skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The increased violence at the hospital I worked at for a bit was because by law anyone who police find to be overdosing need to be brought to nearest emergency room. This meant alot of the people there weren't mentally sound and definitely didn't want to be there. There were often a half-dozen cops in the ER trying to get someone being aggressive to calm down. It was quite an experience working there hearing "code gray in the emergency department" about twice a day.
UEFI is a terribly designed system, with a lot of x86-specific quirks. It's really sad other architectures picking it up. While general idea of it is good, a lot of design details and implementation specifics are just meh. Take, for example, the need of using PE format. Everywhere outside x86 world it doesn't make any sense. Some vendors invented TE (Terse Executable) which is more appropriate for a firmware, without unnecessary legacy, but it didn't become a standard, and even have multiple incompatible versions without easy way to distinguish them.
Agner Fog, Optimizing subroutines in assembly language, page 150.
What if we just let cheaters cheat? If they don't have the knowledge, they won't last long in a job that requires it. As the saying goes "You're only cheating yourself"
Yes I agree, but there's a narrative that people who don't agree with forced vaccination are taking out their anger on healthcare workers. I'm suspicious that's what they're trying to hint at. Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but I know that was a (completely made up) narrative during covid.
Obligatory $5 wrench xkcd: https://xkcd.com/538/

Still, physically threatening/kidnapping somebody is an entirely different threat model, although it's very common in the Bitcoin world: https://github.com/jlopp/physical-bitcoin-attacks
This isn't just a C++-ism. The null pointer constants are only more prominent in C++ because of the rejection of void * even though it isn't any "safer" to have a special integer literal with the same semantics. Ultimately, it all comes from K&R C.

There are legitimate cases where you need a function pointer assigned to address zero (reset vectors commonly). The correct behavior in C is ambiguous if the null address isn't also 0 since the standard doesn't call out special behavior for function pointers. That wouldn't be the case if nullptr had been standardized earlier and there was no need for the magic 0 as a null pointer constant.
At first, REP MOVS and REP STOS were obviously better. Shorter code, that couldn't possibly be beaten by unrolled loops of anything because of instruction decoding overhead on each instruction cycle.

Then for a range of x86 generations maybe starting with the Pentium Pro (first OOO) or Pentium (first superscalar), REP MOVS and REP STOS called into microcode and it was significantly faster to use unrolled loops of register-sized operations that could execute with some level of instruction parallelism, at least if the addresses had good alignment, and this advantage increased if MMX and later SSE and AVX registers were used.

The speed difference was particularly important for known big, aligned copies such as page copies and page clearing. If the copy was not well aligned, though, there needed to be shift operations or unaligned memory accesses, and that slowed the unrolled loops.

Later, microcode for REP MOVS and REP STOS was improved to make using them consistently worth using again, as was the overhead of performing an instruction that calls that kind of microcode.

They had access to cache-line actions not available to regular code. In particlar they could write a whole cache line putting it into the M state (from MESI) without needing to fetch the cache line from RAM or higher level cache first, and REP MOVS had access to good prefetching patterns on the read side. Whereas a memory-write instruction like MOV MEM,REG needed to fetch the cache line first, to modify a single word in it. Those cache line improvements reduced the amount of memory bus traffic, which directly improved performance. Also, the CPU could determine its ideal internal alignments for those operations quickly, instead of the setup needed with MMX/SSE/AVX to align to cache. Also, no shift instructions or unaligned accesses required. Also, in principle REP MOVS and REP STOS could tell the cache to use different prefetch and eviction policies, though I'm not sure if this was used. Finally, just using the very short instructions REP MOVS and REP STOS, compared with the unrolled code and extra stuff to deal with alignment, reduced instruction cache pressure.

