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photon_lineson Grokking AVL and RAVL Trees

It was mostly written by me, although I do admit to using ChatGPT to help out in generating some of my material. Most of the recent blog posts are Feynman style lecture notes I wrote for myself to learn new concepts and this piece I actually wrote well over 10 years ago and I figured to share it in case anyone else wanted a quick and visual overview. Apologies for missing out any important concepts. At the time I wrote down material that I found important so there are definitely things I may have not explained correctly.

photon_lineson How to check if two SQL tables are the same

Ahhh nice - yup that's one solution and really elegant as well. Great suggestion :)

photon_lineson How to check if two SQL tables are the same

Yeah - I was going to say the same thing. Hashing would be the way to go if you're going for runtime and efficiency. You select the elements in an ordered manner though so that makes it n*log(n) and then produce a hash value for each table (or each row in the table) -- I'm trying to think if there is a better way of doing it in less time right now but I'm not seeing it yet. You could do this in O(n) or even constant time but it adds a bit of complexity to the solution I think.

photon_lineson Young people are flocking to astrology

Thanks for this. I actually re-wrote the content but replaced the word 'astrology' with 'bullshit' and it actually makes a lot more sense in the translated context than the original. You can find the other version here:

https://photonlines.substack.com/p/young-people-are-flocking...

photon_lineson Understanding the Monte Carlo Method

Using the monte carlo methodology for scrum estimation imo is a waste of time -- even time boxing in scrum itself is bullshit. It's impossible to accurately predict how much time it takes to get coding tasks done...just like the concept of adding new devs to a late project won't make it less late - trying to estimate how much each task takes won't make the project run smoother it'll only kill motivation and productivity but i suppose it's a regular part of modern everyday development so it is what it is :)

photon_lineson Keep work fresh by teaching your successors and investing a bit in long-shots

I rarely do. I recently started using sub-stack for blogging myself, and I added in a paid version as well just to annoy people haha :) Just kidding though - the paid version is for everyone who appreciates my work and who wants to help me continue writing. It takes quite a while to come up with content and posts and time isn't 'free'. The free version is for anyone who wants to continually get new posts in their inbox which attempt to explain concept topics in an intuitive and visual manner. Yes - the pop ups I agree are relatively annoying, but I appreciate what sub-stack is attempting to do regardless. If it were up to me, I'd simply include a subscribe button at the end of each post which asks the user whether they'd like a free or paid subscription should they click on it. That's me though. I'm not sure what type of UI testing they've done nor what effect that would have.

photon_lineson Show HN: A hash array-mapped trie implementation in C

I just did a bit of a write-up on HAMTs and you can find it here: https://photonlines.substack.com/p/grokking-hash-array-mappe...

I actually included your repo as well in the mentions at the end of the article so hopefully it helps :)

photon_lineson Telling the Bees

The flow of time is an illusion. This has already been undoubtedly proven and discovered and the theory of relativity implies that the flow of time is nothing but an illusion. Here - read pages 68 to 76 to understand what I'm talking about:

https://cdn.preterhuman.net/texts/science_and_technology/The...

photon_lineson Telling the Bees

"I mean, you honestly are, quite objectively. You are literally relaying your own interpretation of Buddhist philosophy, specifically the teachings of no-self and impermanence."

I'm sorry - but could you show where I'm actually implying or stating that there is 'no-self' or 'impermanence'? I'm implying that we're infinitely powerful beings that misperceive the interconnection within reality. I'll once again pull up a quote from Einstein to reiterate my position:

“A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.” - Albert Einstein

All I did was attempt to state that we are all inter-connected. Everything else you talk about is your own skewed and incredibly wrong interpretation of what I'm trying to state.

"Well that doesn't really mean anything. Physics doesn't say that time is an illusion."

And the same back to you. Your PhD in Physics means nothing to me, so blatantly talking about it like it gives you some sort of extra credentials makes you look extremely ignorant. Also - apologies for stating something in a manner which wasn't clear. Time is clearly a PARAMATER IN THIS UNIVERSE AND IS NOT AN ILLUSION. I can't think of anyone who would be stupid enough to deny the existence of time. What I meant to say is that the 'FLOW' of time is an ILLUSION. Here - this is a great watch for anyone that's non-you and that wants to understand what I truly meant to say:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Y-JmocB84Y

"Life and death are of supreme importance. Time swiftly passes by and opportunity is lost. We should strive to awaken. Awaken! Take heed! Do not squander your life." - Zen Master Dogen

I 100% agree with this statement.

