@predict_addict Yup. There’s nothing more practical than a good theory.
English
Jan Willem Brands
2.1K posts
Solid mathematical ideas almost always outperform contrived engineering tricks.
For years deep learning has been dominated by increasingly complex architectural hacks: CNN blocks, attention layers, channel mixers, residual pathways, normalization stacks.
Every few years a new architecture is announced as if it were a revolution.
One of the most famous examples was Kaiming He and Residual Networks (ResNet). At the time he was paraded around the AI world like a celebrity because residual connections supposedly “solved” deep learning.
But these were largely engineering patches.
Now something much more interesting appeared.
A new architecture called CliffordNet returns to mathematics — specifically Clifford Algebra, developed in the 19th century by William Kingdon Clifford.
Instead of stacking arbitrary modules, the model is built around the geometric product
uv = u·v + u∧v
A single algebraic operation that simultaneously captures inner product structure and geometric interactions.
In other words: the math already contains the interaction mechanism.
No attention blocks.
No mixer layers.
No architectural spaghetti.
The result:
• 77.82% accuracy on CIFAR-100 with only 1.4M parameters
• roughly 8× fewer parameters than ResNet-18
And with strict O(N) complexity.
The paper even suggests that once geometric interactions are modeled correctly, feed-forward networks become largely redundant.
A good reminder for the AI community.
Engineering tricks can dominate for years.
But eventually mathematics shows up and deletes half the architecture.
Paper:
[arxiv.org/pdf/2601.06793…)
19th century geometry just walked into computer vision.
English
@levelsio Philips has been slowly dying for 40 years now. Simply lost their mojo. Ruled by investor clubs like pension funds, not run by entrepreneurs. Which is ok, but the ambitious types just leave, and society benefits.
English
The biggest fumble in business ever might be Philips spinning off ASML, TSMC and NXP
Philips co-founded ASML in 1984, then co-founded TSMC in 1987, then they founded NXP
They sold each of them for short term profits in the 2000s
ASML is now worth $545B
TSMC is worth $1.76T
NXP is worth $50B
Philips today is worth just $27B
If they'd never sold, Philips would be the largest company in the EU today, worth $650B
Philips CEO Cor Boonstra called it "making money with the success of the past"
🤡
English
Very well put!
FSD is solved when we can buy cars without steering wheel and with cheap insurance. Let the system sort things out. It usually does.
English
Tesla fans using the “4-second disengagement” as a gotcha are missing the forest for the trees. Yes, the driver was technically in control of the vehicle at the moment of impact. But she was in control because FSD was already failing by driving too fast ahead of this sharp turn — it was heading straight into a concrete barrier at highway speed with no sign of correcting.
Everyone who has frequently used FSD or Autopilot and paints this 4-second disengagement as a “gotcha” moment is being disengenous, and that includes Elon Musk.
I have tens of thousands of miles on FSD, and I’ve experienced the system coming too fast into a turn at least half a dozen times.
We’ve said this before and we’ll keep saying it: the problem with FSD isn’t what happens when the driver is paying attention and the system works. The problem is what happens when the system gives you every reason to trust it, and then suddenly doesn’t work. The driver has to recognize the failure, assess the situation, decide on a correction, and physically execute it, all in less time than the system needs to create the danger.
Musk and Tesla’s propagandists can point to the logs all they want. The video shows what actually matters: FSD approaching a standard highway curve at full speed with zero indication it was going to navigate it. That’s the failure. Everything that happened after, including the panicked disengagement, is a consequence of that failure.
The framing that this was “manual driving, not FSD” is technically true for the final 4 seconds and deeply dishonest about the full sequence of events. It’s exactly the kind of liability shell game that courts are increasingly rejecting, as that $243 million verdict makes clear. Tesla created the system, sold it as “Full Self-Driving,” and profits from the ambiguity. At some point, it has to own the consequences.
Electrek.co@ElectrekCo
Tesla says FSD was off before Cybertruck crash — but the video tells a different story electrek.co/2026/03/18/tes… by @fredlambert
English
Unpleasant truth about programming: solutions that wind up winning aren't the cleanest, most elegant algorithms and design but rather the ones with (morally speaking) the most giant, complete and horrible set of switch statements covering all the weird and interlocking cases.
English
@Plinz @JosephJacks_ Understandable, the place is boring as hell. Every cottage is manicured to death and the fucking sun is out everyday.
