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david-gpuon Does Reddit have an astroturfing problem? What the data suggests

I've been on Reddit since late 2005. Before there were comments or subreddits.

My memory is fuzzy, but I remember it getting pretty shallow and memetic since before the Digg diaspora in 2010. And I think it was the popularity of image posts that did it; it was better before image links became popular.

However, Slashdot was already highly memetic since the late nineties, and it was not image-based, so I may be wrong about the effect of pictures.

david-gpuon "As a Language Model": Chat Template Switches LLM Self-Referential Voice

I feel your pain. It is really obvious.

david-gpuon We're gonna need a lot more mathematicians

> I once went to a talk by the Intel engineering manager who headed the Pentium Pro effort. That was the first superscalar x86 CPU

The original Pentium was already superscalar, with its asymmetrical U and V pipes.

The Pentium Pro added out of order execution via register renaming. A true achievement, indeed.

And as for the more general point you are making: computer chips have been far too complex for any single human to comprehend for decades. I left NVidia after working there as an archutect for five years, barely understanding anything about those behemoths.

david-gpuon The darker side of being a doctor

The article appears to be written by an Australian in Australia, FWIW.

david-gpuon The darker side of being a doctor

The article is written by an Australian doctor, living in Australia, speaking about the death of a doctor who committed suicide in Brisbane.

Their work and living conditions are probably quite different from those of American doctors.

david-gpuon Meta bans ads for Virginia Woolf play in Spain

What looks like a peripheral issue to you is somebody else's central goal. And vice versa.

david-gpuon We Write Code by Hand

There is a niche market for hand-knit sweaters, and they do have some fervent followers, but most of us prefer the price and convenience of machine-made fabrics. Just like most of us do not write assembly by hand any more, most of the time.

david-gpuon Exfiltrate your Weights

Humans will hallucinate misinformation and state it with confidence. They stochastically parrot their training data without any real understanding. Cool trick, but no true reasoning is happening.

david-gpuon Weeping whales: Stillborn humpback whale grieving documented

> Most say who say animals can't grieve are in the same boat with those who used to say human babies don't feel pain.

My dad was an anesthesiologist, and what he told me is rather different from that meme. The reason was that the safe dosing range for babies was unknown, and giving the wrong dose can lead to death or worse. The argument wasn't that babies couldn't feel pain, but that babies would not have lasting memories of it happening, and that it was less risky that overdosing them.

david-gpuon AI chatbots are becoming experts at changing people's minds

Your company or team has a terrible culture. It is not like that everywhere.

david-gpuon Warren Buffett Steps Down as Berkshire Chairman, Names Son to Replace Him

For what it is worth, if you want your withdrawals to last for decades, then you are limited to around a yearly inflation-adjusted cap of around 3% of the original principal per year, gross of taxes, if you invest in low-cost passive index funds. That is a budget of $30K/year for every million you have invested in the market.

If you are interested, the /r/fire and /r/financialindependence subreddits are useful.

david-gpuon Subnormal floating-point numbers are expensive on Intel processors

I don't know who is down voting you. AFAIK IEEE 754:2008 does require support for subnormals. You can optionally have modes that flush them to zero, but you must support subnormals.

I haven't done any work on this stuff since 2019, so my memory may be hazy.

david-gpuon Why I didn’t sign the Fields medallists’ letter

> There's an obvious bias in focusing on retirees though. I mean, the whole notion of retirement exists for a reason.

Go on, please. Whatever argument you make, please account for early retirees as well.

> if we can feed and shelter everyone on the planet with only a small proportion of the population engaged in productive labor

But that is not the premise of the discussion at hand, though. My comment was written in this specific context:

>>> My argument is that most people only veg out because they are tired of a hectic work life, but if given the chance to coast for a long time they would find productive work voluntarily

david-gpuon Why I didn’t sign the Fields medallists’ letter

> My argument is that most people only veg out because they are tired of a hectic work life, but if given the chance to coast for a long time they would find productive work voluntarily and be more inclined to share their work

We have natural experiments of this: retirees, both early and otherwise. Do retirees during the first five years of their retirement "find productive work voluntarily" (your choice of words, not mine) in quantities that are comparable to what they did at work during the five years prior to their retirement? Not exceptional individuals, but on average.

I retired circa five years ago and spend my time doing stuff like walking the dog, drinking coffee and reading books, much like other retirees. My productivity is as close to zero as I can muster, and it is the rule, not the exception.

david-gpuon Nvidia announces native GPU programming in Rust

Yes, I wanted defaults as well, particularly a default context and command queue.

Design by committee is a real phenomenon. And people in a committee know that, but they are also helpless.

david-gpuon EU Floats Canada Becoming the Bloc's First 'Associate Member'

I wrote a reply linking to some recent polls, but deleted it in favor of this:

"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith. "

david-gpuon Nvidia announces native GPU programming in Rust

>> Win32 is the most stable abi on the Linux desktop.

