augment_me (u/augment_me)

augment_me commented on How to Think About GPUs jax-ml.github.io/scaling-... · Posted by u/alphabetting

tormeh · 8 days ago

I find it very hard to justify investing time into learning something that's neither open source nor has multiple interchangeable vendors. Being good at using Nvidia chips sounds a lot like being an ABAP consultant or similar to me. I realize there's a lot of money to be made in the field right now, but IIUC historically this kind of thing has not been a great move.

augment_me · 8 days ago

You can write software for the hardware in a cross-compiled language like Triton. The hardware reality stays the same, a company like Cerebras might have the superior architecture, but you have server rooms filled with H100, A100, and MI300s whether you believe in the hardware or not.

augment_me commented on How ChatGPT spoiled my semester (2024) benborgers.com/chatgpt-se... · Posted by u/edent

what-the-grump · 21 days ago

I think only time will tell? Let me flip this on it's head.

LLMs allow me to tackle stuff I have no business tackling because the support from the LLM for the task far exceeds google / stack overflow / [insert data source for industry or task].

Does the concept sink in? Yes and no, I am moving too fast most of the time to retain the solution.

When the task is complex enough and LLM gets it wrong, oh boy is it educational, not only do I have to figure out why the LLM is wrong, I have to now correct my understanding and learn to reason against it.

I was a very bad student, most of the classes didn't make sense to me, bored me out of my mind, I failed a lot. Do I ever feel that way when talking to Chatgpt about a task I have no idea how to solve? No, and guess what we figure it out together.

Another data point, my english writing has improved by using chatgpt to refactor / reformat, more examples, mostly correct english structure. Over time stuff sinks in even if you are not writing it, you are still reading it, and editing.

Lets take code for a minute, is it easier to edit someone else's code or your own? So everyone that has to dive deep into troubleshooting chatgpt's code is somehow dumb/lazy? I don't think so, they are at least as smart as the code.

What would happen if we made a curriculum around using chatgpt, how far would I get in chem 1 if I spent 90 minutes with chatgpt prompts prepared by a professor and a machine that never gets tired of explaining / rephrasing until I get it?

augment_me · 21 days ago

I get your point and I agree with it, I don't think this flips anything. What you are describing is an engaged, motivated student who is using the tools for learning when the traditional system did not suit them. I am actually the same, had shit grades, and found traditional lectures pointless.

What I am describing in what I and many colleagues have run into are students who are not engaged or motivated with their work because there is a path of much less resistance, and are using the LLMs to pass learning moments with minimal effort.

When you choose to edit the code of the LLM instead of feeding it all back to it with the added prompt "it does not work, fix it", you have already made a choice in learning.

edit; I do agree on the curriculum change, however, there is a time-window now before there has been a consensus on the new ways of learning and political action from the universities where the learning is to a much higher degree in the hands of students than the universities. And this power can lead both ways to a higher extent than before when the university was in control of this.

augment_me commented on How ChatGPT spoiled my semester (2024) benborgers.com/chatgpt-se... · Posted by u/edent

skeaker · 21 days ago

Not sure this was the fault of ChatGPT as much as it was the fault of disinterested students bullshitting a class for credits. I've seen similar bad work in group projects when I was a student well before ChatGPT was a thing.

augment_me · 21 days ago

I am a PhD student who teaches part-time in some courses, and a difference I have personally ran into is that disinterested students still had agency over what they had written. When you present something, or hand something in that you have written, you still display the information that you know at that time. This makes feedback helpful because you can latch it onto SOMETHING.

When I get obvious LLM-handins, who am I correcting? What point does it have? I can say anything, and the student will not be able to integrate it, because they have no agency or connection to "their" work. Its a massive waste of everyone's time, I have another 5 student in line who actually have engaged with their work, and who will be able to integrate feedback, and their time is being taken by someone who will not be able to understand or use the feedback.

