Re: Apple introduces M4 chip
> In case it is not abundantly clear by now: Apple's AI strategy is to put inference (and longer term even learning) on edge devices. This is completely coherent with their privacy-first strategy (which would be at odds with sending data up to the cloud for processing).
Their primary business goal is to sell hardware. Yes, they’ve diversified into services and being a shopping mall for all, but it is about selling luxury hardware.
The promise of privacy is one way in which they position themselves, but I would not bet the bank on that being true forever.
andsoitis, 6 hours ago
> In case it is not abundantly clear by now: Apple's AI strategy is to put inference (and longer term even learning) on edge devices. This is completely coherent with their privacy-first strategy (which would be at odds with sending data up to the cloud for processing).
Their primary business goal is to sell hardware. Yes, they’ve diversified into services and being a shopping mall for all, but it is about selling luxury hardware.
The promise of privacy is one way in which they position themselves, but I would not bet the bank on that being true forever.
andsoitis, 6 hours ago
Re: Road resurfacing during the daytime without stoppi...
There is some more detail on the bridge itself in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8tpv6n1ykfA
The bridge is assembled over 2 nights at a motorway exit (so traffic can bypass it by driving off and immediately back on to the road). During night 1 the two end ramps are assembled and attached together to make a short bridge. During night 2 the ramps are driven apart, the central section is built to reach the full length and the entire structure is driven to the final location.
The entire length is 236 meters long providing a working length of 100 meters underneath. The assembled bridge can flex slightly at the joins between sections, and has a turning radius of 2 kilometers.
comebhack, 10 hours ago
There is some more detail on the bridge itself in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8tpv6n1ykfA
The bridge is assembled over 2 nights at a motorway exit (so traffic can bypass it by driving off and immediately back on to the road). During night 1 the two end ramps are assembled and attached together to make a short bridge. During night 2 the ramps are driven apart, the central section is built to reach the full length and the entire structure is driven to the final location.
The entire length is 236 meters long providing a working length of 100 meters underneath. The assembled bridge can flex slightly at the joins between sections, and has a turning radius of 2 kilometers.
comebhack, 10 hours ago
YouTube
ASTRA Flyover Bridge - Future of motorway rehabilitation
The ASTRA Bridge is a mobile flyover bridge for maintenance work on highways. In accordance with the initial findings from the bridge’s pilot deployment, the...
Re: Cold brew coffee in 3 minutes using acoustic cavit...
Thank you for saying this. When cold brew first came out, it was promoted as a brewing process that resulted in smoother (I'm guessing lower acidity) tasting coffee. Heating it up seemed natural, and its use in iced coffee seemed simply opportunistic. (In my experience at least).
Then it quickly caught on as a novelty, with nitro et al, and when I tell people I drink cold brew warmed I get looks of confusion or turned up noses.
But brew temp and serving temp are orthogonal.
lamename, 12 hours ago
Thank you for saying this. When cold brew first came out, it was promoted as a brewing process that resulted in smoother (I'm guessing lower acidity) tasting coffee. Heating it up seemed natural, and its use in iced coffee seemed simply opportunistic. (In my experience at least).
Then it quickly caught on as a novelty, with nitro et al, and when I tell people I drink cold brew warmed I get looks of confusion or turned up noses.
But brew temp and serving temp are orthogonal.
lamename, 12 hours ago
Re: The Grateful Dead's Wall of Sound (2019)
Article doesn't mention one of the more interesting (to me) aspects which was how feedback was avoided. The solution is elegant: each vocal microphone is doubled, meaning there are two at each position. The phase is inverted on one of them, the singer sings into only one, and both are sent to the speakers via their channel's amp.
The effect of that setup is that only the difference between the two microphones is amplified; common signal in both (i.e. the sound coming out of the speakers) is nulled out, but the difference signal (the voice) makes it through. It apparently wasn't quite perfect but was absolutely a lot better than wailing feedback.
