emanuer

Subscribed!

As a layperson, I find this an approachable way to get an overview of a topic. However, I am only interested in a few select topics, and I was not able to find a way to subscribe to specific ones, such as #insulin-resistance (topic request ;-)

Another thing I really value in science YouTubers (e.g., youtube.com/@Physionic) is the deep dives they offer into the research—highlighting conflicting results, paying special attention to meta-analyses, etc. That would be amazing, although I realize it may be too much to ask.

    Location: Europe
    Remote: Yes
    Willing to relocate: No (travel up to 2x/month)
    Technologies: Jira, CSS, JavaScript, TypeScript, Java, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, OpenAI/Anthropic/Google LLM APIs, WEKA, Deeplearning4j, Figma, Shopify
    Résumé/CV: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WXOCz93eXYKDjAuVp0clZ3T8dyMp7OoV/view?usp=sharing
    Email: hi@fact.ai
    Work hours: CET to EST/CST

- Turn ambiguous SME workflows into shipped AI/LLM products (0-1 -> scale)

- Double conversion (+100%), launch to millions of users, and lead cross-functional teams (6–12; coord. ~50)

- Build pragmatic delivery: discovery with real users, thin slices, instrumented loops

About me:

I’m empathetic with users and exacting about results: I’ll sit with customers to find what they need (not just what they ask), then drive an executable roadmap and delivery process. However I’m not strong at outbound prospecting. My strengths are inbound discovery, executive alignment, and durable partnerships. Roles I fit into: AI Product Manager / Product Lead / Head of Product (AI/LLM)

Could someone please help me understand how a multi-modal RAG does not already solve this issue?[1]

What am I missing?

Flash 2.5, Sonnet 3.7, etc. always provided me with very satisfactory image analysis. And, I might be making this up, but to me it feels like some models provide better responses when I give them the text as an image, instead of feeding "just" the text.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7yRLIj9IyQ

Well, you seem crazy enough to, possibly, find some sort of enjoyment from this book: The Romance of Reality by Bobby Azarian The author explores an philosophical framework to explain the universe through the lens of entropy. I loved it.

Also, it is my firm believe that in the moment you have emergence at play in any shape or form, simulation is the only viable path for in depth research. In my mind any form of neural network is a deterministic chaotic system[1]. If this would be true, simulation is the way how you test and discover truths. So I am a big fan of your intent to start programming.

Another book which your text reminded me of was Scale by Geoffrey West. Again not something pertinent to your effort of Modeling Consciousness, but it informed and delighted me in my attempts to make sense of reality.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svV1MsUdInE

Hey, sorry cannot be an intelectual sparing partner to you in any way. However, I think your sleepless days/nights were very well spent, thank you! I am out of depth when it comes to the graph theory. But I certainly like the way you are approaching this topic.

In the case you have not seen it yet, there was a paper linked a few days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43487699 NotebookLM audio version: https://notebooklm.google.com/notebook/d3b142bb-a9bc-41e4-b1...

Oh, one of my favorite researches is Michael Levin I found his work to be incredibly inspiring https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFMLpZkkH_8 He puts consciousness on a spectrum as well.

You are correct, it was just a random example.

And I share your observation, if there is no clear answer to your question, the idea must be disregarded.

Here is the perspective of a serial founder, exploring fields which I might be able to disrupt:

- The regulatory moat is immediately intimidating.

- The data moat, often, is quite surmountable as long as LLMs can generate high-quality synthetic data (e.g., user preferences). On this I disagree with the author, to some extend.

- The "distribution moat" is another significant barrier. Even if I have a superior product, if the marketing and sales demands are so high that neither I nor an army of bots can manage it alone, the business becomes nonviable (e.g., enterprise sales).

- "Switching costs" form the next moat. The higher these costs, the greater the value per dollar I must offer over the incumbents (e.g., software for dentists).

- Another key barrier is the “business rules” moat. Achieving 80% of the required features may be easy, but as customers demand 90% or 95%, the complexity and cost of reverse engineering grow exponentially. The more mature the market, the higher these demands (e.g., Jira).

