms/implementations. For example, due to my present job, I am very interested in collaborative editing of electrical circuits, and layouts for PCB and chips. Altium and KiCad are trying, for exmaple, to store everything in XML/text files and put the text files in Git/SVN and I can tell you a botched C++ program is nothing in comparison to a botched and malformed electrical circuit. So we need diff tools that "know" about a text file, vs rich-text with formatting, vs bitmap vs vector image, vs song, vs English text. Anybody want to start an open source project (DM me or put a comment here).

Anyhow, thanks to the authors on the great insights and let's work on the take home!

What an obvious article. But it, because it comes from Apple, everybody pays attention. Proof by pedigree. OK, here is my two cents. Firstly, I did my Ph.D. in AI (algorithm design with application to AI) and I also spent seven years applying some of the ideas at Xerox PARC (yes, the same (in)famous research lab). So, I went to and published at many AI conferences (AAAI, ECAI, etc.). Of course, when I was younger and less cynical, I would enter into lengthy philosophical discussions with dignitaries of AI on what does AI mean and it would be long dinners and drinks, and wheelbarrows of ego. Long story, short, there is no such thing as AI. It is a collection of disciplines: the recently famous Machine Learning (transformers trained on large corpora of text), constraint-based reasoning, Boolean satisfiability, theorem proving, probabilistic reasoning, etc., etc. Of course, LLMs are a great achievement and they have good application to Natural Language Processing (also intermingled discipline and considered constituent of AI).

Look at the algorithmic tools used in ML and automated theorem proving for example: ML uses gradient descent (and related numerical methods) for local optimization, while constraint satisfaction/optimization/Boolean satisfiability, SAT modulo-theories, Quantified Boolean Optimization, etc., rely on combinatorial optimization. Mathematically, combinatorial optimization is far more problematic compared to numerical methods and much more difficult, largely because modern computers and NVidia gaming cards are really fast in crunching floating point numbers and also largely that most problems in combinatorial optimization NP-hard or harder.

Now thing of what LLM and local optimization is doing: it is essentially searching/combining sequences of words from Wikipedia and books. But search is not necessarily a difficult problem, it is actually an O(1) problem. While multiplying numbers is an O(n^2.8 (or whatever constant they came up with)) problem while factorization is (God knows what class of complexity) when you take quantum computing into the game).

Great, these are my 2 cents for the day, good luck to the OpenAI investors (I am also investing there a bit as a Bay Area citizen). You guys will certainly make help desk support cheaper...

Does anybody know how the coupling between the individual qubits is achieved/configured?

What? He didn't tell the board that behind ChatGPT, there is actually a bunch of low-paid people copying/pasting quickly from Wikipedia?

Fax me the address of his magic mushrooms supplier. Potent stuff, I want some!

This is a great diverging discussion about the "censorship" and the commenting style in public forums. Let me add something: when I was writing the original comment that started all this, I wanted it to be funny, catchy, snarky, and karma-point-worthy. So, I decided to put a swear word as a stylistic choice. Then, to add some extra to the short comment, I decided to poke fun at the whole FCC bleeping regulation. Here, I will warmly recommend a book dedicated to bleeping over the seven "unspeakable words": the famous Steven Pinker's famous book "The Stuff of Thought".

Now, about the number of asterisks: I really didn't think that much about this, I kind of think I counted the right number of letters, but then there is no caret overwrite mode in the bleeping browser, which is yet another story...

You didn't decide, you ***-up royally and the California DMV decided instead of you!

Google helping with your security is similar to when those nice mafia guys knock on your door offering protection. Don't forget that Google is apotheosis of evil corporation trying to take over all your data. This is the very company that turned "don't do evil" into "do things".

You may be interested in having a look at this relevant and interesting article "Nanoscopic origin of cracks in carbon fibre-reinforced plastic composites":

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-55904-2

It says "private video".

Theranos? All those cases of neglected security when data leaked and/or people killed themselves over scams?

One shall not obsess with the game controller they use, I suppose, in their analysis, failing the controller wouldn't prevent the sub from resurfacing... It is symptomatic, however. The whole Silicon Valley is like that. You have the old guard, NASA, millions for fault analysis, rumors go the C code on some NASA rocket was certified at $1000 per line---human eyeballs reading it...

All those start-ups and unicorns, though. Just do it, when to be a hacker became an honorific, a title... Code your stuff, design your mechanics at Starbucks, who needs mathematics and physics when we can have s*t done instead. Who needs signing-off when we can have a carate-belt meeting standing on bouncing balls instead...

I don't want to be the dean of the faculty of prophecy but this is only the beginning. Wait until those autopilots starts using ChatGPT/Stack Overflow/copy/pasted code...

P.S. Hope they make it to the surface somehow...

INRIX utilized trillions of data points from connected vehicles and INRIX Signal Analytics, to analyze all vehicle movements at over 210,000 signalized intersections across the US to provide a systemwide analysis of individual traffic signals on a national level.