The thing that made it sound so good was that any given speaker only reproduces a single source, but the article touches on that. The mic arrangement I described is simply what makes it possible.
scrumper, 20 hours ago
Article doesn't mention one of the more interesting (to me) aspects which was how feedback was avoided. The solution is elegant: each vocal microphone is doubled, meaning there are two at each position. The phase is inverted on one of them, the singer sings into only one, and both are sent to the speakers via their channel's amp.
The effect of that setup is that only the difference between the two microphones is amplified; common signal in both (i.e. the sound coming out of the speakers) is nulled out, but the difference signal (the voice) makes it through. It apparently wasn't quite perfect but was absolutely a lot better than wailing feedback.
The thing that made it sound so good was that any given speaker only reproduces a single source, but the article touches on that. The mic arrangement I described is simply what makes it possible.
scrumper, 20 hours ago
Re: AlphaFold 3 predicts the structure and interaction...
Stepping back, the high-order bit here is an ML method is beating physically-based methods for accurately predicting the world.
What happens when the best methods for computational fluid dynamics, molecular dynamics, nuclear physics are all uninterpretable ML models? Does this decouple progress from our current understanding of the scientific process - moving to better and better models of the world without human-interpretable theories and mathematical models / explanations? Is that even iteratively sustainable in the way that scientific progress has proven to be?
Interesting times ahead.
moconnor, 1 hour ago
Stepping back, the high-order bit here is an ML method is beating physically-based methods for accurately predicting the world.
What happens when the best methods for computational fluid dynamics, molecular dynamics, nuclear physics are all uninterpretable ML models? Does this decouple progress from our current understanding of the scientific process - moving to better and better models of the world without human-interpretable theories and mathematical models / explanations? Is that even iteratively sustainable in the way that scientific progress has proven to be?
Interesting times ahead.
moconnor, 1 hour ago
Re: AlphaFold 3 predicts the structure and interaction...
If you're a scientist who works in protein folding (or one of those other areas) and strongly believe that science's goal is to produce falsifiable hypotheses, these new approaches will be extremely depressing, especially if you aren't proficient enough with ML to reproduce this work in your own hands.
If you're a scientist who accepts that probabilist models beat interpretable ones (articulated well here: https://norvig.com/chomsky.html), then you'll be quite happy because this is yet another validation of the value of statistical approaches in moving our ability to predict the universe forward.
If you're the sort of person who believes that human brains are capable of understanding the "why" of how things work in all its true detail, you'll find this an interesting challenge- can we actually interpret these models, or are human brains too feeble to understand complex systems without sophisticated models?
If you're the sort of person who likes simple models with as few parameters as possible, you're probably excited because developing more comprehensible or interpretable models that have equivalent predictive ability is a very attractive research subject.
(FWIW, I'm in the camp of "we should simultaneously seek simpler, more interpretable models, while also seeking to improve native human intelligence using computational augmentation")
dekhn, 4 hours ago
If you're a scientist who works in protein folding (or one of those other areas) and strongly believe that science's goal is to produce falsifiable hypotheses, these new approaches will be extremely depressing, especially if you aren't proficient enough with ML to reproduce this work in your own hands.
If you're a scientist who accepts that probabilist models beat interpretable ones (articulated well here: https://norvig.com/chomsky.html), then you'll be quite happy because this is yet another validation of the value of statistical approaches in moving our ability to predict the universe forward.
If you're the sort of person who believes that human brains are capable of understanding the "why" of how things work in all its true detail, you'll find this an interesting challenge- can we actually interpret these models, or are human brains too feeble to understand complex systems without sophisticated models?
If you're the sort of person who likes simple models with as few parameters as possible, you're probably excited because developing more comprehensible or interpretable models that have equivalent predictive ability is a very attractive research subject.
(FWIW, I'm in the camp of "we should simultaneously seek simpler, more interpretable models, while also seeking to improve native human intelligence using computational augmentation")
dekhn, 4 hours ago
Re: Apple introduces M4 chip
Why are we running these high end CPUs on tablets without the ability to run pro apps like Xcode?
