180: Reinforcement Learning

184: Asynchronous ProgrammingIntro topic: AI ScamsNews/Links:Coding Adventure: Ray-Tracing Glass and Caustics (Sebastian Lague)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wA1KVZ1eOuABoson AI announces Higgs Audio V2https://www.boson.ai/technologies/voice The Misconception that Almost Stopped AI [How Models Learn Part 1] (Welch Labs)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrO20Jb-hy0A mind-bending conversation with Peter Thielhttps://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/11/podcasts/interesting-times-a-mind-bending-conversation-with-peter-thiel.htmlBook of the ShowPatrickThe Hobbit (JRR Tolkien)https://amzn.to/4mevuzEJasonNYT Word GamesPatreon Plug https://www.patreon.com/programmingthrowdown?ty=hTool of the ShowPatrickEscape Academyhttps://escapeacademygame.com/enJasonMulti-modal LLMs to make calendar meetingswww.chatgpt.comTopic: Asynchronous ComputingWhat/WhyMulti-threading in between the linesMany of the benefits of multiprocessing without the overhead/complexityHowCoroutinesThread-Local MemoryBlocking vs Non-Blocking operationsBlocking: arithmeticNon-Blocking: Reading from the network card into thread-local memoryInterpreter lockingTypescript: Single threadedPython: GILImplementationsPolling (not-Asynchronous)Callbacks (interrupts)Multithreading (with queues/message passing)Promise/FuturesAsync/Await  ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

23 Sep 1h 30min

00:00:00 Intro00:01:58 Introducing Mark Cunningham00:07:01 How Do You Find A Job?00:15:43 How to Get the Best Interview00:33:06 Tips on How To Pass An Interview00:38:38 How to Have a Good Interview00:48:12 What is the Reverse Interview?00:54:24 What Is The Hiring Manager's Role?00:57:12 Reverse Interviews: Red Flags01:14:45 How to Negotiate a Tech Offer01:23:02 When to Negotiate Your Compensation01:35:21 Interview Horror Stories01:39:29 How Do You Deal With Fake AI Applicants?01:45:32 The Bidding Network ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

31 Jul 1h 46min

Intro topic: Getting an entry-level jobNews/Links:Mario Kart 64 Fully Decompiledhttps://gbatemp.net/threads/mario-kart-64-decompilation-project-reaches-100-completion.671104/Q-Learning is not yet scalablehttps://seohong.me/blog/q-learning-is-not-yet-scalable/Grover’s Algorithmhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQWpF2Gb-gU&vl=enOrangePi has a RISC-V SBChttps://linuxgizmos.com/orangepi-rv2-a-cost-effective-risc-v-board-with-m-2-2280-slot-and-dual-gigabit-ethernet/Book of the ShowPatrickThe Will of the Many (James Islington)https://amzn.to/44DznszJasonThe Intelligence Traphttps://amzn.to/3TqoKCBPatreon Plug https://www.patreon.com/programmingthrowdown?ty=hTool of the ShowPatrick Pokemon Odysseyhttps://www.reddit.com/r/PokemonROMhacks/comments/1l9zdta/pok%C3%A9mon_odyssey_final_release/JasonNetflix Gameshttps://play.google.com/store/apps/dev?id=6891422865930303475&hl=en_USTopic: WhySpeed up developmentCatch errors faster than type checking/compilingWriting tedious boilerplate codeAsk questions and learn local informationLook good for hiring managersHowExtensions for VSCode & other IDEs for inline suggestionsChat with a selection/fileCommand-line Tools run at the root directoryLocal vs CloudExamplesCopilot (VSCode extension)Use the experimental modeCursor (Custom IDE)Jumps to suggest changes in other placesSimilar to copilot experimental modeRooCode (VSCode extension) ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

30 Jun 1h 37min

Intro topic: Video Game PricesNews/Links:Step one: Jump in the Lava - Abyssofthttps://youtu.be/WdadpHLAfdA?si=oXYnhB0EdkR_RaPEScalable world models for continuous controlhttps://www.tdmpc2.com/Clever code is probably the worst code you could write - Engineer’s Codexhttps://read.engineerscodex.com/p/clever-code-is-probably-the-worstA new, open source text-to-speech model called Dia has arrived to challenge ElevenLabs, OpenAI and morehttps://venturebeat.com/ai/a-new-open-source-text-to-speech-model-called-dia-has-arrived-to-challenge-elevenlabs-openai-and-more/Book of the ShowPatrickThe Muscle Ladder - Jeff Nippardhttps://amzn.to/44DznszJasonMetaphysics of Warhttps://amzn.to/4jMjvZ5Patreon Plug https://www.patreon.com/programmingthrowdown?ty=hTool of the ShowPatrickPokemon Trading Card Game PocketJasonPhi-4https://huggingface.co/spaces/microsoft/phi-4-multimodalTopic: Memory ManagementMotivationAvoid thrashing / crashesAllocate resources efficientlyKeep high uptimeWhereOS LevelHeap managementVirtual MemoryLanguage/Compiler LevelCppGarbage collectionOwnershipToolsInstrumentationExport to Datadog / GrafanaPython: psutil & tracemallocValgrindWhat to do when your program uses too much memory?Reduce data sizesCompressionReferencesLazy initializerGenerators & Back PressureRing buffersArena allocatorsDisk based caching ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

