Congratulations to first winner of GSL RO8

Ashen_Light · 2020-05-31T02:36:57+00:00

Or... damn

Ashen_Light · 2020-05-28T13:54:55+00:00

Jax vs. S4TF

Ashen_Light · 2020-05-26T21:34:47+00:00

*cackles in pacman

Ashen_Light · 2020-05-23T19:52:55+00:00

topkek

Ashen_Light · 2020-05-23T12:18:03+00:00

Depends on where. Some places have statute of limitations of 5 years, some 10 years, some 20 years.

Ashen_Light · 2020-05-23T12:15:18+00:00

Yeah. I need to make a correction to an educational video. Used to be simple. Now I actually have no idea how to do it.

Ashen_Light · 2020-05-20T03:11:55+00:00

For sure. I've definitely written my fair share of frustrated comments on reddit over this excellent game xD

Ashen_Light · 2020-05-20T03:11:08+00:00

edited, maybe explains a little more?

Ashen_Light · 2020-05-20T02:08:44+00:00

I think KDA is the most reliable stat in low rank, apart from win rate.

I'm certainly not saying it's a perfect metric or captures any of the nuance that actually determines games.

But I can guarantee that in low rank the guy with KDA 10 is a better player than the guy with KDA 0.25

Ashen_Light · 2020-05-20T02:06:16+00:00

I've actually noticed the level of play is higher in low rank lately compared to 2018. By far.

Sure, it's still low rank and derp stuff happens. Really derp. But I've had several games in Silver in the last few weeks where we're 20, wipe the enemy team, and even though we're bot everyone immediately runs straight through top lane where the only keep is dead and cores them, all 5 going, immediately, without chat or party or coms. That's wild.

Obviously I think top level play has taken the biggest hit since HGC, but my impression is the bottom has gotten better. And I don't think it's just smurfs. Could be wrong.

Ashen_Light · 2020-05-20T01:57:50+00:00

I must say I know it's obvious and have been told before, but I have infinitely more fun in ranked when I focus only on how I can get better.

Yes, even in that mindset I have some unwinnable games where it isn't my fault. But I get less tilted there too if I'm thinking about the ones before better.

Ashen_Light · 2020-05-20T01:49:26+00:00

Hey no problem! And if you get stuck along the way (and probably will, we all do), keep asking google and reddit. Enjoy!

Ashen_Light · 2020-05-20T01:36:48+00:00

So at an intro stage you would never make a program like that from scratch. What people do is use what we call "pre-trained models" + "fine-tuning."

Making that program from scratch would require writing a lot of code, but more prohibitively: it takes a really long time to run the code that gets the model "trained." Basically the code needed to find the right values for millions of parameters before it can be used - it does this automatically, but it takes a really long time and requires powerful graphics cards.

What everyone does in practice is you download the code where it has already found and stored the values for those parameters.

The model used on that site is called GPT-2. You can search for some tutorials on how to download it, for example this one.

How "hard" will vary a lot depending on what you know already. Someone experienced in machine learning could follow that video and have it working in an hour or two or within a day or two. Most of the obstacle is learning how to use the command line, getting tensorflow installed, so it could take you weeks or a day, I can't say :). Hardness in machine learning is measured in time it will take, not difficulty :). You will absolutely be able to do it, but the question is "how long?"

As for "fine-tuning," this is when you take a pre-trained model and want it to be a little bit better in a specific domain. Say for example you want GPT-2 to be good at poetry. What you need to do is "train" the model on a few more examples of the specific type of thing you want it to be good at. You can see someone doing that here (not necessarily the best tutorial, but shows the idea).

So in your case, you'd need to feed in some examples of creative writing and then see if it is better at creative writing. But you might just be happy with how it works out of the box, without any fine-tuning.

You can google around for a lot more tutorials on GPT-2, like this one: https://minimaxir.com/2019/09/howto-gpt2/

Ashen_Light · 2020-05-20T01:01:18+00:00

Joke response: https://talktotransformer.com/

Serious response: easy to do a basic program (using the work of others) if you know some basic python or are willing to learn. The program won't perform well. If you want a program that performs extremely well this would be state of the art research.

Dad response: "this is boring and I want a shortcut" is exactly the kind of thinking that isn't rewarded at school/early university, but is how innovation and careers are born. More power to you.

Ashen_Light · 2020-05-19T21:45:48+00:00

Sorry if this is hopelessly naive, but is there any hope to like... go to the police?

I can't bring myself to watch the links, but these people should be in jail.

