Vineet Gupta

Tech Director - Amazon, Angel Investor. Optimist. Amor-Fati

[Vineet Gupta @vineetg]

Nearly free energy in our times

[Ben Nowack ☀️🌎🪞 @bennbuilds]

Sharing a bit more about Reflect Orbital today. @4TristanS and I are developing a constellation of revolutionary satellites to sell sunlight to thousands of solar farms after dark.

We think sunlight is the new oil and space is ready to support energy infrastructure. This airborne test was the last piece needed before we launch above the atmosphere.

🧵🧵(1/6)

[Vineet Gupta @vineetg]

@vishalanand23 Agreed and I think Bollywood has done a better job of it (even if driven by the nationalism hysteria) than Hollywood, which seems to delight in dystopian futures and dangers of science.

[Vineet Gupta @vineetg]

Who says science is boring? Science pedagogy really needs to bring out the scientific process - theory and experimentation challenging and supporting each other and the process of peer review, like what’s playing out right now. Just presenting the outcome kills the joy

[Alex Kaplan @alexkaplan0]

I am heartened by a lot of engagement by physicists on the recent #LK99 updates, including thoughtful discussions of the DFT calculations by Griffin.

I'll keep this thread updated with as many professional opinions as I can!

[Vineet Gupta @vineetg]

For all the language nerds out there - great thread from @marktenenholtz. And yes, a no-GIL Python will be a game changer.

[Mark Tenenholtz @marktenenholtz]

Python is removing the GIL.

The GIL (Global Interpreter Lock) prevents you from running multi-threaded code.

That makes ML code, in particular, really hard to write in pure Python.

Here's what it takes to remove the GIL:

[Vineet Gupta @vineetg]

Coolest thing on the internet in a long time. Of course, if RC-99 works out the world will change forever!

[Prakash @8teAPi]

The Race To Validate

⏰Previously, on Friday 28 July
Kwon goes rogue and presents at the MMC conference.
Lee is forced to give an interview to Yonhap, retracting the 3 author paper, and disclosing Kwon had been fired 4 months earlier.

⏰Continuing:
🇺🇸 Virginia:, HT Kim, shrugs off the frenzy, corrects the 6 author Arxiv paper. He resubmits on Saturday, with the correction to be mailed out by Arxiv on Tuesday morning. He then starts on his calls and emails.

🇺🇸 Illinois: At DoE funded, Argonne National Labs, Jorg Maser at the Center for Nanoscale Materials gets a call from HT. Maser is trying to figure out what is happening in LK99 as its superconductivity fades around the critical temperature. HT and Maser brainstorm before dialing off.

🇰🇷 Seoul: JH Kim is in the salt mines, supervising production of more LK99, trying to scale up the manufacturing process. HT has more questions on the manufacturing process, which JH quickly answers. Later in the day Lee storms in to the office, swearing at JH’s LinkedIn shitposts. JH deletes everything on his LinkedIn, killing the last Western social media presence of any member of the core team. On Saturday, an Internet influencer from China makes a visit to the modest Qcenter headquarters, is told “Yes, yes we have it” by reception, handed a business card and shooed away.

🇺🇸 Los Angeles: Andrew McCalip, Head of R&D at Varda, a space factory company, reads the description of the LK99 synthesis, and realizes he has most of the equipment in the office. If this is the first room temperature superconductor, there’s no way he’s missing out, so he hustles to secure the ingredients and livestreams the process on Twitch. It is perhaps the most watched stream of a live furnace on the platform in history.

🇨🇳 China: Chinese social media has exploded with speculation. Posts and hoaxes about the LK99 material abound. What is certain is that the materials are widely available, and the process described simple enough, that dozens of labs decide to make an attempt.

🕊️ Twitter: On a widely attended Spaces on Saturday evening, Korean sleuths track down and translate the Korean language scientific papers from Qcenter. They find that a serendipitous accident, the destruction of the quartz capsule on removal from the furnace, resulted in the first sign of the superconductor. This kink begins suspicion that the manufacturing process described in the papers in insufficient. Andrew McCalip, who is on the space, reacts to the news with a sigh. His materials are cooking, and the furnace removal is upcoming. He fires off questions to a number of people. Teams from multiple places start poring over translated Korean language scientific papers with a fine tooth comb.

