I very regularly need to interact with my work through a python interpreter. My work is scientific programming. So the variables might be arrays with millions of elements. In order to debug, optimize, verify, or improve in any way my work, I cannot rely on any other methods than interacting with the code as it's being run, or while everything is still in memory. So if I want to really leverage LLMs, especially to allow them to work semi-autonomously, they must be able to do the same.

I'm not going to dump tens of GB of stuff to a log file or send it around via pipes or whatever. Why is there a nan in an array that is the product of many earlier steps in a code that took an hour to run? Why are certain data in a 200k-variable system of equations much harder to fit than others, and which equations are in tension with each other to prevent better convergence?

Are interpreters and pdb not great, previously-existing tools for this kind of work? Does a new tool that lets LLMs/agents use them actually represent some sort of hack job because better solutions have existed for years?

The issue is that these are generally reported in the literature from local investigations of one or two faults, yielding a few events. These studies are done wherever there are earthquakes on land, so we have a global scope and language issues. Even limiting the results to the English peer-reviewed literature, however, it's a huge distributed search.

I estimate that there are on the order of 10,000 published events, and a mean of 2-3 events per publication.

For my immediate use of the database, it is very important for the database to be as complete as possible--I'm not looking for a sort of statistically representative sample. The literature itself is quite incomplete of course, but we're limited to what exists for now.

Starting with the first step of collating publications, what tools would one use? I have access to most journals through various university affiliations. Are there particular APIs? Web scraping tools? LLMs?

Thanks!

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47140588

Points: 3

# Comments: 3

A few years later, the gravitational deflection of the Himalayas on a plumb line by Airy proved less than expected, which suggested that mountains have 'roots' that extend below them, displacing more dense rock--like icebergs more or less.

I used the gravitational force of the Longmenshan range to calculate the perturbations in the elastic stress field of the Earth's crust in Sichuan province, China, to estimate the tectonic forces in the region, which caused the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/201...

Sequoia developed the Cherokee syllabary (where symbols represent syllables instead of vowels/consonants) in the 1800s after seeing white men reading, and figuring out what they were doing (he spoke little English and could not read it). This is the first real written indigenous language in the Americas.

The Skeena characters shown here are obviously derived from European characters, as was the Cherokee syllabary. I think most written forms of native languages in the Americas are similar.

The Cree have a script which is far from European characters but was nonetheless developed for the Cree by a missionary in the 1800s. The Inuit have modified it for their language.

I don't know much about indigenous languages in the rest of the world.

Volcanic glass (eg obsidian) is also shiny and by no means rare in the solar system.

Many asteroids are also metallic, and perhaps metal crystals or fracture planes could produce reflectors of the right size.

But maybe it’s just aliens.

Or, you have sheets of a few different colors, each paired to a comforter with a different weight that is changed seasonally, or biweekly, depending on the preferences of you and your bedmate.

Time and time again I would send my friend Dave Walker an email declaring that Javascript (or something else) was utterly broken, incapable of executing the simplest program without errors. Dave would ask to see the source code and I would present it to him with detailed notes proving that my code was perfect and Javascript was broken. He’d call me, we’d discuss it, and eventually he’d say something like, “Where did you terminate the loop beginning at line 563?” There would be a long silence, followed by the tiniest “Oh” from me. I’d thank him for his help and hang up. A week later, I’d be fuming again about another fundamental flaw in Javascript.

Many of us are stubborn and will work hard and long, without much positive external feedback, under the assumption that our vision is correct and the audience, if one even exists, is wrong. Much fundamental progress has been made this way: Faraday, Einstein, Jobs, etc. But of course many times one simply is wrong and refusing to see it means throwing years away, and whatever else with it (money, relationships, etc.). It's a hard balance, especially for the monomaniacal without much interest in balance. Finding out how to make solid (public, peer-reviewed, evidence-based, whatever) incremental progress towards the paradigm shift seems to be the way if one can manage.

Furthermore I think most blue collar American workers, and many white collar workers, are used to the concept of sudden and arbitrary termination.

The voluntary resignations are what they are--I can't fault anyone for taking a good deal, and from what I have heard (married to someone in the government, with many friends as well) no one is being pressured inappropriately.

However, the other cuts are dominantly people who are 'probationary' which means that they are new to their positions, either by being recently hired or in some cases promoted. These people are, actually, on the whole harder workers than those who have been in their jobs for a long time, because they're still being competitive in order to move forward. The non-probationary employees have stronger civil service protections which means that they are harder to fire. This is the major discriminant used to decide who leaves and who goes.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43068402

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

The belts themselves are an effect of Earth's magnetic field, which I believe is particularly strong because of flow within the Earth's liquid iron-nickel outer core. (I had long believed that the spinning of the inner core was the primary contributor but given a surface-level skim of the literature that doesn't seem to be the case; convection seems to be more of a driver.)

I think perhaps many otherwise similar planets don't have a liquid iron core, so they may not have the strong radiation belts that shield life from the solar wind. Of course I am not sure what fraction of otherwise-similar planets have liquid iron cores, but Mars for example does not seem to. It is probably a function of the size of a planet (governing the pressure distribution in the interior), the ratio of iron to other elements, the temperature field (a function of the amount of radiogenic elements in the planet and its age), and perhaps other factors. Other planets may not be hot enough to have a liquid iron core at the right pressures, or be too massive (too much pressure) at the right temperatures, etc.