
Hash – Complex Systems Simulation - cocoflunchy
https://hash.ai/
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wespiser_2018
This looks like a bunch of "Sales-Foo". What is the underlying algorithm, and
how does it work to help business solve specific business problems? Machine
learning techniques are rarely revolutionary, so what is this based off of,
and what are the pros/cons of that approach?

I don't know, but this "coming soon" code base always makes me think it's
vaporware.

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EsssM7QVMehFPAs
> As much as 10-50x faster than existing best-in-class tools. We’ve flipped
> simulation software on its head through modern functional programming.

I'd guess they accelerate simulations on the GPU and/or over multiple cores.

Rarely revolutionary since this is certainly best practice in any serious
application domain. Might make it much more accessible to implement though.

We'll see, I also remain rather sceptical.

~~~
wespiser_2018
It looks like they are using Rust, which is at least a positive.[1] Further,
there are a few "wins" for agent-based modeling, like traffic congestion and
supply chain optimization (wikipedia). However, in agent based modeling, you
are looking for emergent behavior (i.e. simulating sheep farmers and observing
a "tragedy of the commons") and require you to correctly assume the proper
agent actions for given states. Further, explainability (why the model says X
given conditions W,Y,Z) is pretty poor for ABM, but the solutions could still
be useful in a black box way.

There's no doubt in my mind that you can run 10-50x faster ABMs than whatever
tool exists using by leveraging advances like cloud computing GPUs, I'm just
not sure what that actually get you in terms of problem solving capability.
It's not like 50x speed like bring these models onto my phone, they will still
be the domain of data scientists and subject matter experts with the patience
to wait.

[1] [https://www.meetup.com/Rust-
NYC/events/266627924/?aff=garysg...](https://www.meetup.com/Rust-
NYC/events/266627924/?aff=garysguide)

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willvarfar
I imagine you can do 50x faster ABM just by tuning, writing in a compiled
language, owning the low level library routines that do the work etc.

I mean, most ABM is probably sub-optimally implemented. There must be lots of
“leading” software that squanders the resources it is given to run on.

So, just implement with some mechanical sympathy and you get order of
magnitudes improvement.

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garmaine
Simulation... of what?

"General purpose simulation" doesn't really make sense to me as a concept,
unless maybe there is some other meaning of the word simulation that is meant
here?

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saghm
I saw a talk from one of the founders just earlier this week at a meetup; it's
essentially an engine that lets you model agent-based simulations and then
multiple frontends that let you design them. He did several demos of their
web-based UI, which could model simple things like Conway's Game of Life as
well as much more complex things, like a 3D-representation of a thunderstorm
in a rain forest. It was really cool!

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garmaine
That doesn’t actually answer the question, although the examples inch forward
towards an unknown answer. Agent-based simulations of... what, exactly?

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koliber
Assuming you can code an agent representing the actor or component of what you
are simulating, it sounds like “what” gets defined by you, the user.

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DavidWilkinson
This ^^ Our starter models are pretty diverse and span real-world problems
like optimizing controlled burns w/r/t wildfire containment, and improving
Stack Overflow community dynamics (sorry... not a problem!)

In addition we have several dozen classic ABM toy models such as Boids,
Schelling segregation, and Conway's GoL. These individually showcase different
components of the system.

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kick
This is the new company by Joel Spolsky, the founder of Stack Overflow (and
notorious blogger), which is why it's relevant to HN.

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tobr
He’s chairman, I’m not sure if it’s “by” him exactly. He seems to be
describing Hash as “they” rather than “we”.[1]

1: [https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2019/12/05/so-hows-that-
retir...](https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2019/12/05/so-hows-that-retirement-
thing-going-anyway/)

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willvarfar
I wonder the extent to which it builds on or learns from Joel’s Monte Carlo
project estimates?

([https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2007/10/26/evidence-based-
sch...](https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2007/10/26/evidence-based-scheduling/)
2007)

Or perhaps it’s a completely different thing, made by different people, who
had no knowledge of all that?

Perhaps Joel is just the accidental sponsor like he was with Trello?

A bunch of interns working for him invent something cool and present it to him
and then let him take over the world? (Not that I think that a bad thing!)

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DavidWilkinson
Hey William! Monte Carlo is one experiment type we support. :)

You're half right -- Jude started as an intern at Fog Creek eleven years ago
and rose over a decade to become CTO. So technically he once was an intern...

But the startup originated outside of Fog Creek, and Joel's involvement is
very much intentional.

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d--b
Simulation of what, ffs??

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TomMarius
I guess it's a generalized environment to simulate any (or a subset of)
complex system
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_system](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_system)

~~~
DavidWilkinson
Hey Åsmund, all. Tom's got it ^^ In theory you can model all of the above, but
simulating complex environments in an agent-based fashion is the initial thing
we've focused on creating a really streamlined experience for.

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decentralised
I've been using cadCAD lately, might be interesting for others here:
[https://community.cadcad.org/](https://community.cadcad.org/)

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sdan
So does it replicate what Mujoco and Pybullet do? What exactly do you mean by
simulation?

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adfhghg123345
This is a cool idea. It seems like currently only the major players have
troves of real data to feed their ML algorithms. Google has clocked how many
real hours of driving for their cars? But if an upstart wants to bring a
better driving AI/algorithm to the market they won't be able to because they
don't have a Google-scale fleet with unlimited cash to burn on driving hours.
In those cases simulation becomes a really good substitute. Driving is one
example but I can imagine other cases where simulating the real word as data
for an ML model is just as good as clocking the real world hours.

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DavidWilkinson
This is a great example. Relatedly Josh Tobin and team (OpenAI) have done some
awesome recent work on how domain randomization can be applied to simulated
worlds to improve the generalizability of algorithms as well:
[https://arxiv.org/abs/1710.06425](https://arxiv.org/abs/1710.06425)

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tirumaraiselvan
This is one of the game-changer use-cases of wasm. Not sure how such a product
would work without that technology.

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mkl
Probably just the same but a bit slower. People have been compiling to
Javascript (and asm.js) for many years.

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DavidWilkinson
I think it's fair to say we would have chosen an entirely different
architectural approach had it not been for Wasm. Whilst simulations would have
run slower, our dev progress would also have taken a hit.

We're big fans and optimistic about its future :)

