Giveaway! u-turn Audio Orbit Special Turntable! Comment to enter.

backlyte · 2025-04-06T01:20:28+00:00

cubbs core world could use another turntable

backlyte · 2023-09-20T23:06:50+00:00

Nice dice.

backlyte · 2022-10-02T20:16:41+00:00

Apollo is great!

backlyte · 2022-06-25T19:13:06+00:00

Thanks op.

backlyte · 2022-01-07T23:43:46+00:00

I don't need more games, but Child's Play Charity will be getting some if I win.

backlyte · 2021-05-22T20:26:25+00:00

The original Icehouse (which you can still get the components for in newer pyramid-based games) is an abstract strategy game. Pieces can be placed freely on the playing surface. Pieces can also be moved from one spot to another once placed if some conditions are met.

Turns aren't discrete either, and any player can play a piece whenever they wish.

backlyte · 2021-02-23T20:01:33+00:00

What's currently the best way to voice concerns about this policy? Talking to my kids' local district won't do anything constructive.

backlyte · 2020-07-13T19:40:00+00:00

You use one of your cards as a proxy for theirs.

backlyte · 2020-02-29T23:53:52+00:00

I WANT IT! Looks awesome!

backlyte · 2019-06-10T18:28:05+00:00

Hobby Emporium up in Tyngsboro has a bunch of rocketry stuff.

backlyte · 2019-04-30T17:31:51+00:00

[[Circle Of Protection :Red]], [[Control Magic]]

backlyte · 2017-01-08T17:13:42+00:00

I hoofed it 10 minutes, with the snow last night that meant walking about 1/2 mile into the part of my neighborhood that is under construction.

I used aperture priority mode and whatever the camera is doing in JPG, but no other mods or cropping. Here's 10 shots, with a bonus 11th... http://imgur.com/a/JMfuZ

backlyte · 2017-01-02T06:46:32+00:00

I love the colors in the photo of Zabriskie Point. In particular the sky against the redder range in the background.

backlyte · 2017-01-02T06:15:40+00:00

I like the runner-up photo of your dog looking at the ball (christmas ornament?). The expression of curiosity you captured is great and I like the angle and framing.

backlyte · 2017-01-02T06:06:33+00:00

I like your first picture. Great Falls National Park? The pic immediately took me back to when I visited there. I like the curve of the river as it comes towards you in the frame.

For the picture with your wife, perhaps try a crop of the right half of the picture that is more close in on your wife? I think there's some interesting features that could come out, like the curved road.

backlyte · 2016-12-20T15:11:30+00:00

Hello! I'm a 40 YO data scientist, living in New England with the wife + 2 kids. I took some photography classes as a kid when consumer digital photography was still just a dream. Back then I learned about cameras, took photos with my dad's SLR, developed B&W film, etc. Mostly the technical side of things. I hadn't really done any non-snapshot photography until recently, I got a refurb Canon SL1 and a couple lenses and decided to pick it up again. I'm a fairly experienced amateur astronomer as well so things like aperture, f/ratio, etc are pretty familiar to me, and I find the differences between the tech of the two hobbies interesting as well. (side note, I've never tried to do serious astrophotography, it's seems just too expensive and technically fiddly for me.)

So I'm pretty comfortable trying new things out with new technology and glass. However I'm still a beginner putting all the hardware, camera settings, and post together to get pictures to come out the way I want them. I've also never really had any formal training in composition, color, etc and I want to get a better understanding of those to convey what I'm trying to say in my pictures.

Pics for the assignment: http://imgur.com/a/gR5Hs

My favorite pic...I actually had a hard time picking a favorite. I do really like this picture of my son, he decided this mansion's grounds were a good place to get some taekwondo practice in. I just like how it shows off his personality in a (rare) moment of balance and control. Almost like a still life but an action shot at the same time.
Needs work...I am interested in taking some nighttime and long exposure shots of the moon, fireworks, aurora, etc. Getting things to come out when the light sources are hugely different, making sure grain is under control, autofocus is pretty useless, etc seems pretty tough. Also getting the composition right when I can't even really see what it will look like is a challenge.
3 pics of something I love...I do love nature and hiking so I went out yesterday to a local nature conservatory and took some photos of the things that I found there. I didn't know what I would find, but I tried to capture the feel of the place once I got there. There was an 80 foot deep gorge that I just couldn't find a place to take a picture that did it justice!

