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naturalgradient

1,745 karma · joined June 11, 2017

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naturalgradient··on Female Congressional Candidate Ends Run After Being Accused of Sexual Harassment
While I have no intention of ever getting involved in that way, I disagree.The article I linked gives a good perspective on this:

'They are subtle to the point of near-invisibility. It seems Michael Oreskes liked to kiss women. Now, it is an embarrassing faux-pas to kiss a woman who does not wish to be kissed, but it happens all the time. Kissing a woman is an early stage of courtship. It is one way that men ask the question, “Would you like more?” Courtship is not a phenomenon so minor to our behavioral repertoire that we can readily expunge it from the workplace. It is central to human life. Men and women are attracted to each other; the human race could not perpetuate itself otherwise; and anyone who imagines they will cease to be attracted to each other—or act as if they were not—in the workplace, or any other place, is delusional. Anyone who imagines it is easy for a man to figure out whether a woman might like to be kissed is insane. The difficulty of ascertaining whether one’s passions are reciprocated is the theme of 90 percent of human literature and every romantic comedy or pop song ever written. '

We cannot eliminate and sterilise male-female relationships or pretend they are not different from male-male.

naturalgradient··on Female Congressional Candidate Ends Run After Being Accused of Sexual Harassment
A relevant take on the metoo debate, although is contains some rather contentious points:

https://www.the-american-interest.com/2017/12/06/the-warlock...

'Several cases recently in the headlines are simply baffling. They do not involve the workplace—or vast discrepancies in power—at all. Perhaps there is more to the story, but from what I’ve read, the improprieties committed by the UK’s (now former) Defense Secretary Michael Fallon amount to this: He kissed a journalist—not his employee, and not someone over whom he had power, but another adult in another profession—fifteen years ago. What transmogrified Fallon’s kiss to a crime that cost him his career were these words, and only these words: “I felt humiliated, ashamed.” Had the object of his affection said, “I felt flattered,” there would be no offense. '

I think the chilling effect is already here now. Nobody will say it, nobody would admit to it and commit career suicide, but I have no doubt countless startups, corps, research groups will just not hire any women in the wake of this debate.

I am a PhD student and it makes me think about teaching female undergrads at all or taking them on for projects. If I meet female undergrads for teaching, it's already only in public places in the department, never in my office or an actual teaching room. I am not the type who would ever make lewd comments, or anything of the sort, but it does not matter. There are no bonus points for being a good guy, an 'ally'.

naturalgradient··on NVidia copies unlicensed code, claims it as their own
Linus Torvald's NVIDIA moment comes to mind..
naturalgradient··on Don't Buy Anyone an Echo
And how is this contributing to the debate?
naturalgradient··on Don't Buy Anyone an Echo
https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Amazon+Echo+Teardown/33953

Hardware teardown of an early generation echo. Worst, all of this is electronic waste in a few years.

We all do this and just by design, smartphones and laptops are not made to last. We accumulate such a staggering about of waste considering the energy/resources used to produce this.

The larger problem is that technology enables us to consume more, so I don't see how technology can ever solve the problem unless a serious shift in perception happens.

naturalgradient··on Don't Buy Anyone an Echo
'Removing a single consumer electronic device from your life isn't going to impact those global markets' <- Indeed it will not. Only if society begins viewing owning and using resources differently (which will happen eventually once certain resources get scarce), change will happen.

This is why I am so pessimistic about humanity. It's an outrageous opinion to sacrifice even a bit of convenience for not using resources.

I see the angry downvotes pouring in on my previous post because (unsurprisingly) people get angry at having their consumerist lifestyle criticised.

naturalgradient··on Don't Buy Anyone an Echo
What about the larger cost to the environment?

Is it worth having rare earth minerals mined by literal slaves in Africa and China?

Is it worth the energy associated with transporting the resources, processing them, assembling the device and delivering it to you?

All for the convenience of not pulling out your phone while you are tying your shoes?

