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ziptron

412 karma · joined December 16, 2017

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ziptron··on You weren't meant to have a boss (2008)
What PG wrote here truly resonates. I worked for a large Co and then 7 years ago started my own thing.

At first it felt unnatural. Doing something that most others are not feels wrong. Eventually, once I accepted the daily feeling of ambiguity created through exploring a limitless world, I knew I had made the right decision.

My advice to anyone navigating the transition is to ensure you first setup something for initial survival (e.g., figure out how to freelance, find a flexible job, learn a skill).

Having even a bit of money flowing in (irrespective of the amount really) while not being tied to a large Corp gave me that initial sense of freedom I needed to truly think big. It kept me from "giving up" and going back.

It's a slippery slope though, if you get too used to just doing freelance, you've built around yourself artificial barriers similar to those that exited before for you. You will gravitate to the easier projects because they will have the best ROI for you on your time.

Find the right balance. Just enough freelance to live, but not too much where you're not trying new things and truly learning how to build long term value.

ziptron··on Whole Earth Index
Project like this make me stop and truly appreciate the time someone took to make this... and make me wish I had more time in my day to consume this beauty in its entirety. So much knowledge retained here.
ziptron··on Show HN: I'm a dermatologist and I vibe coded a skin cancer learning app
Thank you for making this.

My dad passed away from squamous cell carcinoma in 2010. In retrospect, through my casual research into the space and tools like this one, it occurs to me that the entire event was likely preventable and occurred merely because we did not react quickly enough to the cancer’s presence.

ziptron··on We're Raising Kids to Prefer AI over People–and No One's Noticing
My 3yo loves chatting with Gemini, more than just watching some show. It give her undivided attention and always asks follow up questions to her silly comments.
ziptron··on The man who spent forty-two years at the Beverly Hills Hotel pool (1993)
https://experts.mcmaster.ca/display/ironsga <-- A professor of steel making named Dr. Irons
ziptron··on MTA's A.I. bus cameras issue mistaken parking violations
> pay a second company $58 million to outfit an additional 1,000 buses with mobile camera systems

How could it be $58k per bus to install a camera?

ziptron··on Have McKinsey and its consulting rivals got too big?
Since this is reported on by "Insurance Journal" it makes wonder how much of this fine was paid for by their liability insurer. Does anyone know? Presumably they have no coverage for illegal activities, but they never agreed they did anything illegal.
ziptron··on OpenAI is good at unminifying code
>I apologize, GPT-4, for mistakenly accusing you of making mistakes.

I am testing large language models against a ground truth data set we created internally. Quite often when there is a mismatch, I realize the ground truth dataset is wrong, and I feel exactly like the author did.

ziptron··on SanDisk introduces the first 8TB SD and 4TB microSD cards
I still have a photo of myself holding a 256 MB micro SD card. I was in awe when I saw it.
ziptron··on After my dad died, I ran and sold his company (2018)
OP here. @asanwal, in case you're wondering, a mutual connection of ours liked your LinkedIn post featuring this article. That's how I found this.
ziptron··on Lamini Memory Tuning: 10x Fewer Hallucinations
What is the hallucination rate of, for example, a Llama3 or GPT4?
ziptron··on Show HN: MoodieMoovy – A free; movie recommender with a strong algorithm
Can you explain the algorithm a little? How does the day of the week impact the result? What makes it "strong"?
ziptron··on This is a teenager
An interesting silver lining is that reported happiness (shown near the end) seems to be inversely related to all of the other negative effects. At least from first glance at the data.
ziptron··on SD cards expected to hit 4TB in 2025
I have a photo of myself holding a 256Mb SD card when it came out because it seemed magical to me that a single card could hold so much data. After all the leaps the process is still magical.
ziptron··on Map of US Foreign Assistance
Yes, I also like the historic playback feature. It shows the effect the US had overtime on various countries.
ziptron··on Ontario school boards sue social media giants for $4.5B
I think claims like this have the potential to bring out a great deal of research into the public sphere about the effects of social media, but looking at the law firm acting on behalf of the plaintiff, I see it's a personal injury law firm with ~20 lawyers (https://neinstein.com/about), and they have taken on the assignment on a contingency basis. Sadly, I doubt they will have the resources to go up against the major tech companies for long...... but, assuming they have not taken the assignment on as a PR stunt, I am rooting for them.
ziptron··on Anatomy of a Large-Scale Search Engine – Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page (1998)
"... we expect that advertising funded search engines will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of the consumers."
ziptron··on Which word begins with "y" and looks like an axe in this picture? (2017)
Maybe I am bad at promoting, but I could not get ChatGPT3.5 anywhere near a logical process to answer this question.

https://chat.openai.com/share/67998d60-0f81-410e-ba8b-ec5a0f...

