I’ve been talking to coworkers about recent batch of papers claiming deep neural networks can or cannot generalize effectively.

I feel I do not have the same respect for this problem as my coworkers. I do not fear it as they do.

Let’s see, how bad could this be?

I suppose an example of this problem is learning to identify a cat. The robot may find out through reinforcement learning that a cat is best identified by scaring it suddenly and hearing surprised meow. So few mute cat exists that accuracy is negligibly decreased by this overfitting. The obvious problem with this is that there are mute cats and Hollywood will make a movie about the one that was used to defeat the AI that overpowered its human creators.

(And the reverse could be true as well, for example toy dogs finding out that scaring children into crying fit is the best way to detect a child from adult)

The intelligent reader will quickly point out that there are plenty of things covered in deepnets-101 that prevents that from happening. (Well maybe not necessarily for reinforcement learning, but straight up deep nets has nice regularizers)

What else could happen? Was there a meme around the internet about the indistinguishability of dogs and fried chicken? The fear is that Cortana would grab the dog and microwave it when you ask it to reheat the leftover from KFC. The generalization in this case is too general—it found anything that could resemble a dog instead of just the dogs. And this was just a meme, not sure if it could withstand serious answers.

More sophisticated problems, often jokingly put on display, are the mistakes that mentally ill people display. Well, mentally ill people and geniuses. The AI could make framing errors: throwing a person into a pool to clean some dirt off of his shoulder. The solution is not within reasonable framing of the problem. But it could be chosen due to the wrong type of generalization.

There is also a problem of leakage. For example, a learning system could overfit training data consisting of FBI profile so much that it is more of a determiner for whether FBI has investigated a person instead of determiner for true crimes. Failure to truly generalize to other populations for whom FBI never collected information is caused by the learning system picking up bias and errors of the whole FBI system consisting of many error-capable humans. The theory, at least for today’s systems, is that it is at least as bad as the human it learns from.

This now indeed seems to be a very interesting problem to consider. But there may not be a one-stop-shop solution to all of AI’s problems. Generalization is probably just one of many things we must solve for in future systems. This is great opportunity for scientific advancement and development of specializations, such as Robopsychology, and psychohistory, and…

But for real.

I’ve departed from work under very mysterious and inexplicable circumstances. Just before the Christmas break I was scheduled to work on highly visible project at the company. I wonder if my departure had something to do with my very recent blog post giving president Trump’s engineers as an example of superior group than software engineers? Perhaps someone felt a simile between software engineers to prostitutes was antagonizing to female software engineers? (Technically, that would be due to unconscious bias of the offendee IMHO.)

I don’t blame them. I wouldn’t want to be caught dead employing a unionizer. The company’s hip iconic and meteoric growth persona could be marred beyond recognition by such a scandalous employee! And as shareholder, I probably don’t want a unionizer employer either. It would get in the way of things.

(Don’t mock me a FOB, many many coworkers and leaders mgiht be, but not I. Your coworker and the media of this place would have you believe me that it’s needed but never shouldn’t or needn’t happening here in CA. One helpful friend literally, in these words said:”They’d blacklist you, you know that right? If you complain about unfairness they put you on a list and you will never find a job in the silicon valley again” Although that was a good decade and half ago… andI didn’t believe him then, but now… See here, and here, while they are not exactly anti-union efforts, these tech companies, as decided in out of courts, definitely are messing with selective employment and blacklisting of some candidates for reasons other than their skill fitness! Oh, ahh, my poor SIP, the consequent thought: hey, if they want to do that, Unions would really get in the way of these acts. Unions can detect these things and act to prevent them from happening to the extent they have, and to obtain more just, more remunerative remedies for all affected when it does happen.)

I mean my kids play date canceled by her friends’ parents, my new neighbor starts yelling at me for very very very minor stuff. Five checkout counters at the library, three free, and the people behind me insist on rushing us to use ours. I feel like I’ve been misunderstood by Californian karma for my blog post. I feel so unwelcome here all the sudden.