So at first REP MOVS and REP STOS could not be beaten, and more recently (as of many years now) they are fast again on OOO machines, but there was a time in the middle where they were easily beaten as certain unrolled loops had better mechanical sympathy with the CPU's memory system than the not particularly optimised microcode of that time period.
Neither actually. I ordered a fully specced one in February as well. I been successful with purchasing from Ameridroid in the past; an Odroid N2 I had ordered came really quickly. It looks like the manufacturer wants customer data (https://snipboard.io/CE7SIM.jpg) and Ameridroid doesn't want to comply. I decided to keep my order in to support their efforts.
> due to the lack of implicit `void` conversions. C doesn't have this problem.

implicit void conversions are the problem
Yep. Also of note is the fact that human learning is fundamentally a more flexible process in that it can lay down new neuronal connections and in fact new neurons too.

I'm sure there are (evolutionary?) NN models that try to do things like this but I have no idea how successful they've been.
Steve Yegge's recent blog posts claim that SourceGraph are getting a pretty good result by using embeddings created from their knowledge graph of the code structure. That's still the usual [create embeddings, search against embedding of query, retrieve results and use them as prompt] schlep, so yeah, it isn't really understanding architecture well yet.

I too have a job where almost every question is about structural understanding and improvement of a large existing codebase. I'd love to have AI help, but I think it's going to take another iteration or three of model architecture to get there.
It’s because it doesn’t really make sense to plot the results of random() in a circle like this. There’s the same number of points with radius between 0 and 1/2 as between 1/2 and 1, but they have to fit in a space with 1/3 the area as the outer band. So it’s naturally more dense.

The fact that random(random()) /looks/ more even in this visualization shows that the actual distribution is not.
It's not clear how many classical calculations a single human neuron is equivalent to. There's a strong analog component in multiple domains (strength, frequency, timing) and each neuron can connect to up to 15,000 other neurons. Assuming the brain's neurons are (probably unrealistically) fairly 'digital' we get an estimation of the human brain being equivalent to 1 exaflop (this is the currently accepted lower bound, and rather disputed as being too low). Current TPUv4 pods currently provide approximately 9 exaflops. I don't think we're currently reaching human-level learning rates. There’s currently no accepted “upper bound” on estimates of FLOP equivalency to a human brain.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HB5TrK7A4pI is a recently posted video to HN Frontpage which was summarized as such:

> Though we have been building and programming computing machines for about 60 years and have learned a great deal about composition and abstraction, we have just begun to scratch the surface.

> A mammalian neuron takes about ten milliseconds to respond to a stimulus. A driver can respond to a visual stimulus in a few hundred milliseconds, and decide an action, such as making a turn. So the computational depth of this behavior is only a few tens of steps. We don't know how to make such a machine, and we wouldn't know how to program it.

> The human genome -- the information required to build a human from a single, undifferentiated eukariotic cell -- is about 1GB. The instructions to build a mammal are written in very dense code, and the program is extremely flexible. Only small patches to the human genome are required to build a cow or a dog rather than a human. Bigger patches result in a frog or a snake. We don't have any idea how to make a description of such a complex machine that is both dense and flexible.

> New design principles and new linguistic support are needed. I will address this issue and show some ideas that can perhaps get us to the next phase of engineering design.

> Gerald Sussman Massachusetts Institute of Technology
You might check out John McPhee’s The Curve of Binding Energy, a non-fiction book.

There’s a lot of stuff in there about how his interview subject (a former nuclear weapons designer) would approach the problem of designing an improvised nuclear device (circa about 1974)…
> The maneuvering thruster system sounds similar to that of the Harrier VTOL.

It doesn't really, to me. The big idea here is using blown air to avoid having physical surfaces deflect-- neither the engine nozzle or any actual control surfaces on the plane. The Harrier uses fairly conventional bending nozzles to vector trust, and uses fairly conventional control surfaces at speed.

> That system was very difficult for humans to fly.

Anything helicopter-like is difficult to fly, and the Harrier is a pretty mediocre "helicopter" with relatively poor response times. In principle blown-air deflection of thrust could be more responsive for VTOL-type aircraft, but that's not even what this is aiming at.

(The deflection attained of thrust is not sufficient for VTOL use at this point-- nor is deflecting thrust in one degree of freedom from one point sufficient for hovering flight.)

> Pure-thrust vehicles are unstable.