Until I can run Xcode on an iPad (not Swift Playgrounds), it's a pass for me. Hear me out: I don't want to bring both an iPad and Macbook on trips, but I need Xcode. Because of this, I have to pick the Macbook every time. I want an iPad, but the iPad doesn't want me.
asow92, 1 day ago
Why are we running these high end CPUs on tablets without the ability to run pro apps like Xcode?
Until I can run Xcode on an iPad (not Swift Playgrounds), it's a pass for me. Hear me out: I don't want to bring both an iPad and Macbook on trips, but I need Xcode. Because of this, I have to pick the Macbook every time. I want an iPad, but the iPad doesn't want me.
asow92, 1 day ago
Re: The Time I Lied to the CTO and Saved the Day
If you are a "delivery driven" person who cancels holidays to keep working, I would say to you, from own experience: stop being stupid.
I know, that, specially when you get recognised for the hard work it is hard, but you will regret every minute.
If you work for a company that counts on your holidays and vacation to sell their products, you are helping to create the problematic world with have today. If many do that, more will need to do. If none do it, and act like it is an absurd to request it (and it is) nobody is forced to do it and the company is forced to do real estimates even if that hurts your fav CEO pocket
motbus3, 2 hours ago
If you are a "delivery driven" person who cancels holidays to keep working, I would say to you, from own experience: stop being stupid.
I know, that, specially when you get recognised for the hard work it is hard, but you will regret every minute.
If you work for a company that counts on your holidays and vacation to sell their products, you are helping to create the problematic world with have today. If many do that, more will need to do. If none do it, and act like it is an absurd to request it (and it is) nobody is forced to do it and the company is forced to do real estimates even if that hurts your fav CEO pocket
motbus3, 2 hours ago
Re: The Time I Lied to the CTO and Saved the Day
Any impressionable kids reading... this story playing out like it did is highly company-dependent, as well as luck-dependent.
In a healthy company/organization:
* That outsourcing implementation approach probably wouldn't have happened, because an experienced person could've guessed how that would turn out, before it was started (it's such a cliche).
* Earlier on, people would tell the CTO it wasn't working out, instead of lying and saying the opposite.
* Whenever they needed to do something smarter/creative to rescue the project, they could work with the CTO on that, and maybe even with the customer.
* There wouldn't be marathon whip-cracking over the holidays, especially not after the team was already burning out.
* A manager/lead would go to bat for the success of the project and the health of the team, and insist upwards that the team needed a break over the holidays, if that needed to be clarified.
On that last point, in a "half-healthy" organization, a manager might intentionally be very vague, and omit information. That happens, and might or might not be a good idea, depending.
But the way this story is told, it sounds like the manager/lead outright lied repeatedly up the chain of command, which is generally considered very-bad, in both healthy and unhealthy companies.
I'll add that these things are vastly easier to armchair-quarterback. Certainly we're all going to make mistakes, especially when put in difficult positions, and/or when overextended/fatigued. But it helps to look at scenarios, to try to learn from them, and to think from a distance how they might've been handled better, so you're armed with that "experience", the next time you're tossed into a rough situation that has some similarities.
neilv, 7 hours ago
Any impressionable kids reading... this story playing out like it did is highly company-dependent, as well as luck-dependent.
In a healthy company/organization:
* That outsourcing implementation approach probably wouldn't have happened, because an experienced person could've guessed how that would turn out, before it was started (it's such a cliche).
* Earlier on, people would tell the CTO it wasn't working out, instead of lying and saying the opposite.
* Whenever they needed to do something smarter/creative to rescue the project, they could work with the CTO on that, and maybe even with the customer.
* There wouldn't be marathon whip-cracking over the holidays, especially not after the team was already burning out.
* A manager/lead would go to bat for the success of the project and the health of the team, and insist upwards that the team needed a break over the holidays, if that needed to be clarified.
On that last point, in a "half-healthy" organization, a manager might intentionally be very vague, and omit information. That happens, and might or might not be a good idea, depending.
But the way this story is told, it sounds like the manager/lead outright lied repeatedly up the chain of command, which is generally considered very-bad, in both healthy and unhealthy companies.