Honestly though, just because his party aggressively targeted Bay Area industry to tax and pillage, it doesn’t mean we can’t stay within bounds of legality and challenge the administration rationally.

Just because he can be crude, angry, discriminating and unreasoning, it doesn’t mean we have to be. Two wrongs doesn’t make a right. The case against the administration can be made a lot more effectively than they have been made so far.

And it is against California law to unfairly treat employees because of their politics. It is a protected class!

Anyways, all my posts are published long after I write them, so by the time you see this, I may not be here any more. I may be hacked and lose my access to computers all together… I may be in bankruptcy and foreclosures… I might have gone to the west and bought my farm, I applaud you if you hear these primitive mixed metaphors.

I wish the best for everyone still, and seriously hope that we can engage in civilized and legal conversation about politics–even in difficult and poor circumstances.

“…principles are all we have!” declared Michael in the heat of debate with admirer Cromwell about whether or not to blow Qo’nos. What a sharp contrast to “…hope is all we have” exclamation from Star Wars movie.

Yeoh’s costume, btw, reminds me of war lords she’s played in Chinese Wuxia movies. She wears it well.

Sigh, I’d hate to see Philippa summon Michael to see her one last time on her deathbed some years later in the watchers world… like when soong summoned data to bid farewell.

Wow, Ash leaves Michael so that Vog can returns to L’real and take control of Klingon home world… wow what a bitter bitter story for this tortured body and relationships… mind warping to think of the emotions…

And tos theme… I can hardly bear the anticipation…

So, just saw an Asian lady blatantly snapping several picture of screen of a laptop unbeknownst to it’s owner sitting back facing her in the Palo Alto Philz. She later she opens her amera app again d skes yet ore phtos. Another person of a different “profile” approached me and engaged in a “normal” “Silicon Valley”ish convo, he dropped a name that is remarkably similar to a strangely named variable that I had moments ago typed on my laptop in an attempt to name an explosion of genius. My laptop is obviously radio silent. So, I can only assume the same has happened to me. But honestly, size 11 Ubuntu font on a 15” UHD display (8-10megapixels about 300 ppi) ought have been very hard to snap… but that’s digressive.

The federal government is shutdown right now over the Mexico wall. Maybe that’s why all these foreign agents are operating in overdrive?

But it’s all good though. Consider the human cell, well, any eukaryotic cell, they have DNA’s, mRNA’s and tRNA’s… And they’re all floating around in their world like we float around in our world. Some RNA’s make copies of DNA’s, and some RNA’s take DNA information and does something with it. It all works because everything floats around and can interact and copy from canon DNA.

But the one thing though… Even in a primitive system like the cell, there’s this thing called the nucleus which is segregated from other things to prevent writes to DNA. I think our society should mimic this and prevent writes to information devices.

The trespass on my chattle is actionable in the United States when it causes harm. So you can look, you can mimic, but don’t mutate. (Btw, this is not a release of any copyrights I have over any thing, past present or future. Just abstractly discussing human acts upon information.)

A completely random examples, I’m not sure I know why I thought of it, if my compute suddenly lock up, mid-expression, as I bang out prototypo code furiously, due to knowing action of a second party, and I lose the use of it for a while, that is by definition tresspass of chattle, I was dispossessed of its use. The loss in that moment of inspiration is vast, the delay of work, the mental anguish, consequent actions causing harm to me(like this time) are all fair game by the law of this land. If the second party changes some memory or stored information unbeknownst to me(and without my permission), then that also tresspasses on my property. In this vein, it seems that the conception of privacy, and it’s enforcement, can be partially grounded in the need for private property and property law.