With the power of LLMs at my disposal, I have reaffirmed two core beliefs:

1. I must focus on a niche small enough, so that I am the only provider. (e.g., accounting software for gym owners in the north of France)

2. I must offer a value proposition different from that of the incumbents, where competing with me, would harm their business. (e.g., image editing app where you pay per hour used)

So my search continues…

As being part of a software development team working on RPS (runway performance) I can tell you, it is stories like this which keep us up at night.

The amount of business logic involved is staggering, but miraculously there are experts who truly seem to understand almost all of it. Understanding “almost all of it” is not enough, so there are several different experts who in their entirety hopefully capture 99.99…% But you don’t know what you don’t know…

One of the “calming” facts is, that in the tens of thousands of test cases we compared our results to existing solutions, we did discover errors in their calculations. The “calming” aspect is, due to the many safe-guards these errors seemingly never surfaced.

Coming from a machine-learning background I quickly understood that there is little appetite for AI solutions, as any optimization which would reduce fuel consumption, is easily offset by all the safety margins. In my mind the goal of the software is to make everything explainable and proof that you truly did think of every eventuality.

I am very curious to learn what major f*-up lead to planes being grounded.

My absolutely new favorite heuristic for decision making comes from Mr. Bezos:

  Is the decision costly to reverse (costly as in time / money)?
    No → Make a decision fast.
    Yes → Take your time, consider alternatives, talk to people, think some more.

What an excellent point. If it is addressed in the book, I don't remember.

If we actually accept that expansion increase in entropy, I do not know what could possibly compete with this.

To anyone curious about the intimated interplay of entropy and life, I want to highly recommend the book:

The Romance of Reality: How the Universe Organizes Itself to Create Life, Consciousness, and Cosmic Complexity by Bobby Azarian

When you empty a bathtub, why does a swirl form? → Because it is the most efficient way to increase entropy.

The author argues in that life is very likely because it is the most efficient way to increase entropy in the universe.

I fear my words don't do the book justice, I found it very long, but just as illuminating, highly recommended.

For anyone interested in this topic, I can wholeheartedly recommend the book: "The WEIRDest People in the World" by Joseph Henrich.

The book provieds a beautifully constructed framework to understand culture and its effect on psychological development, as well as economic development.

  1. In the book, the author argues that innovation rates of countries correlate positively with the psychological dimension of "individualism". (FIGURE 13.5)
  2. The the dissolution of strong kinship ties correlates significantly with high economic growth. An argument the author repeats in his paper from 2022 [1]

[1] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4200629

This is why I love HN, you gave me a surprising, but after evaluating your links trustworthy explanation.

Thank you!

If anyone else is wondering Exodus Cry is an organization which originated out of a weekly prayer group founded 2007 [0], they apparently lobbied Mastercard to only accept providers which verify the identity of all performers & review content before any upload [1]. Which is almost impossible for the tubes / onlyfans => no more payment

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exodus_Cry

[1] https://www.mastercard.com/news/perspectives/2021/protecting...

I am asking this question out of true intellectual curiosity: Could someone please link me a study which shows strong evidence for micro-plastics being harmful to health, that goes beyond finding "potential" harm? – Thank you!

Seriously, I am looking. So far every study I have found — linking micro-plastics to physical harm done to multicellular organisms — had the phrase "potential" (or a derivative) in it.

I dislike plastic as much as the next guy, but I slowly get the feeling: the harmful effects of plastic have the same level of scientific proof as harm caused by radiation of mobile phones — inconclusive to likely _none_.

This is a wonderful tool, I am very much looking forward to seeing further development & countries

Thank you very much!

One observation I had while playing with the numbers was: The most accurately shaped curves were achieved by adjusting the "seasonal forcing" to values between 0.5 and 0.6 [1]

I extended the time range to one year and lo and behold there was the gigantic hump in all curves.

I hope that testing kits will be amply available within the next few months so that we can emulate the success of Vò [2]

[1] I believe best-fitting curves are a miss-representation as many cases are not recorded, this is why I optimized for a shape that counted the "Infectious"consistently above the "confirmed cases" by the factor of 2-4. I am curious to learn how well my assumptions hold up.

[2] https://www.ft.com/content/0dba7ea8-6713-11ea-800d-da70cff6e...

