Avid Halaby

same handle on protonmail | בעל תשובה | gulf coast Straussian | nuclear family enjoyer with @airportgrinch

[Bobby Allyn @BobbyAllyn]

NEW: DOJ is investigating former congressman George Santos for insider trading on Kalshi

https://t.co/FW4bAozvd3

[Salty @airportgrinch]

I’ve never engaged with the daycare discourse before, but if daycare is so bad, can you explain why my son is grinning, laughing, squealing with joy every time we drop him off? in every picture they send? when we spy on him through the daycare window? Please help me understand

[Avid Halaby @AvidHalaby]

@orthonormalist Mazal tov!!

[Salty @airportgrinch]

The saddest thing in the world are the people on their phones in the elevator who don’t see my adorable 9 month old waving vigorously at them. Get off your phones people!!!

[Tim Newman @whitesundesert]

I lived in an upscale apartment complex in Lagos, and several of the residents had council flats in the UK which they were subletting. They admitted that they couldn’t believe they were able to get away with it, and asked if Brits were retarded.

[Avid Halaby @AvidHalaby]

@jeff82874662 okay but Barry Lyndon might have the strongest moral lesson

[Avid Halaby @AvidHalaby]

Barry Lyndon has many valuable lessons for children, such as "don't trust the Irish"

[Avid Halaby @AvidHalaby]

@Thinkwert Crazy how much people underrate Hail, Caesar. Maybe because a lot of the jokes require some knowledge of the studio era?

[Avid Halaby @AvidHalaby]

Elite human capital

[Ed Whelan @EdWhelanEPPC]

Very weird that cover page states "On Emergency Application to the Supreme Court of Virginia." That's the styling for a petition for a writ of certiorari, but it makes no sense to say that the emergency application is "to" the Supreme Court of Virginia.

[Avid Halaby @AvidHalaby]

This was bad four years ago and it's bad now.

[Javier Blas @JavierBlas]

BREAKING: The US Strategic Petroleum Reserve released last week >1.22 million barrels a day (~8.6 million for the week).

That's the largest ever weekly release, surpassing the peak rate seen in 2022 when President Biden tapped the SPR after Russia invaded Ukraine.

[Avid Halaby @AvidHalaby]

@kitten_beloved @St_Rev I think the term of art is “wreckers”

[Avid Halaby @AvidHalaby]

Drain the oceans, I don’t care

[Marko Slavnic @Markoslavnic]

The quality of animation you can create on your own is truly amazing. We really are just limited by our imaginations at this point. Go tell your story!

Made in @runwayml in a few hours and a handful of gens.

[Avid Halaby @AvidHalaby]

@iamtrask and b) enable companies to sell more/better product at lower prices. If demand for the product is elastic (for AI, it is), then this means demand will rise more than proportionally, necessitating more hiring.

[Avid Halaby @AvidHalaby]

Under this model, why would Anthropic settle for 50K agents improving AI with reduced headcount when they could have 5k employees x 10k agents/employee = 5mm agents improving AI? Cost of compute dwarfs labor costs, why economize on something that's already cheap?

[Avid Halaby @AvidHalaby]

@iamtrask As you say, inference costs have been dropping significantly each year--but labs are hiring more people, not laying anyone off. Productivity gains (including from RSI) a) increase the marginal product of labor (ie the value of labor)...

[Avid Halaby @AvidHalaby]

@iamtrask And/or if they are better from a benchmark perspective, you can run better models on the same hardware, again eating into the compute constraint.

[Avid Halaby @AvidHalaby]

@iamtrask If RSI yields, say, a 2x improvement in algorithmic efficiency, that's functionally the same as doubling your compute. Even if the models aren't better from a benchmark perspective, if you can deploy twice as many without having to buy more chips/build more datacenters.

[Avid Halaby @AvidHalaby]

You can’t know what *any* color looks like without experiencing it directly.

[david rein @idavidrein]

This is one of craziest papers I’ve ever read.

They made a new color by using a laser to individually stimulate particular cells in your eyes.

Apparently it looks like an impossibly saturated teal, but you can’t know what it looks like without experiencing it directly.

[MMI News @MimiMefoInfo]

The Chinese-owned store “Sino Market,” located in the Elig-Edzoa neighborhood of Yaoundé, became the scene of public unrest on Tuesday morning. Many residents took to the streets to denounce the alleged mistreatment of employees working at the establishment.

The National Gendarmerie reportedly arrived a few minutes later to disperse the protesters and restore calm around the area.

The outrage follows a video widely shared on social media by whistleblower Nzuimanto. The footage allegedly shows an employee of the store being violently assaulted by a man presented as a soldier reportedly hired by the Chinese owners of the business.

According to an initial explanation given by the store’s management, the employee had been accused of stealing merchandise. Other sources, however, claim the incident may have stemmed from a cash or accounting error. Regardless of the exact circumstances, the video sparked widespread indignation across the country.

Several reports indicate that the managers of the establishment have been taken in for questioning by the authorities, while the store has been temporarily shut down.

Tension remains high at the scene as the protest movement continues.

#MMINews