dpiponi

dpiponi, 1 day ago to random

I thought of a use for LLMs but I don't see myself having time to code it up for a few weeks. A touch typing tutor. It should be easy to take llama.cpp and adapt it to generate the next token based on which letters and words I need most practice with. So you get to practice with plausible sentences that still train you where you need it.

dpiponi, 1 day ago to random

Given a random number generator that generates points uniformly in the unit interval [0,1] can you generate uniformly distributed points in the unit circle using only algebraic functions? In a finite number of steps - so no rejection sampling, loops, recursion. No "almost always" finite either.

Just wondering about sitiations where it seems you can't avoid trig functions.

dpiponi, 2 days ago to random

Despite Wildberger being a bit off the usual conventional paths in mathematics, he's influenced me to the point where every time I write a line of code using an angle I ask myself if I could use an alternative "rational" representation.

https://research.unsw.edu.au/people/professor-norman-j-wildberger

dpiponi, 4 days ago to random

It's a curious coincidence that before the idea of the warp drive there was this definition of warp:

"move (a ship) along by hauling on a rope attached to a stationary object on shore."

Suggests an alternative sci-fi idea for the meaning of "warp drive".

dpiponi, 4 days ago to random

One of my favorite visual effects from pre-CG days was the shield effect in 1984's Dune. Lots of work with an optical printer. Underrated, I think, as I've never heard anyone talk about it.

https://youtu.be/6XFYV2h5gAo?si=eVz-fVrtMJ8wBME0&t=24

dpiponi, 5 days ago to random

It's not like I had any chance of resisting when one of my favourite books is published in a fancy new hardback edition

dpiponi, 6 days ago to random

Looked up speed of snails on Google to see if my USPS package "moving through network" from San Francisco is literally going at a snail's pace. Looks like snails would have to be 3 times faster to beat my package.

dpiponi, 8 days ago to random

When I first came across Voigtländer's paper on speeding up free monads [1] and some of the methods that Hinze mentions [2] I was a bit bemused about why category theory had anything to say about program optimization. But now it seems obvious. Much of optimization is a lot like algebraic manipulation where you're rearranging while hoping to keep the value the same. But in particular, a really common optimization move is to write f(g(x)) as (fg)(x) where (fg) is somehow simpler (or more reusable than) than just applying g then f. Ie. associativity - which is one of the laws of category theory. I think this step also accounts for almost all of the computational reasons for using linear algebra. Eg. graphics pipelines make good use of this kind of associativity.

[1] https://janis-voigtlaender.eu/papers/AsymptoticImprovementOfComputationsOverFreeMonads.pdf
[2] https://www.cs.ox.ac.uk/ralf.hinze/Kan.pdf

dpiponi, 11 days ago to random

I know I must be a uniquely weird individual because in decades of using tabbed web browsers I've still never wanted to close tabs to the right and I've often wanted to close tabs to the left.

dpiponi, 12 days ago to random

Watched The Descent for the second time. Just as good as the first time. To me it's the perfect little horror movie.

dpiponi, 12 days ago to random

For me, and presumably countless others, a computer has always been primarily a creativity tool. But I think this idea may be novel or unusual to a large segment of the population.

dpiponi, 13 days ago to random

One of the weirder bugs I've experienced: you know how you're always being told to make sure caps lock is off when you enter your password? My Mac is currently enabling caps-lock at login and you can't disable it. It took a long time to deduce this was the problem but surprisingly I was able to log in after going round a few loops and realising an obvious trick...

A known problem with a venerable history: https://iboysoft.com/tips/macbook-stuck-on-caps-lock.html

dpiponi, 14 days ago to random

I love the waves of leg motion on this critter that was walking across our driveway.

Very dark red segmented worm like creature with maybe 100 legs that move in waves starting at the back and moving forward.

dpiponi, 14 days ago to random

I hate typing practice. Seriously. I've been programming computers since before most of you were born. But I need to move on from being a two fingered typist, even if a fast one,

dpiponi, 15 days ago to random

I have to admit I enjoy seeing familiar sci-fi plots appearing as papers. This one proposes that AIs cause civilizational collapse, explaining the Fermi "paradox".

https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.00042

"AI could represent a major threat to the future course of not only our technical civilisation but all technical civilisations"

dpiponi, 16 days ago to random

Let me tell you about my embarrassingly stupid C++ mistake so you don't have to make it:

If X is of type std::optional<T> and Y is of type T you can assign Y to X like so:

X = Y

I sort of don't like that because X and Y are different types.

You can also write

*X = Y

which works because *X is of type T&. Now the types match.

But woe is me! Don't do the latter. If X is an empty optional then *X = Y fails silently.

It's obvious when you think about it for a moment. But when you're thinking about the bigger picture you can forget about the little things.

dpiponi, 17 days ago to random

I kept saying to myself "he's gotta be an alien", "surely he's not human", but in my heart of hearts I didn't really believe it...until...well I'm not giving you any spoilers...

dpiponi, 22 days ago to random

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0kl4glp547o

I blame all the stupid rule based systems for getting your attention. iOS Focus is the most needlessly complex solution to a problem relative to the problem difficulty I've ever seen.

dpiponi, 24 days ago to random

I don't know if I hallucinated this but maybe someone recognises it:

I'm sure I once (~20 years ago) saw an arbitrary precision real number library for C or C++ that worked by picking some fixed precision and worked until it produced a result at the required precision, or, if it convinced itself it couldn't achieve that precision, did some kind of backtracking so it could redo the computation at a higher fixed precision. Somewhat analogously to how transactional memory works - and I think under the hood there may have been some unusual memory model.

Sound familiar to anyone?

dpiponi, 25 days ago to random

I'd love something like algebraic effects in C++. So I could write code like (and this is just a sketch, not a realistic proposal for syntax):

handle (new -> MyOwnMemoryAllocator)
{
int* x = new int[n];
...
}

or

handle(out -> Log)
{
out << "debugging stuff" << endl;
}

dpiponi, 26 days ago to random

Here's an animation generated by simulating the 2D wave equation kicked off with a Dirac delta pulse. Periodic boundary conditions.

But let's say we want the field value to be as high as possible at a particular point in space at a chosen future moment in time...

video/mp4

dpiponi, 26 days ago to random

Annoying that the Kindle retroactively changes book covers. Such nice art for these books, except book 1 now.

dpiponi, 26 days ago to random

Big numbers. Who needs them?

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c9wz7pvvjypo

dpiponi, 1 month ago to random

When I buy a dictionary (I'm talking about back in the day here...) I don't feel like I wasted money because I didn't use every entry. You buy a dictionary because you want to cover all the words you might need and you don't know what they are in advance.

Isn't education like this? We have no idea how our lives are going to turn out in the future so the smart thing to do is get some broad coverage because most skills are too difficult to learn the day you suddenly need them.

Anyway, I don't buy all that "learning how to transform a matrix into Smith normal form will make you better at reasoning about other things in life" stuff. Learn stuff for pleasure, or for the possibility it'll be useful or bring you an income, but not because of some mythological side effects.

I feel like when people justify learning a subject by using the "it'll make you reason better" story, the actual message they are sending their listeners is that the speaker is unable to think of a good reason.

dpiponi, 1 month ago to random

From Max Evry's "A Masterpiece in Disarray" on making Lynch's Dune. My question is this: what is a "human trampoline?"