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samus

2,329 karma · joined January 3, 2019

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samus··on Decades-old fish sauce at abandoned factory in Canada finally being removed
It could simply be diluted with lots of river water and disposed into the sea, like the waste product of saltwater desalination plants.

Another solution would be to test it in a lab and then bottle it up and sell it, like it was originally intended to be done. But that's a non-starter for the same reason the producer went out of business back then.

samus··on Decades-old fish sauce at abandoned factory in Canada finally being removed
Yes, it needs to be handled with care, but it's essentially the same procedure as with the waste products of desalination water plants. One caveat though - once you start diluting this stuff you have to keep going since the high salt content is the only thing that ensures it's fairly sterile.
samus··on The Abandoned Fish Sauce Terrorizing a Small Canadian Town
Acid is a good way to modulate the flavor. There is a reason why in Vietnamese dishes are often served with limes.
samus··on GPT-5.6 Sol Ultra produces proof of the Cycle Double Cover Conjecture [pdf]
Teaching only the practical side risks not teaching the subject with the appropriate theoretical depth and the ability to generalize it to other applications. Courses for purely applied fields utilize calculus to solve the current problem and then move on without teaching the finer points. Basing a calculus course on physics alone might be preferable in high school, but would be of disservice to students in university.
samus··on GPT-5.6 Sol Ultra produces proof of the Cycle Double Cover Conjecture [pdf]
Even when this really isn't the case, the math is preferably reduced to a linear problem whenever possible since dealing with the original complexity is usually so much more painful.
samus··on GPT-5.6 Sol Ultra produces proof of the Cycle Double Cover Conjecture [pdf]
Many important advances in linear algebra happened in WWI to solve optimization problems for logistical and industrial planning. A lot of these applications boil down to high-dimensional systems of linear equations, which back then were solved by hand. Efficient algorithms translate to reduced labor costs.
samus··on GPT-5.6 Sol Ultra produces proof of the Cycle Double Cover Conjecture [pdf]
The ultimate goal of university education is to raise researchers, who are the people that investigate the knowledge frontier of their field and then advancing it. To do that they have to understand a large part of the existing field so they can communicate with their peers, avoid investigating things that have already been throroughly explored, and draw useful connections to other fields.

Even in more applied fields it can take decades before advances become practically relevant. Restricting teaching to topics that have immediate practical relevance would therefore do students a huge disservice and prevent them from approaching the knowledge frontier of the field.

samus··on GPT-5.6 Sol Ultra produces proof of the Cycle Double Cover Conjecture [pdf]
There is a tension between applied and theoretical mathematics, and it's as old as the whole science itself. Mathematics arose to solve practical problems (land surveying and division, as well as trade) and recognizing the underlying principles make it possible to abstract that knowledge. That might lead to centuries of ivory tower activity and what could be regarded as a purely artistic pursuit until somebody figures out how to apply a theory to a new practical problem. Or relations to another theory are discovered, and suddenly there is a new approach to previously intractable questions. A good example is be number theory, which is the foundation of modern cryptography.
samus··on GPT-5.6 Sol Ultra produces proof of the Cycle Double Cover Conjecture [pdf]
It's a good outcome as long as the proof is valid and ubderstandable to humans and leads to the discovery of further knowledge. There has been decades of search in Theorem Proving; this is just the next step.
samus··on Java 27: What's New?
The official guidance is very simple and straightforward: upgrade regularly and keep eyes open for the few actual things that could cause trouble. If a project cannot keep up it can always stick to LTS versions. That's it.
samus··on Java 27: What's New?
Just one more push to Java 17; from there on it should be smooth sailing. I hope you have built up a comprehensive regression test suite as part of the migration.
samus··on Java 27: What's New?
Patches are released continuously. The upstream versions get them immediately and they are then backported to LTS versions. Whether the patches actually become available simultaneously I cannot say without.
samus··on Java 27: What's New?
Yes, you can. There is no need to recompile, unless you're interested in new language features.

Maintaining binary compatibility is a principal goal of the platform which continues to constrain design decisions for all future changes.

samus··on Java 27: What's New?
I believe that's by design: applications are encouraged to upgrade often. That's usually a smooth process for standard-conforming applications.