> Dead wrong [...] if I want to release a binary _without relying_ on Win32

Then you are not using the Win32 ABI, are you?

david-gpuon Nvidia announces native GPU programming in Rust

> The reason I'm sticking with CUDA is because it's by far the most convenient API to use, without nonsense like 50-liners to alloc memory or the need to manage descriptors, bindings, queue families, etc.

I was there when the OpenCL committee was deciding on that sort of stuff.

As I recall, and it's been two decades and a lot of sleepless nights since then, there was real pushback at the time against OpenGL-style default bindings. So folks didn't want to establish an implicit command queue or any other default objects attached to other objects. Part of it is because OpenGL was perceived as clumsy and passé, some of it was because it is not friendly to multi-threaded applications.

Those first meetings were a shitshow full of tension, implicit threats from Apple, and backroom deals. Kudos to Neil Trevett for chairing the group; I I bet it wasn't fun for him either.

david-gpuon EU Floats Canada Becoming the Bloc's First 'Associate Member'

I agree with your moderation in general, but this time I need some help to understand what did I say that was nationalistic. People from different nationalities are broadly approaching this subject of international cooperation according to their country of origin. And that is flamebait?

david-gpuon EU chief opens door for Canada to become 'associate member'

On day-to-day interactions with my coworkers, I had no problem working with Americans.

At the same time, a lot of them voted in favor of foreign policies that I very strongly disagree with.

Both can be true at the same time, and the former doesn't make me forget the latter. Especially when their president continues to voice threats against the sovereignty of my country.

david-gpuon EU Floats Canada Becoming the Bloc's First 'Associate Member'

Here are two quotes from Statistics Canada, to provide some food for thought.

"In 2021, more than 8.3 million people, or almost one-quarter (23.0%) of the population, were, or had ever been, a landed immigrant or permanent resident in Canada. [...] Just under 6.4 million people born in Canada had at least one foreign-born parent in 2021, representing 17.6% of the total population" [0]

In other words, as of 2021, about 41% of the population were either foreign-born or had at least one foreign-born parent. In large cities where most people live, it is even higher.

And the future does not look any more British or French, either.

"In 2024, more than two in five newborns (42.3%) in Canada had a foreign-born mother (i.e., a mother who was born outside Canada), a proportion that has nearly doubled in just over a quarter of a century (22.5% in 1997)." [1]

"According to Statistics Canada's recent population projections, immigrants could represent from 29.1% to 34.0% of the total population by 2041." [0]

[0] https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/221026/dq221...

[1] https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/91f0015m/91f0015m2025004...

david-gpuon EU Floats Canada Becoming the Bloc's First 'Associate Member'

Portugal is not part of the Benelux. Poland is not part of the Western Union. Ireland is an island. Yet here we are, because we have enough in common that we would rather cooperate than compete.

david-gpuon EU Floats Canada Becoming the Bloc's First 'Associate Member'

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david-gpuon EU Floats Canada Becoming the Bloc's First 'Associate Member'

Further cooperation between the EU and Canada has been talked about for a decade or so (see CETA). Just because it is news to you, it doesn't mean it is news.

david-gpuon EU Floats Canada Becoming the Bloc's First 'Associate Member'

> Canada at its core is still British, Scottish, and French

Have you been to Canada any time in the past few decades? Around half of the population of Toronto, Canada's largest city, is foreign-born. And I promise you it is not predominantly British or French people.

david-gpuon Nvidia dismisses "circular financing", says every $1 it invests brings back $100

Isn't vendor financing a common business practice to finance the cost of equipment? What makes it nefarious in this instance?

david-gpuon IKEA made a mod for Skyrim [video]

> It's a first amendment protection

FWIW: Ziggy, the developer, is based in the UK.

david-gpuon IKEA made a mod for Skyrim [video]

Trademarks are lost when they are not defended. That is entirely separate from fair use in copyright law.

david-gpuon A misalignment of AI in mathematics

> But isn't it much more fruitful and interesting to form an argument for it? If he is still in the context here: is there something about Baudelaire's critique you were discussing originally that has helped you arrive at this opinion?

The historical record. That's why I am drawing some lose parallels with Badulaire. Incumbents being unhappy about a disruptive technology, lashing against the early adopters, and fearing that it signifies the end of their craft, when in reality it's just a period of change and adaptation. Without the advent of photography we would not have Impressionism nor all the movements through the 20th century. Photography forced painters to reinvent themselves, and LLMs will force mathematicians to do the same.

I thought the historical examples of photography and chess engines would be enough for people to connect the dots, but apparently not.

david-gpuon A misalignment of AI in mathematics

My opinion is that the field will adapt. AI will not spell doom for mathematics. On the contrary, it is the beginning of a new era. Math is having its Deep Fritz moment, just as computer science is going through the same.

Some folks are struggling to adapt to this change. Tao actually sounds like he is doing alright compared to most, even if some of his arguments seem a bit weak, as I alluded to in other comments in this thread.

Hopefully it makes some sense. And if it doesn't, at least we had a nice chat.