Transformer Model Comparisons

There are comparisons out there between various transformer models. However, such comparisons often are flawed that provide evaluations between apples and oranges. Transformers must be first narrowed down to the architecture and use case in order to compare. For example, a comparison between Bert vs GPT vs T5 is pointless. Bert has an encoder architecture. GPT has a decoder architecture. And, T5 has a balanced encoder-decoder architecture. All three have their contexts for specific use cases. One approach is better for NLU use cases. One approach is better for NLG use cases. And, one can be used interchangeably between NLU and NLG use case. There are cases for when a balance is needed and cases for when a particular architecture is required. Evaluation really should be made across similar use cases and context-specific architectures so as to provide a more meaningful comparison. Context is very important.

Project Debater

Project Debater

Project Debater Simulation

Large Corporates vs Startups

In the IT industry, there is a stark difference between working for large corporations compared to startups. The following explore a few areas of comparison.

• Startups 
• enable employees to be heard
• to be more vocal
• chance to influence a culture
• explore and exchange thoughts and ideas
• build closer relationships
• bigger sense of responsibility
• fast-paced
• proactive
• rapid learning
• can be disruptive and at the same time risky
• less stability of work
• smaller teams and even individual ownership of work
• chance to play many hats which leads to often overworked staff
• more loosening up parties and chill out times
• opportunities to explore play times and breakout periods
• equity options
• salaries can be low
• greater degree of flexibility to be creative
• limited funding budgets on projects
• small teams means cultural fit becomes important which may lead to issues with diversity, inclusion, and equity
• communication channels are often spread across a very flat hierarchical structure
• Large corporates
• one is reduced to an employee number
• lots of red tape to get things done
• chance to influence culture is minimum or difficult
• more decisions are made by management
• people become too distant
• lots of reporting functions 
• lots of internal competition
• more ceremony within team structures
• lots of mundane work as things slow down considerably
• excessive amount of politics which at some places can be toxic
• difficult to make a mark and rise up the ladder
• risk of stagnation
• can be great places for graduates to start their careers as period of learning and ramping up skills in industry
• lots of stability
• projects can be complex
• willing to take risks
• chance to do things properly
• chance to specialize in an area
• lots of benefits and perks
• salaries can be more dynamic with greater bonus options
• great when you just want to move up into management
• great to go back to when you are nearing retirement
• great to go back to when you want stability while setting up a startup of your own
• great for networking for the future
• chance for bigger project budgets
• chance to work in different countries and with distributed teams
• more structured career progression
• potentials for redundancies under bad leadership
• more consideration for compliance
• more restrictions on opensource
• unnecessarily and often long recruitment processes
• lots of pointless paperwork for filling out forms
• lots of areas of unclear, inefficient, incorrect channels of communication
• often issues relating to diversity, inclusion, and equity in the workplace

Worst Consultancies

Indian companies have the worst record of how they treat their employees both in terms of compensation and work/life balance. They also have a terrible record of having dishonest and exploitative practices both with their clients as well as with their employees. The following are some of the worst companies that one should avoid:

• Infosys
• TCS
• Wipro
• HCL
• Mphasis
• Mindtree

Although, not indian companies, mention also goes to Virtusa and NTT Data, in this category. Other multinational consultancies that are basically sweatshops and that mostly have indian outsourcing are CapGemini, Accenture, KPMG, EY, and Deloitte. Most of these companies all have dodgy practices of low pay and terrible work ethics.

