gphil

5 ms·

1.
by gphil 3mo ago
Yes, I actually linked to Open AI’s discussion of GPT-4o being overly sycophantic. I think this is a tunable parameter that they are going to use, and I fully agree re corporate cultures.
2.
What if AI psychosis is the product?(gregoryap.substack.com)
10 points by gphil 4mo ago|4 comments
3.
If there is an AI bubble, where is it?(gregoryap.substack.com)
3 points by gphil 4mo ago|0 comments
4.
by gphil 1y ago
> I hope everyone here gets to have the experience of seeing HN discuss something that you're an expert in. It's eye-opening to see how confidently wrong most poasters are. This is so true. And not confined to HN.
5.
by gphil 2y ago
I also recently came across some of these fake company campaigns with attached employee profiles. It's very hard to distinguish them from legitimate companies. It's especially hard now that many legitimate companies use a lot of g
6.
by gphil 3y ago
The problem is that Twilio is not profitable. They wouldn't need to show a hockey stick if they were. Investor-subsidized, non-profitable companies have to sell growth to their investors because they have no other fundamental to point
7.
by gphil 3y ago
Or: incumbent banks worried about disruption have the stronger lobby/influence.
8.
by gphil 6y ago
I think the answer to both of your questions is yes. I think the related concepts of immutability and pure functions without mutable state allow for cleaner analytical modeling (and in some cases in strong functional languages, mathematical
9.
by gphil 10y ago
It depends on what you are looking at, but generally index returns (such as the FTSE 100) are calculated as if you are rebalancing your portfolio periodically to reflect the changing composition of the index over time, which is what a passi
10.
by gphil 10y ago
Do you live in or are you at least familiar with Philly? This comparison is cherry-picking a WeWork the nicest area in the city and juxtaposing it with an office space in/near one of the worst neighborhoods. Of course the prices are go
11.
by gphil 10y ago
In a lot of places it's illegal to ride motor vehicles on the sidewalk. I think the sweet spots for this are trails and low-traffic streets.
12.
by gphil 10y ago
Interestingly, the all-time Bitcoin price graph looks a lot like the Gartner Hype Cycle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hype_cycle Whether or not this really is a "plateau of productivity" remains to be seen h
13.
by gphil 10y ago
The problem with using "small business" as a blanket term is that they vary widely in stage and ambition. For example, it's a mouthful to distinguish between "brand new small business" and "established small bu
14.
by gphil 11y ago
OK, then I agree with you completely now that I understand. I concur we should incent small and family businesses.
15.
by gphil 11y ago
I was with you until the last sentence: > This means tax cuts but above all simplifications of the relevant law. How do you pay for the poorest to have tolerable lives with tax cuts? Or are you talking about cutting out regressive taxes
16.
by gphil 11y ago
From an American who's been to Trader Joe's a lot and a Marks and Spencer grocery exactly once, I think they are pretty comparable except that the food items are more aligned with their respective nation's typical dietary pre
17.
by gphil 11y ago
If you factor in the people-hours behind the AWS services Netflix uses, I'm sure their number looks a lot different.
18.
by gphil 11y ago
Yeah, I wouldn't rule out the possibility of structural problems--we've never seen this phenomenon before so it's hard to say how it will turn out. I was just trying to point out that it's not impossible for the current
19.
by gphil 11y ago
> There are about 144 unicorns right now. If only 10% break out, that's only 14 companies that will really make it. Doesn't this ratio seem about right for any basket of unprofitable (or even zero-revenue) high-growth companies
20.
by gphil 11y ago
It's troubling that this is where the entrepreneurial ethos is heading. But it's hardly surprising with the leaders of the "sharing economy" almost ubiquitously operating illegally, enticing their customers and contracto
21.
by gphil 11y ago
I think they mean they are subtracting debt, though I agree that isn't clear.
22.
by gphil 11y ago
I think this would be a pretty good approach, especially when combined with the author's strategy.
23.
by gphil 11y ago
> without the ability to allow it to be fast Practically speaking, Python is still slower than a lot of languages that use predominantly immutable data structures. I think you'd want to go to a systems programming language for raw s
24.
by gphil 11y ago
This is still the wrong math. I'm not qualified to come up with a great model here, but given that the S&P 500 has only lost value in 5 of the last 25 years the chances of having no losses in the last 25 years are a lot greater. I&
25.
by gphil 11y ago
Because out of the many thousands of funds who attempt it, some are bound to end up beating the market. You can't know in advance which funds are going to the be the best over the next two decades.
26.
by gphil 11y ago
The only thing any investor can control with any certainty is fees and taxes, so you might as well focus your effort on minimizing these. For the most part, Vanguard funds are the best at this that I know of.
27.
by gphil 11y ago
> I always thought the cabs in Philly were bad. Apparently they're decent, comparatively. I also have a laundry list of complaints about Philly cabs, but I've never been anywhere where I felt the cabs were definitively better.
28.
by gphil 11y ago
I read your comment first, then I clicked through to see if they really suggesting "mastering" all of these fields (which is nigh impossible as you suggest.) They just say to "learn" them, and if by that they mean "
29.
by gphil 11y ago
What I want to know is, when the VC money runs out, what's the barrier to entry to this business? Right now, Uber can beat everybody on price and quality because they don't have to be profitable for a long time. But once they have
30.
by gphil 11y ago
Yeah, once you work through the explanation of that kind of thing the magic kind of falls out of it when you realize how the definitions fit together to produce that result. However, I think there are certainly some areas of Math that are s

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