boccaff (u/boccaff) - Readit News

boccaff commented on Yann LeCun raises $1B to build AI that understands the physical world wired.com/story/yann-lecu... · Posted by u/helloplanets

Oras · 3 days ago

> But this is not an applied AI company.

There is absolutely no doubt about Yann's impact on AI/ML, but he had access to many more resources in Meta, and we didn't see anything.

It could be a management issue, though, and I sincerely wish we will see more competition, but from what I quoted above, it does not seem like it.

Understanding world through videos (mentioned in the article), is just what video models have already done, and they are getting pretty good (see Seedance, Kling, Sora .. etc). So I'm not quite sure how what he proposed would work.

boccaff · 3 days ago

llama models pushed the envelope for a while, and having them "open-weight" allowed a lot of tinkering. I would say that most of fine tuned evolved from work on top of llama models.

boccaff commented on Decision trees – the unreasonable power of nested decision rules mlu-explain.github.io/dec... · Posted by u/mschnell

srean · 12 days ago

What benefit does numpy or dataframes bring to decision tree logic over what is available in Guile already ? Honest question.

Guile like languages are very well suited for decision trees, because manipulating and operating on trees is it's mother tongue. Only thing that would be a bit more work would be to compile the decision tree into machine code. Then one doesn't have traverse a runtime structure, the former being more efficient.

BTW take a look at Lush, you might like it.

https://lush.sourceforge.net/

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2406325

If you are looking for vectors and tensors in Guile, there is this

https://wedesoft.github.io/aiscm/

boccaff · 12 days ago

tree algorithms on sklearn use parallel arrays to represent the tree structure.

boccaff commented on Decision trees – the unreasonable power of nested decision rules mlu-explain.github.io/dec... · Posted by u/mschnell

wodenokoto · 12 days ago

Are boosted decision trees the same as a boosted random forest?

boccaff · 12 days ago

short answer: No.

longer answer: Random forests use the average of multiple trees that are trained in a way to reduce the correlation between trees (bagging with modified trees). Boosting trains sequentially, with each classifier working on the resulting residuals so far.

I am assuming that you meant boosted decision trees, sometimes gradient boosted decisions trees, as usually one have boosted decision trees. I think xgboost added boosted RF, and you can boost any supervised model, but it is not usual.

boccaff commented on Study identifies weaknesses in how AI systems are evaluated oii.ox.ac.uk/news-events/... · Posted by u/pseudolus

andai · 4 months ago

>when we get a prompt working reliably on one model, we often have trouble porting it to another LLM

I saw a study where a prompt massively boosted one model's performance on a task, but significantly reduced another popular model's performance on the same task.

boccaff · 4 months ago

Do you have any pointer to search for that?

boccaff commented on Advent of Code 2025: Number of puzzles reduce from 25 to 12 for the first time adventofcode.com/2025/abo... · Posted by u/vismit2000

ihuman · 4 months ago

I wouldn’t be surprised if the creator has metrics that show that most people drop off around the halfway mark, for the exact same reason

boccaff · 4 months ago

You can see aggregated results on `stats` [1] for every year. In general, half the people drop in the first 3-4 days. For last year, by day 12 there is less than 1/5 of day 01. While the stats do count people that completed later, the shape appears to track well with what I saw during the events since 2021.

[1] https://adventofcode.com/2024/stats

boccaff commented on Advent of Code 2025: Number of puzzles reduce from 25 to 12 for the first time adventofcode.com/2025/abo... · Posted by u/vismit2000

gs17 · 4 months ago

I think the easiest way to have 24/25 of something would be to have the "part 2" for each puzzle get released the next day. It would probably ruin the momentum about as much as having days off would (as another alternative to make the timing fit "advent"), but there could be a fun extra layer of puzzle with a hint of what the part 2 will be so people can try to speculate and modify their code in anticipation.

boccaff · 4 months ago

I am not aware of Eric saying something about that alternative, but this comment on reddit[1] makes a lot of sense to me:

> Given that part 2 is often a very simple modification of part 1, this could lead to many of the days being total letdowns. I can enjoy a simple puzzle, but I'd be a bit disappointed if one day is a single line change to the previous day.

