@dougmerritt.mathstodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy
I'm a philomath (many interests; call it polymath-wanna-be) professional computer programmer in Silicon Valley, specializing in operating systems […]
🌉 bridged from ⁂ https://mathstodon.xyz/@dougmerritt, follow @ap.brid.gy to interact
@aka-pugs.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gyReposted by @dougmerritt.mathstodon.xyz.ap.brid.gyOTD 2011, we lost Dennis Ritchie. R.I.P.
@dougmerritt.mathstodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy@dougmerritt.mathstodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy@dougmerritt.mathstodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy@oschene
It doesn't *look* like Eric Burdon; but he has an unusual voice (albeit not outright unique).
Maybe he just learned Japanese to do this album; I wouldn't put it past him. ;)
There are many possible theories. Many bordering on the insane.
@glyph.imReposted by @dougmerritt.mathstodon.xyz.ap.brid.gythis is the perfect metaphor to understand the distinction between AI doomer concerns versus AI skeptic concerns
@dougmerritt.mathstodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy@oschene
The melody is very memorable, at least.
@dougmerritt.mathstodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy(Kiesel: JavaScript engine written in Zig; multi-platform.)
> ...Other notable mentions: the long-anticipated DOS port finally became reality thanks to dos.zig being revived
@highergeometer.mathstodon.xyz.ap.brid.gyReposted by @dougmerritt.mathstodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy"A senior colleague of mine found one of his favourite problems among those solved and attempted to read the accompanying paper. He told me it was so unintelligible that, had he received it as an editor at a mathematics journal, “it would have gone straight into the bin”. —Melissa Lee, Monash […]
@dougmerritt.mathstodon.xyz.ap.brid.gyThe authors were interviewed on BBC news just now (Sat Oct 10 9:45 am PDT). Very reasonably, they emphasized that no one knows whether LLMs actually experience things or not, just that they have these interesting indicators from within their workings.
@ranaldclouston.fediscience.org.ap.brid.gyReposted by @dougmerritt.mathstodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy#GardnerDozois must be the most reliable name in short sci fi; for more than three decades straight he read every professional publication in the field and published 600 pages of his favourites. His 2011 collection is not the best I've read - it even has one […]
@dougmerritt.mathstodon.xyz.ap.brid.gyA rather different kind of UI:
The Lightbulb Computer: a device that combines a projector with computer vision, in the shape of a large lightbulb
https://lightbulbcomputer.com/
Or video presentation:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0R-9qkjPEqg
@dougmerritt.mathstodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy"Programs must be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute." Harold Abelson, Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, 1984
@dougmerritt.mathstodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy"We are not trying to meet some abstract production quota of definitions, theorems and proofs. The measure of our success is whether what we do enables *people* to understand and think more clearly and effectively about mathematics." -- William Thurston, "On proof and progress in mathematics" […]
@dougmerritt.mathstodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy“Robot” Is A Social Construct: Why Your Dishwasher Is Not A Robot
https://robotgirlgang.com/2026/10/08/robot-is-a-social-construct-why-your-dishwasher-is-not-a-robot/
@dougmerritt.mathstodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy@ed1conf
Still required course material!
@ccppurcell.mathstodon.xyz.ap.brid.gyReposted by @dougmerritt.mathstodon.xyz.ap.brid.gyWhen I'm thinking about AI in mathematics I end up thinking about the moon landings. It's not a perfect analogy. But there are some parallels. We tend to look back at them as a somewhat collective achievement of humanity; we're right to, I think. But the concentration of wealth in one place due […]
@dougmerritt.mathstodon.xyz.ap.brid.gyThe attention to detail in this stop-motion no-AI animation is remarkable; beautifully done. "Mrs. Apple's recipe — Strawberry cake"
@jschauma.mstdn.social.ap.brid.gyReposted by @dougmerritt.mathstodon.xyz.ap.brid.gyIn 1981, Ned Block described a branch predicting algorithm to determine "sensible strings" for a dialog beyond Eliza. "Could the issue of whether a machine in fact thinks or is intelligent depend on how gullible human interrogators tend to be? [...] I conclude that the capacity to emit sensible […]
@dougmerritt.mathstodon.xyz.ap.brid.gyLLMs do not *experience* anything, no matter what one believes about their abilities. So I find the following research alarming (in how it may influence people inadvisedly), which implicitly assumes that LLMs *can* experience (pain, if nothing else) without even explicitly raising the question […]
@dougmerritt.mathstodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy> More generally, this work shows how to add full-fledged union types to functional languages of the ML family that usually rely on the Hindley-Milner type system
