mnkv (u/mnkv) - Readit News

mnkv commented on Reinforcement learning, explained with a minimum of math and jargon understandingai.org/p/rei... · Posted by u/JnBrymn

mnkv · 2 months ago

reasonable post with a decent analogy explaining on-policy learning, only major thing I take issue with is

> Reinforcement learning is a technical subject—there are whole textbooks written about it.

and then linking to the still wip RLHF book instead of the book on RL: Sutton & Barto.

mnkv commented on Wired is dropping paywalls for FOIA-based reporting. Others should follow freedom.press/issues/wire... · Posted by u/healsdata

jancsika · 5 months ago

> By the way, the FOIA process certainly has a cost which needs to be optimized out...

Meaning 1: Republicans might very well try to get rid of a democratic check on power under the cover of "reducing waste" and that is bad and I don't want it to happen.

Meaning 2: I believe the government works essentially like a compiler and therefore optimizing out anything in the name of efficiency is actually a "good thing."

I can't follow the "be generous" rule of HN because I cannot tell from your comment which one you mean. Could you clarify?

Edit: maybe more important-- I'm not sure which interpretation HN would take to be generous here.

mnkv · 5 months ago

I think it's pretty obvious it's 1. Given the recent huge, clearly politically-motivated cuts from the current administration, it feels pretty likely that FOIA could be disrupted under the guise of "cost-saving".

And I think you're supposed to be generous to the commenter, not the current administration ;)

mnkv commented on JabRef – Literature Management jabref.org/... · Posted by u/smartmic

mnkv · a year ago

how does this compare to zotero?

mnkv commented on iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max apple.com/newsroom/2024/0... · Posted by u/mfiguiere

pzo · a year ago

There is lots of things were competition is ahead of them or things they could improve:

- 90W fast wired charging, 80W wireless charging - many android phone have it

- reverse charging - so that in emergency when you forgot to charge airpods and you already outside you could charge a little bit enough for a run - again some androids have it

- stylus support - still would be nice to get apple pencil for some signatures etc

- fingerprint reader either under display or on side button like on ipad air - sometimes when phone is sitting on the table it's easier to unlock with finger than pick it up and point at your face then put it back (especially annoying for iOS devs)

- irda led for controlling air con in hotel - they have already IR blaster on front and maybe even on lidar that they could potentially hack it similar like they hacked screen for flash.

- temperature sensor and humidity sensor

- IR temperature sensor for checking your body temperature or stuff you baking in the oven

- tiny thermal camera sensor for inspecting leaks in house for the winter

- microsd support (yes can dream can I?)

- any improvements for lidar quality or truedepth

- another programmable button on the left side for lefties

- 250GB storage by default

- 12GB RAM

- bluetooth 5.4

- thread protocol support like HomePod

mnkv · a year ago

> IR temperature sensor for checking your body temperature or stuff you baking in the oven

> tiny thermal camera sensor for inspecting leaks in house for the winter

So just a thermometer gun? It costs like $20-30 on amazon and I've never needed one other than in my home / kitchen. Why in the world do you want a phone for this haha.

I do think I've found the perfect car for you: https://tenor.com/view/homer-simpsons-car-gif-8120474

mnkv commented on Large models of what? Mistaking engineering achievements for linguistic agency arxiv.org/abs/2407.08790... · Posted by u/Anon84

mnkv · a year ago

Good summary of some of the main "theoretical" criticism of LLMs but I feel that it's a bit dated and ignores the recent trend of iterative post-training, especially with human feedback. Major chatbots are no doubt being iteratively refined on the feedback from users i.e. interaction feedback, RLHF, RLAIF. So ChatGPT could fall within the sort of "enactive" perspective on language and definitely goes beyond the issues of static datasets and data completeness.

Sidenote: the authors make a mistake when citing Wittgenstein to find similarity between humans and LLMs. Language modelling on a static dataset is mostly not a language game (see Bender and Koller's section on distributional semantics and caveats on learning meaning from "control codes")

mnkv commented on How AI Is Enhancing, Not Replacing, Human Expertise in Creative Fields blog.scottynordstrom.org/... · Posted by u/xitss

mnkv · a year ago

The low quality of this blog post (and all your posts) makes me think you wrote it mostly with AI. The irony is palpable.

AI is clearly enhancing humans in their creation of garbage.

mnkv commented on Charlie Munger – Feeling Like a Victim Is Perfectly Disastrous butwhatfor.com/p/takeaway... · Posted by u/stanrivers

jjoonathan · 2 years ago

Affordable housing where all I have to give up is a shitty view? Sign me up!

mnkv · 2 years ago

You give up a shitty view and any chance of fire escape. Such a savings!

mnkv commented on Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tra... · Posted by u/stefankuehnel

padjo · 2 years ago

Kind of implies that the whole “if a lion could speak…” thing is bunk. I can understand my cats non verbal communication pretty well.

mnkv · 2 years ago

You understand some of what your cats mean because you learned it using the same language games Wittgenstein describes. Also they co-evolved to work with us. But just because you understand three moods of your cat, doesn't mean you would understand their language (if they had one). In fact, it is well studied that cats communicate differently with other cats than with humans.

Sidenote: grouping together non-verbal communication and language fails to take into account the richness of language.

mnkv commented on Lewis Hine’s early 20th-century “photo stories” smithsonianmag.com/histor... · Posted by u/cratermoon

hobo_in_library · 2 years ago

Unpopular opinion: Even as a kid, I thought child labor laws were weird. Perhaps this had to do with me growing up in a developing nation where child labor was normal and even openly visible on the streets.

Young me thought: If a kid and their family is dirt poor, should the kids just sit home and starve instead of working to earn an income for themselves? What if the kid _wants_ to work? Are lemon-aid stands `child labor`? Is working in the family store/restaurant child labor?

As an adult, child labor laws seem like a distraction from the real evil: The existence of environments where children feel compelled to perform child labor

And that is very much a question about poverty.

How do you make sure that poor families don't feel so poor that they feel the need to push their kids to work? Our public schools have been a huuuuuge step in this direction (despite all their flaws). Guaranteeing the poor and homeless some amount of food helps with this a lot too.

Of course our current implementations are far from perfect. Poverty is still a big problem in many parts of the US. But I now digress.

My main point: Child labor shouldn't be considered inherently bad. An environment where children FEEL COMPELLED to work as laborers IS bad, and we should focus on eliminating that

mnkv · 2 years ago

The problem with your perspective is you are assuming children have independent wants and needs to work and can stand up for themselves like adult workers can. This just isn't the case.

Children don't personally decide to work, they are told to by parents / authority / etc.. and they are incredibly vulnerable as employees. Comparing child labour to lemonade stands is ridiculous. There are rules about children working in the family store etc.. and child labour laws explicitly account for this. Child labour laws are explicitly about preventing abusive conditions in factories, fields, and other hard, grueling jobs.

mnkv commented on The techlash that never happened eriktorenberg.substack.co... · Posted by u/tim_sw

mnkv · 2 years ago

Of all the absolute horseshit in the article, the most obviously wrong is saying that "tech doesn't play both sides of the political aisle".

So obviously wrong if you look at any single company. Just recently, we saw how FTX was lobbying hard for both sides.

And there absolutely has been a backlash against tech. Ask any Facebook employee how people react when they say where they work.