ylem (u/ylem) - Readit News

ylem commented on Books I Loved Reading in 2024 thoughts.wyounas.com/p/bo... · Posted by u/simplegeek

My best books of 2024:

* Chemistry: A Very Short Introduction by Peter Atkins. Now that I'm into physics I had a hunch that I would now also appreciate chemistry. This book delivered.

* Philosophy of Mind: A Very Short Introduction by Barbara Gail Montero. I recall it just being a really well-written overview of an interesting field.

* Systemantics by John Gall. Very entertaining musings on why systems fail.

* Hard-Boiled Wonderland by Haruki Murakami. Read this while in Japan. A very strange and interesting noir detective story.

* All Systems Red by Martha Wells. <3 Murderbot <3

* Desert Oracle Volume 1 by Ken Layne. American southwest folklore. Read it while in Joshua Tree.

* There Is No Antimemetics Division by qntm. Biggest brainfuck I've read in a long time, probably ever.

* Fundamentals: Ten Keys To Reality by Frank Wilczek. Physics musings from a Nobel winner.

ylem · a year ago

Dr. John Gall was my pediatrician! When I was young, I was interested in astronomy and he gave me a membership in the astronomy book club. I only learned of his work on system theory after his death.

ylem commented on Elicit – AI Research Assistant elicit.com/... · Posted by u/zerojames

ta988 · 2 years ago

To me it reminds me of the advent of scholarly databases. The main effect I saw is that researchers started using exclusively those databases, sometimes publisher specific databases (so they were citing only from one publisher!) and were missing all the papers that were not indexed there. In particular a big chunk of the older literature that wasn't yet OCRed (it is better but still not fabulous). This led to so many "we discovered a new X" paper that the older people in the crowd in conferences were always debunking "that was known since at least the 60s". While those AI tools can clearly help with initial discovery around a subject, it worries me that it will reduce the search in other databases, or the digging into paper references. It is often enlightening to unravel references and go back in time to realize that all recent papers were basing their work on a false or misunderstood premise. Not talking about the cases where the citation was copied from another paper and either doesn't exist or had nothing to do with the subject. There was a super interesting article about the "mutations" of citations and how you could, by using similar tools to genetic alysis, generate an evolutionary tree of who copied on who and introduced slight errors that would get reproduced by the next one.

edit: various typos

ylem · 2 years ago

I think this is the paper https://arxiv.org/abs/cond-mat/0212043

ylem commented on Meteorology student submits Masters thesis, gets PhD news24.com/news24/southaf... · Posted by u/herodoturtle

fastasucan · 4 years ago

>His contribution to the body of scientific knowledge was deserving of a doctorate as determined by experts in the field, no?

This is what I dont agree on. A doctorate is not a prize for the best scientific work from a student that year.

ylem · 4 years ago

You can look him up on Google scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=baVVmaoAAAAJ&hl=en In 2020/2021 he has at least 3 first author papers and a number of co-authored papers and apparently he wrote an impressive thesis. Even if he wanted to continue in academia, in a number of STEM fields, it would be sufficient for a degree. It's not a question of putting in time, it's about output.

ylem commented on Senate approves $250B bill to boost tech research wsj.com/articles/senate-a... · Posted by u/julienchastang

ardme · 5 years ago

What exactly is in this bill and where is the money going? I'm having a very hard time researching this for some reason. Is there anything of interest to software technologists in there?

ylem · 5 years ago

I looked at a PDF of the bill that was linked to in the WaPo version of the article. It probably doesn't matter until the House passes its version, but there are funds for AI workforce development for example that might be of interest to those early in their careers.

ylem commented on An In-Depth Look at What/How/Why Books Sell (2016) electricliterature.com/ev... · Posted by u/pepys

ggambetta · 5 years ago

My novel doesn't. I don't know why. The few people who have read it really like it, so I believe it's not that it sucks. But I've tried ads, promo services who have mailing lists of readers per genre,... and very few people buy it. Something doesn't work.

Is it the cover? Is it the blurb? Is it the theme? Is it the price? https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00QPBYGFI Anyone knows anyone in publishing who could help me debug this?

(On the other hand, my not-novel Computer Graphics from Scratch seems to be doing well!)

ylem · 5 years ago

FWIW, this was actually in my wish List on Amazon, so I will eventually get around to buying it. I have Amazon unlimited, so I don't know how much this will help you--the book's description caught my eye and I think it came up as a recommendation. I'll write a review when I get around to reading it (I have some other books in the queue). Good luck!

ylem commented on Collusion rings threaten the integrity of computer science research m-cacm.acm.org/magazines/... · Posted by u/djoldman

jll29 · 5 years ago

One way forward could be to lower the bar for publications.