Blowing air to adjust airflow at the trailing edge doesn't necessarily produce anything too hard to control-- it's pretty similar to conventional control schemes. On the other hand, this aircraft will not be controllable at all without the active systems gating the airflow, while aircraft with control surfaces can often fallback completely to dumb control cables.
I wrote some tooling for one of the major tax preparation firms to import returns from our competitors into our system, so you wouldn’t be locked into one provider or another. It was a fun project, but it would be better if it wasn’t necessary!
Is it so hard to have the models return "I don't know"?
She was 17, and it happened in Florida where the age of consent was 18 at the time. So it really doesn't matter how "willingly" she may have presented herself.

Also, come on, I'm 37 and I wouldn't have sex with a teenager. Even beyond legality (which isn't really an issue, the dude is dead) there are the ethical considerations. This dude was sketchy and RMS is sketchy for defending him.
What do you mean by “eliminating short chain poly unsaturated fatty acids”? Omega-3 is also a poly unsaturated fatty acid, isn’t it?
> And hospitals can now establish law enforcement offices like those on university campuses. The officers must be certified by the Georgia Peace Officer Standards and Training Council and maintain law enforcement records that can be made public.

They’re certified Peace Officers who have the power to make arrests and enforce warrants… entering people into the criminal justice system. Typically a security officer would detain someone one then call “real police” to make a judgement call.

If there’s an important distinction between what this article describes and police I’m missing it.
Very helpful information. Thank you.
Maybe BingGPT is related to Tay https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tay_(chatbot)
From Hardware Requirements > SDR: "To sniff only downlink traffic from the base station, one can operate LTESniffer with USRP B210 which is connected to PC via a USB 3.0 port. Similarly, USRB B210 should be equipped with GPSDO and two RX antennas to decode downlink messages in transmission modes 3 and 4."
To be honest, you are already paying a hefty price for a TV that still shows ads.. OP is not a good thing obviously but I think we passed the non return point.
The fact that it's in human nature doesn't make it any less reprehensible. Physical violence is in human nature, too.
i feel like this is a meta commentary about substack itself
Grafana has a self-hosted all-in-one docker compose for Loki, Grafana, and Promtail: https://grafana.com/docs/loki/latest/installation/docker/

I love pretty much everything these folks do.
Yeah you're wrong :)

So, random(k) should just be k rand() and so random(random()) should be just random() random().

One really fun way to do this is to rewrite using standard exp/ln rules as

# three exponential random variables each with mean 1
k1 = -ln(rand())
k2 = -ln(rand())
k3 = -ln(rand())
# rand() * rand() * rand() written cryptically
exp(-(k1 + k2 + k3))

That these are exponential random variables comes from the inverse-CDF Sampling Theorem.

The characteristic function E[exp(itX)] is a Fourier transform of the PDF and for a sum of independent variables it becomes a product,

E[exp(it(X + Y))] = E[exp(itX) exp(itY)] = E[exp(itX)] E[exp(itY)]

for an exponential distribution you have

E[exp(itX)] = ∫{0 → ∞} dx exp(-x) exp(itx) = 1/(1 – it).

So the Fourier transform of the PDF of a sum of n geometric random variables is going to be 1/(1 — i t)^n, which is the characteristic function for a gamma-distributed random variable,[1] and so the corresponding PDF is actually

f_n(x) = x^{n-1}/(n-1)! exp(-x)

[this is not too hard to see above when you realize that the exponent can be factored out as a repeated derivative of 1/(1 — i t) and in Fourier space a derivative corresponds to multiplication by the frequency ... derivatives with respect to t become multiplications by x].