I'll add that these things are vastly easier to armchair-quarterback. Certainly we're all going to make mistakes, especially when put in difficult positions, and/or when overextended/fatigued. But it helps to look at scenarios, to try to learn from them, and to think from a distance how they might've been handled better, so you're armed with that "experience", the next time you're tossed into a rough situation that has some similarities.
neilv, 7 hours ago
Re: Leaked deck reveals how OpenAI is pitching publish...
>Additionally, members of the program receive priority placement and “richer brand expression” in chat conversations, and their content benefits from more prominent link treatments. Finally, through PPP, OpenAI also offers licensed financial terms to publishers.
This is what a lot of people pushing for open models fear - responses of commercial models will be biased based on marketing spend.
samfriedman, 1 hour ago
>Additionally, members of the program receive priority placement and “richer brand expression” in chat conversations, and their content benefits from more prominent link treatments. Finally, through PPP, OpenAI also offers licensed financial terms to publishers.
This is what a lot of people pushing for open models fear - responses of commercial models will be biased based on marketing spend.
samfriedman, 1 hour ago
Re: AlphaFold 3 predicts the structure and interaction...
Probably worth mentioning that David Baker’s lab released a similar model (predicts protein structure along with bound DNA and ligands), just a couple of months ago, and it is open source [1].
It’s also worth remembering that it was David Baker who originally came up with the idea of extending AlphaFold from predicting just proteins to predicting ligands as well [2].
1. https://github.com/baker-laboratory/RoseTTAFold-All-Atom
2. https://alexcarlin.bearblog.dev/generalized/
Unlike AlphaFold 3, which predicts only a small, preselected subset of ligands, RosettaFold All Atom predicts a much wider range of small molecules. While I am certain that neither network is up to the task of designing an enzyme, these are exciting steps.
One of the more exciting aspects of the RosettaFold paper is that they train the model for predicting structures, but then also use the structure predicting model as the denoising model in a diffusion process, enabling them to actually design new functional proteins. Presumably, DeepMind is working on this problem as well.
lysozyme, 1 day ago
Probably worth mentioning that David Baker’s lab released a similar model (predicts protein structure along with bound DNA and ligands), just a couple of months ago, and it is open source [1].
It’s also worth remembering that it was David Baker who originally came up with the idea of extending AlphaFold from predicting just proteins to predicting ligands as well [2].
1. https://github.com/baker-laboratory/RoseTTAFold-All-Atom
2. https://alexcarlin.bearblog.dev/generalized/
Unlike AlphaFold 3, which predicts only a small, preselected subset of ligands, RosettaFold All Atom predicts a much wider range of small molecules. While I am certain that neither network is up to the task of designing an enzyme, these are exciting steps.
One of the more exciting aspects of the RosettaFold paper is that they train the model for predicting structures, but then also use the structure predicting model as the denoising model in a diffusion process, enabling them to actually design new functional proteins. Presumably, DeepMind is working on this problem as well.
lysozyme, 1 day ago
GitHub
GitHub - baker-laboratory/RoseTTAFold-All-Atom
Contribute to baker-laboratory/RoseTTAFold-All-Atom development by creating an account on GitHub.
Re: The Time I Lied to the CTO and Saved the Day
All of the bad stuff in the article is a consequence of the CTO not being able to call technical bullshit and encouraging a culture of yes-reports.
If you ever find yourself in a company like this, start looking for a new job.
It's impossible to fix rot that bad at the top, and they're not going to make you CTO.
ethbr1, 1 day ago
All of the bad stuff in the article is a consequence of the CTO not being able to call technical bullshit and encouraging a culture of yes-reports.
If you ever find yourself in a company like this, start looking for a new job.
It's impossible to fix rot that bad at the top, and they're not going to make you CTO.
ethbr1, 1 day ago
Re: Apple apologizes for iPad 'Crush' ad that 'missed ...
I like it. You throw away all your hard-earned, expensive instruments, tools, and crush them to be sure. You then go buy an iPad, and the circle is complete: You're now a next-generation Apple consumer! Just turn on YouTube kids and watch slime videos for the rest of your life.