The Satanic Verses

'The Satanic Verses' can be downloaded from the archive for free. Don't bother buying the book as it is not a good read. In fact, it is garbage from any sense of the word. The entire book is filled with embedded hate speech. The author dispels many of his hate through the personification of characters. Not only does he hate everything and everyone, he seems to also hate himself. The book was written to offend and provoke, much of which can be seen from the quote at the beginning of the book from Daniel Defoe. The more significant bit of hate speech is directed towards women that not only incites hate but also violence. In 1989, an incident occurred against a woman in New York where six individuals after reading passages from the book went out to put it into action that conjured up their imaginations. The book not only hates on blacks, but also jews, brits, whites, women, hindus, and across the protected characteristics. In US, hate speech laws don't really exist much outside of incitement. However, in UK/EU the hate crime law can provide a way towards censorship of the book. After all freedom of speech is not absolute. One finds it surprising that there is a lot of focus around the hate for a given religion while much of the other forms of hate in the book are completely overlooked. Perhaps, this is because of racism and bigotry shared in much of the western societies towards Islam and the book provides a weapon to incite hate towards it. But, it is shocking that many do not notice the level of hate speech mentioned in the book towards women. The author is an opportunist. Who wanted to gain notoriety by being as controversial as possible. In fact, a lot of the writing is in broken sentences and swearing that do not amplify any form of literary quality. The author cannot even make up his mind whether he wants to swear in hindi or english. It reads like an indian version of an urban dictionary. This leads one to wonder why on earth would someone want to consider it for the Booker Prize. The book sales is an indicator of how it is viewed in society. Book sales increased after the fatwa. They further increased after the attack on the author. But, in between such events book sales were virtually unheard of. Many people who support the book are jumping on the bandwagon of crowd follower mentality and have never even read the book. However, the man that attacked the author may also be exercising their freedom of speech and expression. This could be compared to the egg attack on John Prescott who returned it with a punch. Book burning is also another form of freedom of speech and expression. And, apparently, one cannot even challenge the holocaust behind the curtain of freedom of speech and expression. Or, even challenge the use of additional pronouns in freedom of speech and expression. We live in a society of hypocrites.

Extracts from 'The Satanic Verses':

• "White women -- never mind fat, Jewish, non deferential white women -- were for fucking and throwing over. What one hates in whites -- love of brown sugar -- one must also hate when it turns up, inverted, in black. Bigotry is not only a function of power." 
• "Torture. Maggie the Bitch."
• "N****r eat white shit?"
• "Black shit is bad?"
• "Sister Fucking British"
• "This country that's stuffed full of fucking old corpses"

Prologue (by Daniel Defoe, from 'The History of the Devil'):

"Satan, being thus confined to a vagabond, wandering, unsettled condition, is without any certain abode; for though he has, in consequence of his angelic nature, a kind of empire in the liquid waste of air, yet this is certainly part of his punishment, that he is....without any fixed place, or space, allowed him to rest the sole of his foot upon." 

Argumentation Reasoning with GNN

Argumentation Reasoning with GNN

Micromouse

 

Faanmg Companies

Faanmg have weird processes, lots of politics and unnecessary levels of arrogance. Fang, Faang, Faamg, Faanmg - what is it short for? It consists of Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Microsoft, and Alphabet-Google as per their stock tickers. But, the referred acronyms can vary as per stock performances and their potential growth.

• Why do they have so many interview processes?
• Why do they ask so many dumb, irrelevant questions in interviews?
• Why do they care so much about what academic background a person has when even their founder, in most cases, is a dropout?
• Why do they have so many screening stages?
• Why are they stuck on processes when they talk about breaking barriers?
• Why do they have such a bad track record on diversity, inclusion, and equity?
• Why is working for them so mundane and boring?
• Why people that work there are bred to be arrogant pricks?
• Why do they outsource work and then bother recruiting through so many stages?
• What is the point in working for such pointless companies when there are a lot better opportunities out there at startups?
• Why do they recruit people to work on mundane and boring stuff when they can outsource it?
• Why life at such companies is not cracked up to what they say in their marketing campaigns?
• Why do majority of these companies hire for academics, especially ones that can't put theory into practice?
• Why there is so much politics and red tape in such companies?
• Why such companies like to hire dumb people and give them tasks to work on complex things?
• Why the typical employee at such companies is a high academic achiever but an inept practical problem solver?
• Why they like using theoretical puzzles in interview stages but have no skills of solving real-world practical issues?
• Why most work in such companies is compartmentalized boredom?
• Why such companies have the worst managers with terrible people skills?
• Why such companies have the worst record of sexism and discrimination against women?
• Why every such company should have a separate ethics department so they can control all the discrimination, biases, and unethical behavior rampant in the organization?
• Why do such companies have such a discriminatory policy on hiring blacks and asians?

Energy Prices

As energy prices soar, likely people will look for alternatives. Predictable things that could emerge from such an event may include:

• Demand for household generators goes up
• People will try to commoditize their use of energy for the home as a crowdsourcing initiatives emerge to compete against big businesses
• Demand for energy from big businesses will go down - supply vs demand will cause cheaper prices, but such prices will not be reflected in the market as the providers will stall via price caping and price fixing for maximization of returns, setting into action their monopoly. Since no one will want their energy, they will go out of business which will again lead to layoffs.
• Can't create or destroy energy, you can only convert and conserve it into different forms
• The govt will try to step in but will have very little effect as they work for organizations not for the interest of the public
• People get inventive and form alternative energy sourcing systems for the home
• New crowdfunding projects for energy will emerge to tackle energy prices as everyone will want to make a profit from it
• People will protest against big businesses for energy prices, but this will have very little effect on deaf ears
• Big businesses will use their lobby to hamper smaller business ventures for alternatives or try to buy them out

