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2023-05-21

Don Knuth plays with ChatGPT

  • Donald Knuth asked 20 questions to ChatGPT and received insightful responses on various topics, highlighting the potential of AI language models.
  • Domain knowledge is essential when working with mathematical functions and expressions, as seen in the case of the undefined Binomial[-1,-1].
  • AI language models have limitations and cannot provide real-time information or prediction about stock market movements.

Industry Reactions

  • GPT-4 has a more reliable data input and output, but limitations still exist in AI's ability to perform common sense reasoning and lack of basic sensory inputs.
  • ChatGPT and other language models need continual research and improvement to enhance their performance and align them more closely with user expectations.

YouTube Full Text Search – Search all of a channel from the commandline

  • yt-fts is a python script that scrapes all a channel's subtitles and loads them into a searchable database accessible from the command line.
  • Users can query channels for specific keywords and be provided with time-stamped URLs to the relevant videos.
  • The script has several commands, including download and search, and requires installation of yt-dlp.

Industry Reactions

  • Implementing and maintaining a full-text search feature would require substantial resources, and would add considerable operational costs such as hiring teams
  • Users suggest using vector databases for semantic search and expanding search capabilities to include comments and prettifying subtitles into sentences.

Rooms.xyz

  • Rooms.xyz is a platform that allows users to create and remix interactive rooms from their browser.
  • The platform offers a variety of features that are easy to use and allow users to customize their rooms to their liking.
  • Users can access pre-made examples and view them on their browser, but the platform requires a browser that supports HTML5 video.

Industry Reactions

  • Despite unclear monetization strategy, the platform gained $10m from a16z and support from the crypto space.
  • Rooms.xyz provides extensive Lua API documentation, in-browser 3D room building, and user-generated content, with potential for education opportunities.

People who die by suicide want to stop suffering, not to stop living

  • Psychologist Enrique Echeburúa has published a book titled "Death by Suicide" that outlines the fundamental aspects of suicide as a public health problem and emphasizes the need to support survivors.
  • Suicide is not a mental disorder but often a result of intensified suffering and disappointments that make people feel life is no longer worth living. Suicide prevention programs should monitor risk factors and provide extra medical, psychological, and social support, particularly among young and old people.
  • Suicide can occur impulsively, but controlling access to drugs, high bridges, and firearms can help prevent it. There is a need to conduct more psychological autopsies to understand how to conduct better prevention campaigns and improve treatments for different age groups.

Industry Reactions

  • The conversation in the comments section covers topics related to medical malpractice, mental health, and the need for better support systems for people in crisis.
  • Commenters share personal stories of struggling with suicidal thoughts and experiences with mental illness, emphasizing the importance of recognizing suicide as a serious issue and advocating for support, resources, and empathy.

Writing summaries is more important than reading more books

  • Writing summaries for good books is more important than reading more books.
  • Optimizing comprehension is more important than page count or speed.
  • Asking questions while reading and summarizing the answers can help improve understanding and retention of the material.

Industry Reactions

  • Various tools and methods for note-taking, organization, and reflection are discussed, including Emdash, Obsidian, llamaindex, meditation, journaling, and book discussion with friends.
  • The thread on Hacker News reflects diverse opinions on the effectiveness and enjoyment of summarizing books, with some finding it helpful for comprehension and others finding it tedious or unnecessary, emphasizing the need for personalized learning strategies.

FBI Misused Spy Database, FISA Court Says

  • The FBI misused a spy database to search for information on individuals suspected of involvement in the Capitol attack and George Floyd protests.
  • The search was deemed improper by a court opinion released on Friday.
  • No other significant information was shared in the article.

Industry Reactions

  • Suggestions made for harsh punishments for those who abuse their power, although others argue that systemic issues need to be addressed
  • Conversation on the legality, potential abuses, and politicization of government databases built through domestic spying and the use of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act

We will be shutting down neeva.com

  • Neeva, a search engine startup with an ad-free and privacy-focused approach, will shut down its consumer search product due to challenges in user acquisition and the economic environment.
  • Neeva is refunding all unused portion of the premium subscriptions and deleting all user data.
  • The startup will focus on applying its search and LLM (large language model) expertise to enterprises, aiming to use LLM effectively, inexpensively, safely, and responsibly.

Industry Reactions

  • Kagi, a rival pay-per-search engine, uses AI to rank search results, but faces criticism for high fares and AI self-censorship that raises privacy concerns.
  • Hobbyists with access to machine learning algorithms may create domain-specific knowledge to form networks of databases, signaling a potential change in the future of search.

Using ChatGPT for home automation

  • A new home automation project was developed that uses ChatGPT plugins to control hardware connected to a Raspberry Pi.
  • The system is controlled using natural language commands, which makes it easier to connect poorly designed APIs and different systems and services together.
  • ChatGPT was used to generate the code for the Python Flask API using a basic specification, which required minimal coding.

Industry Reactions

  • Concerns are raised about the potential quality issues and security risks of connecting home automation to the cloud, suggesting offline alternatives like Home Assistant.
  • LLMs could make higher order functions and adapting to changing routines easier, and could be used for more complex queries in addition to AI interfaces based on presence sensors or light switches.

Axle OS

  • Axle OS is an open-source microkernel and userspace operating system that was started in 2016 and has been worked on periodically since then.
  • The current version utilizes a microkernel architecture and supports variable-length IPC messaging, and all applications run in userspace.
  • Axle OS now includes features like a compositing window manager, TCP/IP stack, C and Rust-based GUI toolkits, games, and userspace applications, among others. It also supports running on real hardware but is recommended to use in an emulator like QEMU.

Industry Reactions

  • The OS is developed primarily for fun and experimentation.
  • Structured patches could replace /proc in Linux, eliminating the need to parse data as a string.

Counterintuitive Properties of High Dimensional Space (2018)

  • Our intuition for three-dimensional geometry fails us in higher dimensions, where the properties of even simple objects can be counterintuitive.
  • The radius of the inner sphere in a higher dimensional cube grows as the dimension increases, and in some dimensions, the sphere pokes outside of the cube.
  • The volume of a high-dimensional unit sphere approaches zero as the dimension increases, and the vast majority of its surface area lies near the equator. The kissing number, which is the maximum number of non-overlapping spheres that can touch a central sphere, is only known exactly in a few dimensions, and it increases as the dimension increases.

Industry Reactions

  • The article explores how regular polytopes decrease in number as dimensions increase, and how it becomes harder to maintain knots in higher dimensions.
  • The article discusses the concept of volume in higher dimensions, specifically the fact that the volume of a d-sphere tends to zero as d grows, and provides a critique of the explanations given in the original post, arguing that they lack clarity.