Sam Kumar Sachdev

Sam Kumar Sachdev

@samsachdev.bsky.social

Founder of Ziporama. I like math and Alf. Ziporama: https://www.ziporama.com/ Alf: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ALF_(TV_series)

288 followers47 following572 posts

Sam Kumar Sachdev reposted

Steve Rattner
@steverattner.bsky.social

When first reported, 2025’s jobs reports added up to 1.2 million new jobs. After revisions, the economy added just 116,000 — 90% less.

Sam Kumar Sachdev
@samsachdev.bsky.social

The number of planned or under construction nuclear reactors in: China: 37 India: 8 Russia: 7 Egypt: 4 Turkey: 4 Bangladesh: 2 Japan: 2 UK: 2 Iran: 1 Brazil: 1 Slovakia: 1 Canada: 1 USA: 0 Mexico: 0 Vietnam: 0 Sweden: 0 world-nuclear.org/information-...

world-nuclear.orgPlans For New Reactors Worldwide - World Nuclear AssociationNuclear power capacity worldwide is increasing steadily. Most reactors under construction are in the Asian region. Significant further capacity is being created by plant uprating.

Sam Kumar Sachdev reposted

Steve Rattner
@steverattner.bsky.social

Workers' share of GDP is at its lowest point on record whereas the corporate share is near record highs. This dynamic may exacerbate as Trump's fiscal policies disproportionately benefit corporations and the wealthy.

Sam Kumar Sachdev reposted

Mark Histed
@markhisted.org

Trump 2.0 has blown up US scientific research in a way that will take decades to roll back. Labs that took years to build have closed, young people have left science. NYT Mag published a long report on Dismantling Cancer Research. Why does Ross Douthat lie like this?

Peter@notalawyer.bsky.social

also, describing a lack of legislative capacity as a point against authoritarian consolidation misses the point: the defining feature of Trump’s second term is consolidation of power in the *executive* - the lack of legislative authorization makes him more authoritarian, not less

Sam Kumar Sachdev reposted

Robert Reich
@rbreich.bsky.social

The effective federal corporate income tax rate: 1950: 50% 1990: 25% 2020: 13% Stop asking "but how we will pay for it?" Restore the corporate tax rate. That is how we will pay for it.

Sam Kumar Sachdev
@samsachdev.bsky.social

Life expectancy of: Mississippi: 72.6 Iran: 78.2 Alabama: 73.8 Lebanon: 79 California: 79.3 West Virginia: 72.2 Haiti: 65.2 China: 79.2 Norway: 83.2 India: 72.2 Kentucky: 72.3 Sudan: 66.5 Phillippines: 71 Italy: 83.7 Mexico: 75.4 South Carolina: 73.5 Chad: 55.6 Bulgaria: 75.9 Ukraine: 72.5

Sam Kumar Sachdev reposted

ProPublica
@propublica.org

Nearly 500,000 public comments have flooded in since the Trump administration proposed a rule that gives political appointees control over research funding. “The United States will not just fall behind. It will step aside,” one physicist wrote.

propublica.orgHow Trump’s “America First” Administration Could Shut U.S. Scientists Out of the Next Nobel-Worthy DiscoveryA proposed White House rule would give political appointees unprecedented control over scientific funding. One physicist, who helped discover the Higgs boson, explains how the rule would’ve stifled th...
Sam Kumar Sachdev
@samsachdev.bsky.social

56% of all HTTPS-enabled website use the P-256 elliptic curve, which was developed by NIST. In order to use this curve for, say, key exchanges you need a seed. NIST provides one sentence in its documentation of P-256 that says use this one seed. That's it. No mention of who developed it or how.

Sam Kumar Sachdev reposted

Pew Research Center
@pewresearch.org

#SCOTUS has overturned a 91-year-old precedent that has prevented presidents from removing members of independent agencies at will. ⚖️ In the past 20 Supreme Court terms, about 1% of cases have overruled an earlier decision.

Sam Kumar Sachdev
@samsachdev.bsky.social

Mississippi has an infant mortality rate of 9.7 deaths per 1000 babies. America's is 5.6. Here are other countries: China: 3.8 Mexico: 11 Japan: 1.7 India: 23.5 Phillippines: 18 Italy: 2.1 South Africa: 23 Canada: 4 Peru: 9.75 Denmark: 3 UK: 3.5 Indonesia: 14.6 Sudan: 37 Ghana: 30 Brazil: 10

Sam Kumar Sachdev
@samsachdev.bsky.social

Zap Energy, which has raised $327 million (US) to build a fusion power plant, has decided instead to become a company that builds fission power plants: energy.media/energy-deals...

energy.mediaZap Energy Raises $130M for Nuclear Fusion - Energy.MediaZap Energy, a Washington-based startup developing fusion power technology, recently secured $130 million in Series D funding. This brings Zap Energy’s total capital raised to $327 million, positioning...
Sam Kumar Sachdev
@samsachdev.bsky.social

A reminder: the Dallas Mavs let Jalen Brunson go in 2022. That is, they didn't trade him. They simply didn't resign him. During the playoffs, in '22, Brunson averaged 32 points/game. After the playoffs, the Mavs offered Brunson $55 million/4 yrs. Brunson signed with the Knicks for $104 mil/4 years

Sam Kumar Sachdev
@samsachdev.bsky.social

Tom Steyer, who is running for governor of California and is presently in third place, has spent $213 million on the primary election. So far, he's received approximately 1,488,000 votes. This means he's spent about $143 per vote.