So now we know that the distribution of the product U_n = exp(-G_n) where G_n is a Γ(n, 1)-distributed random variable, we work backwards from the definition:

h_n(u) du = the probability that U_n is between u and u + du

in which case G_n is between -ln(u) and -ln(u + du) = -[ ln(u) + ln(1 + du/u) ] ~= -ln(u) - du/u.

so that's f_n(x) dx where x = -ln(u) and dx = du/u, so that's

h_n(u) = (-ln(u))^{n-1}/(n-1)!, for 0 < u < 1.

and if you wanted the CDF it'd be an incomplete gamma function I think. For n=1 you can see that this recapitulates a uniform distribution but even for n=2 you have -ln(u) being the probability density function which I don't think will give you that sqrt() stuff that you need to get exact uniformity.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamma_distribution .
> the one mRNA vaccine we gave had in people did not provide much immunity past three months

That's much more about the virus than the vaccine type, no? The non-mRNA vaccines acted similarly.
In the world before markdown and not wanting to embed html in the page - how do you designate that "this text" is a link to a page with the same name? Btw, it would work best if it was a regex (since this was perl CGI back in the day).

if ($word =~ m/[:upper:]+[:lower:]+([:upper:]+[:lower:]+)+/) {
$word = "<a href=\"${somePrefix}${word}\">${word}</a>"
}

or something to that effect.
who's going to index and make web3 discoverable?
After you’ve committed a crime, if they can legally deprive you of your freedom and exert the state’s monopoly on violence against you, they are police.
> This feels like the kind of thing to include citations with, no?

I assumed this was well known.

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/02/19/9691430...

Edit: note that the NPR piece missed the more important problem. While some people in the placebo group decided to continue the study and not to take the vaccine, blinding was irrecoverably broken, and what is worse, they are self selected, so randomization is gone as well.
Why large context windows are a good thing for vector DBs (and vice versa)
In a bunch of conversations, people asked me how large context windows supposedly pose a threat to vector databases. Some thoughts from somebody who works on a vector DB why this is not only _not_ a threat but actually makes vector DBs _better_.

1) storing the whole dataset in the context window (as the “pessimists” describe it) is quite impractical because the larger the dataset, the more complex it becomes to operate. Especially for bigger datasets, you need some form of selection through retrieval (even if that turns into a 100k token corpus, which probably is not the case).

2) a bigger context window is excellent for use cases like generative feedback loops (where the generative output is feedback looped back into the vector DB).

3) it seems that people sometimes forget what it means to operate/create a DB. It's way more than just storing a bunch of blobs and -in this case- vectors, let alone shoehorning data into a context window.

4) A 100k context window is not much when it comes to serious workloads. Also, the larger the context window, the harder to maintain all the ops _around_ it. A solution to manage this is (you've guessed it) is a vector DB.

5) vector DBs and LLMs (or any other model for that matter) excel _together_, I.e., easier-to-operate models (e.g., CPU inference), and larger context windows increase the capability of the vector DB rather than decrease it (see the generative feedback loops example above).

So, no worries, we're all good, and can get back to work...
Guess I'll stick with spectacles. Safe, inert, strong, transparent, recyclable, cheap, and abundant... glass is truly a Bronze Age wonder material!
That was actually my first line of thought as well, but I could never find a way to do that.

My low-level development expertise is pretty low, so perhaps there is a way, but after looking through the USB specification and other USB-development related docs, I just could not figure it out unfortunately.

The closest thing I found was to do someting like this (https://stackoverflow.com/questions/13335402/unable-to-sync-...) but I never did.

Do you think that would have worked?
Very well explained, that made it click for me, thanks!
Does it track the nm density of the core? I would think it's sourced as an independent path at whatever functional density works for the vendor at that time meeting spec. which is bus speed limited, not on-die.

sorry if I mis-use terms of art, It looks to me like its unlikely to be specced to match the apparent design density of VLSI used to make the CPU.
I did not mean "allowed" in a sense of permitted legally or otherwise.

EPFL is not a person. It does not have a set opinion on the subject. And its individual members likely disagree on the matter.

I am also not denying EPFL right to associate, I am questioning their judgement here.
Ah yes, flashing my own firmware. The future of finance.
I find references like this to other posts with good commentary to be useful in understanding the discourse surrounding the topic.
Would someone be able to spell out how this attack works after initialisation? I don't really understand hardware wallets. How does the information about the user and their key make its way back to the people who created the device?
well at least it doesn't mean nothing
7 years late and $16B over budget.