Applications that need to move slower can stick to LTS versions. LTS hopping has become a little bit more viable since the interval has been shortened to two years, i.e., four major versions.

samus··on CRISPR takes important step toward silencing Down syndrome’s extra chromosome
Presumably by targeting them toward these differences.
samus··on CRISPR takes important step toward silencing Down syndrome’s extra chromosome
Since the presence of that chromosome causes problems in an organism that functions normally with just two of these chromosomes, the change is actually not that big. And the therapy might also not be intended for adults or even children - most of the developmental impediments have already happened at that stage, and neither cutting out the extra chromosome or silencing it will fix this up.
samus··on The local LLM ecosystem doesn’t need Ollama
How about kobold.cpp then? Or LMStudio (I know it's not open source, but at least they give proper credit to llama.cpp)?

Re curation: they should strive to not integrate broken support for models and avoid uploading broken GGUFs.

samus··on Want to Write a Compiler? Just Read These Two Papers (2008)
Getting an overview of parsing theory is mainly useful to avoid making ambiguous or otherwise hard to parse grammars. Usually one can't go too wrong with a hand-written recursive descent parser, and most general-purpose language are so complicated that parser generator can't really handle them. Anyway the really interesting parts of compiling happen in the backend.

Another alternative is basing the language on S-expressions, for which a parser is extremely simple to write.

samus··on All elementary functions from a single binary operator
Single transistors aren't yet logic gates by themselves; they are amplifiers with a very specific gain function that makes it possible to use them as switches. Logic gates usually consist of at least two transistors. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CMOS for an example of how it is done in CMOS technology.
samus··on New synthesis of astronomical measurements shows Hubble tension is real
I was referring to that model :-)
samus··on New synthesis of astronomical measurements shows Hubble tension is real
We don't just use one single method to infer distances. TA is about that there are multiple methods, and that the framework is open for new ones. What is more likely at fault is the underlying model of how the cosmos developed, which is highly likely to be incomplete or misguided.
samus··on Chimpanzees in Uganda locked in eight-year 'civil war', say researchers
It's just the sin with the greatest consequences since it invokes the wrath of the groups the person being killed belonged to. Unlawful killings challenge the authority of those who determine which killings are lawful and which aren't, therefore destabilizing societies that are more complex than a hunter-gatherer group.

However, most religions do more than just declare murder to be a sin. They usually aim to foster bonds between relative strangers as well. And values like the guest-host relationship are held to apply to all humans and even to sentient non-humans.

samus··on France Launches Government Linux Desktop Plan as Windows Exit Begins
There is one very serious issue with software: it needs updates for security issues that are uncovered. And it might be built requiring access to MS cloud services to work. To get rid of these problems is basically equivalent to adopting open source products.
samus··on France Launches Government Linux Desktop Plan as Windows Exit Begins
At the same time, TFA is about software, not about the computers themselves.
samus··on France to ditch Windows for Linux to reduce reliance on US tech
At the same time it is an open source product and can therefore be forked. Being controlled by Google presents not nearly such an issue as Microsoft products or the Apple ecosystem.
samus··on France Launches Government Linux Desktop Plan as Windows Exit Begins
Android Open Source is good enough. The tough part are device-specific drivers that never make it upstream and are eventually abandoned by the vendor, making upgrade past specific kernel versions very troublesome.
samus··on France to ditch Windows for Linux to reduce reliance on US tech
Which powerful computers are made in the USA? Design and assembly don't count, as these are the least robust to replication attempts. Apart from that, the manufacturing is all in East Asia; Intel is the exception, not the normal!
samus··on France Launches Government Linux Desktop Plan as Windows Exit Begins
Achieving redundancy from China is likely not possible in the near future. Meanwhile, the risk emanating from a rugpull or from deliberate sabotage by the USA is very concrete.
samus··on Artemis II and the invisible hazard on the way to the Moon
None of these devices are mission-critical. Worst case they have to be restarted; then they are fine again and the world moves on.
samus··on Artemis II and the invisible hazard on the way to the Moon
Unshielded circuits are basically radiation detectors. Even here on planet Earth bitflips are an underappreciated source of unreproducible bugs.

A bit flip in an index variable, a pointers or in native code can send the CPU on a wild goose chase around memory.

To add insult to injury, applications like browsers use JITs, which generate and execute large amounts of native code on the fly, making them even more vulnerable for this kind of fault.

The same issue arises from overclocking, inconsistent power sources, and from damaged RAM cells, but those problem sources can presumably be dismissed on a vehicle with pristine, well-made hardware during a short hop to the moon and back.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47252971

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