Sam Kumar Sachdev
@samsachdev.bsky.social

The Jaecoo 7 is the most popular car sold in the UK in 2026. This is a Chinese car brand. As an American: 1) Have never even heard of Jaecoo 2) Don't think I've ever seen a Chinese brand of a car 3) Am shocked that in many countries Chinese cars are popular www.autocar.co.uk/car-review/j...

autocar.co.ukWe drove the £30k Jaecoo 7 for 6000 miles. Does it deserve to be UK's bestseller? | AutocarChinese newbie has conquered sales charts, offering strong value and high-tech interior
Sam Kumar Sachdev
@samsachdev.bsky.social

On Polymarket, a bet can be placed if Jesus Christ will return before Dec 31, 2026. It pays 2% if you bet he won't. For a period of two months, from February to April (2026), the rate of return for a "no" bet was greater than a one year US Treasury rate 3.81%. During this time, it was about 4%:

polymarket.comWill Jesus Christ return before 2027?$63,455,218 has traded on "Will Jesus Christ return before 2027?" as of June 3, 2026. View real-time odds or trade on The World's Largest Prediction Market™
Sam Kumar Sachdev
@samsachdev.bsky.social

Homicide rates of various countries per 100k people: The US: 5.9 Mexico: 15.5-17.5 Germany: 0.91 India: 2.0-2.7 Jamaica: 24 Columbia: 25.8 Japan: 0.2-0.8 Canada: 1.91 Brazil: 18.5-19.2 Phillipines: 4.3-5.2 South Africa: 45 Bulgaria: 1.15-1.3 Singapore: 0.1 China: 0.44 Guatemala: 17.4 Sweden: 0.8

Sam Kumar Sachdev
@samsachdev.bsky.social

Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Vietnam are the least entrepreneurial countries I've encountered. Consider, the number of startups valued at over $1 billion (US): Japan: 10 South Korea: 33 Vietnam: 7 Taiwan: 3 Israel: 42 (which has half of the population of Taiwan) India: 128 China: 416 US: 1172

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Sam Kumar Sachdev
@samsachdev.bsky.social

3/The advantage of this analytic approach would be that these geometric shapes most likely have differomorphisms that would allow you to find invertible geometric units that then could be applied homomorphically.

Sam Kumar Sachdev
@samsachdev.bsky.social

4/In other words, instead of making many thousands of plastic objects and that each have their own distribution, there could be a set of invertible geometric objects that could be homomorphically rotated and twisted to different shapes and that would provide analytic solutions.

Sam Kumar Sachdev
@samsachdev.bsky.social

5/ Then, at 52:18 in the linked video, LeCun casually mentions that, although this new approach seems to work well (see the paper for examples), he doesn't understand why it works. No one, it seems, understands why it works. Does this mean that this new approach won't always work? Not necessarily.

Sam Kumar Sachdev
@samsachdev.bsky.social

5/ But I do think if you don't understand why it works, you're going to have difficulty to work in all cases and may have trouble either generalizing from it or optimizing it. But, maybe I'm wrong. Or maybe $1 billion will help find why it works. Or maybe it won't.

Sam Kumar Sachdev
@samsachdev.bsky.social

3/ Briefly, the idea is that LLMs aren't feasible for the physical world because they're too granular. That is, higher level abstraction is needed. Consider, the equation f=ma isn't at the atomic level. Rather, it's concerned with abstractions such as mass and force. LeCun argues a similar...

Sam Kumar Sachdev
@samsachdev.bsky.social

4/...abstraction is needed for machine learning. In other words, the predictions in a feed forward neural network aren't concerned with pixels or tokens but abstractions of physical reality (that can be embedded in vectors). Great! Sounds like an idea that has a lot of promise, I thought.

Sam Kumar Sachdev
@samsachdev.bsky.social

1/ I just discovered this -- and can't believe I just did. There is no solution to the following: find the integral from infinity to minus infinity of e^((-z^2)/2)dz, where z is any real number. Specifically, it's been proven that there's no solution to this indefinite integral.

Sam Kumar Sachdev
@samsachdev.bsky.social

1/Nexperia is a 100% Chinese-owned company based in the Netherlands. It makes semiconductors primarily for cars. Last week, the Dutch gov't nationalized it. That is, they formally took over ownership of the company. Why? It seems to be because of US pressure. This has the potential to blowup.

Sam Kumar Sachdev
@samsachdev.bsky.social

2/That is, this could motivate the CCP to retaliate against the US by restricting rare earth imports. In any case, this news story is not getting headlines in the US but it has the potential to greatly influence the trade war between the US and China. www.scmp.com/tech/tech-wa...

scmp.comHow Wingtech became the latest cautionary tale in the US-China tech warSome analysts link seizure of subsidiary by Dutch authorities to new rule issued by the US Bureau of Industry and Security.