My 9 years old son has refused to go to his public Tokyo school for two years now. I am from a German speaking country and the idea of a child not to attend school is absolutely unimaginable. His mother (Japanese) has always insisted that this is not uncommon in Japan. His head-teachers also insured me that this is not uncommon. As I am not living in Japan I had to accept these circumstances.

I was somewhat calmed by the knowledge that the school provided counseling and other dedicated programs for the development of my son. I thought the counselors cared quite well for him, when I was allowed to witness sessions.

When I took my son to my home country for two months he transformed. He was quiet and reclusive in the first weeks, but turned into a much more playful, outspoken and socially interested young boy towards the end.

Since then I discovered that his mother has been hiding a worsening mental illness from me. This affected my son greatly, he felt the need to care for her. He even has hundreds of YouTube videos in his history explaining children of what to do when your parent is mentally unwell — discovering this really broke my heart.

Per my request, my son was taken into the custody of the Japanese child protective services 3 months ago and I am currently in Japan fighting for sole custody of him.

My tale is a single data point, but I have come to believe the many stories of mental problems of Japanese children and young adults are not solely attributable to the pressures of society. I rather believe that mental health problems being a taboo in Japan may be the root of many problems.

Per my understanding it is incredibly shameful to admit to mental health problems and doing so brings serious ramifications.

So, if my hypothesis is correct, parents in Japan are more likely to go untreated and their children suffer the effects, perpetuating the cycle.

In our case, the school—very subtly—tried to inform me about their worries concerning his mothers mental health problems without ever speaking about it directly. They only spoke freely when a court appointed expert demanded them to.

My son has an entire network of child psychologist, youth counselors and also me waiting for him in my home country, who will all encourage him to treat mental health like physical health; Everyone gets sick sometimes. For the body you take antibiotics, for the mind you take time of to become aware of what is happening. You seek professional help in both situations and being depressed, is a shameful as getting the flu, not at all.

This is amazing, it took me some time to understand it, but now I am blown away by the simplicity of the tool and the possibilities it holds.

I already started gaining insights in some systems I am currently involved with.

Could you point me to more resources like this?

As a non-American I am less than qualified to provide an answer, but one possible hypothesis is Race and ethnicity. The midwest has according to Wikipedia with 79% the highest Non-Hispanic White ratio of any region.[1] As Blacks have the highest rate of poverty 27%, followed by Hispanics 25% compared to 10% for non-Hispanic Whites. [2] Income equality might be explained by having less poor people.

A follow up hypothesis would be that racial homogeneity might lead to less ghettoisation resulting in less competition for the lowest paying jobs. One might feel less compelled to pay only the lowest possible wage if one can relate to the other person, by race, neighbourhood, etc.

Now, as to why Blacks and Hispanics have higher poverty rates; one explanation may be that the American social system relies very heavily on both parents present (and working) for a child to grow up in an advantageous situation. This is something I have observed to a much lesser extend in more socialist societies in Europa. And famously in all but 11 states, most black children do not live with both parents. In every state, 7 in 10 white children do. [3]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_ethnicity_in_the_Unit...

[2] http://www.csgmidwest.org/policyresearch/1012incometrends.as...

[3] http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/dec/25/fathers-disa...

I can anecdotally confirm and at the same time fail to confirm these findings. Since recently I am awoken about 1—2 times per night. Yet, the noise is only disturbing enough to awake me in between my sleep cycles. I have not noticed any mood changes.

However after my son was born I definitely noticed a considerable drop in mood due to being awoken randomly at night. (It was also roughly 1—2 times a night)

I wonder if the stage of the sleep cycle—one is experiencing—would influence the mood changes.

Oh, I am Austrian (culturally very close to Germany) and I worked in a German company in Tokyo. I am not alone with my opinion, that Japanese are taking perfectionism to a whole new level, actually harming productivity.

Thank you for your advice, I fully agree. I cannot edit my comment anymore, so I actually think about just deleting it.

Edit: I am surprised to find; I mistakenly assumed I have the ability to delete my comments. That seems new...

