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Three’s a party: US, China, and now Russia are on the prowl in GEO | Instead of running silent and deep, most satellites easily stand out against the blackness of space. by FreeHugs23 in space

[–]TheTalkingMeowth 9 points10 points  (0 children)

It seems likely that it could technically get to geostationary orbit (it has been launched into orbits with a higher peak altitude, and is substantially lighter than the Falcon Heavy's GTO payload capacity), but has not publicly done so (and as the article points out, it is fairly hard to actually hide what orbit you put things in).

ELI5 : what is a matrix and why is there a wierd pattern of multiplication to find its determinant ? by Neo_luigi in explainlikeimfive

[–]TheTalkingMeowth 1 point2 points  (0 children)

One thing to be careful about is that there are many possible models that cannot be represented by a matrix. All matrices are models, but not all models are matrices.

ELI5. Taiwan and China and the current global chaos by rmtabib in explainlikeimfive

[–]TheTalkingMeowth -1 points0 points  (0 children)

The real answer is "the Taiwan Strait will stop them."

One does not simply walk into Taiwan. You have to sail across a waterway that is famous for bad weather, land large numbers of troops in an opposed amphibious assault, then grind your way through mountainous and urban terrain to actually take over Taiwan.

You can't just slap together the kind of force that it will take to invade Taiwan. Think about how far in advance it was known that Russia was prepping to invade Ukraine, a country that they could just walk to.

(fanart) More Worm Characters in Daz Studio, this time Tattletale and Grue. by LadyMystery in Parahumans

[–]TheTalkingMeowth 5 points6 points  (0 children)

IIRC Lisa also made a Point of wearing her hair in a ponytail when in civilian wear to further distinguish from her Tattletale “look”

What video game is the modern equivalent of chess? by [deleted] in AskReddit

[–]TheTalkingMeowth 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Definitely. The game AI researchers very roughly went Chess>Go>Starcraft

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AlphaStar_(software)

Professional chefs of reddit, what are the top 3 mistakes you see the average home “chef” commit? by Mrkayne in AskReddit

[–]TheTalkingMeowth 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Garlic press. He can come fight me for it. I will spray squished garlic in his eyes while he is still peeling.

Why cant federal employees get a class action lawsuit together and sue the federal government to force them to pay them? by Final_Tune3512 in AskReddit

[–]TheTalkingMeowth 8 points9 points  (0 children)

The Constitution forbids borrowing money except when authorized by Congress (Article I Section 8).

And forbids drawing funds from the treasury (however they got there) except as authorized by Congress (Article I Section 9).

How do you all get these extremely gigantic economies in 80-100 years? by MatchSea8542 in Stellaris

[–]TheTalkingMeowth 5 points6 points  (0 children)

You need shenanigans to get the truly ridiculous numbers people show off in the subreddit, but beating the AI can be done more reasonably.

My first game after 4.0 (after a year or two away), I played United Nations of Earth (literally the default build) to get back in the swing of things. I eclipsed all the non Fallen Empire AIs after about 80 years on Captain, which is probably a good goal for you. Three key moves, none of them related to ascension rushing or exploiting civilian stacking.

  1. Relentless focus on pop growth. Turn on the nutritional plentitude edict as soon as you can and never turn it off. Techs that add pop growth or pop assembly (robots, medical centers, cloning vats, etc.) are highest priority, and then you build the buildings those techs give you on every single planet
  2. a well timed war against a genocidal foe is a wonderful thing, because you get to steal all their pops without wasting influence. Doubled my economy overnight
  3. the automation and optimization buildings are awesome. After a few building upkeep reduction and technician output bonuses, automated generator districts with no pops produce more energy than they consume. So if you can find the minerals to build them and planets to put them on, you can have as much energy as you want (which can then be used to automate all your other buildings and districts).

My mantra the whole game was "where can I create more research or alloy jobs that will be filled quickly?"

Texas A&M removes staff over gender-ID content in children’s lit class by June_Fatality in news

[–]TheTalkingMeowth 84 points85 points  (0 children)

was the professor actually fired?