Reject culture, consume the slop.
lionkor, 3 hours ago
I like it. You throw away all your hard-earned, expensive instruments, tools, and crush them to be sure. You then go buy an iPad, and the circle is complete: You're now a next-generation Apple consumer! Just turn on YouTube kids and watch slime videos for the rest of your life.
Reject culture, consume the slop.
lionkor, 3 hours ago
Re: Apple apologizes for iPad 'Crush' ad that 'missed ...
It’s not my place to tell anyone how they should feel about anything, but the number of comments here suggesting people had a strong emotional reaction to this does kinda worry me. How do those of you who feel so strongly about this ad get through daily life? If I was feeling so upset about something like this, life would be pretty bad. Genuine question.
EDIT: I appreciate the amount of good-faith discussion on this comment. To be clear, if your reaction to the ad was along the lines of ‘this is distasteful and I don’t like it’, I totally get that. I’m referring to some of the comments I saw that likened it to ‘stress inducing’ or ‘like watching someone’s arm get cut off’ which are much more emotive.
mindwok, 2 hours ago
It’s not my place to tell anyone how they should feel about anything, but the number of comments here suggesting people had a strong emotional reaction to this does kinda worry me. How do those of you who feel so strongly about this ad get through daily life? If I was feeling so upset about something like this, life would be pretty bad. Genuine question.
EDIT: I appreciate the amount of good-faith discussion on this comment. To be clear, if your reaction to the ad was along the lines of ‘this is distasteful and I don’t like it’, I totally get that. I’m referring to some of the comments I saw that likened it to ‘stress inducing’ or ‘like watching someone’s arm get cut off’ which are much more emotive.
mindwok, 2 hours ago
Re: Apple apologizes for iPad 'Crush' ad that 'missed ...
Missing from this extremely short and underreported article is how badly this played out in Japanese market. The culture they have states that musical instruments, creative tools have some energy and imbued sense of spirit to them. So destroying these elements of culture is really really blunt and gauche to them. The majority of the push back came from Japanese people, and then artists empathizing with their sentiment.
edkennedy, 15 hours ago
Missing from this extremely short and underreported article is how badly this played out in Japanese market. The culture they have states that musical instruments, creative tools have some energy and imbued sense of spirit to them. So destroying these elements of culture is really really blunt and gauche to them. The majority of the push back came from Japanese people, and then artists empathizing with their sentiment.
edkennedy, 15 hours ago
Re: Apple apologizes for iPad 'Crush' ad that 'missed ...
When I watch the trailer, it feels very cringe.
I can absolutely see what they're going for- something like "you're iPad contains the power of all these cultural tools", but visually that connection isn't there. It just looks like "Hooray! Culture has been destroyed, now there is only iPad!"
benrutter, 6 hours ago
When I watch the trailer, it feels very cringe.
I can absolutely see what they're going for- something like "you're iPad contains the power of all these cultural tools", but visually that connection isn't there. It just looks like "Hooray! Culture has been destroyed, now there is only iPad!"
benrutter, 6 hours ago
Re: Jim Simons has died
Will be interesting to see how this affects math research. He has pumped unthinkable amounts of money into the field. The only first-class flights I've taken in my life were to get to Simons-funded conferences at super fancy hotels. (I found these conferences a bit ridiculous, but the luxury treatment did ensure that they could get together a lot of the biggest names in the field in one place.)
Besides the conferences, there is the SCGP at Stony Brook, the Simons Center in Manhattan, whatever MSRI is called now, AMS-Simons travel grants, tons of money for the arXiv, the Magma license deal... and that's just the stuff that I've benefited from personally. I know there's more, Simons Collaboration grants and probably other things I've never heard of. He was very good to us all.
We've always joked that Phds in geometry-adjacent fields have to have one of the highest average incomes of any degree, probably at least $1 million a year. Simons making $3 billion, the rest of us making 90k apiece.
markgall, 2 hours ago
Will be interesting to see how this affects math research. He has pumped unthinkable amounts of money into the field. The only first-class flights I've taken in my life were to get to Simons-funded conferences at super fancy hotels. (I found these conferences a bit ridiculous, but the luxury treatment did ensure that they could get together a lot of the biggest names in the field in one place.)
