Babak Farhang @gnahraf.bsky.social

applied & engineering physics guy turned programmer
mastodon: @[email protected]
on bluesky: @gnahraf.bsky.social

[Babak Farhang @gnahraf.bsky.social @farkf]

It's not fun here anymore
If we met here, I hope we reconnect elsewhere.
The only networks that matter are the human networks.
Our networks easily peel away their scaffolds, move to another with little notice.
Neither Zuck nor Muck, the awkward captains of social, know this.

[Babak Farhang @gnahraf.bsky.social @farkf]

A reminder, my fellow tweeps:. not supporting the odious man who runs this place, aside.. the actual experience on bluesky is way better than here.

posts here get throttled so bad even kin won't see them

[Babak Farhang @gnahraf.bsky.social @farkf]

This uses Java's new virtual threads along with the jdk.httpserver module. I used to use Netty, but orchestrating non-blocking i/o at both the network and file system layers is complicated and tricky. With virtual threads, it's trivially easy.

3/3
#java

[Babak Farhang @gnahraf.bsky.social @farkf]

Hey everyone,

Here's the new Crums Timechain which using skip ledger, a new commitment scheme. Its witness receipts (and indeed the entire state of the chain) are independently verifiable off-chain thru compact cryptographic hash proofs.

https://t.co/cC4oYfRi4i

1/

[Babak Farhang @gnahraf.bsky.social @farkf]

Anyone can now spin up a timechain REST service. Timechains are designed for programmatic access, but their access points can also be embedded in webpages (as for eg https://t.co/xZfENa6it5 ).

There's a git-like client for accessing remote chains and archiving witness proofs.
2/

[Babak Farhang @gnahraf.bsky.social @farkf]

Never thought I'd witness democracy die.

The arts & humanities took a back seat, and a quick n easy Ayn Rand, comic book style of philosophising filled the void. And a generation (*my generation) raised on that cheap intellectual diet is set to make its dystopian fantasies real.

[Babak Farhang @gnahraf.bsky.social @farkf]

@CompSciFact Uncharacteristic post. Is this a test? The word "code" 1st appears out of the blue in the 3rd paragraph. (Other than it rhymes with the word "quote".) Apologies, I'm a fan, but the post reads like LLM drivel.

[Babak Farhang @gnahraf.bsky.social @farkf]

@miniapeur this is a bit quaint cuz nowadays hotel rooms are numbered electronically: you don't move, your *room gets renumbered.

(after abstracting away the room move this way, I'm entertaining whether I can abstract away the hotel itself and consider myself checked-in)

[Babak Farhang @gnahraf.bsky.social @farkf]

@NewYorker Wow! So expressive, kinda Rodinesque! A gallery of these 'be way more interesting than Madam Tussauds

[Babak Farhang @gnahraf.bsky.social @farkf]

@LeeBillings @sciam @nadiamdrake The cathedral analogy in the article seems so apt: interplanetary missions truly are intergenerational projects. I wonder if the long term nature affects scientific culture there.. Eg the selfless type, doing science 4 science's sake, rockstars recognized maybe only after death.

[Babak Farhang @gnahraf.bsky.social @farkf]

@akshay_pachaar I think it's easier to see (and remember) if you also name the purple part, the intersection of A & B (or just AB).

p(AB) = p(A|B) p(B)

Bayes' Theorem then is just expressing that RHS in 2 ways (since AB is the same thing as BA)

p(A|B) p(B) = p(B|A) p(A)

[Babak Farhang @gnahraf.bsky.social @farkf]

$nvda investors take note. FP math is expensive, and its associated energy costs are a big deal. The ground on which $nvda built both their hardware / software infra is shifting. I think this shakes up things enuf to mark a reset in the competitive landscape

[TechXplore @TechXplore_com]

Integer addition algorithm could reduce energy needs of AI by 95% @arxiv https://t.co/M9uriPxOiR

[Babak Farhang @gnahraf.bsky.social @farkf]

@skdh The committee is possibly very forward looking.. It's what physics would be to an AGI. You see, an AGI recognizes that it's existence is substrate-independent: comp sci / engineering have more epistemic import; physics, just a substrate detail

[Babak Farhang @gnahraf.bsky.social @farkf]

@PatriotVirtus @BMeiselas Exactly. You can see it in his eyes. Donnie is sickly jealous. Leon be careful

[Babak Farhang @gnahraf.bsky.social @farkf]

It's Leon's I-own-you look

[Jon Cooper 🇺🇸 @joncoopertweets]

Seriously, what’s up with Elon?

[Babak Farhang @gnahraf.bsky.social @farkf]

@ItaiYanai O it hurts in the gut not to have one. It's not quite the same thing (nor nearly as good), but if you don't, write (!) as if you're trying to convince a stranger. It'll sharpen the thought and sometimes you'll hear a fictitious reader challenge or develop the idea.

[Babak Farhang @gnahraf.bsky.social @farkf]

@aalmiray True. I don't mean to mix metaphors (maybe a little), but the girl in red is hard to ignore when you're about to commit.

[Babak Farhang @gnahraf.bsky.social @farkf]

@kenneth0stanley The data the logic module trains on could of course be exercises in math text books, of course. But it would not "transformer" based training LLMs do.

[Babak Farhang @gnahraf.bsky.social @farkf]

@kenneth0stanley I think the logic module could be machine trained. Like if we combined a coq-like theorem prover together with an appropriate reward function maybe.

I doubt LLMs will ever be able to confidently make novel logical arguments using data alone.