[HN Gopher] We were not accepted into Google Summer of Code. So,...
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       We were not accepted into Google Summer of Code. So, we started our
       own
        
       Author : andre-z
       Score  : 78 points
       Date   : 2024-02-24 20:08 UTC (2 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (qdrant.tech)
 (TXT) w3m dump (qdrant.tech)
        
       | minimaxir wrote:
       | > WASM-based dimension reduction viz
       | 
       | > Implement a dimension reduction algorithm in Rust and compile
       | to WASM and integrate the WASM code with Qdrant Web UI.
       | 
       | Easy, just use a Rust crate to fit a PCA
       | (https://crates.io/crates/pca), then at runtime do a matmul
       | between the fitted matrix and the embeddings to get it reduced.
       | :P
       | 
       | Speaking of which, there's a surprising spike in downloads for
       | that crate on the date this blog post was made.
       | 
       | It's not as simple in practice, and even popular dimensionality
       | reduction techniques like UMAP require you to reference the
       | original dataset which is infeasible for large datasets. The
       | hacky approach that would be good for production use (maybe not
       | "just want to visualize 2D embeddings because they look cool")
       | would be to train a small Parametric UMAP model (with likely a
       | non-Rust implementation: https://umap-
       | learn.readthedocs.io/en/latest/parametric_umap....), then convert
       | the trained model to ONNX for WASM.
        
         | olliej wrote:
         | "Easy, just..." lol I do like the joke (and I appreciate you
         | pointing out that in reality things aren't necessarily _that_
         | simple), but as I understand it these programs (internships?)
         | are targeted mostly at young folk/undergrads who are still
         | learning the core skills, in which case projects that are
         | conceptually easy but require you learn the skills to actually
         | implement the conceptually easy task within the confines of
         | real world constraints feels reasonably appropriate?
         | 
         | I could be wrong, because it's not really a field I do anything
         | in but based on what you said it's sounds about right for a
         | first "real project" task an intern would do at a big tech
         | summer internship (this is as someone who has helped summer
         | interns over the years, but never did one myself so it's based
         | on seeing what tasks are given to someone in their first ever
         | internship vs people who have interned previously)
        
       | vander_elst wrote:
       | In general it seems that organizations that are accepted to the
       | GSoC program are no-profit like associations, that develop a
       | product for the sake of developing it, probably there are also
       | exceptions.
       | 
       | Anyway, it seems that qdrant is more a for-profit organization.
       | So maybe that was the one of the criteria that was taken into
       | account to exclude it?
       | 
       | My understanding might be wrong/incomplete, please let me know if
       | that's not the case.
        
         | refulgentis wrote:
         | .
        
           | andre-z wrote:
           | Did you look a bit deeper? Qdrant is written in Rust from
           | scratch. The project is over three years old and started long
           | before the "gold rush." :) Run it wherever you want, in your
           | data center, locally, with no limitations.
           | https://github.com/qdrant/qdrant-helm
        
         | andre-z wrote:
         | This is not a reason. We participated successfully last year
         | and even hired one of the guys afterward.
        
       | productlordtr wrote:
       | Who would spend even a minute for a unknown company called
       | 'Qdrant' ?
       | 
       | They would develop for Google because Google would give an
       | additional value to their CV.
        
         | minimaxir wrote:
         | They recently raised a Series A:
         | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39101682
         | 
         | Additionally, the product that this Summer of Code is for is
         | open-source so it's a win-win for everyone.
        
           | jjtheblunt wrote:
           | I wonder if Google wants rights to what is developed in GSoC.
           | 
           | If so, that might explain the lack of invitation.
        
             | umanwizard wrote:
             | > I wonder if Google wants rights to what is developed in
             | GSoC.
             | 
             | They don't. I participated in GSoC working on something
             | that competes directly with Google (LibreOffice) and was
             | never asked to assign copyright or anything like that.
             | 
             | IMO GSoC is a relatively cheap way for Google to get some
             | goodwill and boost their brand among college students; it's
             | not really a core part of their competitive business
             | strategy.
        
               | jjtheblunt wrote:
               | That's very cool then. Thanks for responding.
        
