Syzygies

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211.
by Syzygies 3y ago
I paid more than that for a used abacus, best handmade quality for business use, dating to the 1960's. But I'm a mathematician with a brush cut.
212.
by Syzygies 3y ago
"Interstellar plasma braking", as mentioned in another comment? The ship can slow down, but the passengers will all have died from the plasma radiation.
213.
by Syzygies 3y ago
I mentioned this article to my retired AT&T engineer wife, and she blurted out "Robbed-bit signaling!" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robbed-bit_signaling
214.
by Syzygies 3y ago
Wow, thank you. So I adhere to the Schützenberger view of automata theory, that the way to explain a semester's finite automata theory to a math major in twenty minutes is via rational power series on noncommuting variables. Change the
215.
by Syzygies 3y ago
In the mid-seventies at Swarthmore College, we were mired in punched card Fortran programming on a single IBM 1130. The horror, a machine less powerful than the first Apple II. My job six hours a week was to reboot after each crash. People
216.
by Syzygies 3y ago
I have a midrange Zojirushi rice cooker, a Vermicular Musui Kamado cast iron induction cooker, and a Kamado-san double-lid donabe rice cooker, all from Japan. The Zojirushi makes respectable rice with minimal effort, as in we're about
217.
by Syzygies 3y ago
How about the visual complexity of the coronavirus? Of course, you could challenge its effectiveness, too. London ended its cholera epidemic by no longer drinking sewer water. We still don't vent our buildings properly.
218.
by Syzygies 3y ago
The guidance is simplistic. If you spot an item of potential concern, research it further. One plant I've researched for my puppy is Morning Glory. First, one needs to clarify leaves? flowers? seeds? And there are many varieties of vin
219.
by Syzygies 3y ago
I was expressing amazement that you took the time to provide a "fix typo" mechanism. In the real world, many of us would take the time to fix a splinter in a well-traveled floor. I love that your appreciation for robust protocol i
220.
by Syzygies 3y ago
You misunderstand me. I am amazed by the author's attention to robust protocol design. No one wants to be "that person" who observes a missing space before an open parenthesis, so usually smoothing out flawless work is not a
221.
by Syzygies 3y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1964_Alaska_earthquake The 1964 Alaska "Good Friday" earthquake is the second most powerful earthquake in recorded history, estimated to have been stronger than the 1700 Cascadia
222.
by Syzygies 3y ago
Wow. There was a tiny typo. I found myself thinking, someone who reasons like this should have a protocol for fixing typos, if they eat their own dog food. I was floored to see the "fix typo" link at the bottom. Submitted. I now w
223.
by Syzygies 3y ago
Ok, so despite anecdotal evidence that some individuals can distinguish better-than-CD quality audio, we're questioning the existence of convincing double-blind studies. Yet we accept the varying cutoffs for what frequencies a person c
224.
by Syzygies 3y ago
"You" is excellent wording here. Who's listening? I've heard the resonable assertion that the most gifted audio engineers in the world cannot distinguish 192 kHz sample rates from a raw line feed, but some can distinguis
225.
by Syzygies 3y ago
In the distant past, there was this NSF-funded geometry center in Minneapolis. There was a computational group theory conference (these guys are over the top) and they invited a few mascots from neighboring fields. I had written a system fo
226.
by Syzygies 3y ago
The source article sends these devices to scan books in Ethiopia, where there are people looking for work.
227.
by Syzygies 3y ago
This is a problem domain where software hasn't caught up with what is possible, so people do in hardware what could be done in software. With two or more photos or a stereo image (new iPhone?) one could triangulate to infer a flattened
228.
by Syzygies 3y ago
No byline? Oh yeah, The Economist tends to be written by interns. When my college frets that ChatGPT writes better than our B students, there are various reactions. So I had to see. I signed up for ChatGTP-3.5 and asked it "How can art
229.
by Syzygies 3y ago
People used to die of Cholera in London because they were drinking sewer water. There were so many deaths that they were motivated to fix this. We still breathe sewer air. There weren't enough pandemic deaths to motivate us to fix this
230.
by Syzygies 3y ago
I want to see a scanner app that nails flattening out book pages. The spatial data is needed to triangulate depth accurately.
231.
by Syzygies 3y ago
I'm sure we've all had the experience where we went to meet a romantic partner's extended family, and realized our partner was the only one who didn't have seven toes. In one instance, I did meet a family member who was
232.
by Syzygies 3y ago
Thank you. Doron Zeilberger is an original; do not miss a chance to hear him speak. I can access though my university, but I'm limited to 100 pages per download, requiring 11 logins. Here, I just needed Acrobat to crop for an iPad, and
233.
by Syzygies 3y ago
https://www.engineering.columbia.edu/news/visionary-engineer... "Inspired by her interdisciplinary studies in history, anthropology, and sociology at Columbia, Conway sought, as an engineer, not only to ride a wav
234.
by Syzygies 3y ago
I applaud this, for people who prefer a GUI interface. I started to write something to better organize synchronizing my Homebrew installation across multiple machines, then thought someone must have done this well already. Sure enough, htt
235.
by Syzygies 3y ago
I built a tomato dehydrator (partially dried freezer packs from our garden, estrattu from Santa Cruz dry farmed Early Girls). We haven't opened a can of tomatoes in decades. Using four stacks of consumer dehydrator trays was a nightmar
236.
by Syzygies 3y ago
Yep, but beware of anyone who makes criticism their identity. That's a mindset that predetermines perception. As math consultant to "A Beautiful Mind" I waited six hours so Russell Crowe could ask me where to look when he dec
237.
by Syzygies 3y ago
For a parallel effort to save heirloom beans, see Rancho Gordo. They sell online and in stores; their bean club sometimes has an 11,000 place waitlist. https://www.ranchogordo.com/ Yes, Masienda rocks, and making one's
238.
by Syzygies 3y ago
The Leopold F660C keyboard with Topre Silent 45g switches isn't silent, but it's an obsession killer. If one want custom QMK firmware, get the Hasu aftermarket controller. https://mechanicalkeyboards.com/shop/
239.
by Syzygies 3y ago
Yes, the twin idiocies of the freebie planners offered by the major investment firms: "Expect to live until" huh? My death has a probability distribution that's better understood than the market, any Monte Carlo simulations s
240.
by Syzygies 3y ago
Exactly. It's the best proxy for grayscale detail. One could have balanced RGB in a hexagonal grid. That's harder to build and slower to process. He would have considered a hex grid, but our rectilinear cognitive bias was pretty e

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