This is the big difference. For a bad student, failing and making errors is a way to progress and integrate feedback, for an LLM-student, its pointless.

augment_me commented on NautilusTrader: Open-source algorithmic trading platform nautilustrader.io/... · Posted by u/Lwrless

jjangkke · 22 days ago

I used to trade options and had about 99.5% success on all my trades

The problem is the 0.5% of the time, it erases all the gains made on the successful ones.

I'm convinced without information edge or some capital sunk cost edge (for HFT) you are literally just flipping coins when it comes to trading.

What's dangerous is fixation on strategies that form after a period of success.

All in all, I think just buying stock and holding is the best and most successful approach to making money.

Maybe when AI becomes sentient it will know on which days it make sense to buy and sell iron condors with huge ass wings....

augment_me · 22 days ago

Have exactly the same experience as you.

Had a period in my college days where I had a neural network running that could successfully trade on patterns of periodicity of non-chaotic windows of the asset. But as soon as the system would go back to being chaotic, and there was no way to identify WHEN the system was chaotic and when it wasn't, the trades would go to shit and I would lose all gains. I was up about 400-450% at an end of a successful cycle, which was 2-4 months, and then it could be a year of decline with gains being eaten up by the option issuers.

Now I only do long-term funds/stocks and have:

a) much less anxiety about losses b) more money.

augment_me commented on Ask HN: What trick of the trade took you too long to learn? · Posted by u/unsupp0rted

hintklb · 23 days ago

exactly the way I think. Home ownership is what you do when you act on autopilot.

If you think this through, it is essentially spending more money and more time on something very materialistic that doesn't matter that much.

Renting allows you to spend more time and resources doing things that really matter.

I think most people would come to that same conclusion if they really think about this from first principle, but as a society we have been pushed and molded to believe that home ownership is the pinnacle of success and personal accomplishment somehow. I have been attacked left and right for even suggesting that owning a home is maybe not as big of a deal for personal happiness as we think. In the west and in the US it has been pushed as a core component of people's identities.

augment_me · 23 days ago

Yeah... I have had a hard time with my friends on this topic. In general, in my country (Sweden), the system is kicking the can down the road. You have 65% of the people in the country owning, with an common housing mortgage at 85% of the purchasing price. Avgift(you pay a rent equivalent to your apt association)+interest+amortization requirement make up around 30-50% of the average income.

Average loan amortization rate is 25 years, with a 35 year roof.

Govt has approved 90% loans at the end of this year, meaning you will only need 10% as down-payment when you take a multi-million SEK loan, which will achieve nothing except for continued price growth and larger loans, and push up the average amortization rate closer to the roof.

The banks dont care, they would be fine with a 0% down payment rate, as they are immediately selling these loans and the associated risk to the pension funds.

Every year, you have new political patches to make the pyramid scheme palpable. Last year they had that homeowners can get services on their homes subsidized by 66% by the govt. The year before that they had that you can write off your taxes using loans as "economic losses". The year before that they capped the property tax, etc. You can as a housing owner (in an association) build your own in-house electricity distribution, essentially letting the renters pay for all the government electricity infrastructure. You can negotiate lower costs for internet, water, power in bulk with distributors.

As you can guess, since the homeowners with loans are the majority, its political suicide by any political party to not kick the can down the road. So no action is taken.

When I talk about this with my friends, they have not thought about this. Honestly, I would be more happy if they said "Oh yeah, I know, I believe that there is such a majority of people with loans that the government will have to bail us out, or increase inflation to eat the loans", but there isn't.

Even if we ignored the inevitable crash, and looked at the situation as-is in the current moment with all of the patches to improve house-owning, its STILL cheaper to rent. Its mind-boggling.

augment_me commented on We may not like what we become if A.I. solves loneliness newyorker.com/magazine/20... · Posted by u/defo10

GreenWatermelon · 25 days ago

This argument does not resonate with me.

I'm in my mid 20s, far from being a grumpt old man, and I used to frequent Facebook back in the early 2010s (remember all those games?)

What became clear is how the landscape is filled to the brim with scammers and grifters. These newer applications of technology are akin to cigarettes, or heroin, or opium. They're designed to inflict misfortune for profit.

