jkf
9hr ago
You just said it though! (well, maybe your LLM did)
I also know how Big O works, for the record.
It doesn't really seem like you do; an optimal square packing algorithm that is better only in the case of infinite squares is not making anybody any money either.
jkf
9hr ago
Nobody is making any money on a 1-10^xx exponent on integer multiplication's big O -- the fact that you think this shows that you are relying on an unreliable interlocuter to form your opinions.
I don't dispute that some of the other results may have some useful application, but the ones of this form are only interesting in the sense that humans tend to expect round numbers, and have been mostly correct in this assumption to date. (I do share this expectation and personally think it's more likely that there's some kind of mistake in these proofs -- but if I'm wrong, that's interesting!)
Your bot can probably explain this to you if you ask, but briefly: Big-O notation typically disregards the portion of algorithmic complexity that's constant doesn't and depend on the size of the dataset; ie. whether a loop takes a millisecond or a minute to execute once is not considered. Something that takes a minute per cycle but is O(1) may be better than something that does it in a millisecond but is O(n^2) -- it depends on how many "n" you are interested in though.
TBH I haven't looked into the actual algorithms involved here, but given the length of the proof I'd expect the constant term (call it overhead) to be quite high compared to existing methods -- considering the tiny difference in the exponents, you would need n to be literally approaching infinity for the proposed algo to make any difference at all. In the case of the integer math, this would mean that multiplying integers of ~infinite length could be somewhat faster -- but we can't even test it, because computers don't have infinite memory.
jkf
9hr ago
Curiously most of those niche fora are still there -- a number of the ones I've been on since ~Y2k are even fairly successfully monetized still.
Just that discoverability is kind of bad -- many of them still pop up frequently as google results for me, but I suspect personalization at work there.
Most of them are leaning heavily on Cloudflare for bot detection; from what I see of admin posts this is pretty much a requirement due to frequent (probably somewhat accidental) DDOS activity from LLM scrapers -- but even phpBB seems to still work OK if you put it behind a cloudflare gate. Many are migrating away from that, which apparently is about a weeks work.
I don't think it's a growth industry or anything, but userbases are pretty locked in and forum owners are still making a decent living from old-fashioned "give me $100 a month and I will put your logo and link in my header" type advertising. I even know of people scraping by on Amazon affiliate links!
jkf
9hr ago
Uh, now I see that it claims that I had strong opinions on the algorithmic floor of integer multiplication. I did not, beyond being vaguely aware that there was a better option than a naive n^2 based off an article I think I read on Quanta. I couldn't have told you off the top of my head that the previous SOTA was O(n log n).
So the LLM inserted something dumb that you have no personal knowledge of? I'd be embarrassed, myself, but you do you I guess.
jkf
10hr ago
"sub-incremental counterexamples to previous conjectures with no practical applications"?
jkf
8d ago
Figures closest to you, 93% match
(Feeling a bit seen tbh...)
Zapata, Gandhi and Chesterton also in the mix apparently; happily I am incompatible with Stalin, Goebbels and Genghis Khan though!
jkf
10d ago
I'm the furthest thing from a frat-boy defender myself, but I think pretty much everyone knows that hazing is (by nature, really) going to involve some physical discomfort and embarrassment? In the case of frats I'd expect some pretty extreme BACs to be involved as well; that's about all I know!
jkf
10d ago
Kind of elides the nature of the injuries, and emphasizes the condiments though -- I'd think if there were serious (consentual in any case) injuries it would have been mentioned?
Athletes often have visible injuries too -- is college athletics considered harmful? (I suppose I should say "widely considered" given that the outrage machine is winding up on the concussion thing RN)
jkf
11d ago
Later they mostly fixed the bugs and delivered something like working software to customers.
Citation needed!
jkf
12d ago
President Trump has been ignoring… the building code!!! 😱😱😱 In response to the architect's complaints, he literally said: "I am the code." 😡😡😡
I actually like the idea that Trump became President because he was tired of having to obey the building code even better than the theory that it's because Obama mocked him at a dinner!
jkf
15d ago
Even if the roads are winding?
I mean you have to slow down if there's a sharp corner -- then you speed up again!
jkf
15d ago
One feature of rural living (that can be shared with decaying urban areas) is roads in generally bad condition forcing you to drive more carefully and slowly.
People in rural areas have a lot more ground to cover, and fewer police hanging about -- we usually drive ~80mph everywhere paved regardless of road conditions.
Typical speeds on decent loose gravel would be 45-50 -- slower than that and you no longer float over the washboard.
jkf
15d ago
German beers and various dark types were a mainstay of first-wave craft brewers in the late 80s -- they were occasionally too malty (especially the dark ones) but some persist to this day!
IDK where you are going that meads are in style, and in any case the ones I've had are very much not beer -- that leaves Trappist and Sour which (assuming you mean sparkling-monk-style due to EU regulations) are pretty far from mainstream IME?
Whereas whenever I go to a restaurant since the dawn of the millenial, I typically have twenty disgusting IPAs with colourful labels to choose from, and can maybe find one each of decent lager/ale/stout. Sometimes the brewers are even sneaking extra hops into those though, so ordering something you've never heard of is not safe.
I assume somebody is buying this stuff, and my money is on the dudes (still) wearing the ironic facial hair.
jkf
15d ago
Lots of things can be learned by working towards resolving Navier-Stokes
My guess would be that since not much can be learned from a million or so lines of Lean, the results are not exciting in that way -- IANAM, but somewhat adjacent I guess, and my impression is that the result is not really the point in most cases. The proof itself is very important, and if the LLM is acting as some sort of Lean fuzzer then it's not that interesting. OFC we don't know what's going on without seeing the proofs, but I can't imagine they'd be holding off on some novel elegant proof of the Riemann Hypothesis or whatever.
jkf
16d ago
Depends on the photographer I suppose?
Sally Mann would probably want a lot more than the lady down the street who goes to Paint and Wine nights...
jkf
16d ago
I haven't heard a big company come out against it
There's a tonne of them that explicitly ban anything remotely SOTA for security reasons -- they do let you dick around with some terrible private-cloud instance of Copilot or whatnot so the C-suite doesn't worry about being "left behind", but it's a pretty strong repudiation of the usefulness of the thing. (from cybersecurity's point of view)
jkf
16d ago
If you hook them up to a machine that does random stuff (and you have an organization that apparently can't manage a simple internet firewall), I'm not so sure...
jkf
16d ago
He outed himself here months ago -- which is for sure against the rules, but Scott comments that he noted it and just did a shrug emoji I guess?
I don't think I've agreed with a word out of @BurdensomeCount 's mouth in my life -- but you truly are a curious case.
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