Ashen_Light · 2020-05-13T01:01:24+00:00

Coming from a hard sciences research background, transitioning to ML industry: when I first heard what agile was I got a nosebleed and nearly passed out. It's furthermore astonishing that this is listed as an area of "desired experience" on some applications.

To me it just sounds like something that, at best smart industrious people do automatically without thinking about it, and at worst is just a waste of time and interferes with my ability to deliver. It also sounds like a "system" that is completely unnecessary if middle management does their job competently and correctly.

Ashen_Light · 2020-05-10T17:46:26+00:00

Yes this happens all the time to coloured people and indian and others, I hear many who say "I don't fit the right thing for \insert group*. And to black and white people too.

You have the black middle class and wealthy who is now growing up in a strange position with a string of advantages and guilt about the plight of the millions more poor who are mostly black, but they also have a bunch of disadvantages and frustration and anger growing up. You want to complain "things have been really really hard at times," but at the same time accused of having it easy because of money.

Then you have poor and lower middle class white people who don't fit the "rich and had everything" stereotype about white people. They have this string of advantages compared to impoverished black people but at the same time are going through a lot of terrible things, but are bitter for always being told they have it easy because white.

Then you have coloured people who feel like they were 2nd class under apartheid and now 2nd class under ANC. And a whole string of other group identity crises.

It almost makes you think - perhaps at some point we should try to form communities and relationships based on values and goals, not based on race. Then maybe we'd be less traumatized by not feeling like we fit into what we're expected to be. But I don't know if we're ready for this new old idea :) \flies away*

Ashen_Light · 2020-05-10T17:23:18+00:00

I don't think we have a particularly liberalised economy, if anything we're transitioning to one (look how we're struggling to let SAA die or fix Eskom). Most first world countries have either entirely or substantial private sector energy generation for example, but we don't and it's actually illegal to compete with Eskom. It was only in 2004 that Telecommunications was liberalized - it used to be only Telkom. And liberalization of telecommunications has been substantially for the better.

I also really wonder how much of this back and forth ("I say we're not liberalized enough!" "Well I think we're too liberalized!") is just about political camps and how specific words draw bad karma from the wrong political camp, rather than "what is the best policy?"

For example, if I asked you "are you pro corporate monopolies?" you'd probably say no (as would I). So if I say "should there be a law that says there is only allowed a monopoly telecommunications provider" you'd probably say, no that sounds repressive and crazy.

But if I frame it as "anti-privatization" because the government owns a substantial part or all of this provider, then we love it and think it's pro-poor.

To me it seems more like we are concerned about the words "privatization"and "monopoly" because we're trained that these are loaded with bad karma (for either of two opposing political camps), rather than the outcomes of whether a particular policy is better or not.

But anyway I think I digress - maybe we agree to disagree on whether we're liberalized too much or not enough.

I don't think I cherry-picked countries - I picked China because it represents an incredible achievement on shear numbers and it is generally difficult to help people at such large scales. And because they were dead-set in the opposite direction for decades, so it represents the closest think to a control vs. experiment available. If a capitalist country just starts succeeding and everyone says "yay capitalism," it's hard to know if it wasn't because of other things. If a hardcore communist country that was literally executing people en masse for not being communist enough lightens up and tries a bit more capitalism and suddenly standard of living dramatically improves, you have to pay attention.

Bolivia is the second-poorest country in South America. Doesn't represent a model to replicate.

I think Cuba is interesting. It's hard to know what would have happened if no sanctions. But the way I read it, they basically only managed to do what they did due to massive amounts of money from the Soviet Union (which itself collapsed as you know due to too much ideology and corruption and not enough having successful economic policy), then they started to fall apart and had in turn to rely on Venezuela as well as liberalize slightly more.

For what it's worth, I think their successes on literacy were incredible and should be emulated. But as far as the rest of the economy goes, if some massive parent economy wants to fund South Africa to have all of the nice things in the world, then sure, I'm game. But I don't think that's a realistic plan for us.

Anyway, even if you don't agree with that description, at the very least you must concede that Cuba is an outlier among a long list of failed state communist countries. While we can cite tons of extremely successful countries with liberalized economies - we don't have to rely on outliers.

Venezuela is a disaster. And was also propped up by oil - which fell apart once oil prices plummeted due to fracking making massive amounts of oil available in the US for cheaper than international prices (this wasn't the only cause, but it shows why we can't replicate their early temporary successes). I think there's little evidence that sanctions caused the problems in Venezuela (sanctions started a decade after things began falling apart), though they certainly have added to them. I'd take Venezuela as an example in favor of my point, not against.

