If any one wants to see how well xai grok sysprompt repo is going...
They merged to main a pr that added back white genocide and bore related update AFTER being reviewed by five people. Then deleted pr after reverting and squashing the history LOL.
My May newsletter issue is out now.
The focus is on global trade and the current attempt to rebalance it. Plus newsletter portfolio updates as usual.
https://t.co/8qeUkwfBfE
HOLY CRAP, a new super tiny 1.6B param voice model just dropped that seems to.. outperform 11labs!? 😵💫
From Nari-labs, Dia is an Apache 2.0 voice model, that can generate laughs, sniffs and emotions, copy an existing voice and is effectively real time on larger GPUs:
@RahimNathwani@DanielLockyer Without this improvement the code would burn through the additional CPU compute hours that 15k servers of that type can provide per year.
It’s like switching off a 100W lightbulb and saying you saved 2.4kwh per day, just broken down to a specific server type.
Imprecise phrasing
Every day on YouTube, people upload 4 million videos and watch 5 billion videos. Handling this staggering traffic requires a vast fleet of servers. So when a new request comes in, where does it go? How do you balance load across so many servers for so many jobs?
I love this paper because it proposes a clever load balancing system that works at the largest of scales. Let’s imagine a YouTube service is distributed across 1000 servers. Whenever a new query arrives, we send it to one of those servers to process. How do we choose which one?
The obvious load balancing strategy is CPU-based, sending requests to whichever server has the lowest utilization. This works pretty well! But the problem with CPU-based load balancing is that CPU utilization is a lagging indicator that’s averaged over a measuring period and might not reflect the exact current state of a server. That means CPU-based load balancing can risk momentarily overloading servers and causing spikes in tail latency.
How do we balance load better? The idea is simple and elegant: if your goal is to minimize query latency, why not send each query to the server with the lowest latency? This works through probing. When a new query comes in, the load balancer sends lightweight probes to a number of target servers. Each probe measures two instantaneous signals: estimated latency of the server (based on latency of recent queries) and the number of requests in flight. Usually, queries are routed to the server with the lowest estimated latency. The exception is if the servers have very high numbers of requests in flight, indicating high incoming load–then, requests are routed to the servers with the fewest requests in flight.
What’s most impressive about this paper is that Prequal really works. The authors report that when they deployed it in production at YouTube, tail latency dropped by 2x, significantly reducing error and lag spikes for users. It’s not often that we see a systems paper produce results like that in the real world.
Wanted to update everyone: I’m 3 months in and horse electrolytes has had tangible and noticeable benefits on my life. Lower stress, less shaking (essential tremors), and I have far more energy. Did a test run of not taking it for a week and doing everything the same and felt noticeably more fatigued, less sharp, glum, and more anxious. I’m sticking with it. Before anyone says “it’s not up to human standards it’s not organic!” I don’t give a rats ass. Everything has fucking micro plastics and shit in it the benefits outweigh the negligible risks. Also, fuck all of the detractors and haters that said I would be dead. I could absolutely whip you guys anyplace anywhere and I am more hydrated than you. Trust the genius. #horseade forever. I already have a lifetime supply for $15 fucking dollars. Continue drinking the zog powder sold to you for $3 a pop because Bradley Martin or some other industry sellout tells you to.
J.E. out
PS - insurance coverage starts in January. I’ll drop my blood test results once I get it done (mid January). Test may be lower than before (900) because I started propescia and Rogain.
@grhmc They certainly declined over the last two years, but there is also a little alternative in terms of deliver speed and availability of products. The only other thing I know of is Walmart plus, but that is often lacking in both departments
Beautiful tribute from @NOAA_HurrHunter who earlier this evening honored longtime radar scientist and researcher Peter Dodge who passed away in March 2023.
His ashes were dropped in the eye of Category 5 Milton tonight –
PETER DODGE HX SCI (1950-2023) 387TH PENNY