Melissa Mullen

Physicist, Data Scientist & Entrepreneur

[Melissa Mullen @_melissamullen]

Idk who needs to hear this but if you’re bored do something else.

[Melissa Mullen @_melissamullen]

Any statement that remains so accurate two centuries later deserves some attention. I hope someone else tries humor-based matchmaking because I still think it’s central to human connection.

“Different taste in jokes is a great strain on the affections.” - George Eliot

[Melissa Mullen @_melissamullen]

I miss the default in-person meeting assumption that existed pre-pandemic.

[Melissa Mullen @_melissamullen]

A Republican’s take on what happened to the Republican Party: “The central problem is that when animosity toward Democrats is the primary value, any critique of Trump has to end the instant it's perceived to help or signal agreement with Democrats.”
https://t.co/AmmqdevxQB

[Melissa Mullen @_melissamullen]

We don’t get enough articles like this one. It’s interesting that we’re still tempted to trust forecasters so much (not just in economics). Maybe it’s because we assume they know more than us, they tell convincing stories, and we are uncomfortable with uncertainty.

[Melissa Mullen @_melissamullen]

https://t.co/62rg95cU2b

[Paul Graham @paulg]

It's a superpower to be interested in important things that most other people find boring. They'll do them out of duty, if they do them at all. So if you do them out of genuine interest, you'll get a lot further.

[Melissa Mullen @_melissamullen]

@AviSchiffmann How do you think about our human tendency toward laziness? Do you think there's some value in procrastination that needs to be included in an agent for it to reach it's full potential?

[Paul Graham @paulg]

You can't protect people from forbidden ideas without also making them ignorant of history, because the constant change in moral fashions ensures that any sufficiently old book, however well-meaning its author, will contain ideas that are now forbidden.

[Dara @daraladje]

1/10 Introducing Chat2024.

Chat2024 lets you speak to clones of all 2024 presidential candidates. You can also simulate debates on any topic that comes to mind.

Here's why we built it 👇

[Santiago @svpino]

Software estimates are one of the oldest lies we tell ourselves.

We all know they don't work, but pretend they mean something and later feel enraged when shit hits the fan.

I focused a big part of my undergrad on software estimation.

After graduating, I wrote plenty about the topic.

Then, I started working for a company where I spent years researching how to make better estimates. We sold multiple millions of dollars of software using the tools I built.

I read everything there's to read. I could recite Steve McConnel's "Software Estimation" book from top to bottom.

Here is the most important lesson I learned:

People can't estimate software. It doesn't matter who they are or how much experience they have.

Estimating software reliably is science fiction.

And the best part:

They will ask you to estimate something. They will tell you they understand it's not exact. They will promise they won't hold you accountable.

And then they will. They always do.

There are two solutions for this. Let's start with my recommendations for those who don't have a choice:

1. Remove "quick," "simple," "straightforward," "easy," and every similar word from your dictionary. Never use them. Don't let others use them when referring to your work.

2. Never volunteer an estimate. Everything you say will be used against you.

3. When forced, estimate work you know you can complete today. Always estimate with a range: "It will take me 2 - 4 hours."

4. Estimate anything you won't do today in days and weeks. Say, "I should finish that feature sometime this week." Do not estimate future work in hours.

But we all know your manager will force you to give an estimate. Here is what you should do:

1. Estimate how long you think it will take you to complete the task.

2. Multiply the number by 3. This will be the lower range of your estimate.

3. Double the lower range of the estimate. This will be the upper range.

Example: If you think something will take you 1 day of work, say "between 3 and 6 days."

Here is the funny part:

It won't take you between 3 - 6 days. This is as much bullshit as any other method you can think of.

The true solution for this problem:

Work for a company that doesn't care about estimates.

[Melissa Mullen @_melissamullen]

On second thought, I would like to drive closely behind them on a very long road trip.

[Melissa Mullen @_melissamullen]

I’d like a word with the inventor of LED headlights.

[Melissa Mullen @_melissamullen]

Elon asking for a friend

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

What should Twitter do next?

[Melissa Mullen @_melissamullen]

An interactive map of BERT's pretrained embeddings of all English articles on Wikipedia: https://t.co/qL1yi9BwEi

[Melissa Mullen @_melissamullen]

A great summary of the history of the quantum mechanics vs general relativity paradox and how it might be reconciled with wormholes

https://t.co/6pdydoHGCW

[Google DeepMind @GoogleDeepMind]

Today in @Nature: #AlphaTensor, an AI system for discovering novel, efficient, and exact algorithms for matrix multiplication - a building block of modern computations. AlphaTensor finds faster algorithms for many matrix sizes: https://t.co/E18DezRPTL & https://t.co/SvHgsa0SNV 1/

[Melissa Mullen @_melissamullen]

being in a google doc at the same time as someone is weirdly intimate

[Melissa Mullen @_melissamullen]

It takes 10x longer for a pill to dissolve if you’re laying on your left side than it does if you’re laying on your right https://t.co/64VT862hFO

[Freddie Wong @fwong]

I only eat at Chinese restaurants with 3.5 stars on Yelp

[Los Alamos National Laboratory @LosAlamosNatLab]

Quantum #AI isn't a data hog after all! A new theorem proves #quantum neural networks can train on minimal data, taking a big step toward quantum advantage.

https://t.co/UEQPBFVZBv