In Zen we called what you are doing "attaching to emptiness"

Once again, I'm not sure where in the world I'm "attaching to emptiness." Once again - you're adding your own interpretation here so I have no further comments for you.

photon_lineson Telling the Bees

I'm not sure what your insinuating here. What I'm attempting to say is that the universe is ONE thing. It's not a fractured state of personalities that are living and dying - we are all interconnected. Even after you die, you and the memories and actions here will travel along well into the future without you realizing it, so it is wise to treat everyone with compassion and respect and to live life to the fullest. Also - death is a gift. Living forever would be a nightmare. Those are my beliefs and solely mine. Maybe you don't believe in them and that's fine.

photon_lineson Telling the Bees

I love Thich Nhat Hanh as well! I didn't realize this was directly from him! Thank you!

photon_lineson Telling the Bees

You're not understanding the message at all. There is nothing narcissistic about what I posted - the message is supposed to be more about how interconnected we all are and how the human experience is in fact an illusion. "A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty." - Albert Einstein

photon_lineson Telling the Bees

Also - I'm not scared of death. You come out attacking assuming that I'm sprouting new age stuff. I'm not. I'm simply trying to respond to a pessimistic comment in a positive way and to make the author feel better about his perception of existance. I've studied physics for well over 20 years now and I've met and talked to many others who have PhDs as well. QED by Feynman is actually my bible. I actually bring it with me everywhere I travel. Either way - before offending someone and coming out firing next time, maybe you should calm down and take a deep breath. I'm not trying to offend or hurt anyone - although it appears to me that you are.

photon_lineson Telling the Bees

Our perception of time as having a 'flow' is an illusion is what I meant to say. Saying that I'm incorrect when you aren't even comprehending what I'm saying I think means that having this conversation with you is useless. Good luck with your physics PhD.

photon_lineson Telling the Bees

I'm not sure where you got that message from. Nowhere in my response did I state that I or anyone else should deny existence - in fact what I'm implying is quite the opposite. I'm simply stating that our perceived experience of having a fractured existence as individual beings that die and are extinguished within a single lifetime is an illusion (i.e. you not only exist currently but you exist in a myriad of forms). In fact - time itself is also an illusion. Read about the theory of relativity if you don't believe me. Brian Green also explains it well in his Frozen River chapter in Fabric of the Cosmos.

photon_lineson Telling the Bees

Wow - an amazing and incredibly insightful response. Thank you for this. Would you mind if I shared your insight on my blog? The explanation you provided is sublime :)

photon_lineson Telling the Bees

I suppose you're correct. Maybe this conversation with Alan Watts is a better description of what I'm talking about: https://youtu.be/NpS85_E4xj4

photon_lineson Telling the Bees

Actually you're right - living forever in general would be a nightmare regardless of intelligence i suppose, but neither I or you yourself can comment on it since I don't believe humanity is close to having super-intelligence yet? Sorry if I'm misunderstanding your question though. If you're asking why living forever would be a nightmare - this quite by James Joyce sums it up nicely: "What must it be, then, to bear the manifold tortures of hell forever? Forever! For all eternity! Not for a year or an age but forever. Try to imagine the awful meaning of this. You have often seen the sand on the seashore. How fine are its tiny grains! And how many of those tiny grains go to make up the small handful which a child grasps in its play. Now imagine a mountain of that sand, a million miles high, reaching from the earth to the farthest heavens, and a million miles broad, extending to remotest space, and a million miles in thickness, and imagine such an enormous mass of countless particles of sand multiplied as often as there are leaves in the forest, drops of water in the mighty ocean, feathers on birds, scales on fish, hairs on animals, atoms in the vast expanse of air. And imagine that at the end of every million years a little bird came to that mountain and carried away in its beak a tiny grain of that sand. How many millions upon millions of centuries would pass before that bird had carried away even a square foot of that mountain, how many eons upon eons of ages before it had carried away all. Yet at the end of that immense stretch time not even one instant of eternity could be said to have ended. At the end of all those billions and trillions of years eternity would have scarcely begun. And if that mountain rose again after it had been carried all away again grain by grain, and if it so rose and sank as many times as there are stars in the sky, atoms in the air, drops of water in the sea, leaves on the trees, feathers upon birds, scales upon fish, hairs upon animals – at the end of all those innumerable risings and sinkings of that immeasurably vast mountain not even one single instant of eternity could be said to have ended; even then, at the end of such a period, after that eon of time, the mere thought of which makes our very brain reel dizzily, eternity would have scarcely begun."

