Complexity podcast: Santa Fe Institute has a podcast. Season 3 is Melanie Mitchell on AI, should be good material
https://complexity.simplecast.com/
#complexsystems #complexity #computing #podcast #santafe #sfi #ai #+
Command-line Tools can be 235x Faster than your Hadoop Cluster
"This find | xargs mawk | mawk pipeline gets us down to a runtime of about 12 seconds, or about 270MB/sec, which is around 235 times faster than the Hadoop implementation."
Organizations which design systems are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations.
— Conway's law
https://www.europesays.com/2092608/ DIY BI Without the Complexity #Advanced #analytics #capabilities #complexity #Data #databox #DIY #without
"A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked.
"A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be patched up to make it work.
"You have to start over with a working, simple system."
—John Gall, 1975
cited and explained by @baldur there: https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/courses/yellow/
Such is modern computing: everything simple is made too complicated because it's easy to fiddle with; everything complicated stays complicated because it's hard to fix.
— Rob Pike
Massive NHS reorganisation, with ‘devolution’ and local government reform – and more to come. It's like crossing the straits with the ice floes both shifting and melting underfoot. https://www.linkedin.com/posts/antlerboy_hsj-icbmergers-integratedcare-activity-7325429570424233984-C26Y What's your advice for people trying to get through their working day, make things a little better, and deal with this overwhelming #complexity?
When in software, I would rather choose a GUI over a terminal. A typo has percussion, harder to spot the error. A dashboard is visual, you can see the command changes. I think the foundation should be least complicated, like when I decide a tech stack. Things get complicated in new context. This currently are my values. #complexity #software #tech #VPS
When in software, I would rather choose a GUI over a terminal. A typo has percussion, harder to spot the error. A dashboard is visual, you can see the command changes. I think the foundation should be least complicated, like when I decide a tech stack. Things get complicated in new context. This currently are my values. #complexity #tech #VPS
"Modern civilisation has a number of extremely delicate and highly interconnected components whose graceful degradation is effectively impossible."
It is "much easier to break things than to build them up. The government administrations of Britain, France and Germany for example, were set up at a time in the nineteenth century when the rising middle classes demanded a properly functioning state[…]. It took perhaps a generation for professional, neutral public services to fully emerge."
"Forty years of globalised neoliberalism have broken our societies, our economies and our political systems, and we no longer have the ability to put them back together."
The world is getting more complex, but why? Please check out my thoughts in the free-to-read weekly essay on my personal blog after the jump! https://sharpenyouraxe.substack.com/p/increasing-complexity #Complexity
Hi @cark @thunderbird,
sure, #complexity, but this is result of deliberate decisions by the project owners. The failing feature should tell in the error #message. Like https://shellcheck.net does.
Quantum Computing’s Impact on Algorithmic Complexity
https://cacm.acm.org/blogcacm/quantum-computings-impact-on-algorithmic-complexity/
The origin of the eukaryotic cell corresponded to the most significant increase in #complexity in the history of #life's evolution on Earth.
The billions of years that have passed since the fusion of an #archaea and a #bacteria have resulted in a lack of evolutionary intermediates in the phylogenetic tree until the emergence of the #eukaryotes.
Now researchers present theoretical and observational evidence that a phase transition in genetic complexity was involved.
https://phys.org/news/2025-04-evolutionary-algorithmic-phase-transition-billion.html
The Evolution of Biological Information: How Evolution Creates Complexity, From Viruses to Brains by Christoph Adams, 2024
Why information is the unifying principle that allows us to understand the evolution of complexity in natureMore than 150 years after Darwin’s revolutionary On the Origin of Species, we are still attempting to understand and explain the amazing complexity of life.
@bookstodon
#books
#nonfiction
#biology
#evolution
#information
#complexity
@AlexanderKingsbury @JugglingWithEggs
Could have been Emergent, #complexity arising from simplicity. Designed, but not by discrete authorial process or gesture.
This is a really cool read. Not entirely sure if there are any practical implications, except that maybe we humans should stop trying to look for simplifying narratives everywhere and start appreciating and embracing diversity in everything.
Oh, I guess that's practical..
https://www.quantamagazine.org/why-everything-in-the-universe-turns-more-complex-20250402/
> The purpose is to warn bystanders to invest in technological #complexity
I think your point is well taken. My introduction to ZFS was gradual, deploying it first on spare H/W to see what it was all about and about half a year later, migrating my home lab file server to ZFS. Years later I'm installing desktop, laptop and servers with ZFS on root. I admit to being a ZFS fanboy, but that took time and practice.
And as always backups are king!
1/2
@janl The purpose is to warn bystanders to invest in technological #complexity that seems to be very attractive for its advanced features without acknowledging the risks or efforts associated.
Its learning curve doesn't even allow for an easy start.
As with so many awesome tools, this is something for specific experts and not for new/occasional/advanced users.
BTDT and I've had my fair share of bad experiences.
Current pain in my setup: #NixOS. Instead of providing an abstraction layer to keep away certain OS setup & maintenance problems for good, I got into so many little & bigger troubles that I try to tell people only to use it when they are ready to invest its required learning effort all the way.
From my point of view, this also holds true for "advanced" file systems like #ZFS, #XFS, ... YMMV.
An interdisciplinary team of researchers has proposed nothing less than a new law of #nature, according to which the #complexity of entities in the #universe increases over time with an inexorability comparable to the second law of #thermodynamics — the law that dictates an inevitable rise in entropy, a measure of disorder.
If they’re right, complex and intelligent #life should be widespread.
#astrobiology #physics
https://www.quantamagazine.org/why-everything-in-the-universe-turns-more-complex-20250402/