🇷🇺 Russia: Soil scientist and anime catgirl Iris, stumbles upon the papers and reads them casually on Friday morning. Russian scientific practice when replicating Western papers is to deconstruct the science into abstraction. Not having the same access to equipment, Russian inquiry delves into the why much more deeply, to concentrate on the essence required to produce the outcome. With that starting point, cursing and swearing in inimical Russian style, she recognizes the smokescreen of the method in both papers immediately, cursing the idiocy of the Korean team (normally it would American, but the curses work just as well on Koreans). You want to produce a crystal, get good quality, well mixed starting inputs, and perform the actual exothermic reaction that produces the desired outcome. She posts her kitchen chemistry process over the weekend, at arrives at 2 confirmed Meissner effect levitation stones, beating all other public teams. She posts the pics on Twitter and begins to indulge in her favorite hobby, insulting the intelligence of westerners.

📈In Corporate Boardrooms Around The World: Eyebrows are raised, what-ifs are asked, quiet emissaries are despatched.

⏰Monday

[Vineet Gupta @vineetg]

Tha pain of discipline or the pain of regret. What will it be?

[David Perell @david_perell]

René Girard wrote that our similarities cause more conflict than our differences.

How can this be?

Let me explain, with a story from "American Psycho."

[Dr. Emily Anhalt @dremilyanhalt]

Grief, I’ve learned, is really just love. It’s all the love you want to give, but cannot. All that unspent love gathers up in the corners of your eyes, the lump in your throat, and in that hollow part of your chest. Grief is just love with no place to go. - Jamie Anderson

[Vineet Gupta @vineetg]

Super educational

[Adam Tooze @adam_tooze]

“If you want to re-establish a complete semiconductor supply chain in the US, you will not find it as a possible task,” Excellent this on the IMMENSE complexity of chip supply chains.
https://t.co/XjYKVm7yrL

[Steve Stewart-Williams @SteveStuWill]

Lefties and conservatives are about equally prone to conspiracy theories; they just often prefer different ones.

>0 = more common among conservatives
<0 = more common among lefties
0 = equally common on both sides

https://t.co/twCdpPhdxs

[Ethan Mollick @emollick]

Here’s the chance that a kid born in the bottom 20% of the income distribution eventually reaches the top 20%, depending on where they live.

Stark geographic differences & the lowest mobility areas in the US are worse than any other developed country. https://t.co/1OWsr8KtHV

[Andrew Revkin 🌎 ✍🏼 🪕 ☮️ @Revkin]

You can download the @NASAWebb images here (full resolution or lower): https://t.co/ghNGyBkaJ1 Have a look and join our live @columbiaclimate #sustainwhat chat. 20,000 people were involved in developing this mission, NASA says.

[NASA Webb Telescope @NASAWebb]

🌟 A star is born!

Behind the curtain of dust and gas in these “Cosmic Cliffs” are previously hidden baby stars, now uncovered by Webb. We know — this is a show-stopper. Just take a second to admire the Carina Nebula in all its glory: https://t.co/tlougFWg8B #UnfoldTheUniverse

[Vineet Gupta @vineetg]

“The wound is the place where the light enters you.” - Rumi

[Vineet Gupta @vineetg]

This is not as widely known as it should be

[Dr. Raghuraj Hegde @raghurajs_hegde]

Yesterday my patient on the operating table bled buckets. He wasn't on blood thinners-no explanations.🤷‍♂️

After surgery he told me he was taking a herbal concoction of Ginger, Garlic, Turmeric & Asafoetida thrice daily to prevent covid.

Need to change my Pre-op instructions. 🤦‍♂️

[Vineet Gupta @vineetg]

+1 If you want to learn about the real India, he is necessary reading. It’s a shame his work is not better known. Model journalist.

[Durga Raghunath @durgaraghunath]

I simply cannot let 20/09/2020 pass without saluting @PSainath_org as he completes 40 years in journalism. Teacher of teachers, dearest friend, and chief-preventer-of-self-destruction - he was why I got into journalism and still remains my moral compass. Cheers my dearest person

[Vineet Gupta @vineetg]

Startling example of bias in ML systems. Zoom erases the face of a black man and Twitter picks up the white man in the preview irrespective of the placement. A diverse workplace would prevent / catch the bias sooner.