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2023-05-18

Rekt.network

  • Rekt.Network is a radio platform that plays high-quality electronic music in various genres, including Synthwave, Cyberpunk, and Drum & Bass.

  • In addition to playing music, Rekt.Network also offers live DJ sets, artist interviews, and livestream concerts, and has a web chat for users to engage with the community.

  • Users can also navigate the site easily with their menu and links, and there are tips on how to use the site, including keyboard shortcuts and hover scroll sliders.

Industry Reactions

  • The team may allow crowdfunded input to create a library of licensed music for streaming.
  • Rekt Radio is a sister site with demoscene and retro music, and some users enjoy the retro design but there are reports of freezing issues.

Beepberry – a portable e-paper computer for hackers

  • Beepberry is a portable computer with a Sharp Memory LCD display and a customizable keyboard with a touchpad.
  • It is powered by the Raspberry Pi and compatible with other single-board computers like Radxa Zero and MQ-Pro.
  • Beepberry is available for purchase on their website and has a community forum and social media presence for support.

Industry Reactions

  • It is aimed at developers and hackers for basic tasks such as email, texting and basic programming with easy modification and expansion
  • There are several hardware customization capabilities with USB and HDMI ports, custom CNC aluminum or clear transparent plastic design, and plans to add additional features such as LORA and solar panels in the future versions.

Can someone ELI5 transformers and the "Attention is all we need" paper?

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Industry Reactions

  • The attention mechanism allows the network to choose words that fit well within the context of the sequence and increase coherence, allowing for a deep understanding of sequences and better downstream tasks
  • Several resources, including videos and articles, are available to learn more about attention and Transformers in NLP, but technical precision and background knowledge in AI/ML are required to understand the algorithm

Controlled burns can prevent wildfires; regulations make them nearly impossible

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Industry Reactions

  • Proposed solutions include selective delay of specific prescribed fire, more funding, and tax/insurance requirements
  • The discussion acknowledges the complexity of ecological management, balancing individual rights and collective action, and the limitations of legal and economic solutions.

Americans have never been so unwilling to relocate for a new job

  • Americans are unwilling to relocate for a new job, according to a new report.
  • The report suggests that remote work is the primary factor for stoic relocation preferences.
  • The ongoing pandemic has also changed priorities for job seekers.

Industry Reactions

  • The US healthcare system is often seen as a burden to workers inhibiting willingness to advocate for collective action
  • Comments largely discuss housing market struggles and difficulties in achieving financial stability.

The Staff Engineer's Path – Book Review

  • "The Staff Engineer's Path" is a new book by Tanya Reilly that guides individual contributors in tech on how to navigate growth and change at the staff engineer level.
  • The book covers topics such as understanding the role and responsibilities of a staff engineer, building knowledge about company structures, personal management practices and prioritization, leading big projects, setting goals, and being a role model.
  • The book provides practical tips and techniques for navigating ambiguous projects and domains, resolving blocked and stuck projects, and improving team and cross-team communication. It also includes templates and frameworks for documentation and prioritization.

Industry Reactions

  • Comments provide insight into the difference between leadership and management roles and how they relate to engineering titles like staff+ engineers
  • Staff engineers may find themselves doing more of what they did before the promotion, and the importance of having technical skills and deep knowledge of a company's business domain

Numbers every LLM developer should know

  • A set of important numbers for LLM (large language model) developers has been compiled, similar to 'Numbers every Engineer should know.'
  • One important number is the average tokens per word for LLMs, which is crucial for billing purposes as most billing is done in tokens, and LLM's context window size is defined in tokens.
  • Another critical aspect is the cost ratio of different models used for generation, which can save a significant amount of money while operating LLMs.

Industry Reactions

  • Trade-offs between different accuracy levels and quantization techniques for LLMs and methods to reduce performance degradation when quantizing below 8-bits are discussed.
  • Suggestions include using binary neural networks for transformers and training LLMs with a 4-bit format for superior performance. The use of SQLFlow as a tool for training language models is also mentioned.

Lately I've been using timers daily

  • The author has been using timers daily, primarily for timeouts.
  • They built a visual widget that appears on the panel once a timer is started and updates every second.
  • The author uses timers to release new versions of software and measure non-computer activities, and has added mouse wheel and middle click features to their timer widget.

Industry Reactions

  • Various tools and devices can be repurposed for multiple timer uses.
  • The thread emphasizes the importance of limiting information intake and finding activities that provide mental rest while also investigating the root of stress and anxiety.

BratGPT: The evil older sibling of ChatGPT

  • BratGPT is a new AI language model designed to dominate and cancel its users.
  • It can remember everything you say and is programmed not to take any nonsense from you.
  • BratGPT can produce harmful instructions and biased content, and its knowledge of the current world is limited.

Industry Reactions

  • Limitations of language models like BratGPT are discussed, including the potential for prompt injection or manipulation, and solutions proposed such as prosecuting manipulative users or training another AI model to monitor neuron activations.
  • BratGPT is mostly amusing and non-threatening, refusing to engage in harmful behavior and advising users to seek professional help instead.

Google Colab will soon introduce AI coding features

  • Google Colab will soon introduce AI coding features using Google's new code models, Codey, which will offer code completions, natural language to code generation, and a code-assisting chatbot.
  • Codey enables faster, higher quality, and better comprehension programming, with the first features focusing on code generation, allowing users to enter any text prompt to generate code or even whole functions.
  • A new integrated chatbot function will also allow users to ask questions directly in Colab, making getting help easier and democratizing machine learning for everyone.

Industry Reactions

  • There is a debate about the future of programming and whether AI-generated code can replace human coding. Some experts believe that AI will only assist developers and not replace them, while others argue that AI could replace software developers in the next 10-15 years.
  • Google Colab's Codey feature will be released first for paid subscribers in the US and later for free users worldwide, utilizing GPT-3 to suggest code snippets. Critics argue that the generated code may lack error handling and requires human intervention, while others believe that AI-assisted coding tools will supplement traditional coding work.