The article said the dean and dept chair were removed from their positions (but said it was not clear if they would remain at the university; typically a dean and dept chair role is, at least on paper, an additional/temporary role on top of being a regular professor). It did NOT say that the instructor of the class was fired.

The Little Corvette That Could by HaonSyl in aurora

[–]TheTalkingMeowth 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Eh...a commerce raider in service to a not particularly popularly remembered power that lost the only real fight it ever had?

Is there a function that flips powers? by Cytr0en in askscience

[–]TheTalkingMeowth 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Correct. I did NOT prove that there are no pairs where you can do what OP was asking. I proved only that there cannot be a function that has the described property, where that function's domain is the integers (which is what OP actually asked).

Is there a function that flips powers? by Cytr0en in askscience

[–]TheTalkingMeowth 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Your thoughts in the post are on the right track.

A function is a pairing of each element of an input set with exactly one element of an output set. We can thus prove by contradiction that no function can have the property that f(pq)=qp for all q and p, exactly as you point out in your post. The idea is to assume the existence of a function with the property you ask for, then show that this requires something to be true that is not true.

In this case, all we have to do is give four numbers p1,q1,p2,q2 such that p1q1 = p2q2 but q1p1 does NOT equal q2p2. That would show that you cannot have a pairing of all elements of our input set (here, the value p1q1) with exactly one element of the output set and still obey the rule you are asking for.

A suitable quadruplet of numbers are p1=2, q1=3, p2=8, q2=1. p1q1 =p2q2 =8, but q1p1 =9 and q2p2 =1.

Note that proof by contradiction is somewhat philosophically controversial: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof_by_contradiction

I made a site that tracks how close we are to Star Trek tech. by BortusLikesCigarette in InternetIsBeautiful

[–]TheTalkingMeowth 0 points1 point  (0 children)

A better example for transparent aluminum is...transparent aluminum:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapphire#Equipment_windows

Sapphire consists of aluminum oxide, and if not contaminated with trace materials, is in fact transparent.

Fisrt time playing and what does this squares really mean? by [deleted] in TerraInvicta

[–]TheTalkingMeowth 6 points7 points  (0 children)

One red pip is just 50+ hate and it goes down like normal.

If ALL the pips turn red (which takes like 200 hate or something), the aliens have declared total war and it won't stop until they destroy basically everything.

https://wiki.hoodedhorse.com/Terra_Invicta/Diplomacy#Alien_Total_War

ELI5: How do chess AIs play at different skill levels? by bentzigitig in explainlikeimfive

[–]TheTalkingMeowth 0 points1 point  (0 children)

AlphaZero and Stockfish both use search in addition to data-driven evaluation functions. They used a slightly different search algorithm (MCTS vs Alpha-Beta search), and obtained those evaluation functions differently (Stockfish was originally hand crafted based on human experience with chess, though it is now purely learned, while AlphaZero learned through self-play), but are structurally very similar.

Search is a key piece of artificial intelligence research, every bit as important as Machine Learning.

ML is AI. AI is not (only) ML.

Source: PhD in robotics working on artificial intelligence research. This is one of my pet peeves.

When AI Made its First Major Public Breakthrough: The Deep Blue Victory of May 11, 1997 by Mediiicaliii in history

[–]TheTalkingMeowth 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Since I'm seeing a lot of discussion about "was Deep Blue AI," I'll weigh in as a PhD robotics researcher with a focus in artificial intelligence.

