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TL;DR

This idea proposes that synonymous codons may act as more than passive alternatives — they could be part of an evolved error-correcting code hidden in the genome.

It’s a new angle on an old code.


The Koha model describes an algorithm for how neurons within a neural circuit specialize to become pattern detectors. The model also describes the role that dendritic spines have in memory formation and storage.

Some short segments of the recording are missing, and there were also some audio issues at the beginning of the recording. But overall the idea is followable.


What exactly is elegant about this algorithm? The approach seems computationally quite inefficient to me.


It is inefficient to build (unless on GPU), but good for search. Moreover, the search naturally benefits from data locality after ordering - this allows using MergeTree tables in ClickHouse. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36341754

And it is around 10 lines of code in SQL: https://presentations.clickhouse.com/meetup74/ai/#35


That's the thing though, it's very easy to perform approximate nearest neighbor search in an efficient way. There are plenty of simple solutions for that. The real challenge is to design an algorithm that can scale & that remains robust even when there are additions and deletions to the set.


That presentation was pretty cool, thanks for posting.


As he's expressing several opinions, let's comment on each one separately:

1) His comment that "People don’t want to run their own servers, and never will" is correct, but I think it's not the right way to think about the problem. All of us have gigabytes of cached shit on our devices. Ideally that locally stored information should be part of a decentralized web. By "decentralized web" I mean smth very different from today's web3 bs.

2) "A protocol moves much more slowly than a platform" - again, he is correct, but I feel like he's not seeing the larger picture. The fact that a protocol "moves much more slowly" is actually a feature. Elaboration: He is looking only at the pace of change, not at the robustness of the system in question. Old software that was designed for use value, still works flawlessly, i.e. it doesn't break. The dependency graph of older protocols is mind blowingly small. Today's software, which most often gets designed for exchange value, breaks within a year if it doesn't get updates, because their dependency graph is enormous. It's correct that protocols rarely update, but they get forked way more. Most updates get introduced through new forks.

3) his section "Making some distributed apps" - spot on. As long as you need to have a local copy of a ledger (even if it's just the block headers) to be a validator, the majority of users will still have to trust a server. crypto fanatics will claim "yeah, but you can ask for a merklle proof of the state" miss that lying by omission is a thing (i.e. in the classic merkle tree, you can prove that smth is present, you cannot prove that smth is not present). As a result servers can still lie to you by omission. Crypto fanatics will say "yeah, but you can contact several nodes", but that assumes that there are several nodes. In reality the majority of projects will only call an Infura node. It's all insane. Nothing about today's crypto space is actually trustless & decentralized.

4) His section "Making an NFT" - Yup, the NFT space is ridiculous on several levels. His arguments against metamask are also legit, same reasoning as in the previous point.

5) Section "Recreating this world" - I think he's making the same logical mistake as in the earlier sections here. The cryptocurrency protocols did not converge to a client - server setup. They always were a client - server setup in disguise. The problems related to simplified payment verification (SPV) were never actually solved. I think it's wrong to think that things must converge to platforms. Things that are use value based often resist such dynamics, e.g. Torrents.

6) The "It’s early days" section - yup, it's not early days anymore. These problems are inherit in the architecture design of blockchain protocols.

7) "But you can’t stop a gold rush" - This whole section was spot on. It's all a gold rush. There's no use value to any of the crypto projects right now, except maybe enabling people who live under authoritarian regimes to take take their capital with them.

8) "Creativity might not be enough" - I don't agree with the first part of his conclusion, but the second part is legit.

Personally I think current web3 is going down a very bad path. The old school p2p protocol designers were still driven mainly by a socialist / anarchist zeitgeist. They were designing for use value. Today's protocols have a neoliberal zeitgeist. Use value was thrown out of the window in exchange for speculative value.


The real reason why people don’t use the blocked bloom filter, is because it’s FPR is much higher + it requires more storage. It has the worst of both worlds.


TLDR:

- The paper argues for the existence of a code within dendritic spines.

- The paper describes a biological mechanism for how information is processed within neurons.

- The paper describes a biological mechanism for how neurons within competitive circuits can learn to become pattern detectors.


Germany has lost the race for renewable energy against China, and it is losing the race for EVs against both the US and China. Two tech sectors that will generate immense wealth. Around 30% of Germany's GDP depends on the automotive market. There are whole factories in Germany that design parts that will soon be completely obsolete, and they're not adjusting any of their strategies. The EU has most definitely lost the tech race.


People in most EU countries are 1) annoyingly conservative when it comes to tech, and 2) the insane bureaucracy and regulations in most EU countries simply does not allow for the formation of a startup sphere. As a result we see 0 innovation in the tech space from Europe's side.

I believe that the hostility of EU countries towards foreigners plays also a big role in all this. If you're a non-EU citizen trying to setup a startup in an EU country, you're out of luck. For me as a non-EU citizen living in an EU country, it's just much simpler to start a startup somewhere else than here.


So we’re ignoring the fact that Germany basically backstabbed Ukraine with that deal on purpose? Germany did not want to get involved into the Russia / Ukraine conflict because of Russia’s gas dependence, but they knew that Ukraine could force them to take a stance because of their pipeline. So Germany screwed them over and started a pipeline directly with Russia. Germany here is just as much of a scumbag as the US.


I wouldn't expect anything different from François..


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