bambataa

I also got a SO-101 and mucked about a bit. I stopped partly because I realised my idea of putting a laser on the end of it had potential risks but also when you’re just prompting an agent to do things it’s hard to feel that you’re really “learning robotics”.

This post has given me some inspiration though!

I did cover it and had a toggle for it in the visualisations but decided to cut it out because the article was long enough already. There's maybe still a reference to the "vrio system" lurking in it.

My understanding -- correct me if wrong -- is that this hugely complicates things because the search space expands so much. If you imagine three straight pieces in a row, with vrio they now form a fan of possible positions. Then with corners and so on you have a near infinite amount of wiggle room. To do it accurately you probably need to map out the physical space a given connector can move within, but for the visualisation I just loosened the "connectors must align" rule to be "connectors must be within 6mm of each other", which is wrong but fairly close.

I’ve heard this a few times. Could you elaborate why? Surely at that point, less you are hired to a very senior role, you are going to get a very small equity % and a lot of the capitalisation growth has already been priced in? In exchange it is far less risky.

Do you just go for the market salary and treat the equity as a minor plus?

Perrin the guy on YouTube? What’s wrong with him?

I kinda feel sorry for Gary Marcus. He’s carved this niche as an LLM critic and must have been delighted to have this bug to post about.

I stopped reading his Substack because he was always trying to find a negative. Meanwhile I use LLMs most days and find them very useful.

That’s interesting, thank you.

Does it not leave inaccessible vast swathes of philosophy where, almost by definition, science cannot contribute answers? Such as the nature of numbers and other metaphysical things.

I haven’t heard of the areas you mention in a sibling comment, so I’ll look them up. Do you find that you need to refocus attention to areas where scientific premises are useful as axioms so that progress can be made?

I’ve read the book under review and would recommend it.

Philosophy has always appealed to me but disappointed because it never seems to settle on answers. There’s a bit in the book where Kleene (I think?) is advising young academic philosophers to go into logic instead as at least there they’ll get answers.

Someone in the book describes philosophy’s truth value as less like scientific inquiry and more like poetry done in logical argument. That seemed like a potentially valuable way of looking at it.

I have been doing the Math for ML course and would recommend.

I have UK A level math but not Further Math, so up to basic calculus. But I forgot most of it and so Math Academy has me going through a lot of the Math Foundation units along the way.

I was initially put off by the monthly price, as it is quite steep. The clincher is that about a year before starting Math Academy I had gone through the Open University’s MST124/125 textbooks (covering the same stuff as Foundations). Except even after a year I’d already forgotten most of it.

Math Academy learning feels much more robust, since it includes spaced reviews and regular tests. I record things in Anki but it’s useful to have regular practice questions too. I also use ChatGPT to spell out things and find it works well at this level.

Some things I’d like Math Academy to have:

- ability to skip lessons (I don’t want to spend ages going over symbolic integration again)

- a reference page to track unlocked material, maybe with Anki integration

- fewer multiple choice questions and more in depth problems

- proof-based math. I’m told this is coming but the degree-level courses have missed their estimated due dates.

I will definitely finish Math for ML and then do linear algebra and multivariate calculus. You’d still need a good textbook to do them rigorously, but I think Math Academy sets you up well.

Peak HN.

Where do you find this shared view of what is considered the least valuable part of the curriculum?

Aren’t dress shoes without socks very sweaty and painful to wear?

“Defund the police” is a terrible slogan.

“Oh what we mean by that is actually the opposite where we want to redistribute funding in different ways blah blah blah”.

And all a critic has to do is “left wing radicals say they want to defund the police”.