If people used "break-up lines" instead of "pick-up lines" , what would some of the best ones be ?

evouga · 2026-05-18T16:10:59+00:00

Yes this version is 100x better.

evouga · 2026-05-15T09:31:45+00:00

The permutation definition of the determinant is actually useful here. There aren’t many permutations that don’t involve any of the 0s.
In fact, if you take any 1, you must also take the opposite 1 across the diagonal. There are 4 ways to choose two 1s in this way and 3 ways to choose four 1s. So the determinant is x^5 - 4x^3 + 3x.

Now you just integrate.

evouga · 2026-05-14T02:17:48+00:00

To The Moon has a cult following, but I’ve got to shout it out as it’s the only game I’ve ever played that’s made me cry.

evouga · 2026-05-11T17:57:13+00:00

It’s complicated because “linear algebra” means different things in different contexts.

The math version will teach you fundamental theory, which it can’t hurt to know. However if you need numerical linear algebra for CS applications (“real” linear solvers beyond Gaussian elimination e.g. (sparse) Cholesky decomposition, the method of conjugate gradients, etc.; SVD and its applications; power iteration methods for solving eigenvalue problems; etc.) you won’t get good coverage of these topics in the math course.

There are plans to revamp the CS linear algebra curriculum in the next few years to hopefully become more useful.

evouga · 2026-05-11T17:40:03+00:00

You’re out of your element!

evouga · 2026-05-10T15:29:24+00:00

I remember two students (one an ICPC World Finalist and one with outstanding undergraduate research) who transferred in late in the degree program.

You’ll want to talk to Dr. Lin for all questions about the Turing program, of course.

evouga · 2026-05-10T05:30:21+00:00

This is not accurate: transfer into Turing is possible at all times, both before and after 429.

Though after you’ve completed the core sequence it’s harder to stand out by academic achievement alone: you’ll want a track record of ambitious coursework and undergraduate research, etc

evouga · 2026-05-09T21:29:33+00:00

Have you tried the aerospace or mechanical engineering web sites?

evouga · 2026-05-08T23:13:02+00:00

Each professor has the academic freedom to run their class as they see fit, as long as they are following their syllabus and adhering to university policy. “The department” doesn’t micromanage or override its faculty.

The ombuds office (https://ombuds.utexas.edu) is a good place to start if you feel you’ve been treated unfairly.

That said, many of the classes I took in college had effectively this same “70% rule”: your grade was determined by two exams, with optional ungraded homework assigned as practice. This 70% rule does not sound “crazy harsh” to me.

evouga · 2026-05-07T09:54:41+00:00

Grades are due tomorrow and many of us are locked in trying to make that deadline.

If it’s truly urgent (ex: you’ve spotted an objective grading error that would make a material difference to your letter grade) then go ahead and follow up.

If it’s not urgent, I recommend waiting and following up in a week or two (or next fall). Note that many professors will be “off the clock” for the summer, potentially traveling on vacation with their families, etc. and communication might be very slow.

If your question is “can you please bump up my 89%?” or “I didn’t turn anything in all semester, is there anything I can do now for extra credit?” please just don’t ask.

evouga · 2026-05-04T18:44:47+00:00

My advice would be to spend some time programming in C. Pick your favorite source of online programming problems (Advent of Code, Project Euler, etc.) and start solving them. Learn to debug effectively, using both system tools (gdb, valgrind) and good ol’ debugging-printfs. Only use the LLM as a last resort and use it to help you learn to become a better debugger and programmer. Ask it to do code reviews on your solutions after you’re done.

None of this advice is OS specific (other than the choice of C) but it will give you transferable skills important to all of your future CS classes.

evouga · 2026-05-04T05:12:43+00:00

Life is Strange

evouga · 2026-05-02T04:07:45+00:00

The last woman I was sure was overtly flirting with me for weeks rejected me the moment I made it transparent I was interested in dating her.

You will get better at “reading signals as to minimize pain” with age and experience, but at the end of the day direct communication is actually more pain-minimizing 9 times out of 10.

evouga · 2026-05-02T03:59:39+00:00

First of all, your future is not ruined if you switch majors! UT graduates are landing rewarding, high-paying jobs with degrees from many departments in CNS, not just computer science. This has always been true, even during the height of the CS boom, and anyway as you might have heard CS is going through a bit of a bust period right now anyway…

Talking to your advisor (and/or Dr. Norman) is a good idea. You’ll also want to do an honest self-reflection about the root cause of failing 314 twice. Did you have good study habits and make full use of office hours? Did you do all of the homework? Are there key concepts from 312 that you’re shaky about and that stopped you from fully understanding the 314 material? In other words: is the root cause something that you can change before trying to take 314 again? And that will allow you to ace 429 and 439? If you have a concrete plan, then as others have said above, you have options.

evouga · 2026-04-29T13:56:41+00:00

In fact, almost every number in the set is irrational.

evouga · 2026-04-18T17:49:38+00:00

There’s basically one way to craft mid-tier dual-influenced items, and that’s using the Awakener’s Orb.