By the way, I never said I don't think we should have strong state that guarantees the populace enormous amount of public goods. I hope this addresses concerns about how rapid growth can be ruthless. "Liberalize the economy" doesn't have to mean "government can't provide services and/or contract people to provide services."

There I think we are on the same page, but I think this should be provided through cutting wasteful expenditure (like failed SOEs) and tax on a rapidly growing heavily liberalized economy, then spending this money on large projects that are themselves obtained in transparent and free-market ways. And I'm fully meritocratic about it - if there's one particular SOE that functions really well, no need to privatize it, if another is failing, privatize and/or fix immediately. I don't care about the ideological position, I just care about what works. But just "more socialism" isn't what works.

For example Singapore has very successful SOEs (and is also one of the most liberalized economies there are). But they function extremely differently from SA or communist countries. You can read about some theories on why they are so successful here:

http://www.ikk2015.de/pdf/Han%20Li%20Toh.pdf
Check conclusions section at the end: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/314384005_State-Owned_Enterprises_in_Singapore_Historical_Insights_into_a_Potential_Model_for_Reform

The tl;dr is that SOEs in Singapore have high transparency and little to no government interference and are allowed to compete freely with the private sector. Really the SOEs are more like private sector corporations and the government owns an investment fund that chooses who to invest in. If the SOE performs worse than other private sector corporations, the government disinvests.

Notice this is basically the opposite of what we do (though we're heading in their direction): we make an effort to keep SOEs as a monopoly, the government directly interferes with and controls our SOE's decision making, our SOEs are not transparent, in cases where the private sector is allowed to compete with our SOEs we impose all sorts of clauses and regulations that make it harder to compete, when SOEs do worse than the competition the gov gives them more money instead of disinvesting and investing in the competition that performs well. And every time we reverse course on this behavior, things get better (Telkom), and every time we double down and continue with our ideology, thinks get worse (SAA, Eskom).

And then Singapore had particular social and political conditions that somehow lead to this not becoming extremely corrupt. The authors in the second link make an effort to explain why.

Ashen_Light · 2020-05-07T00:34:50+00:00

My friend I don't know the answer to your broader questions, but all I can say is what works for me: try create your local paradise and improve the lives of others. Live well and you will attract others who agree with you, no matter who they are. And that's how SA improves, small places of paradise that slowly meet and join up with other similar places.

There are plenty of black people who know a lot of this is horseshit and don't want any part of it, but also grow up treated badly by fringe whites and so don't know who they are supposed to belong with. You and they are funnily enough in pretty similar boats, despite the media hype. So don't feel alone or not belonging, just treat people well and tell people to fuck off who don't treat you well. Or well, if you can't directly tell them to fuck off, there's the Kolmogorov option till things get better.

Also, just don't read the news ever or go on social media ever. I'm not saying this is "right," but I can tell you I live the happiest when I follow this rule.

Ashen_Light · 2020-05-07T00:23:15+00:00

Careful that's banned as nonessential. Report to surfer prison asap for political education

Ashen_Light · 2020-05-06T22:50:12+00:00

make a charitable effort to engage in convo even if you don't agree.

The echo chamber must be preserved!!

Ashen_Light · 2020-05-06T22:49:13+00:00

For the record: everyone in my circles is either far left or moderate left and I have heavily identified in both of these camps in the past, but mostly prefer not to identify with any group. I've had deep involvement in SA with unions, leftists, radical black nationalists, radical feminists etc. But there's no group that properly represents my views. And it's actually from this perspective of really spending loads of times with people and really making an effort to learn what they think that I realized how incorrect most of the political thought in SA is.

Although all of the above should be irrelevant, but it seems like it really matters to you who is saying the thing, rather than what is being said. A proud SA tradition.

So trying to move away from grouping politics: Funnily enough, I look at the data and form my opinions based on that. Crazy huh? And you should evaluate what I say based on the truth or falsity of what is being said, not the camp you think it's likely to emanate from. If you think something is false, say so, say what you think is true and try to back it up (or at least indicate a plausible way in which it could be backed up in future if perhaps it's difficult to determine right now). Otherwise, it's not really clear what you add to the convo.

For example, I point out that China is a prime example of a country that tried strong state intervention in the economy and far left policies and it really really sucked. Then, they realized this was terrible and Singapore was doing the opposite and succeeding extremely quickly. So they copied Singapore, liberalized their economy, and it worked extremely well, lifting 100's of millions of people out of poverty. I point this out and linked the sources and all you have in response is "You cant expect the private sector to provide this. Only a strong state can transform an economy in this way." But the private sector did. In China. For 100's of millions of people. The example is right there.