Although privacy seems to be a fundamentally different kind of property than physical or intellectual, it is information property. Information is real, you know it when you see or otherwise become aware of it. Information exists objectively and its quality, quantity and changes can all be measured like physical objects(e.g. your information gain is my loss of privacy)

Information property entirely encompasses intellectual property and many other informational property. It has become increasingly practical to both protect and tresspass upon information property. I hope the courts of America will explore this notion in the cases to come.

Honestly, some days I think I may just be mentally ill, worrying about another party constantly hacking my electronic devices. There was some old news….. here–apparently, making many typographic mistakes is a sign of sick mental mind. You cannot imagine how many corrections I had to make while typing this blog entry on my Pixel 2. (And even more glaring once upon an n-th review)

All those suspicions about law enforcement hacking the cellular network, company security commandeering my computer to protect company IP or secrets, competitors and entrenpenurs hacking to gain competitive advantage, sadistic voyeurs satiating themselves….. What if all that is my imagination trying to compensate for my real lack of effort, talent or capacity? What if I simply type really badly and made all this trouble for myself?

How can I know for myself what I am to this world?

But, at least, in case all this is imaginary, we have a new idea for a future where we have legal protection on our ownership of information property.

Hrmn I just read my blog post. Wow what was I thinking? I don’t know when I wrote this!! Or why it was publicized? Did somebody hack my WordPress account?

It’s happened before on other internet services, I bought an insulting domain name to prevent someone else from using it. Later I found it pointed to my own website. Some one obviously hacked my domain registration account and changed the records…

If the spies at work are monitoring my personal blog I could get fired for this! Should have put a disclaimer in that says it isn’t meant to be about my present employer–and I will not name that entity fearing retribution or jeering from its peers.

That is a very poorly written blog with a few very mean things! Like wtf is wrong with foreigners who are talented? And there are no domestic terrorist putting dogshit on my lawn other than creators of these excrements.

I mean it practically says they are not talented as my employers says they are. Man that’s something to write. I mean I’m an immigrant. My mom and dad are immigrants! Wtf? Are we talentless overhyped like I seem to think everyone else is?

Errr…

(I’m so glad I didn’t write even prostitutes knows to take action against those who wrong them… what would I have meant even? This piece of writing is so retarded and so demeaning!!)

(Man this is such… so many incomplete thought sounds like reading a freaking stroke in progress. …. think of trump this trump that… PR and GR…, developer professional, the engineering and surrounding activity are complicated and delicate…. then the consequent thought: when will a software professional muster the wherewithal to be a president of United States? (In particular all You software/tech people cursing trumps stupidity, how big is your project? Has it never fallen down? Yes yes he’s gone bankrupt many times and runs big business probably in a valley-evil way. But if you are so righteous and he is so evil why don’t you run for president? Is it because you are too busy debugging code? Is it because you spin in whirlwind of your products’ upkeep? Is it because your systems can’t scale in complexity space? I mean gosh, I had to factory reset the pixel 2 three times in the first month of use, and during that time they price went down $300 from my purchase price. How can google, once proud geeky engineer-centric tech-centric and knowledge- and skill-centric company with insanely high hiring bar as evidenced by their interview questions, how is it loosing so badly to Apple, a design-centric company? In code they are weaker in code there are bugs in android!!! They’re not weaker in usability, the stupid thing has more visible bugs) I mean I hate myself for experiencing this. Google is such an icon of tech! Symbol of no-evil, it is such a big company with market cap. How can money and talent not produce a product?)(but!! Larry or Sergei if you guys run, I will very likely still vote for you and probably eric too)