I'd also add that not having to be worried everyday about something makes a lot of sense. He can have fewer days "on call" in December with.

[1]https://www.reddit.com/r/adventofcode/comments/1ocwh04/chang...

boccaff commented on Why friction is necessary for growth jameelur.com/blog/overcom... · Posted by u/WanderingSoul

djoldman · 5 months ago

> Overcoming friction leads to growth. Comfort leads to stagnation.... I’ve come to believe that with the rise of convenience and comfort, it becomes harder for us to reach our potential.... A certain level of convenience can lead to efficiency gains. Automation is important for a reason. Too much convenience though, that's a killer. When friction was inherent in the system, applying ourselves led to growth as we overcame that friction.

There's some kind of logical flaw in all of this where "growth" is circularly defined as the overcoming of friction.

In a world where one could snap their fingers and magically have everything, would "growth" be impossible?

Conversely, just throw out all your technology and live in the woods and re-implement and re-discover agrarian tools and techniques: amazing growth!

The point is that in my opinion "growth" defined in this way is not a helpful goal.

Building/creating/producing something that is more cheap/efficient/better than an existing tech should be the goal, regardless of whether or not there is friction involved in creating it.

Friction in current technology may or may not be a signal that therein lies opportunity. It's not a given.

boccaff · 5 months ago

You could think about how most people can get away without doing anything physical to survive, so we must artificially exercise to be healthy. The question then is if this analogy hold for mental capacities, and I think it does.

boccaff commented on The role of Amazon fires in the record atmospheric CO₂ growth in 2024 essopenarchive.org/doi/fu... · Posted by u/bikenaga

HappyPanacea · 5 months ago

How hard is it to plant it back?

boccaff · 5 months ago

hard, and expensive, but doable as long as carbon credits are a thing: https://re.green/en/?force_locale=1

there are a few others in Brazil, like Biomas and Mombak

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

suchoudh · 7 months ago

I took too much time to

1. Empathise about effect of menstrual cycle in women.Its so well hidden from boys (at least Indian). They wonder why girls behave erratically ( sex education needed much earlier at least in India as more kids are exposed to adult content)

2. be very careful when using rm command (use alias rm='rm -i' )

3. Have backup of backup of backup.

4. keep checking if backups restore correctly. (can have a very rude awakening if it does not work someday )

5. People who report to you are different on different days . Dont judge them on few events. (20+ chances at least be given before giving them negative feedback privately )

6. Friends are more useful than family. ( because you have similar priorities in life) They are a lifesaver after 50 so be in touch with school buddies and college buddies esp as its so much easier now. ( Lost few classmates in Covid who had less family support)

7. Learn to cook all your favorite recipes ( of your mom/wife/grandmother). You will never be sad. Make them at least for two people, share it.( right size the utensils you use regularly. not too small not too big)

8. Meet Reality as it is by using Vipassana. It is a super power to counter the unethical AI use. (just finished 10 day course in Bhopal, India New courses are across world ) * They are not paying me anything for this.

  I genuinely believe #Vipassana works. BTW Yuval Noah Harare (Wrote Sapiens and Nexus) has endorsed it as well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1_YhlXiuxE

You can find course near you in this link. https://www.dhamma.org/en-US/courses/search?current_state=Ne... (Its free and runs on donations)

9. Keep a water bottle and flat tiffin (empty is also ok but can keep biscuits/leftover for later in day)

10. Remember to have fun. (we often forget) (kk.org has advice on how2)

boccaff · 7 months ago

>2. be very careful when using rm command (use alias rm='rm -i' )

and treat mv/cp/rsync like rm

boccaff commented on Why Datadog bought Eppo for $220M, and what it means for experimentation statsig.com/blog/datadog-... · Posted by u/mikpanko

boccaff · 10 months ago

Announcement from Eppo[1]

[1] https://www.geteppo.com/blog/eppo-is-now-part-of-datadog