Ryan DeFever

Data science in energy & ChE. Machine learning, molecular simulations, public policy, etc. Postdoc @ejmaginn @NDCBE, PhD with @SarupriaS. Views are my own.

[Ryan DeFever @rsdefever]

Maybe, maybe not. Computers largely use numerical methods to do math instead of symbol manipulation. Meanwhile the LLMs themselves are fine for interpolating/manipulating human language, but that is much fuzzier and forgiving than formal logic/mathematical systems. And that’s all before you account for the difference in the amount of training data readily available.

[Ryan DeFever @rsdefever]

I’m eager to learn about the sudden fluctuations in earth’s (or the planes) mass that resulted in a change in the gravitational force 👀

[Randall Munroe @xkcd]

Elementary Physics Paths https://t.co/MAt40O2xkm

[Ryan DeFever @rsdefever]

A/B testing at home

[Carl Quintanilla @carlquintanilla]

JPMORGAN: “.. the US has achieved US energy independence for the first time in 40 years while Europe and China compete for global energy resources.” [Cembalest] #OOTT 🇺🇸

[Ryan DeFever @rsdefever]

Seems about right. Feels true in contexts beyond consumer software, too. I’m not convinced that mediocrity wins out in the long run.

[Andrej Karpathy @karpathy]

"The Tyranny of the Marginal User"
Why consumer software gets worse, not better, over time. Great post from @IvanVendrov, hard to not see it everywhere.

"Here’s what I’ve been able to piece together about the marginal user. Let’s call him Marl."

https://t.co/MVxAazFO0z

[Ryan DeFever @rsdefever]

This has to be one of the more egregious headlines I’ve seen. IF humans still exist in 250MM years and IF we aren’t already off earth I’d think we’ll have plenty of time to engineer our way around such challenges. The research is probably 😎😎😎, but the headline 🙄🙄🙄

[Ryan DeFever @rsdefever]

Only Microsoft would think, why yes, you’re choosing to export a CSV file for portability, why don’t we use a non-generic encoding 🙄.

[Ryan DeFever @rsdefever]

One of the more thought provoking reads in awhile: https://t.co/1j1lKlLbfh

[Michael Shirts @Michael_Shirts]

OK, we've started to figure out the answer to this - I guess everything gets homogenized to the mean:

https://t.co/viiDx42JFY

[Ryan DeFever @rsdefever]

Good fun using known methods to address an engineering application. The latest with @ejmaginn. Many thanks to Ning Wang for pulling this across the finish line. https://t.co/2iOckhwQLd

[Ryan DeFever @rsdefever]

Check out the latest on heterogeneous ice nucleation from @SAMPELatUMN. Great work all around and fun to be involved after so many years. https://t.co/ap9EzIWLXd

[Ernesto C. Morales @ernie2k]

@SAMPELatUMN @rsdefever @SarupriaS https://t.co/qcP6GYglgd

[Jeffrey Potoff @jpotoff]

It's new paper day! MoSDeF-GOMC simplifies input file generation with @mosdef_hub (MoSDeF) for @GPUMonteCarlo (GOMC), and also provides support for complex workflows with @signacdata. Also a great resource for teaching Monte Carlo simulation.
https://t.co/k4hwP81yTT

[François Chollet @fchollet]

The ability to train big models is not a moat. Anyone with enough budget can replicate your model in a matter of months.

A much better moat is to have a novel and clever way of using AI in a useful product.

[Ryan DeFever @rsdefever]

Wishing I was still doing MD so I could give this a whirl!

[The Journal of Physical Chemistry @JPhysChem]

Replica exchange is a popular method for improving sampling in #MolecularDynamics. #NormalizingFlows are a promising deep generative method. Their combination can reduce the computational cost of both by orders of magnitude! @inve_michele @FrankNoeBerlin
https://t.co/9RKRN3G29H

[Ryan DeFever @rsdefever]

LISP interpreter implemented on a computer built with Conway’s Game of Life. Count me impressed. https://t.co/zkMljTY9ph

[Ryan DeFever @rsdefever]

Take: Acceptance criteria for AI systems is going to be much higher than for humans performing the same task. Someone is always going to prod the system and say “well that’s a dumb/bad/misleading answer/decision” without realizing just how bad many human-informed decisions are.

[Ryan DeFever @rsdefever]

This (crazy dependency trees that could be susceptible to malicious code in downstream packages) strikes me as a major issue with the Python open-source ecosystem (e.g., conda, pypi).

[Miles Cranmer @MilesCranmer]

It's good that PyTorch found this so quickly.

However it makes me worry that many packages share this issue without realizing. You could easily clone pip wheels and add exploits without being obvious.

The fragmentation of the ecosystem (see xkcd) is seeing some consequences...

[Ryan DeFever @rsdefever]

@andrewwhite01 Accessible + license file. Outside of personal use I’m be hesitant to touch anything without a license file, so it’s hard to say it’s “open source”.

[Le Chou News @LeChouNews]

New Tesla Software Update Will Drive Your Vehicle Into A Wall If You Even Mention Another Carmaker