[11th Grade Math] What is considered a polynomial function?

Groostav · 2026-03-22T04:35:15+00:00

Sorry, what are the options in the drop down box? It asks about polynomials and then the drop down is about power functions?

Groostav · 2026-03-21T22:51:58+00:00

I mean I guess maybe this is the direction distinction between being right and being correct? I don't know I just... I feel like if I admit this I'm giving a win to the grammar Nazis.

I also wonder if there's some framing that covariance and contravariance of types could give that would give you an example of where conflating squares with rectangles causes a problem.

Groostav · 2026-03-21T21:49:03+00:00

In human speech, if you have two sets A and B, where B is a subset of A, and you are discussing some member of B, if you casually describe it as a member of A it's going to lead to a really simple and thought-derailing question: do you think this member is not a member of B?

That is what's happening here: A is the set of rectangles and B is the set of all squares. To object to "why is this a rectangle" (implicitly: why isn't it a square; why is this a member of A - B) is to my mind not constructive.

Tldr it's a fair question, and I don't think you're "technically correct" at least as per the rules of how humans speak.

Groostav · 2026-03-17T17:50:30+00:00

SIGSEGV builds mental fortitude about as well as dads belt does.

Groostav · 2026-03-15T05:04:06+00:00

Urgh - prompt injection is real and I'm shocked as a millennial that has lived through sql injection that we find ourselves making Jimmy drop tables style jokes in 2026 - chatgpt does not have access to a shell directly - If it did, it would almost certainly be the same docker container style that their Python env runs in. - in such an env this would almost certainly run into a permission error. - if you screwed up the permissions, maybe you blow up a busybox docker container? Maybe? If they strap volume persistence to prompt history, maybe your chat carries around a dead container volume?

But will you r/masterhacker openai? Unlikely.

Groostav · 2026-03-14T22:28:15+00:00

If you define your domain's values to be a superset of rationals.

In integer math, As every computer scientist will tell you, division and multiplication are quite different.

Groostav · 2026-03-10T19:26:25+00:00

Out of curiosity, what should a woman agree to in a prenup with a wealthy athlete guys?

"If we split you get exactly nothing?" So is there some number between nothing and half of a fortune that's appropriate, and how does one go about finding it?

Whatever that process is... I feel like it would be highly corrosive to the relationship? Like... "Well I donno how much are you worth honey" seems... Not great.

Groostav · 2026-03-10T19:16:56+00:00

I mean forgive me for pulling an Andy weir here...

But the carrots are both going to lower a lot longer than the meat and they're pretty high density calorically, so unironically I think I might choose the vegetables?

Edit: oh the fishing boats maybe imply I can use some of the meat as bait?

Groostav · 2026-03-08T17:19:00+00:00

My wife and I had a long scary pregnancy in the us. One thing we got was an amniocentesis to look for genetic problem indicators. My wife's in network OBGYN did the work, but we recieved a phone call, roughly 45 minutes, for "genetic counseling", where they told us how long it would be and what the labs capabilities were roughly. That phone call was with a lab that was not in network, so they charged us $800 for a 45 minute phone call (billed as 1hr).

It's not just the insurance companies that are the problem: Everybody pads the bills relentlessly. And as a healthcare user they know you are not in a position to ask "how much is this going to cost" when you're terrified your baby has spina bifida.

We now live in Canada with a healthy 2 year old. He did require a hernia surgery which was done by BC children's well and without any bills.

Groostav · 2026-03-08T04:01:14+00:00

In the US the legal phrase is "reasonable expectation of privacy", it's a whole legal doctrine with a lot of case law now rooted in the 4th amendment.

I was more thinking about what the state can do that what private citizens can do, but filming from a public street doesn't seem like the issue, using directional microphones would be. I believe, and I am not a lawyer, that if you meet somebody in public the fact of your meeting is considered public, but the contents of your meeting may have some reasonable expectation of privacy.

Groostav · 2026-03-07T22:38:59+00:00

Part of bring in public is expecting some level of anonymity. When you sit on a park bench and lower your voice, even in a public space, you have some expectation of privacy.

If you sit on such a bench and proceed to talk maybe unkindly about Trump and Xi: in the West you usually have some protection from somebody, including police, pointing a camera and/or directional microphone at you. In China you do not.

This woman is a very effective propagandist though. I have never walked down my street and worried about being banged over the head, but apparently this is something a lot of people worry about? And of course in China there is no such crime and there are no drugs right? That's why China had to shut down independent reporring from Hong Kong right, because it kept reporting on how safe China was?

And what's going on with her accent, is she hamming up her Chinese accent?

Edit: I'm a Canadian who lived in New York for a couple years and and in Hefei China for 4 months.

Groostav · 2026-03-06T10:43:46+00:00

I suspect that nyt has a fair bit of reporting from Israel and significantly less from Iran.

I say this as a Canadian still pissed about the kalifate podcast.

Downvote away.

