bgavran.bsky.social - Profile | ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

Reading about linters, and I ran into a lovely example of what they keep you from doing: (from the International obfuscated C code contest https://github.com/ioccc-src/winner/blob/master/2011/goren/goren.c )

submitted 3 days ago • 3 comments

Fun fact I just learned: gunpowder was created by alchemists as a byproduct of trying to create the elixir of life. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunpowder

submitted 5 days ago • 1 comment

Discovered a gem of a paper, which merges two things I am very excited about: DeepRL + (dependently) type-directed program search. Highly recommended read. https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.00695

submitted 7 days ago • 0 comments

I'm writing a new blog series on practical implementation of substructural type systems, in Idris! The first blog post will look at substructural polymorphism and why it's hard, harder than people assume on first glance! zanzix.github.io/posts/5-subs...

submitted 12 days ago • 1 comment

What separates life from death? Mary Shelley once wrote: "To understand life, we first need to understand death". In this movie, we see how a single-celled organism dies. The same matter in both pictures. It is not the same state or the same integrated complexity. youtube.com/watch?v=4bj6...

submitted 16 days ago • 8 comments

I'm hoping starting to post more both on Bluesky and Mathstodon. Is there a good client for crossposting I ought to use? (as opposed to what I'm doing now, which is pasting the same message twice)

submitted 20 days ago • 0 comments

An Invitation to Neuroalgebraic Geometry https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.18915

submitted 20 days ago • 0 comments

The takeover of Twitter was a preview of what we're all living with now and a stark example of why you can't let any one person have too much money: they go insane and make themselves everybody's problem

submitted 24 days ago • 587 comments

This post by @zanzi on the Cybercat blog is the one I've been the most excited for in a very long time: Optics for UI 1: Deconstructing React with Parametrised Lenses https://cybercat.institute/2025/01/21/ui-para-optic/

submitted 38 days ago • 0 comments

This has been a long time coming! Have you ever wondered what lenses and UI programming have in common? Can we recreate React, Elm, and Redux entirely using pure category theory? Read this series to find out. cybercat.institute/2025/01/21/u...

submitted 38 days ago • 2 comments

Dropping in with some good news that two of the last papers from my PhD have recently been accepted to their respective journals, SciPost and PhysRevLett :))) Many thanks to the hard work of all my collaborators! 1/3

submitted 52 days ago • 1 comment

🥰 🎄

submitted 75 days ago • 2 comments

I have an unfortunate personal announcement: I was fired from Symbolica. This was a complete surprise. I am in shock and, honestly, still not sure how to process this. If you've been following me, you understand just how excited and optimistic I am about the programme of categorical deep learning.

submitted 77 days ago • 6 comments

Rewatched “My Neighbour Totoro” with @bgavran.bsky.social yesterday and was once again reminded of the goodness in humanity, if only for a little bit :) deeply recommend doing so given the state of the world these days

submitted 83 days ago • 2 comments

🌟Noether's razor⭐️ Our NeurIPS 2024 paper connects ML symmetries to conserved quantities through a seminal result in mathematical physics: Noether's theorem. We can learn neural network symmetries from data by learning associated conservation laws. Learn more👇. 1/16🧵

submitted 85 days ago • 3 comments

I've been thinking about how 'First Class Types' feels like a much better name for 'Dependent Types' than 'Dependent Types'. The fact that we can treat types as first-class objects seems of primary value, and the fact that they types arise as outputs of functions sometimes seems secondary.

submitted 88 days ago • 3 comments

Reposting with alt text!

submitted 91 days ago • 8 comments

"Categories and Compositionality with a view to Applications" z7-stage-act4e-book.zuper.ai/sync/ACT4E/A...

submitted 95 days ago • 0 comments

A fundamental puzzle of programming is how to lessen the enormous cost of good programming abstractions. I didn't mean things like functional vs imperative languages. I mean more fundamental things, like the choice between a CPU with an instruction set, vs circuit level hardware design.

submitted 99 days ago • 9 comments

A random selection of thoughts from my history, from the old bird site, pasted here!

submitted 99 days ago • 0 comments

"According to Eastern traditions, all dollars are not the same. It matters where you get it from. In Buddhism this is called “right livelihood”. In Chinese culture, it is Qi (energy) It is believed that working for unethical or toxic companies gives you toxic or tainted money"

submitted 99 days ago • 0 comments

A welcome property of Para(Optic) framework for studying deep learning is that it does not impose any conceptual separation between training and inference stages - meaning in-context learning exhibited by Transformers is not automatically ruled out as in some classical frameworks.

submitted 99 days ago • 0 comments

Luc's ten commandments of authorship luc.devroye.org/commandments...

submitted 99 days ago • 0 comments

One of my deep beliefs is that the transition from the human to an "artificial" intelligence is a natural progression, rather than something to be feared or resisted. It often sounds like we're overemphasizing what "human values" mean, even though we can't agree on what they mean.

submitted 99 days ago • 1 comment

Neural networks, seen as processes, have 3 distinct properties. They are: * parametric * bidirectional * defined functorially by differentiation Using the category Poly to model them blends these distinctions. I'm still trying to decide whether that's a good or a bad thing.

submitted 99 days ago • 0 comments

"CT is an emergent inevitability in response to the structure which underpins our world"

submitted 99 days ago • 0 comments

There is more than one way to skin a cat, but only one way to preserve its structure.

submitted 99 days ago • 0 comments

"Just because you know something, it doesn't mean that you know that you know it." A random piece of thought that I heard in @davidcorfield.bsky.social's talk that resonated with me

submitted 99 days ago • 0 comments

The Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics "The Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics says that when you observe or interact with a problem in any way, you can be blamed for it. At the very least, you are to blame for not doing more." forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/QXpxio...

submitted 99 days ago • 0 comments

What I don't like about the notation for (co)ends is that you can't specify whether you're using ends or coends without binding a variable of the functor you're taking the (co)end of.

submitted 99 days ago • 0 comments