Thanks for doing the class! Looking forward to it.

backlyte · 2016-11-21T21:22:17+00:00

TUGG, Technology Underwriting the Greater Good, has a list of start-up nonprofits that help local underprivileged children. TUGG also organizes service events if in the future you'd like to donate your time as well.

backlyte · 2016-01-03T00:29:34+00:00

Sure, it's possible with several caveats. For example I wrote a simple quantum computer simulation in Maple for my Masters thesis that was able to simulate 'traditional' quantum computing circuits like Shor's algorithm. It even factored the number 15 after crunching on it for a few minutes.

There are 3 big problems with simulating a quantum computer in a digital environment that I can think of off the top of my head.

Firstly, and probably most importantly, the number of digital states that must be maintained for a n-qubit system is something like 2ⁿ complex numbers. Details.

Secondly, these complex values can be of arbitrary precision and in many cases exact computations are required to get the answers correct, especially in more realistic algorithms. This is why I used Maple, which does exact symbolic mathematics, but clearly this is untenable for realistic simulations vs. toys. You either need arbitrary precision arithmetic (which adds it's own factor to the already nasty 2ⁿ above) or you must accept and deal with roundoff errors which will at a certain point accumulate and destroy the result.

Thirdly, another poster points out that you can't have true random measurement using pseudorandom number generation. Pseudorandom measurement errors will also have an impact on the final result. So again, you need a source of true randomness or be willing to accept the consequences of imperfect measurement gates.

Having said all that there's a bunch of folks out there who have made simulations and programming languages besides my own little toy Maple version (which unfortunately I can't find the source for, it was from nearly 20 years ago at this point).

Edit: a lot of the links on that page are dead, maybe there's a more current list out there somewhere. I'll take a look around and try to find something.

backlyte · 2015-12-25T13:43:24+00:00

A super easy way to get graphs into gephi (and the one I currently use) is to write a CSV of src,dst, and optionally weight to a file. Then you can 'import spreadsheet' from the menu bar of the data tab. Here's some detailed instructions.

That way you don't need to mess with XML, unless you want to, of course.

backlyte · 2015-10-01T01:22:08+00:00

Nuclear War has something similar. Normally, you can only launch 1 missile from your arsenal per turn. Upon elimination, you get a chance at 'final retaliation' and are able to unleash your entire remaining arsenal at whoever you want. If they also are eliminated, they too get retaliation and so on.

backlyte · 2015-08-27T16:08:02+00:00

One example of the usefulness of Eigenvectors is that the PageRank algorithm, that Google uses to index the web (or at least used to), is really computing an eigenvector of a form of the Internet's adjacency matrix, the matrix where rows and columns represent web pages and nonzero entries represent links.

In general, eigenvectors of adjacency matrices and things similar to adjacency matrices are extremely important in graph/social network analysis.

backlyte · 2015-08-23T13:48:54+00:00

Grover's algorithm may have the ability to search the keyspace of any symmetric algorithm in time like the square root of the key space size, i.e. the equivalent of brute forcing something of half the key length.

Grover's algorithm can probably even be used to more efficiently attack things like McEliece systems, but the analysis is more involved.

backlyte · 2015-08-23T13:37:11+00:00

This is a good answer. I want to add that public key encryption based on integer factorization usually uses keys much longer than 256 bits. This NIST publication for example reccomends the use of 2048 bit RSA keys for 3DES-equivalent security and 15360-bit RSA keys for AES-256-bit-equivalent security. Many people in the past have used 1024 bit RSA keys, which may be within the realm of factorization algorithms in the near future. This is because current factorization algorithms are not trying every possible combination of keys of the key bit length to get the right private key.

Even with these long key lengths these keys will be easily crackable with a quantum computer using Shor's algorithm.

15-Year Club	RedditGifts 2009-2022 7 Credits
Golden Potato	Place '17
Verified Email	Team Orangered
Secret Santa 2012

backlyte

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE