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mhagiwara

105 karma · joined November 25, 2013

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mhagiwara··on Recto – A Truly 2D Language
Hi! Author here. You're right that music and speech carry more than just raw symbols such as intonation, pitch, dynamics, etc. all add important information. But in the framework I'm using, both are still fundamentally “1D” because their core structure unfolds sequentially in time: notes in a score, words and phrases in speech. Even when additional features like accent or dynamics are present, they're layered onto a linear stream.

Recto, by contrast, makes two dimensions part of the syntax itself: elements and rects can expand horizontally or vertically, and they can nest recursively. That's the difference I wanted to highlight.

mhagiwara··on NeuralMorse – Reinventing Morse Code with Neural Networks
I redesigned Morse code with modern statistical techniques, including neural networks. NeuralMorse dynamically tokenizes input text and encodes it as sequences of eight tonal alphabets, optimized by word embeddings and the assignment problem.
mhagiwara··on Reading texts on paper versus computer screen: Effects on reading comprehension [pdf]
Here's a more recent meta analysis: Delgado et al., 2018. Don't throw away your printed books: A meta-analysis on the effects of reading media on reading comprehension https://sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1747938X18300...

"Paper-based reading yields better comprehension outcomes than digital-based reading."

mhagiwara··on Octopuses seen hunting together with fish
We do! https://www.earthspecies.org/about-us#careers
mhagiwara··on Walk and Talk
I'm interested!
mhagiwara··on Diffusion Models Beat GANs on Image Synthesis
See my comment above. I highly recommend this talk by Stefano Ermon from Stanford: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TcNXi3A5DI
mhagiwara··on Diffusion Models Beat GANs on Image Synthesis
If you are interested in learning the intuition & theory behind diffusion and score-based models, I highly recommend this talk by Stefano Ermon from Stanford:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TcNXi3A5DI

mhagiwara··on My First Year as a Freelance AI Engineer
This has never been a big problem for me. Some clients have strict policies (e.g., only allowing you to work on their servers) while others don't care as much. In some cases, as a freelancer, you only work on a "proof of concept" prototype assuming you have access to their private data. It is their FTEs job to actually train/implement/deploy this prototype using their private data.
mhagiwara··on My First Year as a Freelance AI Engineer
This has never happened to me (yet).
mhagiwara··on My First Year as a Freelance AI Engineer
I do have a CPA and we did an S-corp election for 2019 tax return. This is something I didn't get to mention in the post because we hadn't filed the tax yet.
mhagiwara··on My First Year as a Freelance AI Engineer
If your clients are choosing you based on where you are and how your rate compares with other freelancers, I think you have wrong clients.
mhagiwara··on My First Year as a Freelance AI Engineer
Yes. I basically charge the same rate in USD no matter where my client is.
mhagiwara··on My First Year as a Freelance AI Engineer
Wow, it's nice to see my post on the top page of Hacker News.

Note that I wrote this post back in February 2020 and there are a couple of things that I would like to add:

- Due to high demand, I increased my rate to $250/hour + some fixed monthly fee in April. I didn't drop any single client :)

- I'm seeing very little impact from the coronavirus. I have a client base spanning between Japan and the US in a little-impacted industry (education). Don't put all your eggs in one basket.

- I would strongly encourage everyone who's considering making a leap to read "The Win Without Pitching Manifesto" https://www.winwithoutpitching.com/the-manifesto/

- Due to a sheer volume of my incoming emails I can't answer all of them, but do let me know if you are interested in working with me!

mhagiwara··on Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking Freelancer? (February 2020)
SEEKING WORK | Seattle, WA | REMOTE

Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Machine Learning (ML) Engineer and Researcher available

I am an independent NLP/ML engineer and researcher. My clients include world-class institutions and startups such as the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence and RIKEN AIP. In the past, I worked as a researcher/engineer at Google, Microsoft Research, Baidu, and Duolingo. My expertise is NLP (especially for education and Asian language processing) and machine learning.

Let me know if you need help with your NLP/ML projects.

Website: http://masatohagiwara.net/

Email: masato [at] octanove.com

mhagiwara··on AlphaGo beats Lee Sedol again in match 2 of 5
I always wanted to learn to play Go and one of the reasons was because it was the only game where computers hadn't defeated human - well, it is no longer the case and I kind of lost motivation to learn it.

I wonder what would be interesting games (intellectual sports) where computers have yet to defeat humans that you would probably be interested in learning?