I do not understand this uncritical consumption. $30 may be 'a steal', but think about whom you are stealing from.

naturalgradient··on The Cost Savings Of Netflix's Internal Spot Market
So they built...a scheduler?
naturalgradient··on Apple Agrees to Deal with Ireland Over $15B Unpaid Tax Issue
It's the old adage: "If you owe the bank $1000, you have a problem, if you owe it $1 billion, the bank has a problem".
naturalgradient··on Optimization for Deep Learning Highlights
No mention of Kronecker factorization or any work on second order methods?

This would be more aptly titled 'Tips and tricks for Adam'..

naturalgradient··on The backstory of Alexa’s Indian makeover
So any consumption is justified because it supports the overall advancement of technology and we need not think about consumption because things will be consumed either way?

I am sorry I do not buy this - where is the justification for the assumption that this is the only way we can advance tech? As an AI researcher, I strongly strongly disagree that I have to enable more consumption for tech to progress.

naturalgradient··on The backstory of Alexa’s Indian makeover
Now this is a very negative opinion in a general anti-consumerist sense but:

Why does one buy items like an Alexa? I get that it performs some features, it slightly increases convenience but it does not enable anything new or different.

Something I do not understand about hackernews: There are a lot of people on here who, on average, care about the environment. By the same token, there are many users here who have an interest in electronics and technology, and are just generally interested in new gadgets.

How do you square buying gadgets with being somewhat conscious of the mounting environmental problems? The amount of electronic waste, the almost literal slave labour to mine the resources, the energy necessary to transport and assemble the parts, and the final device.

All to not use one's smartphone's assistant but a home assistant.

The consumer does not ask himself 'why do I consume', every decision is in the framework of making consumerist choices (e.g. buy a Tesla instead of a Jeep), the option 'I do not need to consume most of these things at all' is barely present.

So I am honestly asking to people buying these things, what is the thought process? Is there a feeling of happiness or joy in having new gadgets? Does it last? Are environmental or more generally philosophical considerations on whether you need to buy new things part of your thought process?

naturalgradient··on A Year in Computer Vision
This is not really the case. I have personally quite literally implemented papers the week after they appeared on ArXiv and they worked. Anecdotical yes, and there have been papers that nobody was able to replicate, but at large the community is quite good at recognising which work can be used, and this work is then implemented and disseminated.
naturalgradient··on Why we never thank open source maintainers
Well that is actually true.

A 'thanks' does not do anything for me. I don't write a library for other people's appreciation, I write it because I want to, because I can, and because I have my own interests for it.

Insofar I am interacting with other people on the project, the only thing that does anything for me is if they contribute something.

Appreciation is not worth anything to me but I am also deeply introvert and not very social, I simply do not care. I can appreciate most people feel different (by observation) but I build technology because I want it to exist and do things, not to be thanked.

naturalgradient··on Why we never thank open source maintainers
I do tell them i) whether it is on the roadmap ii) what would need to be done.

The reason it bothers me because it sounds like an order to someone who is delivering a service for you, e.g. 'Can I have another drink? Thanks!'? That's not a 'thanks'.

naturalgradient··on Why we never thank open source maintainers
As the maintainer of a reasonably popular library, I actually get irritated by a lot of 'thanks', because they are in the form of this sentence:

'Hi, can you implement <Feature that takes a month of work>? Thanks!'

Usually from people who have never contributed anything.

Honestly, being thanked in any shape or form does nothing for me, Id rather have users be more considerate of our time and not abuse issues and the community for supporting their laziness.

naturalgradient··on Steve Jurvetson pushed out of DFJ as lines between personal and prof crossed
Really? To me the article reads like moral mccarthyism. He sounds like a not nice person to be around, like a bad husband, but really, really, this is national news:

'And, indeed, multiple women whom Recode interviewed said their sexual relationships with Jurvetson were not forced, and did not involve an implicit workplace quid-pro-quo.

While the allegations do not resemble the scandals that have forced other powerful Silicon Valley men out of their jobs in recent months, they do shed some light on what investigators found.

