sesm (u/sesm) - Readit News

sesm commented on String theory inspires a brilliant, baffling new math proof quantamagazine.org/string... · Posted by u/ArmageddonIt

shin_lao · 4 days ago

Because String Theory hasn't delivered falsifiable predictions, yet keeps expanding to accommodate failure.

sesm · 4 days ago

The word 'falsifiable' comes from Popper's criterion, which is central to scientific methodology. What it means: if theory predicts something, and later observations show that prediction doesn't hold, then the theory is incorrect.

String theory doesn't work this way, whatever was measured will be explained as an afterthought by free parameter tuning.

sesm commented on A “frozen” dictionary for Python lwn.net/SubscriberLink/10... · Posted by u/jwilk

aewens · 6 days ago

I think Raymond Hettinger is called out specially here because he did a well known talk called [Modern Dictionaries](https://youtu.be/p33CVV29OG8) where around 32:00 to 35:00 in he makes the quip about how younger developers think they need new data structures to handle new problems, but eventually just end up recreating / rediscovering solutions from the 1960s.

“What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done; there is nothing new under the sun.”

sesm · 6 days ago

Since that time HAMT was invented and successfully used in Scala and Clojure, so this talk didn't age well.

sesm commented on Zellij: A terminal workspace with batteries included zellij.dev... · Posted by u/ndr

pomdtr · 11 days ago

I built a project to add a terminal emulator to the browser (using a chrome extension): https://github.com/pomdtr/tweety.

I'm working on a `tweety edit` command which open arbitrary files in your $EDITOR of choice in a new tab.

sesm · 11 days ago

Looks great, I'll give it a try!

sesm commented on Zellij: A terminal workspace with batteries included zellij.dev... · Posted by u/ndr

maccard · 11 days ago

You’ve basically described vscode!

sesm · 11 days ago

As far as I understand, VSCode browser can't install browser extensions and doesn't even have Dev Tools. For example, IntelliJ IDEs ship with CEF-based browser that has Chromium Dev Tools, but it still doesn't support browser extensions.

sesm commented on Zellij: A terminal workspace with batteries included zellij.dev... · Posted by u/ndr

sesm · 11 days ago

My dream workspace is a real browser (with all dev tools), with integrated terminal emulator and integrated editor. Editor plugins could be prototyped with web technology and debugged on the fly (like Obsidian plugins). Is there anything like this?

sesm commented on Thoughts on Go vs. Rust vs. Zig sinclairtarget.com/blog/2... · Posted by u/yurivish

globalnode · 12 days ago

so does the rust compiler check for race conditions between threads at compile time? if so then i can see the allure of rust over c, some of those sync issues are devilish. and what about situations where you might have two variables closely related that need to be locked as a pair whenever accessed.

sesm · 12 days ago

No, it does not.

Rust approach to shared memory is in-place mutation guarded by locks. This approach is old and well-know, and has known problems: deadlocks, lock contention, etc. Rust specifically encourages coarse-granular locks by design, so lock contention problem is very pressing.

There are other approaches to shared memory, like ML-style mutable pointers to immutable data (perfected in Clojure) and actors. Rust has nothing to do with them, and as far as I understand the core choices made by the language make implementing them very problematic.

sesm commented on Writing a good Claude.md humanlayer.dev/blog/writi... · Posted by u/objcts

nico · 16 days ago

> Claude often ignores CLAUDE.md

> The more information you have in the file that's not universally applicable to the tasks you have it working on, the more likely it is that Claude will ignore your instructions in the file

Claude.md files can get pretty long, and many times Claude Code just stops following a lot of the directions specified in the file

A friend of mine tells Claude to always address him as “Mr Tinkleberry”, he says he can tell Claude is not paying attention to the instructions on Claude.md, when Claude stops calling him “Mr Tinkleberry” consistently

sesm · 16 days ago

We are back to color-sorted M&Ms bowls.

sesm commented on There is No Quintic Formula [video] youtube.com/watch?v=9HIy5... · Posted by u/DamnInteresting

steppi · 16 days ago

Vladimir Arnold famously taught a proof of the insolubility of the Quintic to Moscow Highschool students in the 1960s using a concrete, low-prerequisite approach. His lectures were turned into a book Abel’s Theorem in Problems and Solutions by V.B. Alekseev which is available online here: https://webhomes.maths.ed.ac.uk/~v1ranick/papers/abel.pdf. He doesn't consider Galois theory in full generality, but instead gives a more concrete topological/geometric treatment. For anyone who wants to get a good grip on the insolubility of the quintic, but feels overwhelmed by the abstraction of modern algebra, I think this would be a good place to start.

sesm · 16 days ago

This book is also an accessible introduction to group theory, I managed to work through the first half of the book when I was 15 y.o.

sesm commented on Terence Tao: At the Erdos problem website, AI assistance now becoming routine mathstodon.xyz/@tao/11559... · Posted by u/dwohnitmok

NitpickLawyer · 24 days ago

Having the ability to throw math heavy ML papers at the assistants and get simplified explanations / pseudocode back is absolutely amazing, as someone who's forgot most of what I learned in uni, 25+ years back and never really used it since.

sesm · 23 days ago

How do you verify that the explanation is accurate? Mathematical definitions can be very subtle.

sesm commented on Ego, empathy, and humility at work matthogg.fyi/a-unified-th... · Posted by u/mrmatthogg

Aeglaecia · 23 days ago

why should experts dumb down their interpersonal discussion for perusal by the unaware ? if gatekeeping anything is weak , why is it ok to gatekeep virtue by stating that empathy and humility are obviously virtuous ? honestly some of the article's points are good but anyone capable of understanding and implementing these practices was probably not that egotistical to start with. I don't particularly enjoy the focus on dev egoism when the manager class is by design de-empathized (iirc commanding another human intrinsically down regulates empathy). anyway all of this ramble is definitely egotistical itself and that's intentional - everything is indeed so much bigger than us as individuals , without some form of separation we are liable to be subsumed.

sesm · 23 days ago

Will Storr would say that the author is playing a status game of virtue.

u/sesm

KarmaCake day1191June 19, 2013View Original