notfashion

If I were you I wouldn't make a personal ethical stand on this (by not learning GNU software). If you're the only one who does it, it can realistically only hurt you.

I think there's an error in the first bit of example code:

  float fbm( in vecN x, in float H )
  {    
      float t = 0.0;
      for( int i=0; i<numOctaves; i++ )
      {
          float f = pow( 2.0, float(i) );
          float a = pow( f, -H );
          t += a*noise(f*x);
      }
      return t;
  }

Shouldn't "float a = pow( f, -H );" be "float a = pow( i, -H );"?

If I understand this correctly, it's not even a matter of using a filter, just a case of summing some random sinusoids with an appropriate weighting for each according to the frequency. You can do this by starting off with noise in the frequency domain and shaping it before doing an iFFT.

Representing an arbitrary sequence of bits, digits, etc. using a real number is the basis for arithmetic coding. As such, it's an approach that has been productive historically, and arithmetic coding continues to be widely used. So the basic idea of encoding whatever you want to encode in a single real number (obviously represented to just enough precision) isn't fruitless and boring. In this case it is a number that is easy to calculate using the formula given, which doesn't at first glance resemble a prime sieve.

What I don't exactly get is how the pages are assigned. It's not really a hashing algorithm in that sense, it's more like a dictionary data structure where the user has to choose the storage locations. It's only possible to work from one end or the other, or more or less randomly. Either way fragmentation will creep in. This looks like it happens in the image of Locke's index.

The presence of the term "gaslighting" in the comment you are replying to implies that this might be a situation involving narcissism. It's all very well, in a pop psych way, to tell someone "be more zen", but there is little useful overlap between that advice and the course of action that is usually recommended for people dealing with a serious narcissist (to get away from them any way you can).

I don't think you're helping by bringing positive pop psychology and generic consumer zen "mastery" to what is effectively a borderline clinical mental health situation. Narcissism and gaslighting (whatever the actual situation described in the previous comment) are way beyond what can be smoothed away with equanimity and a good attitude. It's unhelpful and a bit condescending to suggest otherwise.

I'm not sure the scenarios "some of my best friends are of the opposite sex" or "some of my best friends are of another race" have much bearing on sexism or racism. Loving someone from a different category doesn't automatically dissolve all antagonism or prejudice—it might just override it in a specific case. Relationships are multidimensional. You would need to provide evidence that these bonds of love/affection somehow erode prejudice toward a given 'other' in general. There are many historic cases of celebrities who have been widely accepted despite massive ongoing prejudice against the group of which they are a member. Affection for celebrities is not the same as familial love, but I do think this suggests that the way people feel about individuals doesn't translate in a simple way to their attitudes to whole groups.

Each rotor implements a permutation of its input terminals. So maybe more like a p-box, but the difference is significant (only two wires in use at a any time, and one is in "reverse") so probably just thinking of it as a permutation is better.

Ireland's per capita level of funding for research has been lagging badly behind the European average, though. It's really a cultural problem: R&D doesn't happen here, except in rare cases. It's not really down to the size of the population: in the 19th C we had Hamilton and Boole, the world's largest telescope in Birr, Grubb telescope manufacturing in Dublin, and the Titanic was built in Belfast in the early 20th C. But independence, for better or worse, saw the Republic kind of divesting itself of technological stuff—it didn't match the national image, and separating from the UK meant that the communication and exchange of technical knowledge became an exception rather than the norm.

So it even has to do with the protestant/catholic divide (science and manufacturing was something "they" did). It's a very painful story, and a lot of Irish tech people have a chip on their shoulder (narcissistic injury) because of our backwardness.

If you read to the end, there's a mention of the premature collapse of the probabilistic inference about some entity. That clarifies what the author is talking about.

The scenario is something like a situation in which individuals are categorized into two discrete groups, and then inference proceeds as if the fate of each individual has been determined by which group they fell into (rather than determined probabilistically). The fact that a discrete categorization is assumed to 'determine' the outcome (the possibility wave function 'collapses' at the moment of categorization) could certainly be referred to as deterministic. I agree that it's not an application of the word that we are familiar with.

It's not a case of an "original headline": this is an entirely separate article, not a regurgitation of the press release. Wolchover is a very serious writer.

It's pretty sickening to watch the (sadly predictable) HN sneering and mockery around the topic of someone's (anyone's) mental health. It's such a cruel, distorted and completely non-constructive conversation. Do you guys really not have anything more interesting to say?