Besides the conferences, there is the SCGP at Stony Brook, the Simons Center in Manhattan, whatever MSRI is called now, AMS-Simons travel grants, tons of money for the arXiv, the Magma license deal... and that's just the stuff that I've benefited from personally. I know there's more, Simons Collaboration grants and probably other things I've never heard of. He was very good to us all.
We've always joked that Phds in geometry-adjacent fields have to have one of the highest average incomes of any degree, probably at least $1 million a year. Simons making $3 billion, the rest of us making 90k apiece.
markgall, 2 hours ago
Re: Apple apologizes for iPad 'Crush' ad that 'missed ...
My initial reaction to the ad, upon watching it in the launch event was "huh, that's a fun reference to the Hydraulic Press Channel". The slapstick elements (trumpet noise, squishy balls) made it come across as light-hearted, rather than an ominous display of force by a large company crushing artists' tools.
This idea of 'squashing all these tools down to a thin slab of glass' made sense given their somewhat unusual focus on the thinness of the device. It was a bit of a throwback to the early 2010s smartphone innovation, where the size of the devices was the yardstick by which manufacturers would outdo each other. I would charitably interpret it as an uninspired marketing team trying to spin some version of Jobs' classic "the iPhone is simultaneously an iPod, phone and internet device" - however the party trick is old, and nobody's impressed anymore.
Perhaps the blowback is a sign of a wider weariness that people have accumulated towards big tech companies over the past few years, mixed with a nebulous malaise about 'AI' and what it means for the status quo and people's livelihoods.
maxrobeyns, 8 hours ago
My initial reaction to the ad, upon watching it in the launch event was "huh, that's a fun reference to the Hydraulic Press Channel". The slapstick elements (trumpet noise, squishy balls) made it come across as light-hearted, rather than an ominous display of force by a large company crushing artists' tools.
This idea of 'squashing all these tools down to a thin slab of glass' made sense given their somewhat unusual focus on the thinness of the device. It was a bit of a throwback to the early 2010s smartphone innovation, where the size of the devices was the yardstick by which manufacturers would outdo each other. I would charitably interpret it as an uninspired marketing team trying to spin some version of Jobs' classic "the iPhone is simultaneously an iPod, phone and internet device" - however the party trick is old, and nobody's impressed anymore.
Perhaps the blowback is a sign of a wider weariness that people have accumulated towards big tech companies over the past few years, mixed with a nebulous malaise about 'AI' and what it means for the status quo and people's livelihoods.
maxrobeyns, 8 hours ago
Re: Apple apologizes for iPad 'Crush' ad that 'missed ...
I'm not Japanese and it was upsetting to me
Not because eg one piano got destroyed; surely that happens all the time, even on camera for eg movies and such. But there was something about watching beautiful objects be destroyed, in slow motion, gratuitously, and with an upbeat/sunny tone, that just aesthetically made me squirm in my seat
brundolf, 13 hours ago
I'm not Japanese and it was upsetting to me
Not because eg one piano got destroyed; surely that happens all the time, even on camera for eg movies and such. But there was something about watching beautiful objects be destroyed, in slow motion, gratuitously, and with an upbeat/sunny tone, that just aesthetically made me squirm in my seat
brundolf, 13 hours ago
Re: Apple apologizes for iPad 'Crush' ad that 'missed ...
It goes beyond aesthetics for me. It's like they took everyone's deepest fears about technology and AI, that it will replace or "crush" authentic human experience and creativity, and they just embraced and celebrate it by literally crushing representations of human creativity. At least I'm glad the corporate types were actually honest about their goals, though, instead of their typical doublespeak
shmageggy, 18 hours ago
It goes beyond aesthetics for me. It's like they took everyone's deepest fears about technology and AI, that it will replace or "crush" authentic human experience and creativity, and they just embraced and celebrate it by literally crushing representations of human creativity. At least I'm glad the corporate types were actually honest about their goals, though, instead of their typical doublespeak
shmageggy, 18 hours ago