English
@JosephJacks_ I have just learned that Marin County has 250 Alcoholics Anonymous groups
English
i think chips with burnt-in LLMs that run at a very low power will probably result in much of the world around us being unneccesarily intelligent. cheaper to throw that chip and some flash with a readme into an automatic door opener than develop firmware for it.
English
Static types catch errors early and that's great—but they also catch non-errors early, preventing you from writing the software you want—and that's terrible.
Those who only tell you about one side of the tradeoff, or claim the other side is universally negligible—are dishonest.
English
@FischerKing64 True. But they make me feel frustrated and helpless. And then angry. What's next?
English
By far the best and most relevant novelist over the last 30 years is Michel Houellebecq.
Every novel is still relevant. They were all prescient. They’re all filled with humor that actually lands. No one else is close.
English
Fox News: “So far, Germany, Italy, and Japan have said they will not send ships to” the Middle East to help keep the Strait of Hormuz open.”
Lawrence B. Jones: “Well, they fell for the trap because, as the president said during the press conference yesterday, it’s almost a test. He goes, do we really need them? No, but he goes, I kind of want to see what they’re going to say to us. Are they going to be there—and they’re kind of proving his theory.”
Cut off all funding to these countries!
English
@JustDeezGuy Nope, you have to really track the opening and closing brackets…
English
Pure FP is about “reducing the state a developer has to hold in their head” to 0.
trish@_trish_xD
wise words from the best systems engineer I've worked with: "two things that make code actually maintainable: 1. reduce the layers a reader has to trace 2. reduce the state a reader has to hold in their head" applies to every codebase. always.
English
Jan Willem Brands がリツイート
I wonder how much of Western civilization's collapse is downstream of writers and scriptwriters deciding they were too cool and sophisticated to write about good people doing good things.
English
@cars_pixels Well it looks definitely better than a Tesla model 3. Similar price?
English
LEAKED!
Here's a first look at the all-new and fully-electric BMW i3 sedan. Thoughts?
English
@nexta_tv Well, ackshually, it’s better for Europe to talk to Russia directly than to expect Trump to represent. Isn’t that what he means?
English
😑 Belgium’s Prime Minister once again calls on the EU to negotiate with Moscow
According to him, European initiatives will not lead to peace in Ukraine without dialogue with Moscow. De Wever argues that direct contacts with the Kremlin are necessary to resolve the war.
His previous calls for negotiations have already drawn criticism across Europe — many believe such statements only play into Moscow’s hands.
What do you think? Are direct talks necessary, or should there be no negotiations with terrorists?
NEXTA@nexta_tv
Belgium’s Prime Minister says Russia will not be defeated — frozen assets will have to be returned to the Kremlin Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever told La Libre that talk of Russia’s defeat is “a fairy tale and a complete illusion.” According to him, no one in the West seriously believes in a scenario where Moscow suffers a strategic failure. He added that the frozen Russian assets will eventually have to be returned to the Kremlin.
English
@bartjw @RichardDawkins I vaguely remember a proposal for a no-holds-barred version of the Olympics where doping etc. is allowed. Would become a bit of a freak show but I'd watch it...
English
@RichardDawkins If we’re entertaining wild hypotheticals in hopes of finding a point in edge cases:
if my child wants to become a dolphin & through gene therapy can develop w/webbed fingers, later winning Olympic swimming gold, should they have been allowed the therapy or later competition?
English
@NotSure09013362 @London_W4 ... rock&roll baby. Can we meet? I'm starting to like you.
English
@BarcoCTO @London_W4 You degenerates always go for that kind of thing. Sex and drugs, thats all you have.
English
On a train heading out of London for a trip to England. Thought I’d show you the architectural dross that is Nine Elms. Possibly the most poorly designed, most devoid of character, devoid of personality area in London. If you can bear to watch to the end, there is a glimpse of an architectural masterpiece amongst it all though.
English
@NotSure09013362 @London_W4 ‘Degeneracy and ugliness’… like I said you ain’t seen my nuts yet. Remember to take your valium.
English
@BarcoCTO @London_W4 Expected answer, you got nothing but degeneracy and ugliness, thats what you are.
English
@RubberGetsLiqd Yes, my wife had a Cherokee Sport 4L inline 6.
English
i wish car manufacturers would bring older models back. change absolutely nothing, just make them brand new
English
@NotSure09013362 @London_W4 You ain't seen my nuts yet. Go take a nap.
English
@BarcoCTO @London_W4 You simply dont understand life, you know the thing we all share. Did you get bullied at school? Bad parents? Or what is the reason for your hate towards beauty and harmony?
"You shall know them by their fruits" is a saying that fits right in with you.
English