timdellinger

7 ms·

1.
by timdellinger 2mo ago
agreed - America went through a "mandolin mania" in ~1880s, and even in the 1900s and 1910s, the guitar was by no means an established instrument. As a matter of fact, the "tenor guitar" was made for people who knew how
2.
by timdellinger 2mo ago
“sort by year” is buried on the site, but definitely a fun way to sort there should also be a “you can spot the villain early since they’re the only one not using Apple” sub-list
3.
by timdellinger 6mo ago
The difference is that CEOs fired a lot of people, using "AI can replace human coders" as an excuse. Also: there are claims all over the headlines along the lines of "We built something amazing without human coders." Bo
4.
by timdellinger 1y ago
Bayesian optimization of, say, hyperparameters is the canonical modern usage in my view, and there are other similar optimization problems where it's the preferred approach.
5.
by timdellinger 1y ago
My take is that the Rasmussen book isn't especially approachable, and that this book has actually held back the wider adoption of GPs in the world. The book has been seen as the authoritative source on the topic, so people were hesitan
6.
by timdellinger 1y ago
This perspective under-appreciates the role of a leader's charisma when it comes to attracting staff that will actually execute the ideas of that leader. Anyone who has worked in a presidential administration (or a congressional office
7.
by timdellinger 1y ago
for perspective, monodisperse spheres max out at 74% (hexagonal close packing)
8.
by timdellinger 1y ago
Oh, indeed - for instance, the "Brooks Brothers 346" product line is manufactured specifically and exclusively for the outlet stores.
9.
by timdellinger 1y ago
This cries out for a histogram.
10.
by timdellinger 1y ago
You could grab the top 10 posts by each author, and report the average score of those 10.
11.
by timdellinger 1y ago
I find that I have to steer the AI a lot, but I do have optimism that better prompting will lead to better agents. To take an example from the article: code re-use. When I'm writing code, I subconsciously have a mental inventory of wha
12.
by timdellinger 1y ago
Totally agree here. I tried the following and had a very different experience: "Answer as if you're a senior software engineer giving advice to a less experienced software engineer. I'm looking for a Rust crate to access Pos
13.
by timdellinger 2y ago
an eternal truth, but like all eternal truths, there are many people seeing it for the first time I would perhaps perhaps articulate it as: you find your tribe by hoisting a flag and seeing who rallies around. choose action over perfection
14.
by timdellinger 2y ago
an opinion, and a falsifiable hypothesis: call me old-fasahioned, but two spaces after a period will solve this problem if people insist on all-lower-case. this also helps distinguish between abbreviations such as st. martin's and the
15.
by timdellinger 2y ago
This sounds like a prompting issue. If your prompt instructs the model to ask such questions along the way, the model will, in fact, do so! But yes, it would be nice if the model were smart enough to realize when it's in a situation
16.
by timdellinger 2y ago
My personal view is that the roadmap to AGI requires an LLM acting as a prefrontal cortex: something designed to think about thinking. It would decide what circumstances call for double-checking facts for accuracy, which would hopefully cat
17.
by timdellinger 2y ago
Fair enough. Perhaps better stated as "adult human height is approximately Gaussian for a given biological sex", with an asterisk that environmental factors stretch the distribution. I love the anecdote that people born in the Ame
18.
by timdellinger 2y ago
Interestingly enough, sports salaries are Pareto-distributed, which says something about how valuable (as assessed by the marketplace) each player is https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2024/08/g
19.
by timdellinger 2y ago
Oh, the answer to that is apparent enough, but frustratingly circular: Performance is "visibly doing the things that the company rewards during the performance review process". Theoretically, each role at a company should have a s
20.
by timdellinger 2y ago
Interestingly enough, I remember in my younger days being inspired by Rand Corp's 1950's era game theory work on e.g. mutually assured destruction. It later occurred to me that I don't need to be employed by a think tank to w
21.
Hey, wait – is employee performance Gaussian distributed?(timdellinger.substack.com)
328 points by timdellinger 2y ago|334 comments
22.
by timdellinger 2y ago
My take on the press release is that they're announcing a collaboration between two companies. Lithoz uses photopolymerization to 3-D print a variety of ceramics, and is in the business of selling 3-D printers. Glassomer makes the &quo
23.
by timdellinger 2y ago
I still remember in 2008/2009 when Buffett deployed cash on extremely juicy terms to Dow Chemical, Goldman Sachs, GE, Mars, and Swiss Re. Perhaps he's being prepared just in case cash is hard to come by in the next few years. It a
24.
by timdellinger 2y ago
I'll write the obligatory comment about doing literature searches in the 90s, which involved trudging to the physics library, the chemistry library, and the engineering library in search of dead tree copies of the journal articles you&
25.
by timdellinger 2y ago
I'm a day late to the comments, but... I like the lens of the Big Five model of personality. I think what's at play here is (1) Low neuroticism = resilient and confident (2) Low agreeableness = willing to go against the prevailing
26.
by timdellinger 2y ago
Ironically enough, professional pickleball players today are making more money than WNBA players and more money than most of the folks that this article talks about.
27.
by timdellinger 3y ago
Nice work! I usually like the writing at Quanta, but omg just put "this is percolation theory on a hexagonal grid" in the first paragraph.
28.
by timdellinger 3y ago
I literally was asked two leetcode questions verbatim when interviewing for a data science position at TikTok a few months ago. Dynamic programming (I won't mention which question) and then one regarding binary trees.
29.
by timdellinger 3y ago
Here's a write-up of the actual technology used - the video is worth a watch! https://global.canon/en/technology/nil-2023.html
30.
by timdellinger 3y ago
Indeed, the x-ray diffraction interpretation wasn't completely automated. From the experimental paper: "When the automated refinement gives a poor fit, manual analysis is performed"

More ›