“He’d sort of create a soap opera for himself,” said one of the women who dated Jurvetson, who requested anonymity to protect her career. “He lied to us.”`

and especially his part:

'A second woman who dated Jurvetson told Recode she was searching for career opportunities in venture capital and startups. The woman, who declined to give her real name out of professional concerns, said she only later realized he was also dating the first woman, although she herself was also seeing other men in what she described as an off-again, on-again relationship with Jurvetson.'

What is the scandal here, or the story even?

naturalgradient··on Coders who trade: Wall Street designs its staff for the future
Ah that matches what I have heard. HFT/HF is paying up but overall, as someone who is coming up on making the decision, it's hard to see the upsides of finance.

Losing all visibility/ability to publish/being a first class contributor and not second class dev..

naturalgradient··on Coders who trade: Wall Street designs its staff for the future
Can anyone comment on how competitive salaries are there actually?

Right now, for top tier PhD graduates in machine learning, it's about 300-400k at big tech companies starting out, and ~200k for master's degrees.

From what I read and heard, banks are not really willing to pay up competitively for software?

naturalgradient··on The U.S. Flooded One of Houston’s Richest Neighborhoods to Save Everyone Else
Reader mode is not displaying the article, what kind of dark-pattern trickery is this? (Safari)
naturalgradient··on Peter Thiel Gave Money to Attorney General Going After Google
Do you have an argument other than that it feels wrong to you? Some people feel deeply about net neutrality and the state of society.
naturalgradient··on Changing the Ungit license from MIT to Faircode
As someone being in a similar situation, it's a really difficult business model. Unlike many other business models with a natural moat (i.e. by virtue of having all the data, being deeply integrated into organisational processes, etc), commercialising open source is a struggle because simply justifying making money already requires constant improvement.
naturalgradient··on What Google Learned from Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team (2016)
It is not quite clear to me what value it provides to the discussion to completely mark comments [dead] beyond downvoting. Why not leave them there?
naturalgradient··on What Google Learned from Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team (2016)
Sure, downvote, but that does not make it less true. I am not implying the NYT is a worse newspaper than many others in that instance.

I am saying they are trying to pretend they are objective and above the rest in their noble fight for the truth, when there is evidence they are not.

naturalgradient··on What Google Learned from Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team (2016)
The NYT has run of the most effective ad campaigns in recent years, somehow placing itself as the last bastion of 'objective reporting', and the intellectual smugness that comes with it.

From my observation, they are giving platform to just one side of the debate in many issues, e.g. title IX legislation, where they are portraying a move that is supported by a number of reputed law professors[0] as another Trump goverment vs the victims argument:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/03/opinion/weakening-college...

Yes, it's an opinion article, but by choosing to give platform to just one side of the opinion, they are making a political choice.

[0] http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2017/9/1/law-faculty-title...

naturalgradient··on Pyro: PyTorch-Based Deep Universal Probabilistic Programming
Or it is just Uber being Uber and not caring.
naturalgradient··on How the U.K. Prosecuted a Student on Terrorism Charges for Downloading a Book
His snark also does not make your comment true in the first place.
naturalgradient··on If you care about diversity, don't just hire from the same five schools
I was an undergraduate at a no-name university for various personal reasons. A Google, Microsoft and other big tech co offices were nearby. Throughout my undergrad, not a single event, talk or recruiting opportunity emerged. I understand this: the top people are the same everywhere but it does not economically make sense to do events to potentially hire 1-2 people.

I am now at a world famous grad school and there are talks, events, opportunities every week. I would say the best 5% at the undergraduate school were approximately at least as good as the average undergraduate here.

Unfortunately, economically it makes sense to focus recruiting events only at certain schools.

How could companies reach the great students at unknown schools systematically?

naturalgradient··on Facebook and Google Helped Anti-Refugee Campaign in Swing States
No, now you are blatantly spreading misinformation yourself. The law has extended and modified the penal code.

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netzwerkdurchsetzungsgesetz

Just check 'verabschiedetes gesetz'.

naturalgradient··on Facebook and Google Helped Anti-Refugee Campaign in Swing States
That is a pretty daring statement considering Germany just passed far-reaching anti-hate speech legislation with no precise definition of what hate-speech is, leaving it to social networks to interpret.
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