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I also emailed Gonzalo Navarro once to ask a question, and we had a great discussion and ended up writing a paper together about the answer. [1] Another paper
by yurivish 2y ago
I also emailed Gonzalo Navarro once to ask a question, and we had a great discussion and ended up writing a paper together about the answer. [1]
Another paper of his that I really like combines a few elegant ideas into a simple implementation of bitvector rank/select: https://users.dcc.uchile.cl/~gnavarro/ps/sea12.1.pdf https://users.dcc.uchile.cl/~gnavarro/ps/sea12.1.pdf
During this time I got really excited about succinct data structures and wrote a Rust library implementing many bitvector types and a wavelet matrix. [2]
My interest came from a data visualization perspective -- I was curious if space-efficient data structures could fundamentally improve the interactive exploration of large datasets on the client side. Happy to chat about that if anyone's curious.
[1] Paper: https://archive.yuri.is/pdfing/weighted_range_quantile_queries.pdf https://archive.yuri.is/pdfing/weighted_range_quantile_queri... though it's pretty hard to understand without some background context. I've been meaning to write a blog post explaining the core contribution, which is a simple tweak to one of Navarro's textbook data structures.
[2] The rust version is here: https://github.com/yurivish/made-of-bits/tree/main/rust-playground/made-of-bits https://github.com/yurivish/made-of-bits/tree/main/rust-play... and an earlier pure-JS implementation is here: https://github.com/yurivish/made-of-bits/tree/main https://github.com/yurivish/made-of-bits/tree/main
- sitkack 2y agoReading a Gonzalo Navarro paper is like going for walk, taking a shower and having a wonderful coffee. It literally sets the mind on fire. https://dblp.org/pid/n/GonzaloNavarro.html https://dblp.org/pid/n/GonzaloNavarro.html
- SoftTalker 2y agoWell not literally.
- penguin_booze 2y agoWell, literally doesn't mean literally anymore--literally.
- gwd 2y agoIt never has, it always will. We've already lost a host of words that meant "I'm not exaggerating, I actually mean it": "really", "very", etc. I'm going to keep up the fight.
- Zecc 2y agoSince there are _literally_ people who use, and have been using for a while, the word without the same exact meaning as we both agree on... well. Having said that, I will join you in this fight. See also: exponentially.
- bee_rider 2y ago“Exponentially” and “quantum” are the only language hills I’d die on.
- nxobject 2y agoWhy a quantum leap isn’t the length of an Ångstrom will always sadden me. I’m sure there are other scientific concepts you can use to describe a Great Leap Forward…
- Quekid5 2y agoI think the Quantum Leap expression can also be understood as a "step" with no intermediate stages, i.e. very abrupt or transformative.
- gwd 2y agoLanguage is defined by its speakers, as basically a "vote". I'm going to keep voting for "literally" meaning "this actually happened" as long as it's practical, because 1) there are dozens of other ways to emphasize something 2) we need some way to say "this is not an exaggeration".
- gwd 2y agoThe moreso that those things don't even figuratively set my mind on fire.
- sitkack 2y agoWhat about metaphorically?
- dspillett 2y agoMany dictionaries now list one common use of “literally” as meaning “figuratively, with emphasis”. So literally officially sometimes now literally means figuratively. I suspect some people are literally having conniption fits about this…
- cowsandmilk 2y agoI’m sorry, but your comment mixes two different types of dictionaries. You talk about “official” meanings which would be a prescriptive dictionary telling you the way you are allowed to use a word. But the dictionaries that include “figuratively” in their definitions are clearly descriptive, presenting all the ways words are commonly used. You can’t take a descriptive dictionary and then claim it is prescriptive.
- brandly 2y agoBut “official” is defined in descriptive dictionaries to include descriptive dictionaries.
- bee_rider 2y agoThere aren’t prescriptive dictionaries for (American, at least) English.
- dspillett 2y agoThere are no prescriptive dictionaries, at least not correct ones, for living languages. IIRC both the OED and CED list figurative uses for the word, do you know any publications considered more authoritative than those for English? Webster too, for those who prefer simplified English.
- ForTheKidz 2y agoI think French has prescriptive dictionaries (to varying degrees of success)
- dspillett 2y ago
- __tidu 2y agothe "technical note" link in the RLE bit vector section of the rust repo is broken (https://yuri.is/pdfing/weighted_range_quantile_queries.pdf https://yuri.is/pdfing/weighted_range_quantile_queries.pdf 404s)