ziptron··on What We Watched: A Netflix engagement report
I wonder what else humanity would have done with those 100 billion hours if it were not for Netflix.
ziptron··on New study confirms: Many adults opt for child-free life without regret
I often use Paul Graham's "kids" essay to describe to others what having kids is like. Much of it seems applicable to me.

http://www.paulgraham.com/kids.html

ziptron··on The Seamless Communication models
If you are multilingual but have young children and plan to continue residing in your current English speaking country for the foreseeable future, are you opting to teach your children those additional languages or are you adhering to the idea that they can always learn those languages later if necessary, considering it might not be essential (esp with models like this)?
ziptron··on IKEA sensors for doors and windows, motion, water leaks
What's even more problematic is that new North American homes are often constructed with a washer/dryer "conveniently" placed near a bedroom, typically on the upper level, and yet, they are still installed without a drain.
ziptron··on MonadGPT – What would have happened if ChatGPT was invented in the 17th century?
Makes you appreciate how far we've come..

Here is my attempt at asking the model to cure a headache:

>How do you cure a headache?

>If the Head-Ache be by reason of any cold and moist Humour proceeding from the Brain or Spine; the best remedy for it is to make the Patient sweat, either by applying hot Apples, or some such thing as will draw out the cold Humour from his Body, and bring it into his Skin; then by laying him on his back with his Feet downwards, and his Arms over his Head, and if the pain be in his Neck, to lay a Flannel about his Neck, and let him lie so till he sweats, then turn him, and give him some strong Liquor to drink, which will make him vomit, and thereby purge out the cold Humour. If the Head-Ache be by reason of the Stomach or Liver, it may be cured by giving the Patient some good Cordial, as Spirit of Wormwood, or such like; and if the cause be by reason of the Heart, then give him some strong Liquor, as Wine, or Ale, which will raise his Spirits, and make them run to the Head; and if it be by reason of the Brain, then give him some good Herb, as Pennyroyal, or some such thing, which will open the Pores of the Brain, and make the Humour come forth.

>should I send my son to school?

>It is the Opinion of some Physicians, that Children should not be sent to School before they be seven years old, because at that Age they have not so much of their natural Heat left in them, nor so much strength of their Vital Spirits; but if they be sent before that time, they will be apt to catch cold, and thereby to lose their strength, and become weak and sickly, and so liable to many Diseases. But others think that if Children be sent to School before they be sev'n years old, they will learn to read and write, and to speak well, and to do many other Things with greater Ease than if they were to wait till they were seven Years old, when their Bodies are

>Why do objects fall to the ground when dropped?

>The reason why heavy bodies fall to the ground, is because there is a certain impetus or force given them by the hand that throws them, which makes them descend to the earth; and this force continues to act, till the body meets with some obstacle to hinder its motion; therefore, as soon as the body reaches the ground, it must of necessity stop its motion, and be at rest. It is true, that heavy bodies have a natural tendency to fall downwards, but yet it is not on account of their weight, but on account of the force imparted to them by the hand that throws them; for if the hand did not give them any force, they would not fall at all.

ziptron··on WHO – Physical Activity
I'm not sure how these studies ever conclude that screen time affects psychological well-being. What they do not account for is whether the parents of those troubled kids are less creative or available to nurture the kids, which in itself leaves the kids with more time to watch TV. Or perhaps these kids are just difficult little humans to begin with, and the parents need a break more often by allowing them to watch some TV.
ziptron··on ChatGPT’s system prompts
How did the author find these? Are these published somewhere or was the model jail broken in some way to reveal it?
ziptron··on How are you using ChatGPT internally at your company?
I'm curious about this too. What sort of pilot are you running? How (if at all) did you get permission to upload data?
ziptron··on Experts Argue Whether Computers Could Reason, and If They Should – Circa 1977
> Twenty years ago, in the infancy of the computer revolution, before problems began cropping up, the public was told that computers would be smarter than brains. Computer chess champions and machine translation, for example, were just around the corner. So far, neither has been accomplished successfully, and neither is likely to be any time soon.

The original predictions were merely off by 40 years.

Also, I like this 1977 article as it highlights that any overnight success is decades in the making.

ziptron··on The Toughest Material on Earth
Great article which nicely articulates the material strength mechanism.

The Materials Engineering is currently an underappreciated field

ziptron··on Ask HN: Am I the only one baffled by the long term usage of Twitter?
You can block anything that you find time consuming using UBlock Origin.

Here's a little write up that explains how:

https://medium.com/@okrutny/how-i-gain-hours-of-productive-t...

ziptron··on Things I learned writing my first technical book
The articles says: "Writing my first technical book without a publisher would have been a MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE!"

But why? Does a publisher provide more than some seed money and motivation? What else am I missing by not using a publisher?

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