fermenflo · HackerTrans

6 yıl öncediscuss

Damn, I'm doing research involving partitions right now. I used crank/rank all the time -invariants that he introduced years ago. What a shame, RIP

fermenflo

6 yıl öncediscuss

I don't remember if this is the exact paper but as united893 already posted, the paper was probably:

https://annals.math.princeton.edu/wp-content/uploads/annals-...

Long story short: Imagine you have an object, place an ant on the surface of the object, and then instruct the ant to walk in a straight line forever. Will the ant ever end up in the same place it started (with the same initial direction)? If so, then it has formed a closed geodesic. For some objects, the answer is obvious. For a perfect sphere, the answer is always yes. In fact, any sphere-like object (imagine warping/contorting a sphere without tearing or poking holes in it) will always have at least 3 such closed geodesics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theorem_of_the_three_geodesics.

Miriam managed to construct an amazing formula that, when given the number of holes in an object, can give you the probability of forming a closed geodesic when starting from a random point in a random direction.

This: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sx-kAlEpiZk is a great video that goes over what I explained and a couple other great achievements of hers. Worth a watch.

fermenflo

6 yıl öncediscuss

Mirzakhani will always have a special place in my heart.

I was an undergraduate mathematics student when I discovered her work. It was a paper on closed geodesics and there was something special about her writing. Her approaches were simple an elegant -the kind that made you, as a reader, feel accomplished for understanding such a complex subject. It wasn't long until she was placed among other grand mathematicians that I looked up to.

A year later she died. I wasn't even aware of her health. It sucked to see an idol go so young. But it's incredible what she accomplished within her lifetime. She'll always be one of the greatest.

fermenflo

6 yıl öncediscuss

  That's also what I was taught as a best practice, but it's not always possible.

Well of course it's possible -there are infinitely many sets of coprime numbers! Silly engineers

fermenflo

7 yıl öncediscuss

That was also one of my initial thoughts. But who knows. I'm sure milk consumption varies a lot in different geographies, cultural backgrounds, upbringings, etc...

I personally never drink milk. The only dairy product I regularly consume is butter. But I had a roommate who drank a glass of milk with dinner every day and occasionally had a bowl of cereal in the mornings. So It's at least a spectrum.

fermenflo

7 yıl öncediscuss

To be fair, it's a pretty large claim to just assume that something "went wrong with the attempts to screen out the confounding factors" and that the conclusion must be false.

It's a shocking conclusion, I'll give you that. And to be honest, I'm not convinced either. You might very well be right. But it's a strong claim to make agains a peer-reviewed journal publication.

fermenflo

7 yıl öncediscuss

Exactly. As I said, they didn't reveal much of the process that "accounted for confounding" but I just wanted to dismiss everyone's initial reaction that this is just an obvious case of confounding.

Perhaps it is. Perhaps it isn't. It just depends on how much you trust their methodology.

fermenflo

7 yıl öncediscuss

I know everyone's reaction (mine included) was: "No shit, people who drink low-fat milk probably live healthier lives in general"... But it looks like they really did account for other variables and found that milk-fat percentage was the only strong factor in play:

> "High-fat milk consumers may have lifestyles that are less healthy than low-fat milk drinkers. Since this possibility was recognized before the onset of the investigation, statistical adjustments were made for a dozen potential confounders. Statistical analyses determined that these variables had little influence on the milk fat and telomere relationship. Nevertheless, other variables could explain some of the relationship between milk fat intake and telomere length identified in the present investigation."

Source: https://new.hindawi.com/journals/omcl/2019/1574021/

fermenflo

7 yıl öncediscuss

My immediate reaction as well. Seems like the perfect case of confounding. But after reading the paper, I saw this statement:

> "High-fat milk consumers may have lifestyles that are less healthy than low-fat milk drinkers. Since this possibility was recognized before the onset of the investigation, statistical adjustments were made for a dozen potential confounders. Statistical analyses determined that these variables had little influence on the milk fat and telomere relationship. Nevertheless, other variables could explain some of the relationship between milk fat intake and telomere length identified in the present investigation."

They didn't go into great detail as to what those confounders were, but it looks like they took that into account and isolated milk-fat percentage as well as they could. Source: https://new.hindawi.com/journals/omcl/2019/1574021/

fermenflo

7 yıl öncediscuss

> It searches until it finds a seed, then goes back to the trail, maybe using the angle of the sunlight as a guide, to return to the nest, following the stream of outgoing foragers.

I remember reading that ants counted steps to find their way home. Perhaps I'm remembering incorrectly or maybe it was false?

Either way, cool article. Emergence is a cool property that shows up everywhere!

fermenflo

7 yıl öncediscuss

So no, lol

fermenflo

7 yıl öncediscuss

Sounds like they already pricked the patient when they couldn't find a vein in the arm, maybe?

fermenflo

7 yıl öncediscuss

Except their laptops and phones totally do...

What are you talking about?

fermenflo

7 yıl öncediscuss

The way I understand it (which isn't that well either tbh) is that most modern anti-cheat softwares run off of some Hardware ID (HWID). An amalgam of ids from your GPU, CPU, OS, Mac adress, and so on... that are somehow combined or hashed into some uniquely identifying ID. This is a bit harder to spoof than an IP address ban. And most are robust to gradual changes. Like Theseus' ship, if you change your GPU one day, OS the next, and so on... is it the same computer you should ban? Most HWIDs generated by games won't change until a certain number of those variables are messed around with.

Once again, I'm no expert but I think that's at least helpful.

fermenflo

7 yıl öncediscuss

It's a joke. Being distasteful and offensive was the entire point...

fermenflo

7 yıl öncediscuss

Damn, I should read the comments first

fermenflo

7 yıl öncediscuss

Why post the Quanta write up on a months old publication? OpenAI released this months ago: https://openai.com/blog/emergent-tool-use/ and IMO, did a much better job of explaining/detailing everything.

EDIT: Just finished reading both and I can say the Quanta publication doesn't add anything except a short tangent about the history of self-play. Seriously, go read the openAI publication. It has great reactive visualizations and is much more put together.

fermenflo

7 yıl öncediscuss

No, USB-C is a step in the right direction. It's superior in every way imaginable to USB. It can handle almost every type of transfer (data/power), its orientation-agnostic, it's slim, etc. I could list the pros for days.

Having to deal with dongles for a couple years while the rest of the market catches up isn't a reason to push against the best port standard in decades.

fermenflo

7 yıl öncediscuss

I agree, a lot of the code could be improved. But some of what you mentioned is fairly standard. Like "Gaussian Error Linear Units being GELU, w/b for weights/biases, etc...

fermenflo

7 yıl öncediscuss

Thank you...

Everyone seems to be forgetting that this is a 100% opt-in service. Why do we get to say what FB is obligated to do and to what standards they have to keep their website at?