The hottest Substack posts of Jon’s Substack

And their main takeaways

In Defense of Obnoxious Influencers

2 HN points • 01 May 24
🎭️ Culture Social media Influencers Youth Trends Digital economy Cultural criticism
  1. Many young people today aspire to be influencers, which may seem trivial compared to traditional careers, but it's a sign of changing times. They are learning to monetize their interests and create their own opportunities.
  2. Influencers can be seen as part of a new wave of digital entrepreneurship, allowing anyone to turn a hobby into a business with less barriers than before. This reflects a shift towards more freedom in how people choose to earn a living.
  3. Having more niches and diverse paths for success in society can lead to a more vibrant and stable community. Embracing this change could help empower more individuals to follow their passions and create value.

A New Manhattan Project

2 HN points • 29 Jan 24
  1. America should tackle hard challenges like the Manhattan Project era.
  2. Open-source institution needed for AI research to prevent closed-source AI dominance.
  3. New research institute like a 'New Manhattan Project' could attract top talent and propel AI advancements.

Explaining ResNets in simple, plain language

0 implied HN points • 25 Mar 24
🕹 Technology Machine Learning Artificial Intelligence Neural Networks Data science Optimization
  1. ResNets help make deep neural networks easier to train by smoothing the loss landscape. This makes it simpler for optimization algorithms to find the best solutions.
  2. The main idea behind ResNets is to add 'skip connections' between layers, allowing the network to learn identity functions. This means that if a layer isn’t helpful, it won't negatively impact learning.
  3. As networks get deeper, ResNets adjust their weights to limit changes in representations. This keeps the performance consistent, preventing problems like overfitting and improving accuracy.