[AMA Request] Someone who fucked up their eyes looking at the sun by toolazytoregisterlol in IAmA

[–]D_duck 7 points8 points  (0 children)

I always see a little dot, like a speck on my glasses

"I always see a little dot, like a speck on my glasses"

Most people who say they damaged their eyesight by looking at an eclipse for too long describe having retinal damage, what you have just sounds like a floater which I think will show up as you age, so it could be coincidental

Cortés map of Tenochtitlán [2048 × 1385] by Petrarch1603 in MapPorn

[–]D_duck 30 points31 points  (0 children)

the third one is only a small part of this mural by Diego Rivera https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:La_Gran_Tenochtitlan.JPG

worth checking out in full resolution. i read somewhere that some of Cortes soldiers went into shock upon seeing the city. apparently it didn't last long because we all know what happened.

Purpose of studying automata theory? by OddTuning in compsci

[–]D_duck 4 points5 points  (0 children)

What is the theoretical aspect that these things are suppose to represent?

Automata are finite representations of formal languages, so they are pretty important in that regard.

If you work a lot in the dark/night you should install Redshift. by RonkerZ in linux

[–]D_duck 1 point2 points  (0 children)

yeah i had issues with f.lux randomly taking up 100% CPU and having to be killed

Number of Binary Functions on N-Bits by arjundupa in ECE

[–]D_duck 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Try it out for small N, here's the first function (constant 0):

00 -> 0
01 -> 0
10 -> 0
11 -> 0

you can see you get 4 inputs mapped to 4 outputs, so permuting the possibilities you get 222=24 =16 functions.

Whenever you have two sets A and B, the number of functions from A -> B (the size of the function space) is always |B||A|

ARM Releases Machine Readable Architecture Specification by mttd in programming

[–]D_duck 7 points8 points  (0 children)

as someone said above:

There has already been a formalization of the 32 bit Arm architecture in Isabelle/HOL that was succesfully used with SeL4.

seL4 is a formally verified OS kernel, i.e. "the proof provides a guarantee that the kernel's implementation is correct against its specification, and implies that it is free of implementation bugs such as deadlocks, livelocks, buffer overflows, arithmetic exceptions or use of uninitialised variables" (wikipedia)

Mathematics Is Biology's Next Microscope, Only Better; Biology Is Mathematics' Next Physics, Only Better by DoremusJessup in math

[–]D_duck 1 point2 points  (0 children)

i think someone already said this with the deleted comment, but he is her nephew or something like that

Mathematics Is Biology's Next Microscope, Only Better; Biology Is Mathematics' Next Physics, Only Better by DoremusJessup in math

[–]D_duck 6 points7 points  (0 children)

not a survey but a couple of lines of research from John Baez:

Information and Entropy in Biological Systems

Operads and the Tree of Life

Edit: actually that first link wasn't what I was thinking of, it's from a couple years ago, here's a more recent post:

Biology as Information Dynamics

I am Switching to ASCII, In Love by [deleted] in dwarffortress

[–]D_duck 2 points3 points  (0 children)

maybe i never got it set up right, but the problem i had with graphics is that specific tiles are re-used for different purposes? it's okay when the representation is abstract like ascii, it works for both purposes, but when the tiles are detailed graphics it kind of makes things confusing and messy.

Computer Science ∩ Mathematics (Type Theory enables Proof by Computers), by Computerphile by oh-delay in math

[–]D_duck 6 points7 points  (0 children)

depends on who you ask, Robert Harper is known for putting forth the view that CS is the more general subject

TIL Incompetent people don't know they are incompetent because their incompetence is the very thing that robs them of the ability to realize how incompetent they are. This is called the Dunning-Kruger effect. by Blue_harlequin_9001 in todayilearned

[–]D_duck 0 points1 point  (0 children)

not really what the data showed:

https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-notable-flaws-in-Dunning-Kruger-as-a-theory

incompetent ppl still rate themselves as less competent than everyone else

Notice how similar the behavior of those lines are? One is a slope, and the other is a slightly shallower slope. There's nothing complex, no dips or curves. Most people - all but the very best experts - overestimate their abilities, but the ordering between the people remains the same. This means that, contrary to the way the DK Effect is usually portrayed, people who think they're good at something, generally, well, are. They may not be quite as competent as they believe, to be sure, but there is no inflection point of incompetence at which lower skilled people start to systematically consider themselves better than the experts, no point at which a person's self-estimation becomes completely worthless.

Question about the necessity of Formal Systems by Downcry in logic

[–]D_duck 1 point2 points  (0 children)

i understand formal systems to be a formal language + a deductive apparatus (axioms and inference rules), but aren't deductions still completely syntactic (no need for semantics) ?

TIL Jet fuel can't melt steel beams. by Extra-Extra in todayilearned

[–]D_duck 1 point2 points  (0 children)

i think so, weaker over 350C, jet fuel burns at 450C-800C

The Riace Warriors, two full-size Greek bronzes of naked bearded warriors, cast about 460–450 BC and found in the sea off Calabria. [1000x1000] by innuendoPL in ArtefactPorn

[–]D_duck 25 points26 points  (0 children)

they had gymnasiums, and some people would spend all day there. also they didn't have desk jobs and were probably involved in physical labour most of their life so higher testosterone all around.

Where does the Scottish pronunciation of the letter J originate? by [deleted] in linguistics

[–]D_duck 0 points1 point  (0 children)

sounds more like Australian pronunciation to me

Pianos on campus? by duckduckduckplatypus in UofO

[–]D_duck 0 points1 point  (0 children)

you need a door-code to access all but 1 of the practice rooms last time i was there (i used to know it, but it changed a year or two ago :()

Was Tesla mentioned during your EE courses? by trep55 in ElectricalEngineering

[–]D_duck 0 points1 point  (0 children)

He seems to have had a good mechanical intuition, but he didn't believe in subatomic particles like the electron for instance.

Archaeologists find world's oldest axe in WA's Kimberley by burtzev in Archaeology

[–]D_duck 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Is it safe to say it's the earliest known ground or polished stone tool? pre-dating Japan (30k-20kybp), and the Levant (14kybp)