Why do we aspire and compare ourselves to jet engineering and skyscrapersand dam building? Sheer scale compared to size of individual people . Their largeness in the number of people required to make happen. The complexity of each exerts demand on the intelligence and organization of every individual involved( and yes of course also exerts greatly in pillars of the organization) that is to say it is hard to build a plane and a skyscraper and a dam. It is also to marvel at the fact that it was made to happen: at scale in repeatable industrial setting where it act of creation is repeated on demand! Lots of planes are built. Lots of buildings are built, lots of dams are built wherever and when ever people need them. AND they almost never fail! They never fail in spectacular ways like 100% outage for an entire day! What if on my 14 hour flight to China the engine quits for 18 hours while engineers turn on debugging and step through each rotation of the turbines? What if the third shard (floor) of Empire State Building just shut down and let’s nothing through for a day while DBA’s try to reboot and make another one to replace the broken one? These things do not fail. This is also to say that software do fail… at alarmingly higher rate. How is our industry to grow and become more relied upon by people (the same way we rely on planes dams and tall buildings)? If we don’t even try, it will fail! Humanity may fail because of or bad software! What if fate of humanity depended on 10million lines of ruby? Would you risk that? What about java? C++? Python? Perl? X86ASM? Are you a software engineer who will brush laymen’s aside and say, let me through, I am a software engineer, I can make it all work! Do you see yourself as a hero! Saving humanity? Because you may just very well be! So take it seriously!!!!! We’ren’t in scriptkiddieland no more!

perhaps software really is hard? Like np-hard type with guarantees to fail in the large system. But how do you explain Apple? (Honestly I think there is an exponential decay of memory and I may just not remember my annoyance with iphone, idk, right now, I can’t stand myself for trying pixel 2)

Disclaimer, these posts are not about my employers present or past or anybody I know or interact with. I own some google stock but I’m not being paid to write this.

Perhaps the real problem is that I foundamentally think differently than others. Many of those that I complain about revel in chaos that creates bugs and fixing them. I feel that bad software (product) is not inevitable. I feel perhaps people who believe in the prior will say that the Devil exists and will do his work no matter what we do. I say I want to be on the other team and I believe the Devil can be completely destroyed or contained–such power and knowledge can and do exist. All you Devil worshipers be warned, a day will come that a light shall shine upon us destroying all that is and all that supports and tolerates EVIL! Like germs under UV lamps, you will disintegrate!

Hopefully I’ll still be in good constitution and humor in the future and read this and figure out a better reaction to my blog entry, but wow!

Damn!

That’s bad, that’s super bad!

I just upgraded to android 8.1 on my pixel II and got locked out. To all appearance the new version of the OS doesn’t accept the unlock pattern that I use. The unlock pattern has a knights move step which does not appear when I make the motion to draw it. Sigh…

I think I will pass on iOS 11.2.1 update that is available right now. Won’t have a phone to use after these tech giants are done win their pissing games…

Just saw The Great Wall. Matt Daemon, Dafoe, etc.

So… let’s see, I’m not the kind of Chinese that would be offended by this movie. Well at least not right after I see it.

The rings they recover, still slimy with its occupants bloody tissue, piling up, that’s some pretty gruesome imagery. But sadly, The Great Wall is probably more monument to all those who died building, guarding and rebuilding it than an ancient engineering marvel. This rings loudly as a metal ring would, reverberating many times throughout the movie.

Let’s see, there certainly is the white saves Chinese theme… westerner bringing the magnetic stone to China probly sounds offensive. Chinese invested the compass, and you want to credit that to the traders?

I can’t get upset though. I mean it looks like a pretty serious attempt to beautify Chinese people. All that scale, all that discipline and organization, women leading an army, social hierarchy and behavior expectations, all that ceremony, and respect and honor and greed and loyalty and betrayal, useless leadership at the top, and … a lot of good stuff to put on display, for better or for worse.

Anyways, for a brainless culture infusing fantasy with unevenly mixed movie genres and acting styles, it works fine. If this continues for another 5-10 movies, I’d be worried about the superficial integration. But right now it isn’t bad enough for me to be upset.

But then I’ve been in California for a long time, maybe more desensitized that other Chinese people about these things.

Yesterday, I wrote to my dad to explain to him that two and half years of iPhone malfunction maybe a combination of Apple’s software update to save battery, effectively slowing the phones down. I also hypothesized that the stingrays may have been in use, well, because he is Chinese, and we know what Americans think of Chinese immigrants, even if they live and work here for over three decades nonstop.

Today, I went to the postoffice to file a complaint about non-delivery of a package returning a pair of Nvidia RTX 2080 TiFE. After I raised my voice and said “I will file a claim with my bank because you charged my credit card and failed to provide the delivery service.” My cell phone lost data service. I can still make phone calls, but clearly it was no longer sending or receiving data. Then I noticed this bald man with dark skin standing behind the person acting to be a manager.

A slew of “training” suddenly kicked in she repeated technicalities, and said, it’s Christmas time, and we deliver a lot of packages. I repeated my demand, that she explain the failure of her service or refund me the money. She confers with the bald man, and comes back, now acting quite powerless “I asked the manager,” she said, “they said no.”

The man starting at me from behind the counter continue to do so.

My phone still has no data.

And I wonder, again, what amount of freedom do agents of American law enforcement and clandestined service have? Like, why would they shut off my data? (It made it impossible to occupy the parking spot and search for the credit card claims line phone number) But doesn’t that violate the FCC rules against interference with domestic civilian communications? (They’re in kahoots with each other, the FCC probably owes a lot of favors to law enforcement) doesn’t the USPS care that a customer was not satisfied? (No, she showed no remorse for not delivering the package or for not being able to give me information on it. Looks like she had to deal with this regularly) Doesn’t USPS worry about losing money? (No, haha, is that a joke? It’s not like I have a choice on how much income tax I pay to the federal government or how much of that I’d allocated to the USPS, there’s not a thing about me in the world that would motivate the USPS to provide decent service) Wait, are you paying for the Stingrays? (Afaik that comes from tax payers like me, right?) Oh man, my butt is dumb and needs a good kicking, can I pay you to do it? (You already did)

Anyways. All these secret stuff… All these people never or not any longer able or caring about non-secret stuff(like delivering packages). It’s so bad. This land is growing into a place having no human understandable values, laws or practices that live up to the ideals America was founded on.

The worst thing here, is that this use of advanced technology to interfere with my data service was actually probably not necessary. It was quite possible that NVIDIA’s return label, like their Linux kernel that seg-faulted into my syslog, had a bug. I recall some three weeks ago patiently waiting for the clerk to complete the shipping process. She somehow could not find the city on the mailing label associated with the zipcode. 55038 is Hugo, MN not Lino Lake.

But ultimately the clerk accepted the package saying the zipcode is sufficient. If only USPS provided basic service of looking up a customer by ID to find their packages. One expects almost all businesses to render such a service, except for the USPS.

And plus, get this, her failure to perform is not any worse than the service rep at NVIDIA who refused to read the seg-fault or the mysterious numerical code their software driver produced on a fully supported distro. NVIDIA allowed a return, albeit to an address that confuses shipping company’s computers. So, in theory, I am no angrier with USPS acting manager than with NVIDIA’s support. I don’t think my cellphone data flow should have been interrupted. I don’t think a non-performing government organization should leverage another government agency to cover up the failures. If according to your training or procedure, I should be targeted, then Sir or Ma’am, those training and procedures are wrong. I am not hostile and I am not a danger to society. If anything my demand for better service at the USPS, when satisfied, may make a kinder and safer world because people will be happier, because the workers of USPS will feel much more fulfilled having performed a truly great service. Subduing my complaint may be cheap and efficient, but it is not right.

I very annoyed and $2500 short. Will definitely not use USPS again for things I care about arriving. Will choose another vendor for compute as well if I have he hoice. This is absurd.

P.s. I won’t go into how I recovered my data service. You know… Just in case these stingray users actually render some bits of useful service to America. Maybe my sufferings facilitate happiness and peace for others.

