_alternator_

7 ms·

91.
by _alternator_ 5mo ago
For the first question, the answer is just cos(\theta)*L/W, where theta is the angle off horizontal (assuming the floorboards are vertical). So a trig function shows up, if not pi. If you don't allow rotations, but somehow still t
92.
by _alternator_ 5mo ago
This is the crux of the observation. For needles of length less than W, the probability that it crosses a floorboard is equal to the average number of floorboards it crosses. (Exercise for the reader ;)) The point is that the "right&qu
93.
by _alternator_ 5mo ago
Author here. If I understand the question, the answer is that the average number of lines that the "noodle" intersects depends only on the length of the noodle. If you change the angles between the segments, the average stays the
94.
A recent experience with ChatGPT 5.5 Pro(gowers.wordpress.com)
728 points by _alternator_ 5mo ago|535 comments
95.
From Buffon's Needle to Buffon's Noodle(mbmccoy.dev)
37 points by _alternator_ 5mo ago|13 comments
96.
by _alternator_ 5mo ago
My point is that falling in love with an actor is (usually) falling in love with an idea or image, not an actual person, and in that way it's not that much different than jacking off.
97.
by _alternator_ 5mo ago
And what is falling in love with an actor? Not jerking off?
98.
by _alternator_ 5mo ago
Correct. But this indicator is "when do the vast majority of wealthy people actually take to the air?" Which means it's 'belief' lagged by however long it takes them to get in the air. And the fact is, most wealthy
99.
by _alternator_ 5mo ago
How much do you think all this cost? Ski passes for 2: $500 at mammoth. (Yes, the prices have definitely increased.) We'd sometimes drive up just for the day (leave 4am, back 9pm) to save on lodging. This was fairly doable in my 20s.
100.
by _alternator_ 5mo ago
By definition it's a bit of a lagging indicator, unless we assume that all these folks have better access to inside information than the rest of us. Given that I was well aware of, for example, the likelihood of a Covid pandemic well b
101.
by _alternator_ 5mo ago
One of the new dynamics is a loop between a "code review" LLM and a "fix LLM". It's super annoying because the code review LLM often finds more bugs on a follow-up review that were there from the beginning, but at l
102.
by _alternator_ 5mo ago
I think this is a false dichotomy. My wife and I worked through our 20s, but regularly took vacations. We flew to NYC from LA at least 2x per year from 25-30. We had season ski passes. We lived frugally but well. I was in grad school, she w
103.
by _alternator_ 5mo ago
It's rarely understood that infinity isn't something mathematicians made up to make things more complex, it's an abstraction that makes a lot of ideas vastly simpler. This is alluded to in the article; it's challenging t
104.
by _alternator_ 5mo ago
Look, a dumb bomb is a fully autonomous weapon once it's launched. Let's be real: an LLM making decisions on who to target and when and where to launch munitions represents a meaningful change in our concept of autonomous weapons.
105.
by _alternator_ 5mo ago
Correct. It depends. For example, it might depend on what the collaboration is likely to result in. Perhaps it would be more likely to be moral there were some boundaries in place, like "no mass domestic surveillance" or "no
106.
by _alternator_ 5mo ago
Here's the trick: the CEO doesn't know either, but they make decisions anyway. Knowing that they don't know is a good skill for a CEO to have, it freezing when they don't know is not.
107.
by _alternator_ 5mo ago
Not if you don't have the data. This is one of the reasons that google changed how it tracked people's data.
108.
by _alternator_ 6mo ago
The site also has been dated to ~790,000 years old. Also was hard to find in a quick skim. So, direct evidence of the types of firewood humans have been using for the better part of a million years. Neat.
109.
by _alternator_ 6mo ago
This precise point has been challenged, FWIW. See https://arxiv.org/pdf/2601.21946 .
110.
by _alternator_ 6mo ago
Two things here: radiation exposure could explain this, since there's a period after exposure and before developing where you can get radiation exposure. Second, and perhaps more importantly, is that there's a detailed criticism o
111.
by _alternator_ 6mo ago
Yes, 50-minute exposures would certainly rule out geosynchronous; I've used image stacking to look at geo and you get visible movement relative to the star background after even a few seconds. Fifty minutes would be almost 15 degrees o
112.
by _alternator_ 6mo ago
This actually _is_ falsifiable; I've written before that you can determine whether the point-spread function of the transients match the PSF of stars. If not, then it does not come from outer space, it's an issue with the film, i.
113.
by _alternator_ 6mo ago
Transient 'objects' after nuclear tests are quite possibly high energy radiation from the tests themselves. Remember these are on film, and the film is likely removed from its protective housing for some time before, during, and a
114.
by _alternator_ 6mo ago
I get this sentiment, but I'll just make the classic "two wrongs don't make a right" rebuttal.
115.
by _alternator_ 6mo ago
I see what you are saying now, but I still don't think it makes sense. Labor, in your analysis, is the LLM. It seems to me that when you take people out of the equation then you don't need to talk about unions and labor; that&#x27
116.
by _alternator_ 6mo ago
"Observation of how economies actually work has upended 150 year of economics." True for both Marxist and neoclassical economics.
117.
by _alternator_ 6mo ago
I was really confused by this comment, but I don't think it's just because of the Marxist analysis of the situation ('surplus value' of labor etc). What's really confusing is the claim that there's already a hu
118.
by _alternator_ 6mo ago
Worst case? I dunno, maybe the world's oldest profession becomes the world's only profession? Something along those lines.
119.
by _alternator_ 6mo ago
I would agree that taking a walk is a good thing to do when your tools go down, and in some ways it's similar to what we would do if the power or wifi were cut off. So, yes, it's just another technology we're coming to rely o
120.
by _alternator_ 6mo ago
No, I wouldn't. But most people won't have that choice; it doesn't work that way.

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