12 Mai 1h 46min

Intro topic: Lego event space & retail store: https://www.instagram.com/bambeecave News/Links:StackOverflow Question Count Going Down https://gist.github.com/hopeseekr/f522e380e35745bd5bdc3269a9f0b132DeepSeek claims its ‘reasoning’ model beats OpenAI’s o1 on certain benchmarkshttps://techcrunch.com/2025/01/20/deepseek-claims-its-reasoning-model-beats-openais-o1-on-certain-benchmarks/ Computer Science Papers Every Developer Should Readhttps://newsletter.techworld-with-milan.com/p/computer-science-papers-every-developerNvidia Cosmos - an AI platform to change the future of robots and cars - wins Best of CES 2025https://www.zdnet.com/article/nvidia-signs-largest-car-maker-toyota-to-use-its-self-driving-tech/ Book of the ShowPatrick: Alice’s Adventures in a differentiable wonderlandhttps://www.sscardapane.it/alice-book/Jason: A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (Hulu/Netflix/etc)Patreon Plug https://www.patreon.com/programmingthrowdown?ty=hTool of the ShowPatrick: Digseumhttps://store.steampowered.com/app/3361470/Digseum/Jason: Sqlitedict - Python dictionaries saved to diskTopic: Project Planning and ManagementWhy?Gathering feedbackIdentifying risksDeciding future headcountDocumenting / discovering dependenciesCritical pathScheduleReduce the bullwhip effectHow it worksSMART goalsspecific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-boundMT is most importantGantt ChartsScrumAgileKanbanToolsWhiteboard (the generic IRL one)Post it notesJIRAAsanaOpenProjectDealing with uncertaintyBufferingIssues with recursive paddingProject planning Post-Mortems ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

3 Feb 1h 43min

Intro topic: Smart homesNews/Links:SpaceX Starship Flight Test Five / Sixhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIKI7y3DTXkShareDBhttps://github.com/share/sharedbOrion AR Glasseshttps://about.fb.com/news/2024/09/introducing-orion-our-first-true-augmented-reality-glasses/Blade and Sorcery 1.0 is outhttps://www.meta.com/experiences/blade-sorcery-nomad/2031826350263349/Book of the ShowPatrick: The Book that Wouldn’t Burn by Mark Lawrencehttps://amzn.to/4fry2XWJason: Masters of Doomhttps://amzn.to/3YxuD3cPatreon Plug https://www.patreon.com/programmingthrowdown?ty=hTool of the ShowPatrick: Balatrohttps://www.playbalatro.com/Jason: Cursor IDEhttps://www.cursor.com/Topic: Working from HomeIntroBackground & WFH experiencesIs it Panacea?Realizing it works better for some than othersInternally MotivatedSchedulingCommunicationsHome SetupDedicated spaceHandling Non-work DistractionsKeyboards, Monitors, Music, … Desk related thingsThe specter of RTO ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

3 Des 20241h 45min

Intro topic:  Buying a CarNews/Links:Cognitive Load is what Mattershttps://github.com/zakirullin/cognitive-loadDiffusion models are Real-Time Game Engineshttps://gamengen.github.io/Your Company Needs Junior Devshttps://softwaredoug.com/blog/2024/09/07/your-team-needs-juniorsSeamless Streaming / Fish Speech / LLaMA OmniSeamless: https://huggingface.co/facebook/seamless-streamingFish: https://github.com/fishaudio/fish-speech LLaMA Omni: https://github.com/ictnlp/LLaMA-Omni Book of the ShowPatrick: Thought Emporium Youtubehttps://youtu.be/8X1_HEJk2Hw?si=T8EaHul-QMahyUvQJason: Novel Mindshttps://www.novelminds.ai/Patreon Plug https://www.patreon.com/programmingthrowdown?ty=hTool of the ShowPatrick: Escape Simulatorhttps://pinestudio.com/games/escape-simulator/Jason: Cursor IDEhttps://www.cursor.com/Topic: Vector Databases (~54 min)How computers represent data traditionallyASCII valuesRGB valuesHow traditional compression worksHuffman encoding (tree structure)Lossy example: Fourier Transform & store coefficientsHow embeddings are computedPairwise (contrastive) methodsForward models (self-supervised)Similarity metricsApproximate Nearest Neighbors (ANN)Sub-Linear ANNClusteringSpace Partitioning (e.g. K-D Trees)What a vector database doesPerform nearest-neighbors with many different similarity metricsStore the vectors and the data structures to support sub-linear ANNHandle updates, deletes, rebalancing/reclustering, backups/restoresExamplespgvector: a vector-database plugin for postgresWeaviate, Pinecone Milvus ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

4 Nov 20241h 28min