I'd be interested to know what everyone's favorite opening lines of all time are. (bonus - to see how much of it you can quote without looking :)
For me, its:
Whann that aprill with hir shoures soote,
The drought of march hath perced to the roote,
And zepherus eek with his sweete breath,
inspired hath in every holt and heth,
the tendre cropes, and the sonne hath in the ram,
hir halve cours ironne,
Than preketh hem natur in hir courages,
and longon folk to gon on pilgrimages.
Somehow that has always stuck with me, I'm sure I'm missing parts, but from the first time I ever heard these lines the just imprinted themselves like a song to me.
I'm no expert, and don't know if it applies in this case, but for a cancer I had (lymphoma) I was told that aggressive can often be easier to treat or "cure" (as defined by survival rates, etc.) since it also can often be hit more brutally by the treatments.
Anyway, since many in my family have died from this horrible cancer, its fantastic news to hear of any improvements there.
This. Its also great for finding out all the ways you are wrong or discovering the views, data, perspectives you are missing. I use it for this as well.
Category theory is all about relationships and structural patterns. so its useful when you want to interoperability and composition between systems i.e. invariants under transformations, etc.
Without reading too much into what this framework does, I'd say category theory could be useful for some ML problems (i.e. layer composition, gradient propagation, etc.) - but I'd think it would be more useful as an analytical tool than as actual lib/code structures.
Sadly this is true and lesson anyone who has worked freelance has probably learned - either that or I'd wager they no longer do freelance.
Its easy to say don't be afraid to lose business, but when you're starting out, the economy is rough or all you have are the one or two clients, that's a different matter entirely.
One thing I've learned is that you always have to do the leg work, you can't assume someone will do the right thing or keep their word.
Develop a system where even bad clients, can't do too much damage i.e. upfront deposits, milestone-based payments. You have to control cash flow risks, if you are gonna take risks know what risks you're taking and when to get out.
Clicking on this link just reminded me again that science (like all such restricted access journals) is an operation that relies heavily on publicly funded research and unpaid academic labor.
And yet their access restriction not only removes the public from consuming the fruits of their labor, but it also systematically harms less well-resourced institutions, independent scholars and impedes the spread of knowledge (particularly in areas of the world that need it most).
I wish we could reach a point where we wouldn't allow this anymore.
We'd probably agree on this: people respond to incentives created by system design. One example that comes to mind is how London's Congestion Charge and how it has changed traffic behavior over the years depending on how the rules change.
There is nothing inherent about fast, large-scale, or user-friendly communication that forces spam, scams, or propaganda. Its just that those outcomes emerge when things like engagement, attention, or "reach" are rewarded without being aligned to quality, truth, or mutual cooperation.
This is a well-studied problem in economics, but also behavioral science and psychology: change the incentive and feedback structure, and behavior reliably changes.
Based on the studies I've read in and around this topic, I think harmful dynamics are not inevitable properties of communication, but really contingent on how each system rewards actions taken by participants. The solution is not slowness or barriers, but better incentive alignment and feedback loops.
Plato's works surrounding Socrates' death: Phaedo, Crito, Euthyphro, The Apology.
Its fascinating to discover how many thoughts and ideas they had which are still relevant in our societies today. Also, they are incredibly readable, its like taking part in on a conversation among friends.
> The internet we rely on today is a chain of single points of failure. Cut the undersea cable, and a continent goes dark. Shut down the power grid, and the cloud evaporates. Deprioritize the "wrong" traffic, and the flow of information is strangled.
The deep brokenness of the current internet, specifically what has become the "cloud" is something I've been thinking about a lot over the past few years. (now I'm working on trying to solve some of this - well, at least build alternatives for people).
and this:
> The way you build a system determines how it will be used. If you build a system optimized for mass surveillance, you will get a panopticon. If you build a system optimized for centralized control, you will get a dictatorship. If you build a system optimized for extraction, you will get a parasite.
Seems to be implying (as well as in other places) that this was all coordinated or planned in some way, but I've looked into how it came to be this way and I grew up with it, and for me, I think a lot of it stemmed from good intentions (the ethos that information should be free, etc.)
I made a short video recently on how we got to a centralized and broken internet, so here's a shameless plug if anyone is interested: https://youtu.be/4fYSTvOPHQs
> The different political labels are interesting but also deeply frustrating because it paints people at odds when they're not.
I agree.
I don't necessarily think the two baskets analogy is even the right framework tbh. The important issues imho are transparency, corruption, incentive alignment, feedback loops, it doesn't really matter to me - and I think probably most people - if its in the government or business space.
What matters, at least to me, is how decisions are made, how information flows, and how citizens (or employees) can see whats going on, influence and hold accountable the decision-makers.
interesting. I agree that governmental power should be stoppable in a functioning democratic republic. At least, we have some such examples. However, I would think, at least in the examples that come to my mind, it is far easier to end corporate abuse, although I will admit often the two are tightly intertwined with governmental overreach working hand-in-hand with private corporations so its quite commonly a blurred line.