photon_lineson Telling the Bees

I'll tell you a bit of a secret: when you die you don't really die. First of all - there is no real you. Each human experience is nothing but an illusion. There is no percieved 'self.' We all are everything all at once - an infinite array of lifetimes experiencing everything and perceiving it as a fractured self. In reality - everything that you do you do to yourself. This comes with both dire but also amazing consequences. Each animal you slaughter is you. Each hero you elevate is also you in another timeline. You are all that is and everything that will be - you just don't fully understand it yet. This response that I'm writing is to myself and yes I'm fully aware of it. You should read this is water by David Foster Wallace to maybe get a glimpse of what I'm talking about but even then it's a very small glimpse of who we truly are. Also you should thank god that you don't live forever. Living forever would be hell in your current form. Trust me on this one. Enjoy and fully embrace this life :)

photon_lineson Ask HN: Could you share your personal blog here?

https://photonlines.substack.com/

I'm mostly planning on sharing my own personal data structures and algorithms + applied math notes primarily aimed at visual learners.

photon_lineson Ask HN: Serious mathematics books that can replace a good teacher?

Great introductory books along with videos:

  - Mathematics and Its History (John Stillwell)
  - Journey through Genius: The Great Theorems of Mathematics (William Dunham)
  - Proofs Without Words: Exercises in Visual Thinking (Roger B. Nelsen)
  - The Mathematical Universe: An Alphabetical Journey Through the Great Proofs, Problems, and Personalities (William Dunham)
  - Odds & Ends: Introducing Probability & Decision with a Visual Emphasis (Jonathan Weisberg)
  - Introduction to Probability (Joseph K. Blitzstein, Jessica Hwang)
  - The Secret Life of Equations: The 50 Greatest Equations and How They Work (Richard Cochrane)
  - Euler's Gem: The Polyhedron Formula and the Birth of Topology (David S. Richeson)
  - 3Blue1Brown Essence of Linear Algebra: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZHQObOWTQDPD3MizzM2xVFitgF8hE_ab 
  - 3Blue1Brown Differential Equations: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZHQObOWTQDNPOjrT6KVlfJuKtYTftqH6 
  - Dynamics: The Geometry of Behavior (Ralph Abraham, Christopher Shaw)
  - Geometry, Relativity and the Fourth Dimension (Rudolf Rucker)
  - 3Blue1Brown Essence of Calculus: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZHQObOWTQDMsr9K-rj53DwVRMYO3t5Yr 
  - Calculus for the Practical Man (J.E. Thompson)
  - Div, Grad, Curl, and All That: An Informal Text on Vector Calculus (Harry M. Schey)
  - Who Is Fourier? a Mathematical Adventure
  - Physics, Topology, Logic and Computation: A Rosetta Stone (John C. Baez, Mike Stay)
  - An Illustrated Guide to Relativity (Tatsu Takeuchi)
  - The Mathematics Of Quantum Mechanics (Martin Laforest)
  - A Student's Guide to Maxwell's Equations (Daniel Fleisch) or if you're also interested in a visual guide, I wrote one as well: https://github.com/photonlines/Intuitive-Guide-to-Maxwells-Equations 
  - Introduction to Elementary Particles (David J. Griffiths)
  - An Invitation to Applied Category Theory: Seven Sketches in Compositionality (Brendan Fong, David I Spivak)
  - Solving Mathematical Problems: A Personal Perspective (Terence Tao)

photon_lineson First gene therapy for Tay-Sachs disease successfully given to two children

"The increasing cost of manufacturing these treatments makes it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to develop and test gene therapy for many ultrarare diseases where the number of patients worldwide is very small and profitability low.

We were able to deliver these treatments to the children in our ongoing clinical trials thanks only to funding from a generous family whose own child is a participant. This grassroots approach is a common theme in ultrarare disease research – development and testing are often supported by parents, foundations and federal grants."

