from Hacker News

Distributed Neural Networks with GPUs in the AWS Cloud

by srajbr on 2/13/14, 3:00 PM with 18 comments

• by doh on 2/13/14, 8:05 PM

  Isn't this infringing the recent patent of Neurala? http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=H...

• by waterlesscloud on 2/13/14, 5:13 PM

  The Netflix tech blog goes into more detail about running deep learning on Amazon's cloud servers.

  http://techblog.netflix.com/2014/02/distributed-neural-netwo...

• by Houshalter on 2/13/14, 6:14 PM

  Is this really a good idea? I thought neural networks didn't do as well as other methods outside of image classification and problems like it. Many of the advancements in Deep Learning were learning to extract features from unlabeled data. I assume all of Netflix's data is labelled.

  EDIT: The deaded comment below me makes a good point, but they still have labels in the sense of what everyone watched and for how long.

  Also the new title is terrible. Oh I guess it's a different article now???

• by dasmithii on 2/14/14, 1:42 AM

  Has any large-scale genetic algorithm infrastructure been developed? I've often wondered if EaaS (Evolution as a Service) could ever function successfully. Surely it has potential.

• by luser on 2/13/14, 5:14 PM

  I wish Netflix would just give me a list of genres I could browse through and stop with the oh-my-so-clever recommendation engine. Maybe I want to stretch my viewing habits... how am I going to see what is on offer if it is always filtered through what I chosen before?

• by frosted_moose on 2/13/14, 3:58 PM

  The best possible side-effect from this? That we finally figure out a universal theory of film production and consumption. The social scientific/cultural sociological significance of this is quite lovely.

• by danso on 2/13/14, 5:26 PM

  Sadly, the Recommendation Engine is only of limited use...and I hate to be one of those naysayers as I understand the economics and contractual issues here...the movies that Netflix thinks I would really enjoy and are available for streaming and I haven't seen (I watch a lot of movies but am by no means prolific) goes downhill after a couple dozen.

  It used to be that on the iPad, at least two bottom rows were dedicated to "New Releases" and "Recently Added"...sometimes neither of those rows seem to show up, and so I find myself logging into the web client just to see those listings, and -- I assume this is why they aren't as spotlighted in the iPad app anymore -- there's generally not much new to see. While I like House of Cards, I think Netflix would appeal to me much better if it spent that money on 200 - 300 good recent releases, or holding steady on to some of the great classics (there used to be more Akira Kurosawa and Woody Allen movies on Instant).

• by nctalaviya on 2/13/14, 3:45 PM

  Really a good news. Looking something like this

• by dhfjgkrgjg on 2/13/14, 4:46 PM

  What is it's first recommendation? Add more DRM into the web standards? Subvert the open web further?