ontouchstart (u/ontouchstart)

ontouchstart commented on The Feynman Lectures on Physics (1961-1964) feynmanlectures.caltech.e... · Posted by u/rramadass

another_twist · 6 days ago

Self study is the best study. Out of all the bloatedness of modern education, one thing that doesnt bother me is the high cost of textbooks. High quality books and a habit of studying yourself enables you to learn high skill disciplines on the cheap.

For me, I am currently slogging through Lazlo Lovasz's combinatorics book and another one on Monte Carlo method. Dont know why but its just a good way to pass the time while staying away from the internet and its attention hogging.

ontouchstart · 5 days ago

I got a kindle Scribe which can load PDF, HTML and text files via iPhone Kindle App and read offline.

Since most pre-1925 books are out of copyright and free on https://gutenberg.org, ACM is open access (https://dl.acm.org/) and we have open https://arxiv.org/, it is the golden age for readers seeking original content.

We don’t need bots to read for us. We can live in the mind of human writers.

ontouchstart commented on The Feynman Lectures on Physics (1961-1964) feynmanlectures.caltech.e... · Posted by u/rramadass

vmilner · 6 days ago

Unlike the commercial audio CDs of the lectures the recordings here have the chat before and after the lecture which is fun.

My favourite lecture is the standalone "The Principle of Least Action" at

https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/II_19.html

Audio: https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/II_19.html#Ch19-audi...

ontouchstart · 5 days ago

This one is my favorite too. I had the three volumes of hardcover copy.

> Later chapters do not depend on the material of this special lecture—which is intended to be for “entertainment”

We might say this is the most important chapter in the whole series.

ontouchstart commented on Ex-GitHub CEO launches a new developer platform for AI agents entire.io/blog/hello-enti... · Posted by u/meetpateltech

ontouchstart · 6 days ago

I miss the good old days:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=338286

ontouchstart commented on Monty: A minimal, secure Python interpreter written in Rust for use by AI github.com/pydantic/monty... · Posted by u/dmpetrov

simonw · 9 days ago

This is a solid answer to my question, thanks.

I'm an optimist on this and I remain hopeful that AI will create more and better jobs, but I'm not at all certain about that. It's possible it will play out the way you describe, and that will suck.

I'm not ready to blame the 100,000s of software layoffs on AI though - I think the more likely explanation for those is over-hiring during Covid combined with the end of ZIRP.

ontouchstart · 9 days ago

I think there are two use cases of open source, one is for people who need a solution to grab and use. In this case, I think LLM Agents will pick up quickly and replace grab and use type of engineering.

The second use case is for HUMAN to learn from human. Your open source projects are excellent examples, same with Django and Python open source ecosystem.

I just hope humans will not stop learning. As long as you share your passion of learning, people will learn from you. It has nothing to do automation.

ontouchstart commented on Was Benoit Mandelbrot a hedgehog or a fox? arxiv.org/abs/2602.01122... · Posted by u/bikenaga

direwolf20 · 9 days ago

Sounds like the money's in being a rabbit

ontouchstart · 9 days ago

To some extent. Many mathematical breakthroughs are not from mathematicians thinking in the office but mathematical minded people doing engineering work and bumped into big ideas. Mandelbrot was one of them, so was Alan Turing, Claude Shannon, Tony Hoare, …

They are engineers by trade, that is chasing the money as food. But money is not enough for them. So I would call them rabbits instead of foxes.

ontouchstart commented on Monty: A minimal, secure Python interpreter written in Rust for use by AI github.com/pydantic/monty... · Posted by u/dmpetrov

ontouchstart · 9 days ago

I wonder when the title will be upgraded to “A minimal, secure Rust interpreter written in Python for use by AI”.

Any human or AI want to take the challenge?

ontouchstart · 9 days ago

We already have a starting point:

https://play.rust-lang.org

https://github.com/rust-lang/rust-playground

ontouchstart commented on Monty: A minimal, secure Python interpreter written in Rust for use by AI github.com/pydantic/monty... · Posted by u/dmpetrov

ontouchstart · 9 days ago

I wonder when the title will be upgraded to “A minimal, secure Rust interpreter written in Python for use by AI”.

Any human or AI want to take the challenge?

ontouchstart commented on Was Benoit Mandelbrot a hedgehog or a fox? arxiv.org/abs/2602.01122... · Posted by u/bikenaga

nairboon · 9 days ago

I wonder if the people in 100 years will refer to the current time period (now) the same way as we sometimes do to about ~100 years ago. As in did the scientist and curious minds in the last century really have this golden period to just wander around in all these greenfields, whereas nowadays the fields are not so green anymore. Or is this just a normal phenomena of any time period?

ontouchstart · 9 days ago

There is a third type: rabbit. This is a golden age of rabbit holes. A quick rabbit jumps through complicated holes and tunnels to escape from something or chase something.

We can also call someone chasing a rabbit a fox. Like all the ones chasing LLM agents now.

ontouchstart commented on What Is Ruliology? writings.stephenwolfram.c... · Posted by u/helloplanets

gnfargbl · 9 days ago

By the same argument, it's mathematics because John Conway was a mathematician, and it's physics because Ulam and Von Neumann were physicists.

ontouchstart · 9 days ago

These are computer scientists:

https://youtu.be/wQbFkAkThGk

ontouchstart commented on What Is Ruliology? writings.stephenwolfram.c... · Posted by u/helloplanets

gnfargbl · 9 days ago

And that's my point; it's okay to create new names for sub-disciplines, as Wolfram is doing here. Because that's what we have been doing since the days of Aristotle.

ontouchstart · 9 days ago

Aristotle is the founder of biology:

https://youtu.be/kz7DfbOuvOM

u/ontouchstart

KarmaCake day486July 14, 2011

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Every pothole has a rabbit hole underneath.

RTFM

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