Once it's no longer about being in the esteemed and scarce "10%", they won't bother because they don't need to. Imagine a process where the only criteria are technical soundness and novelty, and as long as minimal standards are met, it's a "go". Call it the "ArXiv + quality check" model.

Neither formal acceptance to publish nor citation numbers truly mark scientific excellence; perhaps, winning a "test of time award" does, or appearing in a text book 10 years later.

I've been reviewing occasionally since ~1995, regularly since ~2004, and I've never heard of collusion rings happening in my sub-area of CS (ML, IR, NLP). I have caught people submitting to multiple conferences without disclosing it. Ignoring past work that is relevant is common, more often our of blissful ignorance, and occasionally likely with full intent. I'm not saying I doubt the report, but I suspect the bigger problem that CS has is a large percentage of poor-quality work that couldn't be replicated.

BTW, the most blantant thing I've heard of (from a contact complaining about it on LinkedIn) is someone had their very own core paper from their PhD thesis plagiarised - submitted to another conference (again) but with different author names on it... and they even cited the real author's PhD thesis!

ylem · 5 years ago

At it's best, that's what scientific reports is (in a number of subfields)--a place to put research that is reviewed for technical correctness. There may be debate about how well it succeeds, but I think it's useful. I would prefer to have more papers out where people worked on something, found it wasn't necessarily exciting, but it was solid work and it saves other people time.

ylem commented on The Tether Ponzi Scheme singlelunch.com/2021/05/1... · Posted by u/enraged_camel

liaukovv · 5 years ago

Not really, the entire function of central bank is that it can create money at will.

ylem · 5 years ago

@eloff I think our replies crossed. I think that the question is whether you are still at a net positive as a result of inflation (consider the counterfactual).

ylem commented on The Tether Ponzi Scheme singlelunch.com/2021/05/1... · Posted by u/enraged_camel

LudwigNagasena · 5 years ago

Printing money in real terms just means taking money from someone who holds it.

ylem · 5 years ago

In what sense? In a world of fiat currency, post-Bretton Woods, what does money mean? I am not an expert by any means, but to me, it seems like the USD has value (ignore the rest of the world for a moment) because the US issues taxes that it says can only be paid with this wacky tokens called dollars and if you don't pay your taxes, then bad things happen. The rest follows from there. I think that you are saying (correct me if I'm wrong) that printing money leads to inflation which lowers what you can exchange your tokens for (maybe it takes more of them to buy apples). So, the first question is whether that is actually true. We have seen a fair amount of printing of money in recent years, but fairly low inflation. It's not obvious to me at what point that changes. The second question is whether inflation if it does occur is net bad/good and for who. I think we can agree Weimar Republic style hyperinflation is bad. However, let's say that inflation is 1% is that good or bad? For who? I think this question doesn't have meaning on an absolute scale. I think it has meaning relative to growth (and the productive capability of the full economy). Let's say that the economy is growing at say 6%, but we have 1% inflation--I'm fairly happy with that. But, let's say that we have 2% growth and 1% inflation--I'm less happy. Deflation is deadly (which has historically been the fate of gold based currencies), so we could argue that having a bit of inflation is insurance that we pay to avoid disaster. But, what about beyond that? The typical argument is that it helps drive consumption and encourages investment. Do you disagree?

ylem commented on How Basecamp Blew Up platformer.news/p/-how-ba... · Posted by u/peterthehacker

dnautics · 5 years ago

To be honest, I would leave almost any company that offered me 6 months salary in severance, if for no other reason than to work on projects for a couple of months while seeking a next job and then making double salary for four months. I passed up that opportunity once (and it was the right choice because it was my first tech company experience,I needed to build up years behind the keyboard and a portfolio), but I definitely would not today.

ylem · 5 years ago

I guess it's just a different way of thinking that I'm unfamiliar with. I have turned down other job offers (30-40% salary increase--not 2x) because I like where I am--coworkers, projects, autonomy, city, etc.

ylem commented on How Basecamp Blew Up platformer.news/p/-how-ba... · Posted by u/peterthehacker

paxys · 5 years ago

A key point not being talked about enough is that the employees quit after being offered 6 months salary as severance, no questions asked. Heck a large chunk of the workforce of the best run company in the world would take up that offer. I imagine few of them actually cared too much about this whole saga.

ylem · 5 years ago

I guess I'm weird. If I were offered 6 months of severance to quit a job at a successful company where I enjoyed the work and my coworkers, why would I take the offer? I've turned down offers that paid over 30% more because I like where I am. I don't think it's so uncommon.