FYI - if anyone here is interested in helping these kinds of causes, a company called Orchard Therapeutics provides similar treatments and has just signed a historic agreement for reimbursement for treating MLD patients in Europe (you can read more about it here: https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2022/02/04/237899...).

Also big discretion: I do have a lot invested in the company and I have incurred significant losses since deciding to invest in it. In the brilliant world of pyramid schemes vested around crypto-coins and NFTs, I don't regret anything and will keep buying more shares to support the dignity of human life.

photon_lineson [dead]

Hi guys,

If anyone is interested in a Python heavy explanation of the paper "Real numbers, data science and chaos: How to fit any dataset with a single parameter", it's available in the above repository. The paper shows how to fit almost any data set into a real number between 0 and 1 (i.e. Cantor's paradise), and it's very interesting! I figured that the bright folks on HN might like it, so I figured I'd share it with everyone here. Any suggestions for improvement are welcome :)

photon_lineson Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (October 2020)

Location: Toronto, ON, Canada

Remote: Yes

Willing to Relocate: Yes

Technologies: I’m generally language / technology agnostic and love learning new things. I have a huge interest in anything relating to machine learning and automation! I'm also currently self-studying particle physics / applied math.

Github: https://github.com/photonlines

LinkedIn: https://ca.linkedin.com/in/nickmiljkovic

Email: nick.miljkovic1@gmail.com

photon_lineson Intuitive Guide to Maxwell's Equations

Indeed and thank you!! Yes - if you have any improvement suggestions, or anything which you'd like added, let me know and I'll see what I can do!

I also see that I made a few spelling mistakes, and a few kind folks here have already submitted issues to let me know, so I'll correct them soon! Thank you all for the feedback and for the help and suggestions! I really appreciate it!

photon_lineson Intuitive Guide to Maxwell's Equations

Yes, but that's the whole point: math is incredibly information dense. I'm trying to avoid that. Math shouldn't be hard - some concepts are incredibly easy to grasp, but the way that they're taught makes me shudder. It's like seeing code with one letter variable names -written by someone who was scared of losing their job. If you have a way of coming up with an intuitive way of conveying the concepts using geometric algebra, let me know, and I'll be happy to include it in the guide though!

photon_lineson Intuitive Guide to Maxwell's Equations

Thanks for the feedback and I agree! I'm going to try to create guides for relativity and quantum mechanics. After I finish those, I'll keep expanding into general math topics, so hopefully those will help as well.

Also an FYI - I made a similar guide to linear algebra which you can also find here:

https://github.com/photonlines/Intuitive-Overview-of-Linear-...

photon_lineson Intuitive Guide to Maxwell's Equations

Actually, at the end of the guide, I tried to include an explanation which states that the magnetic field is just a by-product of relativity, and that the equations really only describe one field. A comment on the other approach: the geometric formulation to me looks interesting, but it's still very information dense and a bit un-intuitive! I'll take a look when I get more time though and see if I can re-formulate the ending chapter using this notation. Thank you for the feedback!

photon_lineson Intuitive Guide to Maxwell's Equations

Apologies - I didn't even realize that the epigraph expressed some of the equations in terms of flux density! That's what those extra terms mean! I did actually include an explanation of what flux is and how to intuitively derive it within the guide, and you can find it near the integral explanations. Hopefully that helps!

photon_lineson Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (July 2020)

Location: Toronto, ON, Canada

Remote: Yes

Willing to Relocate: Yes

Technologies: I’m generally language / technology agnostic and love learning new things. My recent focus has been on learning Rust / Go, as well as attempting to build generalized intelligence agents using Prolog / Python. I have a huge interest in anything relating to machine learning and automation. Currently also self-studying particle physics / applied math.

Github: https://github.com/photonlines

LinkedIn: https://ca.linkedin.com/in/nickmiljkovic

Email: nick.miljkovic1@gmail.com

I’m a software engineer / analyst looking for any roles which would give me a chance to use my experience and knowledge in helping businesses prosper. Side Note: I've been crazy busy with personal projects, so I'm not a 100% interview ready at the moment. I should be ready within the next few weeks though, so if you’re not in a rush to hire, I’d definitely love to chat!