Yes you are right, this is massive over generalization, and I am rather unhappy with my wording, unfortunately I can not edit my comment anymore. In my culture these almost „polemical statements“ are rather accepted and interpreted differently. I found especially english speaking people have a very hard time understanding my intentions. I should have known better.

Obviously there are not 129 million perfectionists, that was particularly misleading.

However I would claim that Japanese are more likely to favor and reward perfectionism than any other culture I experienced. I am only talking about a trend I may have observed.

My wife is Japanese and through her I cam to a realization about this very topic.

My hypothesis is: Japanese do not accept anything less than perfection. The accompanying motto seems: "If you cannot archive perfection, don’t even bother starting.“

To illustrate my point; My wife might ask me to purchase something for her. Whenever I could not get the specific product she asked for, I just bought something comparable. At home she would be disappointed to her core, to the point where she considered the possibility that my intentions where nefarious. Every time this happened I was shocked. Why would I try to bring her harm by not buying the exact same thing, but something comparable? Now I was convinced that her thought-process is rather unique. Yet, to my surprise, almost every Japanese person who I befriended on a deeper level behaved the same way.

To me it seems for Japanese people there is an crucial "line of competency". An average Gaijin (non-Japanese) is seen as incompetent to act according to Japanese customs (rightfully so). Almost everything a Gaijin does, even if it is rather obnoxious, is not judged by Japanese, but accepted as: „Well..., different culture, different habits."

When they allow you in their circle, befriend you, you are seen as to cross the „line of competency“ and your actions will be judged by higher standards.

Now imagine you grew up in a society where everything you do is expected to be done perfectly. And a consequence of not doing something perfect is bringing shame to you and those around you (Japan is a shame based culture, so that is extremely bad). You will not consider starting a task unless you have a very high chance of archiving mastery. If you do a task, you are not perfect in, you better hide it.

Another example: A friend of mine visited me in Japan and quite frequently asked people for directions. To his awe every single one of them went out of their way to help him. People walked for very long distances with him, making 100% certain that he will get to an ATM. In their mind, drawing on a map just did not suffice. They would walk with him all across Shinjuku station (the busiest station on the planet) making sure he will find the right train. To him these were just examples of nice people in Japan. I believe he, unknowingly, tasked these poor people with unreasonably big requests. When asking for the nearest ATM these Japanese did not consider the possibility of pointing in a direction, as this would have left too much room for error. Anything less than walking with him would have brought shame to them. Actually when you ask directions and they „just“ point (it happens) look at their faces. Often thy turn away from you in shame. Or their faces will freeze as if they just did something appalling.

Imagine having a country of 129 million perfectionists. How would the society be run? Trains would always be perfectly on time. Food would always look as delicious as in the ads and taste like you hope it would. People would be very stressed committing to anything they have not done 100 times before. People would feel the constant pressure to live up to insane expectations and if they could not hold up to them, they would be anxious to leave their houses (otaku). — If you are not familiar with the Japanese culture, this is exactly like it is in Japan.

A last point to support the article, I was in Rome and an Italien friend brought me to „the best pizzeria in Italy“. I must say, it was a truly delicious pizza. 3 Days later I was in Osaka and went with a Japanese friend to a „very good “ pizza place. Every single slice of pizza I ate there was pure perfection. It blew the „best pizzeria in Italy“ out of the water. The pizzeria in the Namba Parks is run by Japanese who studied in Italy.

I am on page 60 where train operators and station agents are making $122 000.

The difference between "workers" and manager salaries is about 4x, pretty low compared to the private sector.

I find the salaries to be outrageously high, even factoring in that we are talking about the Bay Area & San Francisco. Considering that the average age of BART's cars is 30 years [1], the money seems better spend on updating the equipment.

[1] http://www.ktvu.com/news/news/local/bart-moved-update-rapidl...

I really would like to have links to the studies mentioned, the most interesting one I could find is:

http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=205797 — 2007, Cited by 1214

  Treatment with beta carotene, vitamin A, and vitamin E may increase mortality. 
  The potential roles of vitamin C and selenium on mortality need further study

Could someone please explain to me why these tools are not commercially available?