Years ago my parents would chastise me for spending too much time othe computer/phone, now I'm the one begging them to uninstall those garbage applications from their phones.

Around me, more older people than younger ones are susceptible to lies and scams perpetrated by LLMs.

The younger generation around me (kids 10 to 17 yo) are falling for the same traps I fell for when I was their age, and people my age are stil falling for: addictive online games with scummy lootboxes (especially Fifa) and gacha games.

I believe there are more than enough studies detailing the extreme negative consequences of Instagram and/or tiktok usage, so much that we don't question that anymore, and treat it like ye olde tobacco addiction. It's addicting and fucks up your health but here yo stay.

augment_me · 23 days ago

You are already past your formative years. Imagine if you were 14 today, and you knew nothing else than BetterHelp, or psychologists in your phone. You would not know that there is an alternative, and would never feel the human connection with someone understanding you, you wouldnt have the point of reference, so the shrink in your phone would be enough. I am in my mid-20s as well, the argument is about a world-view that is shifted. Same with dating. In 10 years, it will perhaps be incomprehensible for kids to understand how people were dating before their AI-profiles selected the best match.

Society moves faster with faster technological innovations, you will feel like an old man faster as well.

augment_me commented on Ask HN: What trick of the trade took you too long to learn? · Posted by u/unsupp0rted

augment_me · 23 days ago

Documentation is the most valuable if it captures the design decision and intention at the time of the creation of the software, rather than the functionality of the software itself.

Its pointless to write "This function splits the input data into two equally sized chunks, multiplies each chunk with Y and then adds it together"

It makes more sense to write "The hardware X that this code runs on has a cache size of Y which makes this split necessary for optimal compute throughput".

This provides the next person an understanding of why the code looks as it does, and if it should be changed at this new moment in time, when perhaps new hardware is available.

I have seen so many design decisions being forgotten with time, and despite "documented code", a new engineer comes in and spends weeks trying to solve something that it inherently correct or is there for a good reason.

augment_me commented on Ask HN: What trick of the trade took you too long to learn? · Posted by u/unsupp0rted

TobTobXX · 23 days ago

This is maybe just me, but I need to remind myself of the opposite: All solutions are temporary and imperfect. So just do something, I can always go back and correct it.

For me this means that I'm allowed to store away 3 things from the moving box, even though I don't know where to put the rest yet. To invite others even though I don't know what to cook yet or to write a bad implementation quickly, instead of spending hours figuring out the best one.

I think a balance of perfectionism and can-do is important. But as people are predisposed differently, either advice might make sense in different circumstances.

augment_me · 23 days ago

I actually did not mean the post as a call to perfection/action but I can see why it could be seen as such. You can have a temporary solution that is good-enough for its purpose at a time. I advocate for the conscious effort to evaluate your intention so that you can feel a sense of agency around whatever happens afterwards because you are more likely to lose context, and the initial intention, as time passes.

augment_me commented on Ask HN: What trick of the trade took you too long to learn? · Posted by u/unsupp0rted

mvdtnz · 23 days ago

It's really sad when you hear about people living this way. Life isn't about profit maximisation.

augment_me · 23 days ago

You can see it from other aspects than just money. For example, renting instead of owning frees up time and gives you much more predictable expenses. From not needing to fix the house to being able to be unemployed with predictable monthly costs.

Home ownership in the west is seen as some sort of pinnacle and goal because of the perceived security it provides, but its also possible to see it as golden handcuffs that force you to stay at safe, predictable jobs for 20 years.

augment_me commented on Ask HN: What trick of the trade took you too long to learn? · Posted by u/unsupp0rted

augment_me · 23 days ago

Temporary solutions will become permanent solutions unless you explicitly hold yourself to fixing it within a certain time window because it becomes harder the longer time has passed.

This ranges from TODO's in codebases, to unpacked moving boxes, to replacing that sofa you got from your friend, to leaving a toxic relationship.

After a while you acclimatize to the situation and no longer see the issue, and unless something is really broken, it grows harder to motivate yourself to change.