robinjhuang

One API for your APIs

Canva has a great presence in China.

ComfyUI now natively supports masking and scheduling of LoRA and model weights. This works for all LoRAs and models - as long as the LoRAs and models are not of conflicting architectures. With these features, you can: Apply LoRAs via masks to specific areas of images, or to specific areas of specific frames for video models - loaded via Create Hook LoRA and CreateHook LoRA (MO) nodes. Apply models via masks to specific areas of images, or to specific areas of specific frames for video models - loaded via Create Hook Model as LoRA and Create Hook Model as LoRA (MO) nodes. Schedule LoRA and model strengths for different steps in the sampling process, allowing to mix the style and compositional benefits of separate LoRAs/models. Use the Create Hook LoRA/Model as LoRA nodes mentioned above for more simple LoRA/model mixing without needing to chain model/clip inputs and outputs.

The update also revamps the ModelPatcher system + adds wrappers/callbacks to make the lives of developers easier going forward, but that will be explained in a future blogpost and expanded even further with future updates.

Chat GPT4 does do internet searches now.

Dependency injection is still tremendously helpful in writing unit tests.

Many years ago I considered being a novelist. Until I read this quote by an acting professor at Yale that I’m now paraphrasing: you should only act, if acting is the only thing you can do.

Spoiler: I didn’t become a novelist.

I was in Colombia recently, where Uber is officially illegal. That didn't stop most of the gringos from using it. Crazy how this is still how Uber works in many countries.

Rat poison squared. Buffet was right.

This might have been mentioned already, but the more accurate comparison would be to stock brokers. Robinhood has SIPC insurance up to $500k in case they go bankrupt.

Crypto has no such insurance.

I think this might be true. But the USA is not simply a democracy. It’s a liberal hegemony, and that brings a whole set of other problems.

I believe that an objective look at US foreign policy shows that US always looks out for #1 (itself).

It helped overthrow an elected socialist leader in Chile in 1973. It made up reasons to invade Iraq. It defended Kuwait, a monarchy. It interferes in other countries all the time. When the dictator supports US interests, it leaves them be. When a democratically elected government resists them, they try to tear it down.

So I think what you mean is democracy is good for advancing human rights for CITIZENS of that country. The empirical evidence is not super strong for advancing human rights in general.

When’s the last time you were back in China? That used to be the case, but increasingly less so. Especially after Trump’s trade war. Chinese people I know proudly buy Huawei and Nio cars. Even American products that Chinese people love like iPhones and Tesla are produced in China now…

Also 1. I don’t think people generally say that.

2. CDC made a huge mess of the pandemic (eg not stocking enough PPE). USPS is in big financial trouble.

3. This is huge topic but I’m inclined to say US messes up as often as it succeeds. Afghanistan will have 22 million people starving this year because of US sanctions. They promote democracy, but not human rights.

But overall I think you’re right to say the US government is one of the “more” efficient ones.

Oil gas pipelines? Sure. The reason I say this is because it seems to me that democracy is a system designed to favor the majority over the minority. So why not for public projects?

I think this is a question worth asking. Should we let a small number of people hold hostage over public projects?

"A dozen lawsuits have targeted environmental aspects of the projects, including another suit by the town of Atherton that argued, among other things, that the rail authority had conducted an inadequate analysis of where the train should be elevated along the San Francisco peninsula. A court ruled that the analysis had been properly done."

This is straight comedy. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/25/us/california-high-speed-...

Having lived in Shanghai during 2005-2012 and seeing the construction boom there, I noticed some differences immediately after arriving in the US. It's common to hear about transportation projects taking decades to expand a few stations here. Mean while, since the time I left the Shanghai subway station has opened 21 new lines composed of 516 stations.

Certainly, the air/water was worse in China but workers also had to work much harder (later nights, weekends, etc). But perhaps most importantly, the government would waste no time in getting land that it needed, and it certainly wouldn't ask for your consideration if it needs to do construction on a Saturday morning.

While I appreciate that there is an inherent trade off between environmental consideration and speed, I think the author makes it clear that it's reached comic proportions in the US. The article is short, but I think the main premise is overwhelmingly accurate: The system exists to protect the status quo.

There's also the reliance of transportation agencies on consultants: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2016/10/21/mbta-o21.html

I don’t think blaming the supply chain is fair. Big transportation projects, big city’s housing problems all existed way before our current supply chain problems.

Clearly considering the environment is important. But the costs of over worrying about the environment is becoming clear too. Negative externalities like the homeless crisis in the West coast are affecting everyone.

This is an amazing takedown by one of Columbia’s own professors. Wow

I like what Kevin Systrom said on a podcast about being competitive. (Paraphrasing) He said he was not the type of person to need to beat someone else in everything. He doesn't need to be number 1 all the time. But he was competitive with himself. He would set goals, and try to reach them. Personally, I think this type of competition is very healthy and will lead to a fulfilling life.

Set your own goals. Don't just ladder-climb or be competitive for the sake of it. Don't live someone else's life.

Looks really great! I like the document style form builder too. Question: I’ve researched many form builders, but none seem to provide a Google Maps place autocomplete input. This is really useful tho, for things like verifying delivery address.

Is there a reason this is hard to add?

As matt says, you can pay for the truth or get lies for free ;) I've been a subscriber for two years and a paid one as soon as it was offered. Really recommend it! We also have open forums and a discord to talk about anything anti-monopoly.

This post helped me so much when I was using the graphviz library. I was trying to use the layout functions in graphviz for another tool, and graphviz spits out layout in bezier curve points. I was plotting the points directly, and didn't realize I needed to interpolate the actual points of the curve. This post helped immensely.

Flutter flow is great.

I think socket.io handles this client keep alive automatically.

https://socket.io/docs/v4/how-it-works/

See disconnection detection section

Congratulations Spencer! Had a question about the early days. How did you keep everyone motivated during the early days of heads down building before you had real customers? Did you talk to customers during that time, and what best practices can you share? How did you communicate your vision to your team / investors?

Could not agree more

Post rationalization and hindsight bias imo