This is the desktop version of the app Bret Victor created: http://vimeo.com/64895205

The tools would make my live so much easier, I can not start to express how much science needs this. Why did no startup jump on implementing them, like "Light Table" [1]? Alternatively, why did Victor not release it commercially? He would not get rich, but I guess he does not need to earn money anymore. His tools could benefit humanity, from cancer research to safer cars.

I really wonder, what the reason is why Mr. Victor never published any of his tools. It makes me sad to see such genius applications and all I can do is look at them.

[1] http://www.chris-granger.com/2012/04/12/light-table---a-new-...

EDIT: Thank you @williamcotton for watching the summary (I didn't) Mr. Victor mentioned he will make it available on github, his account is: https://github.com/worrydream This is great news.

The Samsung software I have seen on their TVs, laptops, phones has been adequate at best. I wish them best of luck developing another closed ecosystem. However their track record of developing good, functioning software is not very promising.

When you use Apple products everything is tied into Apple. I didn't like some parts of their ecosystem (Itunes). It is all or nothing for Apple, so I said farewell and moved on.

When I switched to Android I discovered it is strongly tied to Google, their services are great and free. However I grew increasingly worried about a future in which my account ends up as a "false positive" and my life get's deleted. — Seriously those horror stories about people's Google account getting deleted for no good reason are very scary to a startup founder. The probability is very low, but I am scared enough to invest money and time in moving all my data away from Google.

So Samsung if the article is right and this is your longterm strategy, I wish you best of luck, don't expect me to be a customer at any point in the future.

I agree with niggler, I guess this tax would eliminate >95% of all trades. Therefore the expected tax income of 352 billion would be significantly lower (~ 20 billion) over 10 years. Still I do believe the tax would have a significant positive impact on the economy.

The tax would most effect arbitrage trades. Arbitrageurs get between buyers and sellers. When a seller offers a stock for $95 and a buyer is willing to pay $105 the arbitrageurs buy the stock for $95 and sell it to the buyer for a premium (~ $102.5). Arbitrageurs have trading algorithms which can do this millions of times per second, that's how they can buy faster than the "real" buyer. They behave like vultures fighting for the scraps (so to speak) and getting in the way of "real" market participants.

The act of arbitrage trades is taxing market participants already. The proposed tax of ¢3 might make buying stock cheaper on average. (I don't know the real numbers, this is just a guess) Further more I would rather see the money in the hand of the government, as there is a chance that some of the money is spend on better streets & health care. The alternative is to fund hoards of highly skilled engineers to improve algorithm that pick up the scraps. I personally know engineers at broker firms who feel their extremely well paid job provides absolutely no good to society.

EDIT: The main argument for the existence of arbitrageurs is that they provide liquidity to the market when there are not enough buyers & sellers. My personal believe is, they liquidity they provide today comes with a to high of a price. 20 years ago when it was a few guys yelling on the trading floor you could always count on one guy yelling (the arbitrageur). Today the number of market participants & electronic transactions make trades near perfect; The utility of arbitrage trades vanished almost completely.

I strongly agree. As an example try to create an Launcher for Eclipse, it is a usability nightmare.

Windows:

  Right click > Pin to Taskbar

  Right click > Options > Keep in Dock

  gedit ~/.local/share/applications/opt_eclipse.desktop

  [Desktop Entry]
  Type=Application
  Name=Eclipse
  Comment=Eclipse Integrated Development Environment
  Icon=** something like /opt/eclipse/icon.xpm **
  Exec= ** something like /opt/eclipse/eclipse **
  Terminal=false
  Categories=Development;IDE;Java;
  
  nautilus ~/.local/share/applications
  chmod +x ~/.local/share/applications/opt_eclipse.desktop

Considering that humans are the judge of what constitutes as a well spaced font, one should look at the workings of the human brain. It turnes out we already know the algorithm employed by the visual cortex for edge detection, the _Gabor filter_ http://authors.library.caltech.edu/2653/1/MALjosaa90.pdf

Also Wikipedia has a fantastic overview for the Gabor filter: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabor_filter

Of the approaches mentioned in the original article, "wavelet" masks, are the ones closest to the calculation done in the V1. A quick search on http://scholar.google.com for "Gabor space visual cortex" uncovers that much research was dedicated to this topic.