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TIL: React Server Components

TIL: React Server Components

It's cool to see how things have evolved in React server-side capabilities. This sums it up: "This new application architecture combines the simple “request/response” mental model of server-centric Multi-Page Apps with the seamless interactivity of client-centric Single-Page Apps, giving you the best of both worlds. React

Path to mastery

Path to mastery

1️⃣ Valid Environment Learning requires a clear link between decisions and outcomes. If results are mostly random, there’s little to learn. Counter example: most stock picker. 2️⃣ Repetition with Feedback Skills don’t develop from rare events. Repetition without feedback is useless. Counter example: political commentator. 3️⃣ Timely Feedback

Hume’s law

TIL Hume's Is-Ought Problem Hume argued we can't logically move from describing what is (facts) to prescribing what ought to be (morals). Example1: * Is: "Humans can eat meat." * Ought: "Therefore, humans should eat meat." Example2: * Is: "Air travel is convenient."

The real luxuries in life

The real luxuries in life

(Not sure who wrote this, but I agree.) The real luxuries in life: time health a quiet mind slow mornings ability to travel rest without guilt a good night's sleep calm and "boring" days meaningful conversations home-cooked meals people you love people who love you back

2024 EOY Reflections

2024 EOY Reflections

Dopamine

There has been a lot of confusing information about dopamine. I finally found a literature review-style article, and here is what I learned.

Life is short, a reading list

Life is short, a reading list

Reading list (to be updated) * Books * The Almanack of Naval Ravikant * Meditations - Marcus Aurelius * Four Thousand Weeks * How to Live: 27 conflicting answers - Derek Sivers * On the Shortness of Life - Seneca * Essays * Life is short - Paul Graham * The tail end - Tim Urban * Days are long

List of Advice

Here is a compilation of the advice I received and felt useful over the years, sharing them to pay it forward. 1. “patience” 1. This single word is the parting advice I got from a manager earlier in my career whom I really respected. I still haven’t developed a

London

We visited London in Jan 2024. Here is a quick trip report. (Originally posted here) 1. Westminster Abby, mostly to check out famous ppl’s tombs; nice site and history too; I quite like the colors from these shots from Ricoh GRIII (first trip with this little pocket camera, very

Diffusion Models

Machine Learning

Diffusion Models

This is the first post of hopefully a series of post walking through diffusion models. This post will introduce the foundations, focusing on two foundational papers, that many other papers built upon.

Building LLM-powered products

Machine Learning

Building LLM-powered products

This is a quick note to discuss a few topics below related to building LLM-powered products and applications, such as how to let LLM use tools and become autonomous agents, how to incorporate domain adaptation, and the production hurdles.

How does Auto-GPT work?

Machine Learning

How does Auto-GPT work?

In this note, we'll take a look at how Auto-GPT works and discuss LLM's ability to do explicit reasoning and to become an autonomous agent. We'll touch upon a few related works such as WebGPT, Toolformer, and Langchain.

From Transformers to ChatGPT

Machine Learning

From Transformers to ChatGPT

This note provides a high-level summary of the progress in large language models (LLMs) covering major milestones from Transformers to ChatGPT. The note serves as a fast-paced recap for readers to catch up on this field quickly.

Italy

In October 2021, we spent two weeks traveling to various cities in Italy, including Rome, Cinque Terre, Florence, Tuscany, and Venice. This was our first trip to Italy, and we have documented our journey with a report and photos.

Utah

Trip report (itinerary and photos) from our recent trip to southern Utah (Zion, Arches, Canyonlands and Bryce).

Next.js: Firebase Authentication and Middleware for API Routes

Web Development

Next.js: Firebase Authentication and Middleware for API Routes

Building Next.js app with Firebase authentication on the client-side, as well as using it on the server-side with a middleware pattern similar to Express.js.

Exponential-Min and Gumbel-Max

Machine Learning

Exponential-Min and Gumbel-Max

Exponential-min and Gumbel-max tricks for reformulating sampling from a discrete distribution as argmin and argmax, making the sampling operation differentiable.

Quantitative Tech Interview Preparation Guide

Quantitative Tech Interview Preparation Guide

A short list of interview preparation resources for Data Scientists, Machine Learning Engineers, Machine Learning Scientists, Quant Developers and Quant Researchers.

Recent Progress in Neural Variational Inference

Machine Learning

Recent Progress in Neural Variational Inference

A literature survey of recent papers on Neural Variational Inference (NVI) and its application in topic modeling.

A Brief Survey of Generative Models

Machine Learning

A Brief Survey of Generative Models

A high-level summary of various generative models including Variational Autoencoders (VAE), Generative Adverserial Networks (GAN), and their notable extentions and generalizations, such as f-GAN, Adversarial Variational Bayes (AVB), Wasserstein GAN, Wasserstein Auto-Encoder (WAE), Cramer GAN and etc

Expectation-Maximization Algorithm in 10 minutes

Machine Learning

Expectation-Maximization Algorithm in 10 minutes

A quick walk-through of Expectation-Maximization (EM) algorithm and its cousins.