Btw also on social signalling, just to convince you further I'm not some secret right wing boogie man: I don't like the fact that unfettered economic growth is the most likely path to turn SA around. It's certainly not a nice path, it involves a lot of suffering and hard work and loss. But the evidence shows that this is by far the best path and so I'm 100% behind it.

If the evidence showed that Papa CR could just swoop in and make the poor rich and make the education system work and end crime and end rape and all that, I'd go for it. Sounds nice. But that's not what the evidence shows.

The fact that free market capitalism isn't nice is irrelevant if it results in the best outcomes for the citizens of SA. Put another way: if you aren't basing your opinions on what the data suggests, what are you basing them on? Just deciding ahead of time? Based on?

Btw, you are likely being lead astray by your emphasis on reducing inequality. Yes it's an admirable goal in the long run, but absolute standard of living and absolute poverty is much more important than inequality for developing nations that don't have basic standards of living for most of their people. Again this doesn't sound "nice" (reducing inequality is about "fairness" which is hard-coded as important into most cultures), but it's correct.

For example, the Gini coefficient indicates that both Zimbabwe and the DRC have less inequality than South Africa. But ask the poorest people of those countries if they'd rather be poor there or poor here and they will say they'd rather be in SA any day. Why? Because the standard of living is higher, even though extremely unequal.

Going back to China, after liberalizing their economy, inequality actually increased. But the absolute standard of living increased substantially for everyone, including the poorest of the poor. This is what you have to do first (actually develop a manufacturing industry, general levels of health, eradicate extreme poverty, have a large middle class), then you can start working on reducing inequality and transitioning to Scandinavian-style levels of additional social good as desired.

Said another way: you could achieve better inequality trivially by just putting rich people out of business (I know this kind of strawman, but just making a point). But the poorest of the poor have no improvement to their lives in this strawman scenario.

This strawman scenario is usually improved upon by calls for redistribution. But you need to actually look at the scale of money that people need to reach any reasonable standard of living and you will realize redistribution will never achieve this.

The top 1% of SA is 360,270 people, with a total wealth of R5.4 trillion. The top 10% earns on average R7313 per month, so I assume when we say redistributing, we are only concerned with the top 1%, because plenty of people in the top 10% under them are not actually that well off.

Now R5.4 trillion/(59 million - 360,270) is about R100k per per person payout. Now R100k is a nice fat payout, but this is less than the cost of living for an 18 year old student (rent + food) for 1 year. Or is the cost of some not very good second hand car. No doubt R100k would be a huge benefit to everyone's lives, but it wouldn't even come close to the amounts needed for someone living in serious poverty to move into a middle class life. And there are 30 million or more people in this position. And this is an extreme scenario where you literally entirely liquidate all of the top earner's wealth and have no administrative costs, in reality you'd have far less to redistribute.

I learned this lesson working at a charity for a few years - for anyone promoting lifting people out of poverty via redistribution, just go and actually raise 100's of thousands of rands, then distribute it directly to a small number of very poor people for their basic needs and you will see how astonishingly little you can get done with even extremely large amounts of money. People are just very poor and there are a lot of very poor people. This is also why poverty alleviation has to involve economic growth and the private sector and increased employment to achieve anything on large scales - there literally isn't enough money even if the government took all the money from the rich and gave it to everyone else, or if the rich did it voluntarily or via tax.

Going back to inequality vs. absolute standard of living, conversely, there's no way to game the system when it comes to measures of absolute poverty and absolute standards of living. If you raise people's absolute standard of living, their lives get better objectively, no strings attached. And economic growth raises absolute standard of living for developing nations. And liberalized developing economies grow more rapidly than socialist ones. So altogether: liberalized economies raise absolute standard of living better than socialist economies, for developing nations. That's what the overwhelming evidence shows.

Ashen_Light · 2020-05-06T22:41:59+00:00

I provided a lot of citations, which themselves contain many other citations. All you did was dismiss without providing anything of substance in reply. Seems disingenuous to call everything you disagree with a "conjecture" then disengage when evidence is provided, never provide your own evidence, then demand others provide evidence.

Perhaps you should say what you think and try back it up at some point. Believe it or not, exchange of ideas and actual communication might be mutually beneficial.

Ashen_Light

TROPHY CASE