         | olliej wrote:
         | Yeah I think you'd take the GSoC so you could have qdrant and
         | gsoc on your cv, but also many folk do need a job to pay bills,
         | and even an "unknown" company paying bills and being experience
         | on your CV is better than Walmart (in my case The Warehouse)
         | 
         | [edit: s/Qurans/qdrant, sigh autocarrot]
        
           | pooper wrote:
           | How much are they paying? It is $current_year and at some
           | point we should demand that all job postings (this is a job
           | posting) should come with salary ranges at a minimum.
           | 
           | Are they even compliant with the law with this post?
        
             | olliej wrote:
             | I have no idea :-/
        
             | LoganDark wrote:
             | > we should demand that all job postings (this is a job
             | posting) should come with salary ranges at a minimum
             | 
             | Agreed. Not even considering jobs that pay under 120k, not
             | worth my time. The literal only reason to hide the range is
             | so that you can lowball people
        
             | rjsw wrote:
             | When other organizations have done this they just pay the
             | same as Google.
        
         | jjtheblunt wrote:
         | > ... unknown ...
         | 
         | This is a resounding instance of "tell me you don't know the
         | domain without telling me you don't know the domain" and I
         | think you'll find them interesting if you look into it.
        
         | throwaway5959 wrote:
         | This is an incredibly dumb comment that you should delete.
         | Anyone even remotely aware of RAG, LLMs and vector databases
         | has heard of Qdrant.
        
       | LorenDB wrote:
       | What's with the hashtags inside a normal blog post? It's not like
       | they're writing this on Twitter or anything, and the hashtags
       | aren't clickable, so I wouldn't expect this to serve as SEO. I
       | would guess one of two things: (1) they plan to post the same
       | content to social media or (2) they've decided that people search
       | hashtags in their search engines in general.
       | 
       | I'd be interested if anybody has more insights into this.
        
         | LoganDark wrote:
         | Or (3) hashtags have become some intrinsic quality of writing
         | by people whose minds have been entirely corrupted by social
         | media junk
        
         | minimaxir wrote:
         | Same reason they have random emoji at the ends of each bullet
         | point: it's an intentional forced-quirky vibe.
         | 
         | It has been a part of most major AI open source projects
         | lately, for some reason:
         | https://sigmoid.social/@minimaxir/110951886465291229
        
           | LorenDB wrote:
           | I agree that people use emojis waaaay too much for this sort
           | of stuff (see also: certain projects' commit messages,
           | various READMEs).
        
           | codetrotter wrote:
           | Imagine getting upset over emojis.
           | 
           | It's just injecting a little bit of life and visual variance
           | into the text.
        
         | bradleyjkemp wrote:
         | Appears the blogpost text is from a LinkedIn post (where the
         | hashtags are clickable):
         | https://www.linkedin.com/posts/zayarni_qdrant-summer-of-code...
         | 
         | Nothing more interesting than copy-paste I'm afraid
        
         | andre-z wrote:
         | Sorry, my bad. Was partially copied from Linkedin, where I post
         | most of the content. No idea behind. The emojis are from here
         | https://qdrant.to/gsoc24
        
       | chaosprint wrote:
       | I also applied with Glicol (https://glicol.org/) and got
       | rejected. I guess the main reason is that the project is not as
       | mature as others. I am basically working this project on my own
       | with almost zero extra funding. There are so many places I want
       | to change.
       | 
       | I am currently working on a new website. The old stack is Vite,
       | Svelte and Windi CSS (discontinued unfortunately). So this time
       | maybe Astro + Solid + Tailwind.
       | 
       | And I am also trying to rewrite the whole Rust backend if
       | possible, so there is quite some work to be done. What I want to
       | change most is to make the dsp algorithm of each node clear and
       | easy to understand and contribute to. And I also hope that the
       | entire rust project can have complete bench and test, as well as
       | ci, and get rid of the proc macro.
       | 
       | Generally speaking, what I actually care about is how to compose
       | music, and the new possibilities that live coding brings to
       | improvisation and composition. There is also network cooperation,
       | real-time or non-real-time cooperation, and cooperation with AI.
       | What possibilities can these bring?
       | 
       | Let me know on GH or Discord if you are interested.
       | 
       | It's a good chance to try Rust, WASM, DSP, etc.
        
       | armchairhacker wrote:
       | This is what Haskell did last summer:
       | https://summer.haskell.org/news/2024-01-20-summer-of-haskell....
       | Fortunately they got accepted this summer.
        
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       (page generated 2024-02-24 23:00 UTC)