P.p.s. there are also these police fund nonprofits. Their fund raising calls are preceded immediately by a disruption of data service. This ctually appended to mr on several occasions over everal years. I mean I do not want to cast aspersions on the upright law enforcement service men, but either you are doing it or someone else did it, but either way, you are kind of at fault. This system to mess with us should either not exist, or exist but not be used to help a non-profit to raise fund. And if some third party gain access to this special ability, tsay to try to discredit you, then certainly, at least I feel, that should be against the law, right? And law enforcement fails again.

Where Fucking is any expression of endearment from coitus to employment to friendship to patronization to mimicry to plagiarization in no particular order.

I always had felt this and wrote it previously but hopefully by the time this publishes, it won’t affect my careers or relationships.

I’ve met many mixed race families where women is Chinese, as of this writing. I like them a lot! When they work it’s great! It’s like watching America working out on TV, happy, exotic kids, great cultural tension and double the mystic believes, double the linguistic immersion, and the double happiness of the whammies of life.

But the pain never gets any easier when I dislike the man, and he brings his wife out as a shield and says: hey look, huan, I like you a lot and look here’s my Chinese women to prove I love Chinese people. Or like that manager(and all her managers) that I knew once who has been flagrantly unfair and unprofessional to me at work and who also constantly point out that half her staff is Chinese. Your management of them means nothing to me!

What can I say? Fucking a Chinese girl doesn’t make you especially kind to Chinese race and certainly if you feel that way then it’s just that much worse. Are you one of those people who overcame racial pressure and fear of what could lie within and be the first on your block to fuck a Chinese women? Wow, so brave should probably get a medal of some kind! Are you the manager who overcame the fear of Chinese spies and hired a Chinese kid fresh out of school?? That’s like CEO material right there!

I guess I’m kind of watching the Iron Fist and wondering where this is going? Are they going do it? Is all this portrayal of vaguely Chinese stuff… Sinophilic?

I hate watching a non- Chinese proudly holding up their horse stance or muttering poorly translated wise sounding things.. I despise the fact that people wear this stuff so well!! They are like a very bad parody of something that’s kind of long dead. Modern Chinese people aren’t like that! They’re more like the cheetums and I am not exaggerating.

This is like taking an ancient corpse you irreverently dug up in China, fucking it with a chinchilla, and then selling it on TV! And calling it hip!

Sheesh! I can’t stand that I binge watched 3 episodes and may watch even more! It’s so bad, like that vid of multiple people pooping in a cup and eating each other’s poo bad! And yet I cannot stop watching it! I put it on loop in YouTube to repeat at 4X speed over and over and over…

What the double fuxking fuxk?!

… And don’t get me started on all the koonfoo panda shows! The horror just keeps on streaming in…

This text cannot retain the frustration and sadness I feel after spending three hours of my life on that stupid TV show.

PS. To all my mixed friends, this isn’t about you. It’s about all the other people who pretend to be as great as you.

Pps and obviously not about zuck. afaik.

Ppps. To children, all of whom I hope will not have read this until they have had kids. May you find these words puzzling in the world you live in.

For some reason, I’m watching a top 15 ballerina collection on YouTube on an iPad Pro.

The ballerinas movements do not look graceful to me at all. All these famous ballerinas at famous ballet theaters… their movements look so… bulky. Imprecise. I can see the last kick wasn’t to same height and speed, very clearly. I can see her shake holding a posture, I can see her hip sway asymmetrically. I can see every single wrinkle come and go on top of other wrinkles. I can see her foot not landing at the same spot because there’s a dent in the floor where she stepped last. I can see her exerting to make each and every leap–all the effort is visible! I can hear the notes not starting at same time. I can hear the directors movements just before I hear the music move…

I think it’s the HD and the computers ability to render clear image at higher rates gives image a more steady fidelity that enables me to see all these (even on grainy YouTube videos by especially HD videos)

The consequence is that I think the ballets needs all to be re-choreographed for HD(or higher) recording. The folks at lytro and apple must be having a ball with his problem. when you see more, you see more of everything the good and the bad.