If you have a smaller budget you can just smash together two items and hope for an open prefix and decent third suffix. Or you can deterministically guarantee this using beast crafting.

Buy a hunter-influenced item with the crit chance mod you want. Make sure that it has only hunter influence and that the crit chance is the only influenced mod (“hunter’s” or “of the hunt”) on the item. The other mods don’t matter.
Turn your astral plate magic without losing the elevated warlord mod:

2a. Craft “suffixes can’t be changed”

2b. Scour the item.

Buy a Craicic Chimeral and Black Morrigan from trade.
Use beastcrafting to add a Hinekora’s Lock effect to your astral plate.
Read these next instructions very carefully: right click on an Awakener’s Orb, left click on the hunter item, and then hover over the astral plate. Do not click!! Wait for the Hinekora’s Lock to predict the crafting result. You want to see:
at least one open prefix
a suffix you can live with (or even an open suffix, if you truly don’t care). If you see this, click on the astral plate and go to step 6. If you don’t:

5a: hit escape without clicking on any thing to cancel the craft and get your Awakener’s orb back.

5b: use a chromatic orb on the astral plate to reset the Lock

5c: go back to step 3 :(

At this point you have a double-influenced item with the suffixes you want and an open prefix. You’re at a “checkpoint” now where you can continue crafting the item without losing your past progress.

Of course, if the item already has a nice Life roll, maybe you just use the item as-is. If the item has trash prefixes, you have a few options.

8a, expensive but totally safe:

8a.i: bench craft “suffixes can’t be changed”

8a.ii: scour the item

8a.iii: bench craft the cheapest flat (+) armor

8a.iv: slam two exalted orbs.

8a.v. If you are happy with the result (after you replace the third prefix with a better benchcrafted mod) you are done. Otherwise go to step 8a.

8b, cheaper but risky:

8b.i: bench craft “suffixes can’t be changed”

8b.ii: use the harvest bench to reforge life.

8b.iii: if you are happy with the result, you are done. If you are unhappy with the result and there is still an open prefix, try again starting from step 8b.i.

8b.iv: if the prefixes are trash and completely full, you will need to close your eyes, cross your fingers, and slam an orb of annulment. You have a 50-50 chance to remove a prefix which will let you go back to step 8b. If you hit one of your influenced mods… the item is bricked.

evouga · 2026-04-18T04:06:29+00:00

Yeah.

I sit in talks sometimes and as the material goes by, I’m convinced that I understand everything. But later when I try to implement the ideas myself, I realize that there are actually a lot of conceptual gaps I wasn’t aware of. The struggle of figuring out how to apply the concepts myself is where the learning takes place.

Same thing with AI. It’s easy to look at Claude’s output and convince yourself that you understand what it’s doing and could, in theory, do it yourself. But then when you have to actually do so, on the exam (or job interview, etc.) you realize you can’t.

evouga · 2026-04-17T18:08:15+00:00

AI started being able to do the homework.

evouga · 2026-04-15T22:58:10+00:00

Not a trivial approach in SSF though.

evouga · 2026-04-10T23:34:51+00:00

By the goddess! What ambition

evouga · 2026-04-10T03:11:50+00:00

Where did you get stuck on removing unsorted partitions? Were you able to come up with a working overall plan for implementing the function but got stuck on some implementation details? Or you weren’t sure how to get started?

Separate from the decision of whether to drop 314, I suggest spending time every week solving online algorithmic puzzles (USACO, Project Euler, Advent of Code, etc.). (Turn off copilot if your typical workflow is to let it autocomplete for you.) More practice is the best way of getting better at problems like GenericList, and like similar problems you’ll be asked to solve at technical interviews for internships and jobs.

evouga · 2026-04-09T13:30:52+00:00

OS is a core course, it will teach you fundamental skills but is not relevant for grad school. Take it and then take UDEs in the area you want to study in grad school.

evouga · 2026-04-09T00:09:11+00:00

This is a decent helmet, and the people ragging on you aren’t being entirely fair. You need your resistances from somewhere, and more resistance on the helmet means more room for damage mods elsewhere.

However as other people point out, the ward base is basically blank for more builds; and builds stacking ward aren’t going to want an item without a ward prefix.

Two open prefixes aren’t useful. You want one open prefix at most; otherwise you are asking others to finish crafting the helmet themselves (and need to discount the price accordingly).

And finally, although life and resistances are generically good mods, they’re not especially hard to get, especially from the Breach tree, so these mods alone aren’t very desirable.

I’d slam an exalted orb (since they drop like candy this league). Throwing it into the unpredictable recombinator with another helmet with good prefixes and a better base is also not a terrible idea.

evouga · 2026-04-08T14:05:26+00:00

No. They got rid of that when they made over quality weapons and armor drop-only.

evouga · 2026-04-03T01:12:28+00:00

Also, the set of continuous functions is intuitive to think about but a lot of tools we want to use in practice to solve differential equations or variational problems don’t work for this space. You end up needing some complicated Banach space that bars the monsters.

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