HN user

DavidWilkinson

1,031 karma

twitter.com/vilkinsons linkedin.com/in/delta

[ my public key: https://keybase.io/nonparibus; my proof: https://keybase.io/nonparibus/sigs/PEMt1J0zhF8qk2QWTtVS56s3NzMsQ1dlulft6DuVQlo ]

Posts2
Comments30
View on HN

Interesting approach! We had a similar journey at HASH to figuring out how we deal with stacked errors (as well as collecting parallel errors), developed the `error-stack` crate to solve for it. It works by abstracting over the boilerplate needed to stack errors by wrapping errors in a `Report`. Each time you change the context (which is equivalent to wrapping an error) the location is saved as well, with optional spantrace and backtrace support. It also supports supplying additional attachments, to enrich errors. We spent quite a bit of time on the user output, as well (both for `Debug` and `Display`) so hopefully the results are somewhat pleasant to work with and read.

The Block Protocol 4 years ago

This is a fair criticism of the public spec in its current form and we’re working on documentation to help folks deal with this.

We actively want to talk approaches through with more interested parties, and welcome contributions to the spec and docs.

Sidebar — for our part at HASH - we’re optimistic about the role WebAssembly might play, having used it extensively in building the wider ecosystem of simulation tooling.

The Block Protocol 4 years ago

We’ve spent a lot of time thinking and talking to folks about the incentive structures around this, and think they stand on their own - although your skepticism was an initial worry we had, too. As it stands the Block Protocol enables embedding applications to make their products more useful to consumers. And block developers reach a wider audience with their tools than they would otherwise. There’s a lot more to this that we’ll write up nicely later.

The Block Protocol 4 years ago

Except it turns out that blocks and even block protocols were never actually blocked by the lack of a blockchain

The Block Protocol 4 years ago

(One of the BP maintainers here)

If you’d be open to exploring this in the context of Notion we’d love to chat: david@hash.ai

The Block Protocol 4 years ago

Various are interested in making their platforms more extensible (the flip side of content interop).

Right you both are. Re: behavior trees, we've explored a few visual programming metaphors (for the most part inspired by TouchDesigner), and I'd love to chat through any specific ideas you have around ideal implementation. I'm at david@hash.ai

The Python simulations we run in-browser are indeed using Pyodide in part! It's brilliant, but there's quite a performance penalty at present. We're working on some optimizations, but right now running the engine locally or offloading to the cloud are the only places real scale can be achieved. That said we're thrilled that Python-in-browser is possible at all, and excited at how many high-quality complementary projects are in the works. It really does feel like "everything is coming together" :)

Thanks! We have some network features in the pipeline (including better viz) and will be introducing some stdlib functions to help in the coming days. :)

We have some users representing networks in the 3D viewer at present, and have seen three ways implementing networks to date:

1. Edges are represented as agents. They are used to store properties such as edge length, and to provide nodes with a way of accessing other nodes.

2. Edges are represented AND USED as agents. Edges not only store properties but themselves exhibit behaviors.

3. Nodes are given a network object which contains information about their network neighbors and all relevant properties (such as directed/undirected edge, edge length, etc...)

Re: your question around experiments... yes to all three (parameter sweeping, Monte Carlo, and sensitivity analysis), and a bunch more. We'll be shipping this alongside H-Cloud. More on that in the full explainer at https://hash.ai/about/mission

Thanks for giving the beta a spin! Happy to chat in more depth over on our public Slack.

The following paragraph:

Brilliant innovators have sought to organize the world’s information and make it accessible to all, and the next step on this journey is to make that information understandable and usable to everybody.

HASH (https://hash.ai/) | New York, NY | ONSITE or REMOTE possible | Platform Engineer

We're a team of a dozen working on an in-browser simulation engine and IDE. We're hiring engineers with deep CS backgrounds and real-world experience solving distributed computing problems.

Our H-CORE engine is written in Rust (compiling to Wasm), TypeScript, and React.

We are Joel Spolsky's new venture, post-Fog Creek (Trello, Stack Overflow, and Glitch).

We're hiring for "smart and gets things done". Resume/CV drop @ https://jobs.lever.co/sohostrategy/d6e31b57-eca1-4f2b-9d07-2...

I think it's fair to say we would have chosen an entirely different architectural approach had it not been for Wasm. Whilst simulations would have run slower, our dev progress would also have taken a hit.

We're big fans and optimistic about its future :)

This ^^ Our starter models are pretty diverse and span real-world problems like optimizing controlled burns w/r/t wildfire containment, and improving Stack Overflow community dynamics (sorry... not a problem!)

In addition we have several dozen classic ABM toy models such as Boids, Schelling segregation, and Conway's GoL. These individually showcase different components of the system.

Hey Åsmund, all. Tom's got it ^^ In theory you can model all of the above, but simulating complex environments in an agent-based fashion is the initial thing we've focused on creating a really streamlined experience for.

Hey William! Monte Carlo is one experiment type we support. :)

You're half right -- Jude started as an intern at Fog Creek eleven years ago and rose over a decade to become CTO. So technically he once was an intern...

But the startup originated outside of Fog Creek, and Joel's involvement is very much intentional.

David from HASH here. I know that panic all too well...

GAMA is great -- and we're big fans of the team! They've done an awesome job raising the profile, and improving perceptions, of ABM/MAS-type modeling.

We're approaching things in a rather different manner, with a specific view to decreasing the time and complexity involved in building real-world (versus toy) models. We'll be drip-feeding invites (and more info) in the coming days.