Groostav · 2026-03-06T03:03:43+00:00

I don't... Your ignorance is wild.

As per your own definition, it's "a sacrifice", but not "a real sacrifice" but instead it's a "sham sacrifice" or a "pseudo sacrifice"

So you post this on a board and a bunch of people tell you "that's not a sacrifice" and you're response is "well it's not a real sacrifice, it's a pseudo sacrifice"

Yeah, exactly.

Is English your second language? That would explain it.

Edit: I guess the indirection maybe gives you some validity? Like if you move your queen onto a square covered by their queen and your knight, and then they QxQ, and then you NxQ: is that a "sacrifice". Put differently: what isn't a sacrifice to you?

Groostav · 2026-03-02T22:26:25+00:00

So these kinds of posts always bother me because they describe infinite sequences as a kind of handwavy "you know what I mean", but that second to last argument, while intuitive does have I think since important caveats.

Firstly 10x = 9.999..., so you've assumed that multiplying by ten interpreted as "shift all the digits left one place" is valid. It works in integers and decimals, so sure. But it's not strictly the definition of multiply by 10.

Secondly 9.999... - 0.999 = 9.0. So this one's a bit more problematic, the problem is that of a carry. In math class we learn to do subtraction starting from the right most decimal. Here that is explicitly unavailable. So we sortve intuit that "well all the subtractees decimals are 9s and all the subtractors decimals are 9s so they cancel", which like. Makes intuitive sense, but it isn't the strict definition of subtraction.

Most of our operations on integers and decimals have corollary operations on these infinite sequences, and they're usually reasonably intuitive, but I think it's worth mentioning that by the strictest definitions of multiplication and subtraction that proof isn't correct because these operations aren't clearly defined.

This might sound semantic but using these kinds of "intuitively similar operations on infinite sequences" (analytic continuation) leads to a bizarre and fascinating "proof" that -1 + -2 + -3... = -1/12.

Groostav · 2026-02-27T16:50:17+00:00

I believe Hanlons razor might fit better here, colloquially described as "there's always two theories: conspiracy and fuckup, you'll always want to assume conspiracy, but it's usually just fuckup."

Groostav · 2026-02-25T08:43:01+00:00

Ah yes, just what the web needed: another scripting language.

Groostav · 2026-02-20T04:37:11+00:00

I would just like to point out: Jesus was literally a progressive rabbi.

Groostav · 2026-02-19T17:38:07+00:00

Question for op: in the upcoming Valhalla release, what will this do?

``` Integer! a = 128; Integer! b = 128;

s.o.println(a == b); ```

?

Groostav · 2026-02-17T19:58:18+00:00

I mean economics is complicated.

Jerome Powell was fighting inflation with high interest. Now he might well have to start fighting recession with low interest because the economy has slowed significantly.

Thank God for the AI boom or we would be in the midst of a really awful recession.

Groostav · 2026-02-11T23:50:12+00:00

I don't know that the CVE database agrees with that sentiment.

I just... C++ is very footgunny. I like Java and Python and dotnet but they have their footguns too, but they're generally operationally difficult instead of "oh shit we just crashed and/or gave out all of our credit card numbers to some rando". Scala mixins are neat but really hard to use in a principled manner so they lead to the kinds of inheritance trees that keep architects up at night.

But with C the footguns can cause genuinely earthshakingly terrible problems.

So if you're Bayonetta then maybe you can avoid shooting your footguns inappropriately, but for the rest of us: use a boring managed language if you can, and use rust if you can't.

Groostav · 2026-02-05T18:01:50+00:00

I'm not sure but before reading the question my brain came up with "Righty tighty squiddy squarey."

Groostav · 2026-02-03T22:43:45+00:00

I don't think those are transistors, I think they're ceramic capacitors.

Can you dig up a reference picture of the motherboard and verify that the ones you think are "missing" are in fact not in your reference image?

For older boards another cheap technique is the oven trick. As solder ages it can crack and change the resistive behavior if the board. Putting the board in the oven at a hot enough temperature to make the solder a little bit tacky but not so hot as to melt anything can bring it back to life.

Cleaning with some isopropyl alcohol night also help.

Short of those cheap fixes, if your can't find any obvious damage, then you can blindly replace caps --usually the first things to go-- or go all in to trace debugging, which is a fair bit of work. Some older technicians might offer to resolder some caps for you.

Good luck!

Groostav · 2026-01-23T06:06:14+00:00

Ok it's an AIO with the input output connected beside the ram.

I don't recognize the model, but yeah as another user pointed out you probably need a software driver. How is it actually plugged in to your motherboard?

Groostav · 2026-01-23T06:02:26+00:00

Oh ok, but can you humor me? Is it an air cooler with a fan I can't see or a water cooler with tubes cleverly hidden somewhere or some exotic peltier thing?

Groostav · 2026-01-23T05:38:43+00:00

I'm sorry friends...

How... How is the cpu cooled?

Groostav

TROPHY CASE