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StevenXC

224 karma · joined December 6, 2012

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StevenXC··on National Institutes of Health cuts support to universities
It's very unclear to me how you seem to expect medical research to be done in the cloud. Overhead is crucial to create and maintain research infrastructure necessary to advance medicine and science.
StevenXC··on Teachers: AI is making children dumb as fuck
I wrote a small novel but lost it due to user error, so here's a hot take with much less nuance from a college math professor. Just like calculators meant we needed and could pivot the skills we ask our students to learn, AI will also shift the paradigm. But unlike calculators, which are very good at what they're meant to do, AI produces BS in the academic sense [0] and if used uncritically frequently produces work that's just nonsense. So I tell students I don't care so much if they use it, but that the students who do tend to end up looking foolish.

[0]: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10676-024-09775-5

StevenXC··on Why is x & -x equal to the largest power of 2 that divides x?
Algebraically, where | denotes concatenation, and z is a string of 0s:

x = y | 1 | z

-x = ~x + 1

-x = (~y | 0 | ~z) + 1

-x = ~y | 1 | z

x & -x = (y & ~y) | (1 & 1) | (z & z)

x & -x = 0 | 1 | z

StevenXC··on Mathematicians and the Selection Task (2004)
As an math educator, I think there's a huge flaw in this study. The investigators failed to follow up to see why the mistake was made. They leap to assuming the player is trying to "deny the antecedent", but I think there's a much simpler explanation: the players aren't reading the instructions carefully.

There's two reading errors I would expect someone to make given this experiment:

1. The instructions that each card has exactly one letter and exactly one number are before the big cards. I bet many players just skipped that instruction.

2. Mistaking the P→Q as P←→Q smacks more of a reading comprehension error than a logical error.

Disclosure: I made both mistakes. (-:

StevenXC··on I organized a 20-acre game of Capture the Flag
the kids are alright. Reminds me of when I organized a real life version of Pac-Man on the quad in 2006, inspired by this game ran on the streets of Manhattan in 2004. https://www.pacmanhattan.com/
StevenXC··on Putting a Wet Towel on a Tesla Supercharger Handle Gets Faster Charging Speeds
It's just a little spark of inspiration.
StevenXC··on Stack Overflow users deleting answers after OpenAI partnership
3.0 has a "bug" that makes it risky to use materials without very careful attribution:

https://doctorow.medium.com/a-bug-in-early-creative-commons-...

StevenXC··on U-M finds students with alphabetically lower-ranked names receive lower grades
Like most inequities, those who are in the benefiting group frequently don't realize that privilege.
StevenXC··on Math Puzzles
Nice to see JRMF trending on HN. JRMF puzzles and festivals are a great way to engage general audiences of grade school students in mathematical inquiry and problem solving.
StevenXC··on Online Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences
I like the phrasing used by https://houseofgraphs.org/ — while there are an infinite number of mathematical objects in any category, there are only "a few thousand that can be considered really interesting."
StevenXC··on Online Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences
Those interested in databases of mathematical objects may want to check out https://mathbases.org
StevenXC··on The Super Mario Maker community faces its final boss
Literally Doug Bowser.
StevenXC··on TikTok is finally on the decline
Calculus 1 instructors, everywhere, screaming

> TikTok is finally concave down

StevenXC··on Rogue editors started a competing Wikipedia that's only about roads
https://Topology.pi-base.org (a database of certain mathematical objects) started as a wiki, but transitioned to using GitHub pull requests and custom software to support automated deduction.

Folks interested in open collaborative math content may find these interesting:

- https://code4math.org/ - https://mathbases.org/

StevenXC··on SymPy: Symbolic Mathematics in Python
SymPy is open source, mathematica is not.

Additionally, SageMath (which depends on SymPy) is the more comparable product (and is open source).

StevenXC··on Boeing missing key elements of safety culture: FAA report
A major Boeing campus is in Huntsville, AL, which is going to affect that average for sure.
StevenXC··on I turned my open-source project into a full-time business
They didn't make a business using an open source project; they turned their open source project into a monetized non open source project.
StevenXC··on Study suggests a 'dark mirror' universe within ours where atoms failed to form
I've seen stranger things.
StevenXC··on How Condé Nast bought and destroyed Pitchfork
Same story here. It's a shame.
StevenXC··on Data structures as topological spaces (2002) [pdf]
Also relevant:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topological_data_analysis

StevenXC··on Disney to take $1.5B stake in Epic Games
Frozen (2013), i.e. 11 years ago
StevenXC··on How Condé Nast bought and destroyed Pitchfork
Are people still on Reddit since last summer?
StevenXC··on Super Mario 64 on the Web
Little surprised there isn't a prompt to upload the copy of the ROM we all legally dumped from our personalized copies of the cartridge.
StevenXC··on A Modern Web for Hacker News – Open-Source and Seeking Feedback
As a solely mobile user of HN, my fat fingers much prefer your layout to the current one, which requires a lot of precision or zooming in to find relevant links.
StevenXC··on Word2Vec received 'strong reject' four times at ICLR2013
It can be annoying, and reviewer #2 is a jerk, but I'd be highly suspect of any scientist that doesn't respect the importance of peer review.
StevenXC··on YouTube blames ad blockers for slow load times, not the browser
It's kind of like a Vine.
StevenXC··on Bluesky migrates to single-tenant SQLite
I'm a donating supporter of the Mathstodon.xyz instance, but (sadly?) most of "math Twitter", at least the education-focused university faculty, ended up on BlueSky. I think there's a strong appeal for "a straight forward Twitter clone without Musk" for a lot of people.
StevenXC··on Ask HN: Is anyone using cloud dev environments (e.g. Codespaces/Replit) at work?
Probably not what you mean by "at work" but as a non-CS STEM academic that needs to help my colleagues get dev environments so we can collaborate on research software, devcontainers are a game changer. I work a lot with folks that are scared of the command line, but I can get them productive in their web browser with much less friction these days.
StevenXC··on MGM is down, cybersecurity attack ongoing
I once was stuck in my hotel room due to a malfunction in the inside door handle, which was an annoying way to discover that the latch wasn't even mechanical on that side.
StevenXC··on Peredvizhnikov Engine: Lock-free game engine written in C++20
I'd love to see the Steam Deck "console" change this status quo.
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