Mohammad Skafi

Software Engineer

[Mohammad Skafi @arithma]

@lemire {simd}

[Mohammad Skafi @arithma]

@Teejip @kellabyte Is this line of thinking common? I kind of had the same idea, though vaguely, but am not sure where from, maybe it's all the s3 is malloc for internet stuff.

[Andrej Karpathy @karpathy]

Of ~200 books I've read, the few that stayed with me over time and I find myself often thinking back to or referring to, in ~random order:

All short stories by Ted Chiang, especially Exhalation, Division By Zero, Understand, The Story of Your Life, Liking What You See, The Lifecycle of Software Objects, What's Expected of us, just excellent themes ideas and reading all around.

The Selfish Gene (nonfiction) - a classic for understanding evolution and natural selection, especially the realization that the gene is closer to the real unit of selection more than an individual, explaining altruism and colonies and a lot more.

The Lord of the Rings (fantasy) - I return to LoTR all the time for comfort. I don't think anyone else has created a high fantasy Universe this complex, with so much mythology, symbolism, new languages, mysterious system of magic, ancient and powerful beings and artifacts, beautiful writing and dialog, themes of courage, friendship and heroism, the list goes on and on... You're thrown into a world with characters and references to so many things that are part of this ancient world and never really introduced. There's always more to find on each reading.

The Martian (~scifi) - top tier science porn, competence porn, fast paced and fun.

The Vital Question (nonfiction) - First time I intuitively grokked the bridge from geology to biology, the origin of life, and likelihood of life in the Universe at large at various stages of complexity and development. Also all other Nick Lane books.

How To Live by Derek Sivers (nonfiction) - 27 conflicting answers to how to live life. Emphasizing the diversity of consistent and possible answers to the meaning and goals of life.

1984 (nonfiction) - Classic. Newspeak, Ministry of Truth, Doublethink, Thoughtcrime, Facecrime, Unperson, the list just keeps on going. Chilling world-building and the realization that weaker equivalents of everything exist.

In Defense of Food by Pollan (nonfiction/food) - Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. The book that first taught me to avoid the entire center of every grocery store and only shop on the outer ring. The realization that the food industry is out of control and the things they do with your food, what they put into it, what they are allowed to do, and how they are allowed to market it to you is quite a lot worse than I thought.

The Accidental Superpower by Zeihan (nonfiction/geopolitcs) - I've found Zeihan to be a bit of a mixed bag over time but I still remember his books (esp this one) to be elucidating on geopolitics.

Countdown to Zero Day (nonfiction/cyberwarfare) - Goes into detail on Stuxnet, imo very important and highly elucidating reading on cybersecurity, the future of warfare, and AGI.

A Fire Upon the Deep (scifi) - Chapter one only, incredible portrayal of what superintelligence will be like that has stayed with me since.

Guns Germs and Steel (nonfiction/history) - I'd probably recommend a summary of this book more than the book itself. I remember it being very dry, but it was very interesting because it is a comprehensive analysis of the resources grid (food, animals, freshwater, climate, ...) in our real-world game of Civilization, and the implications there of.

Flowers of Algernon (scifi) - Just a totally crushing masterpiece on intelligence.

Atlas Shrugged (scifi) - No one finishes this I think but the first few chapters and its worldbuilding are enough and, once seen in an exaggerated form in fiction, elements of it cannot be fully unseen in reality.

An Immense World (nonfiction/bio, by Yong, among others of his) - Nice book on so many different sensors used by various animals, you repeatedly realize human senses are super inadequate and that we only measure such a tiny sliver of reality.

The Master Switch (nonfiction/tech history, by Wu) - history of information technologies telegraph, telephony, radio, television, film, cable television, internet and the pattern of "The Cycle", where each medium starts decentralized, open and idealistic and then progresses towards centralization, control and oligopoly, for the very similar reasons, by very similar means, and usually at the expense of diversity, innovation and technological progress. Quite a few connections to draw on for LLMs, which are after all an information technology too.

(I take recommendations for more that are likely to make this list!)

[Will Kinney @WKCosmo]

We shall measure stellar brightness logarithmically, and it will be called the "magnitude."

- Sir, will that logarithm be base 10, or based on Napier's constant?

Neither. It shall be of the base of the fifth root of one hundred.

[Nature is Amazing ☘️ @AMAZlNGNATURE]

Grey wolf howls and gets response from the entire forest

[Paul Graham @paulg]

Cigarette sales and lung cancer deaths are the same curve, shifted 25 years.

[kasra @kasratweets]

one of the wildest case studies I've seen: "Diagnosis by hallucinatory voices"

> winter 1984
> woman starts hearing voices in her head saying things like, "Please don’t be afraid, we would like to help you."
> goes to doctor, is given psychiatric medication for hallucinations
> voices disappear after a few weeks, woman feels relief
> after another few weeks the voices reappear, telling her to get immediate treatment, giving her a specific address
> address is the tomography department of a London hospital
> the voices tell her to get a brain scan done because of a tumor
> just to reassure her, doctor requests a brain scan
> scan identifies a brain tumor
> woman undergoes surgery to remove the tumor
> after the operation woman hears the voices say "We are pleased to have helped you. Goodbye."
> woman discontinues the antipsychotic medication
> woman never hears the voices again

[Brokeboy3 @Sleepinwithtop5]

@skinworms

[dane 🚩 @buckadeath]

It's so funny that some random karen bought the Breaking Bad house and goes ape shit crazy on anyone who stops to take a selfie with it.

[Andrzej Dragan @andrzejdragan]

@ilyasut People building AGI unable to predict consequences of their actions 3 days in advance.

[chris evans @notcapnamerica]

Everyone needs to watch this video in its entirety, and then send it to your friends and family immediately

[Phil Eaton @eatonphil]

> [Nilability] flows in code can be modeled as a system of global typing constraints, which can then be solved using a 2-SAT algorithm to determine potential contradictions.

Nice work by Uber on statically detecting unsafe nil access in Go.

https://t.co/cQueNgIOQJ

[Linus ✦ Ekenstam @LinusEkenstam]

Future of AI assistants

A “jailbroken” Google Nest Mini running custom LLM’s & voice models by Justin Alvey

This demo is insane, a matter of time before these are shipped like this as standard.

Link in next tweet

[shaaloani roadhead @HYENABLOOD]

@edzitron

[Dave Anderson @scarletinked]

Your relationship with your manager shouldn't be adversarial.

Too many cheerfully complain about pointy haired bosses, or how you can't trust your manager. While there are bad managers out there, the vast majority I've gotten to know genuinely care about their employees.

🧵

[Mohammad Skafi @arithma]

@i_rk_jain @FreyaHolmer Speed of speed is "tangential acceleration," which is not "absolute acceleration."
An object going in a circle at constant speed will have 0 rate of change of speed, but an acceleration towards the center of the circle traced by their movement.

[Mohammad Skafi @arithma]

@FreyaHolmer Absolute acceleration!

[Mohammad Skafi @arithma]

@FreyaHolmer hyperbolic space-time curvature.
It sounds close, but I just made this shit up

[murat 🍥 @mayfer]

showcasing multitouch string simulator on ipad with a common chord progression

try it yourself over at https://t.co/T3I4S7Aa32

should work on an iphone too.
how is it on android phones/tablets?

[Mohammad Skafi @arithma]

@amasad But it does waggle its eyebrows at you.