It just got into an "we is you" type of interaction.
Never got a question myself.
Readit Newsplank commented on Wildthing – A model trained on role-reversed ChatGPT conversations youaretheassistantnow.com... · Posted by u/iamwil
plank commented on How a hawk learned to use traffic signals to hunt more successfully frontiersin.org/news/2025... · Posted by u/layer8
The point the story tries to make is that the Hawk learned traffic signals. That is not necessarily the case. It could be that the hawk just sees that the cars are blocking the sight of the prey.
Still an intelligent action, only does not mean the hawk understands the signal itself.
plank commented on The principles of database design, or, the Truth is out there ebellani.github.io/blog/2... · Posted by u/b-man
" Every base relation should be in its highest normal form (3, 5 or 6th normal form). "
If I remember my database lessons correctly there is no strictly highest normal form. It progresses from 1NF to BCNF, but above that it is more choosing different trade-offs.
Even below it is always a trade-off with performance and that is why we most of the time aim for 3NF, and sometimes BCNF.
There are big disadvantages from choosing e g. 5th normal form: any changing in business requirements leads to a big rewrite and data conversion.
Never seen successful projects choosing beyond 3rd/BCNF.
plank commented on British naval dominance during the age of sail lesswrong.com/posts/YE4Xs... · Posted by u/surprisetalk
What I missed in the piece is a description on how they did against the Dutch. Both Spanish and French were more ‘land type’ armies, as a Dutchmen I remember in the history wé were taught that the Dutch punched above their weight on sea warefare.
Indeed, if I had to wager, I would assume that the English against the Portuguese or the Dutch would do worse then against the Spanish or French, given the same firepower/size of ships etc. (For the record, did not check ‘the mighty internet’ whether my gut feelings are supported by facts) (Edit: but -> both)
A variation of the theory that there are only 7 different stories told in (fiction) books.
plank commented on Electron band structure in germanium, my ass (2001) pages.cs.wisc.edu/~kovar/... · Posted by u/tux3
One of my Core Memories when it comes to science, science education, and education in general was in my high school physics class, where we had to do an experiment to determine the gravitational acceleration of Earth. This was done via the following mechanism: Roll a ball off of a standard classroom table. Use a 1990s wristwatch's stopwatch mechanism to start the clock when the ball rolls of the table. Stop the stopwatch when the ball hits the floor.
Anyone who has ever had a wristwatch of similar tech should know how hard it is to get anything like precision out of those things. It's a millimeter sized button with a millimeter depth of press and could easily need half a second of jabbing at it to get it to trigger. It's for measuring your mile times in minutes, not fractions of a second fall times.
Naturally, our data was total, utter crap. Any sensible analysis would have error bars that, if you treat the problem linearly, would have put 0 and negative numbers within our error bars. I dutifully crunched the numbers and determined that the gravitational constant was something like 6.8m/s^2 and turned it in.
Naturally, I got a failing grade, because that's not particularly close, and no matter how many times you are solemnly assured otherwise, you are never graded on whether you did your best and honestly report what you observe. From grade school on, you are graded on whether or not the grading authority likes the results you got. You might hope that there comes some point in your career where that stops being the case, but as near as I can tell, it literally never does. Right on up to professorships, this is how science really works.
The lesson is taught early and often. It often sort of baffles me when other people are baffled at how often this happens in science, because it more-or-less always happens. Science proceeds despite this, not because of it.
(But jerf, my teacher... Yes, you had a wonderful teacher who didn't only give you an A for the equivalent but called you out in class for your honesty and I dunno, flunked everyone who claimed they got the supposed "correct" answer to three significant digits because that was impossible. There are a few shining lights in the field and I would never dream of denying that. Now tell me how that idealism worked for you going forward the next several years.)
Have a complete different experience. As a physical major, did a famous Millikan's oil drop experiment. Am a terrible experimentalist (went on to do my PhD in theoretical physics), so we got a charge of about 1/3 of the charge of an electron.
Now, as I did not get a Nobel prize, I did not actually measure the charge of a single quark, but still got good enough grades for this study.
plank commented on Andrej Karpathy: "I was given early access to Grok 3 earlier today" twitter.com/karpathy/stat... · Posted by u/htk
plank commented on I ask this chess puzzle to every new LLM gist.github.com/abhishek-... · Posted by u/thepoet
I am exactly 1600 at chess.com rating and though I don't do puzzle's much , what I do know is that if you push the white king to b2 then that pawn is losing , take that pawn and then you have 2 bishop endgame which is really really hard .
I once had a bishop and a knight endgame , I think It became draw on repetition.
Asking AI to do this is definitely flawed. This isn't reasoning. From what I know of 2 bishop end game , its more of hey lets trap the king in a box untill you could then snipe the king with your bishop (like his king could be on h1) yours on h3 your 1 bishop targeting g1 and the other bishop anywhere on the main diagonal with no other pieces.
But this is very much stalematey , since I am currently pondering how to get to this position without a stalemate! , if you move the bishop later , its stalement , Like seriously. https://www.chess.com/forum/view/endgames/two-bishop-checkma...
Just search 2 bishop checkmate is hard , a lot of guides exist just for this purpose , though in my 1000+ games I rarely got once or twice 2 bishop endgame , usually bishop or knight which is just as tricky or if I recall , the worst is knight and knight.
Replying to your other questions:
Its been a while since I played chess regularly (in a chess club), but:
Two bishops (of different colour) is actually not that difficult. There are some simple heuristics to help you there (an LLM might actually tell you these, haven’t asked;-0)
Bishop+Knight is, in my opinion slightly more complicated, there are some ‘tricks’ necessary to keep the king from running from one courner to the next.
Bishop+bishop is - in most situations - a draw (you need three knights to mate).
plank commented on I ask this chess puzzle to every new LLM gist.github.com/abhishek-... · Posted by u/thepoet
I am exactly 1600 at chess.com rating and though I don't do puzzle's much , what I do know is that if you push the white king to b2 then that pawn is losing , take that pawn and then you have 2 bishop endgame which is really really hard .
I once had a bishop and a knight endgame , I think It became draw on repetition.
Asking AI to do this is definitely flawed. This isn't reasoning. From what I know of 2 bishop end game , its more of hey lets trap the king in a box untill you could then snipe the king with your bishop (like his king could be on h1) yours on h3 your 1 bishop targeting g1 and the other bishop anywhere on the main diagonal with no other pieces.
But this is very much stalematey , since I am currently pondering how to get to this position without a stalemate! , if you move the bishop later , its stalement , Like seriously. https://www.chess.com/forum/view/endgames/two-bishop-checkma...
Just search 2 bishop checkmate is hard , a lot of guides exist just for this purpose , though in my 1000+ games I rarely got once or twice 2 bishop endgame , usually bishop or knight which is just as tricky or if I recall , the worst is knight and knight.
But there is a reasoning (see my reply above): winning is not possible (only the queen is strong enough against two bishops), so draw should be the goal. And underpromoting to knight is only way to keep the piece for another move while still promoting.
So... Clickbait title? ;-)