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srean

8,886 karma · joined October 4, 2010

cat > Bourne.identity #! /bin/bash echo "$*" ^D
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srean··on Making any integer with four 2s (2025)
That's Grothendieck multiplication.
srean··on Yes, You Can Pass a Nuclear Missile Driving on Interstate 80 Through Wyoming
Well, it can also tokenizes as

ANUS TART

Maybe that was your point.

It is a good idea to screen urls for alternative parses and tokenizations. For example

http://therapistfinder.com

For my day job I had written such a tokenizer, so I do this almost automatically.

srean··on The End of AI Frontiers
In such cases I think it's only fair that HN points get shared between the posters. I am a little embarrassed to get them all, especially for just pointing towards a news item.
srean··on The end of Microsoft Research's AI Frontiers group
They have different jobs.

For a corporation it is to make money.

For a researcher it is to explore and illuminate. That this exploration and illumination often leads to a landfall of new wealth generation is a happy accident. This ensures that the monied class would bet some of their capital on them, at least the wise ones.

srean··on The end of Microsoft Research's AI Frontiers group
I largely agree. For US though, academia has not been a good place lately.
srean··on The end of Microsoft Research's AI Frontiers group
When a company pays billions to OpenAI, any activity that does not do a glorious dance in praise and support of that investment is taken to be an act of disloyalty.
srean··on Microsoft Researcher John Langford Exits. AI Frontiers Group Declared Finished
Thanks for the heads-up. I added an archive.is link to give it a breather.
srean··on Microsoft Researcher John Langford Exits. AI Frontiers Group Declared Finished
Almost inclined to agree, but the headline of Langford's post needs some additional context.
srean··on Five memorable books about programming (2008)
Rarely have I felt the urge to fly out of my building and grab any random guy on the street and exclaim can you see how cool this is, can you please.

That happened to me when I read The Little Schemer.

https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262560993/the-little-schemer/

(The other time was when I saw a Hasui)

https://ukiyo-e.org/artist/kawase-hasui

srean··on The end of Microsoft Research's AI Frontiers group
More here

https://archive.is/AaY5O

(Original https://hunch.net/?p=13764006 )

srean··on My psychophysics as a bilateral cochlear implant user
It is always illuminating to understand the inner worlds of others.

I can recall some short clips in "mind's ears" but for very few pieces of music and for short clips.

srean··on My psychophysics as a bilateral cochlear implant user
Thanks for taking out the time for this reply. Visual imagery I have some, audio less so and olfactory positively zero.

Aborted experience has the right ring to it.

It is always interesting to explore the inner world of someone else, be it with such a limited channel of language.

srean··on My psychophysics as a bilateral cochlear implant user
Does anyone have non-semantic memory of sound, like actually able to play a sound in their head without humming. I cannot. I guess some do, maybe most do, especially those who can sing or play musical instruments.

This inability (inabilities actually, because I can't do visual recall that well either) of mine makes me wish I had those super powers. It would have allowed me to relive wonderful experiences of sight and sound.

At least I can dream and there's photographs and video and audio recordings.

Perhaps there is an evolutionary reason for not having strong sensory experiencial recall capabilities -- one could get dopamine hits simply by recalling and not actually moving and exploring.

srean··on Introduction to Programming in ATS
ATS used to be discussed quite a lot on HN

https://hn.algolia.com/?query=The%20ATS%20Programming%20Lang...

MLton and Felix would be two other ML inspired languages that whole program optimizes to generate fast code.

http://www.mlton.org/

https://felix.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

srean··on Why are Soviet math textbooks so hardcore in comparison to US textbooks? (2017)
Folland is great, but no I am not talking about school books but undergrad books. Books by AMS, Springer are usually great. Some of the common trashy books are by Pearsons, Cengage etc, although Folland's calculus was probably published by pearsons
srean··on Making Peace with the Projective Plane
Consider a simple embedding of words into a 'vector' of dimension d.

One can, however, homogenize it by adding an extra dimension such that the first d dimension catches only the sense of the word and that extra dimension indexes through its synonyms. The sense being the common projective shadow of those words.

srean··on Why are Soviet math textbooks so hardcore in comparison to US textbooks? (2017)
The undergrad books not so much. There are tons of colorful padding. Pages after pages that describe what the next set of pages will describe, advertisement for apps and websites. In fact good 10% of the pages/area seem like marketing copies.

It seems like the publishers feel guilty about charging how much they do and try to add bulk in weight and volume to make the customers feel not so bad -- sugarcoat the rip off somewhat.

Sometimes it is so frustrating that it makes me want to yell -- stop faffing around and get on with it.

This is a recent phenomenon though. American books from the 70s or 80s do not have this problem.

srean··on US boy names that became girl names and vice versa
Gotta mention Lindsey Buckingham.

(Way underrated)

srean··on Supermarket freezers across Europe hit by second suspected cyber-attack
Cool gadget indeed !
srean··on Mathematics has changed. Let's act like it
This topic has been done to death on HN. Now I am getting tired of this. Can we have some other content in HN front page please.

I do not remember such a long period on HN where I haven't found a HN front page story interesting enough to bookmark or upvote or comment in.

srean··on Restrooms along the Norwegian Scenic Routes
Wish the text tiles were not so intrusive and obstructive.

Who wants a pretty view occluded by a large white rectangle!

srean··on Patrick Stewart has died
Then there was that circumcision disagreement.
srean··on Microsoft offers mass buyouts for roughly a quarter of its workforce
Absurd levels of inefficiencies are also good opportunities to make contributions. In practice this fraught because many of those are somebody else's moat.
srean··on Birdwatching rewires the brain and slows cognitive decline
For swift colorful pigs that flit in and out of thick bushes making complex yet signature grunting sounds, yes, I think that would work.
srean··on Dutch government had hacked into Jared Kushner's phone
The outcry is understandable but as long as this was an authorised operation it fits the constraints. Who would let go of such an opportunity ?

Not conducive for trust though, which I assume had long vanished anyway.

srean··on Pentagon grants DHS permission to test heat ray weapon for use at border
> If you have a shitty operator

Well, we are talking about US border patrol folks. Trust me, they are the nicest guys around /s.

srean··on Van Gogh's 'The Starry Night' depicts the sky on July 22, 1889
Cannot confirm because I am on Chrome. But it would be so sad if that website is Chrome only. I doubt it though.

Can other browser users chime in.

srean··on Dutch government had hacked into Jared Kushner's phone
Regarding the Dutch intelligence officials (in fact regardless of their country), targeted and legally authorised information collection is fine. That is what intelligence agencies are supposed to do. "Trust but verify", and all that.

It's blanket surveillance, unauthorised surveillance that crosses the line.

srean··on Van Gogh's 'The Starry Night' depicts the sky on July 22, 1889
Which luminant objects are real and which are artistic license?

Would not plate solving with each choice give different results.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrometric_solving

No guessing needed for Escher's stars. He had a love for astronomy that shows up in some of his works.

https://escherinhetpaleis.nl/en/about-escher/escher-today/ye...

https://escherinhetpaleis.nl/en/about-escher/escher-today/th...

srean··on The Classical Determinism and The Quantum Theory by Prof.S.N.Bose 1944 [pdf]
The story of the third paper:

Bose had sent Einstein a follow-up work after his second submission to him on thermal equilibrium of matter and radiation. The second paper had been published but along with Einstein's takedown. This seems to have mortified Bose. He was expecting a personal review and rejection from publication of a paper that has been judged faulty. The third paper, presumably addressed the objections.

Einstein, however, remained unconvinced and did not arrange for its publication.

This third submission is lost.

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