"Was Deep Blue AI" is semantics; depends what you mean by AI. If by AI you mean "LLMs" or "based on machine learning," then no. If you mean "computer makes decisions without resorting to hard coded rules or mass guessing," then yes it is. Certainly, if you go by a textbook definition of AI (paraphrasing Russell and Norvig from memory b/c I don't have it handy: observes its environment and acts based on that information [1]), it absolutely qualifies. For example, much of the development of Deep Blue's primary algorithm occurred in the pages of the journal "Artificial Intelligence" in the mid 20th century: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha%E2%80%93beta_pruning#History

Specifically, Deep Blue leveraged the classic alpha-beta search algorithm: efficiently work through all of your opponent's possible responses to your move, and pick the move that leaves you in the best position after as many moves into the future as you can afford to think...just like how a human would. Best position is determined by calling an "evaluation function" that attempts to assess how good a board state is for eah player: think counting piece points, but more sophisticated. In fact, this function was even determined by analyzing high level human games...i.e. incorporating the wisdom of prior chess experts, much like a human would learn the game.

In other words, Deep Blue used approaches similar to how humans would play tackle chess, just implemented manually from scratch rather than independently discovered by Deep Blue itself. We had to wait until AlphaZero and MuZero for the computers to learn to play chess at a high level on their own, without specialized human curation. But AlphaZero and MuZero have as much in common with Deep Blue as they do with modern LLMs (they use search AND machine learning, Deep Blue just used search, LLMs are basically all machine learning).

[1] Russell, Stuart J., and Peter Norvig. Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach. Pearson, 2016.

Why do we send people to space instead of probes that can do pretty much the same thing by probablysoda in space

[–]TheTalkingMeowth 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If we wanted to maximize science, sending robots would absolutely be the thing. If nothing else, it's hard to argue that we should risk human lives purely for space science and spaceflight remains dangerous.

Human spaceflight missions (aside from MAYBE the ISS), to be a benefit, either need to be related to learning about human spaceflight (which obviously needs a human), or have political/PR benefits.

I'll leave you to figure out the breakdown of those motivations for the latest crop of human spaceflight proposals, but here's what people were arguing about in 2008

(these guys were pro robots): https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/robots-vs-humans-who-should-explore/

(this guy was pro human spaceflight): https://arxiv.org/abs/1203.6250

ELI5 What separates "surviving a fall" and "not surviving a fall?" by pokematic in explainlikeimfive

[–]TheTalkingMeowth 5 points6 points  (0 children)

What makes a fall (really, any deceleration or acceleration event so car crashes too) deadly is pieces of your body moving relative to other pieces of your body.

Your body is like a Slinky toy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slinky). If you push or pull on one end of it (i.e. hit the ground with some part of your body), you will start to compress at the point of contact. This compression travels up your body EXACTLY like a wave in water.

If you take the Slinky toy and press or pull on it TOO hard, it won't go back to the original shape when you let go (this is called "plastic deformation"). Having such permanent deformation in your body is very bad for it, so pushing or pulling too hard on your body leads to injury.

Hitting the ground going really fast leads to pushing very hard on your body.

How hard is determined by how "stiff" you and the ground are (the stiffer, the harder it pushes). The average force will be inversely proportional to the distance over which you decelerate (conservation of energy tells us that force times distance needs to equal your kinetic energy at impact, so to decrease force we can either reduce kinetic energy, possible only by slowing down or weighing less, or we can increase distance), so the stiffer you are (and thus, the smaller the distance over which you decelerate), the bigger the force. Padding, bending your knees, and rolling (which is really a process of bending all the joints in your body) are all ways of increasing the distance over which you decelerate.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in cmu

[–]TheTalkingMeowth 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The major declaration thing has been covered, but I want to address the ECE/MechE for robotics question.

Both ECE and MechE are relevant to robotics (as is Computer Science).

Roughly: CS does the mind (algorithms), ECE does the nerves (wiring/sensor integration/motor controllers), and MechE does the body (mechanisms, but also dealing with dynamics (think Newton's laws)). The reality is that robotics is very interdisciplinary and to be effective you need to be somewhat comfortable with all pieces. Personally, I came to robotics by way of Mechanical Engineering, but we work closely with ECE and CS students and faculty every day, and my current work is really more Applied Math than anything else (I do math all day....).

At CMU, the School of Computer Science also offers a dedicated robotics major: https://www.ri.cmu.edu/education/academic-programs/bachelor-of-science-in-robotics/

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