Will provide energy only for 1 million people.

And “utilities may build as many as five Vogtle-sized reactors over the next 35 years” —- so energy for 5 million more people?

How many people is the US going to add over the next 35 years? 50 million? 100 million?

It’s telling that even articles in favour of nuclear energy make it clear that nuclear energy is NOT the solution.
Yes, I've definitely read and used them both. I think your understanding of the difference is well-conceived.

There's some conceptual stuff in the Mundis book that provides a framework for understanding the why of his approach, but the majority of it is a 'Do this' and 'If this happens, do this' type of pragmatic approach.

What I found is if I followed the book's suggestions, I got a lot of writing done. That simple. Same for a good friend who is a comics artist, except for the obvious fact that he draws.

I found the Pressfield book somewhat useful but the simple fact is, I just don't turn to it anymore. I didn't find it skillful to anthropomorphize an abstract concept like 'Resistance' that I had to wake up and defeat everday. I think it's possible to have a really productive and fulfilling creative life without thinking of it like some kind of a daily fight.

I return to the Mundis book time and time again.

Finding the way into a healthy self-discipline is such a personal and creative act. The process that ultimate worked best for me is to give an approach a sustained trial (30 days or so) and then reflect on how it went. Assess and try again. After going through a lot stuff that didn't work (for me), I found the thing that did.

Perhap those reflections are useful in some way.
> has made me as sick as I've been from the flu itself (which is why I don't get flu shots anymore)

#1 FEELING sick is not the same as BEING sick. Even if your perceived experience is comparable, almost certainly there's less long-term damage to your health from a controlled vaccine than from an uncontrolled viral infection

#2 Some selection bias is definitely in place here. Those times you got a flu shot you didn't subsequently get that season's flu strain that the vaccine was targeted for. Since you didn't get that season's flu strain, you have no idea how much worse it would've been if you didn't have the vaccine. (And if you DID get the flu anyway, then you DO know that it would've been even worse had you not had the vaccine).

#3 Getting flu shots isn't just for you, it's for your community. Even if you don't get sick from the flu or don't mind getting it, by passing it around you increase the risk to those more vulnerable than you - the immunocompromised, and the elderly.

Please continue to get flu shots. Your future you and the rest of humanity thanks you.
His wife warned him not to go on the jet. When it become public that he had done that, she divorced him. She clearly didn’t think it was superficial!
> She was 17, and it happened in Florida where the age of consent was 18 at the time. So it really doesn't matter how "willingly" she may have presented herself.

Stallman's whole point is that Epstein almost certainly concealed these facts from his associates. Stallman does not in any way argue that these women's and girls aren't victims, only that Minsky was likely unaware of this.

I don't see anything sketchy about defending one's dead friend: Minsky isn't alive to say "I had no idea these women were underage and being trafficked" and it seems natural Stallman wants to point this out to people calling his friend a pedophile and a rapist.
I think that line is a riff on "there are four kinds of countries: developed countries, underdeveloped countries, Japan, and Argentina", attributed to the famous economist Simon Kuznets. See, e.g., https://slate.com/business/2012/04/the-four-types-of-economi...

The earliest online citation I can find is from 2011 in "Argentina: Economic Recovery and Tax Improvement after a Decade of Double Crisis" by Miguel Asensio, https://www.jstor.org/stable/23617724?seq=3 Asensio's citation is to himself, 1988. I can't find the 1988 work, but from the 2011 footnote it seems the quote is hearsay from a peer of Kuznets, Paul Samuelson, and might have been intended as a tongue-in-cheek gloss on Kuznets broader body of work, much of which analyzed the relationships between industrialization, social change, and wealth. In any event, one way or another the meaning is clearly to suggest in dry academic humor that Argentina and Japan defy rigorous theory or description. (One more recent citation I found from a Google Books snippet claims that the original context implied that Japan is an example of a country that developed economically without losing its undeveloped-economy social institutions, while Argentina is a developed country with developed-country social institutions that become undeveloped in fact.)
Peoplebox (YC S22) Is Hiring a Principal Engineer (Back End)