Economic Outsourcing to Foreign Countries

Outsourcing is the single biggest contributor to mass unemployments in western countries and an inhibitor to economic growth. One of the worst contributors to western economies is outsourcing and visa-work permit issues to indian or eastern european outsourcing companies. In fact, it promotes foreign talent, while reducing opportunities for local talent pools. While western economies have over the last few years had a dry spell in growth, they have channeled much of the growth potential into developing and emerging countries - putting private organizations before local taxpaying individuals that comprise the public. 

There are fundamentally key things that hurt western economies:

• Outsourcing to india or other eastern european countries on the cheap - when you could be recruiting, re-training, and promoting local talent
• Issuing visa/work permits - when you could be recruiting, re-training, promoting local talent
• Dodging the bullet by saving costs through foreign hires means in long-run your customers suffer from lack of quality and service
• You end up putting your customers second before costs - but it is the customer that drives revenue
• Using foreign individuals means you depreciate the value of your local currency as it gets converted more frequently into euros and rupee
• Lack of local jobs means business pack up and mass unemployments as consumers spending reduces
• Outsourcing inevitability means non-compliance, likely not compliant under local laws, likely you will have to re-build and re-design the systems again, additional costs, lack of accountability, lack of training, where the costs all add up to more complex situations, and plenty of risks not to mention of not meeting local standards of care
• Difficult to manage data transformations across countries and jurisdictions
• In many cases passing the buck for responsibility and accountability means unethical practices emerge within organizations
• Foreign individuals form a clique so they only look to hiring their own and promoting their own, which means local talent suffers
• Payscales get effected in countries as they have to constantly compete against foreign individuals who may be willing to work for less, often challenging local living costs through inflation
• Local businesses suffer who look to hiring local talent pools, while larger organizations outsource on the cheap 
• The local talent pool may also be potentially an element of the customer pool in the local markets

Countries in first instance should impose restrictions on the issuance of work visa/permits to employers where they are required to seek local talent, then have a complicated process to justify requirements for foreign talent recruitment. The same should go for multinationals who work across countries where they should be expected to source local talent pools in the first instance.

Cognitive Architecture

• Cognitive Architecture
• Common Model of Cognition
• Cross-Pollination

Graph Neural Networks

• Graph Neural Networks
• Graph Neural Networks
• Machine Learning with Graphs
• GNNPapers

Dive into Deep Learning

• Dive into Deep Learning
• Deep Learning

Why Organizational Layoffs Don't Work

Layoffs is a cyclical short-term approach to looking good to shareholders on the balance sheets. In long-term those same jobs will need to be re-filled. In end, it costs more because not only does one have to layoff people with redundancy packages, but in a few months one will have to hire people to fill those same job roles. In MBA schools, the first course of action taught is to let go of people to resolve financial issues. As a result, such degrees teach a disconnect between management and employees. An alternative approach is to selectively shrink the middle and senior management within the organization.

What this means is that:

• less people to layoff
• reduces red tape so the organization can function more efficiently, productively, and get things done quickly
• layoff people who set such performance targets for others and don't meet them in first place
• letting go of those managers in most cases will result in not having to re-hire either because it would have solved many internal issues in process and then can set more realistic targets for the future
• save on future costs where one may have to consider layoffs again
• something that acts as a quick fix in short-term is likely not a long-term solution
• better looking balance sheets as managers get paid more than employees so the sum total will reflect more in cost savings when it all adds up
• managers are also then held accountable for organizational-wide, team-wide decisions which may have collectively cost the business
• reduce the recruitment costs every year from cyclical layoffs and re-hire
• produce more stable balance sheets that are reflected in the long-term performance of the organization which means more opportunities for finance and business
• reduces employee turnover
• organizations become more responsible and accountable for people and their local communities
• not having to let go of the best people
• increases employee moral as they can maintain stability in their lives from working with a responsible organization that practices rational and strategic decision making for the long-term
• reduces the collective expense in benefits packages
• reduces the toxic culture that may be brewing in the organization through excessive and unnecessary politics
• reducing employee head count does not reflect well for the future of the organization 
• layoffs invariably are a sign of bad leadership
• laid off employees may hold resentment and ill-feelings which brews on the social media and effects brand value