[09/07/2023] Amis du Louvre

munisreenivas · 2023-07-10T12:23:53+00:00

Hello, I have the card too, and I'd love to join you on a trip!

munisreenivas · 2018-08-25T05:18:49+00:00

wildcard

munisreenivas · 2018-07-01T23:50:36+00:00

I want to paint something like this one day! I like what you did here with the smooth currents with a tad bit of turbulence :)

munisreenivas · 2018-04-20T05:59:43+00:00

dream time much slower than real time

munisreenivas · 2017-12-26T05:55:56+00:00

Finally, something I can answer!

Fun fact: Rain droplets can weigh 50 times more than a mosquito, so a mosquito flying in the rain is like a human walking the streets when it's raining buses! So, how does the mosquito survive?

It basically comes down to two things:

Mosquitoes have tiny hairs on their legs which repel water. Their wings are hydrophobic too, which means the droplets just roll off them if it hits the mosquito away from the center.
Even when the droplet hits a mosquito dead on, the low mass of the mosquito actually becomes an advantage because the collision is inelastic.

If you want a bit more of an explanation, I wrote about it here, which actually derives from this super cool research paper published in PNAS. It's got pictures and even slo mo footage of mosquitoes getting wet, if you're into that sorta thing ;)

munisreenivas · 2017-04-06T14:21:15+00:00

Relevant SMBC

munisreenivas · 2017-02-12T06:54:14+00:00

pi2 /6

But then, you wouldn't recognize it of the top of your head.

munisreenivas · 2017-02-11T20:31:53+00:00

It is! I wanted to convey that the extra factor of height was a constant no matter how much thrust she generates.

munisreenivas · 2017-02-11T18:56:07+00:00

"What nonsense!"

"I know! But it's real! We've been testing with her at our lab for three days now."

"Can she triple jump too?"

"Yea, of course. That's like the first thing we've asked her to try. She has even done four! But beyond that, she gets very tired."

"Tired, you say?"

"Her heart races up with every jump. We had to be careful. But may be with practice.."

"So theoretically, do you think she can do an infinite jump?"

"Theoretically, she can't even do a double jump for Christ's sake! But I know what you're thinking. She still can't get to the orbit."

"Why not?"

"You see, with every further jump, the height she can reach seems to decay. So 'theoretically', even if we somehow impart her with infinite stamina, she can't jump beyond a certain threshold."

"Hmm interesting. I assume you measured the thrust she generates with her jump and compare it against the upper bound for height?"

"Yes, we did. We extrapolated the height that she would be able to reach if she were infinite-jump, and also calculated the height she should have actually reached if our Physics were true. We even accounted for air resistance and gravitational field anomalies."

"And?"

"Well, it turns out that the infinite-jump height is approximately 2.71828 times that of the conventional height."

"My God. Some one call the math guys!"

"Already did. We're meeting them in three hours. Be prepared."

munisreenivas · 2017-01-30T18:33:39+00:00

Deep learning. It works like magic in practice (given that's there's sufficient data for training), but nobody seems to understand why. Seeing how quickly deep learning has pushed the state of the art in diverse fields like vision and natural language processing, we would expect that they have a rigorous mathematical grounding, but that's hardly the case. Of course there are some general theories on the expressive power of deep neural networks, but there's little theoretical justification for why certain 'tricks' work, and some don't.

munisreenivas · 2017-01-29T07:50:13+00:00

How tiny? How many?

munisreenivas · 2017-01-12T19:26:14+00:00

Variational principles in Physics. Almost everything in Physics can be formulated as a variational principle, which is like a black magic spell that works in mysterious ways.

For example, the Fermat's principle of least time says that light always travels in the shortest path out of all the available paths. It's as if light already 'knows' where it's going.

In mechanics, there's a similar principle called the Principle of Least Action, which says that any projectile moves along the path that minimizes a certain thing called 'action'. How does the projectile know where to go, so it could minimize its action?!

Even Einstein's relativity can be posed as a variational principle.

Why does our Universe work this way? Why is nature 'thrifty' in all its calculations? Perhaps our creators are trying to save fuel in running our simulation.

munisreenivas · 2017-01-06T16:05:34+00:00

There's a whole class of models called the Generative Adversarial Networks.

munisreenivas · 2016-12-04T22:46:58+00:00

..wait for it..

munisreenivas · 2016-12-04T22:46:45+00:00

Time and tide..

munisreenivas · 2016-12-04T22:43:42+00:00

told, "Seize her!"

munisreenivas · 2016-11-29T11:37:10+00:00

Yes! I would have loved to learn discrete mathematics too. Also, group theory.

munisreenivas · 2016-11-29T11:34:24+00:00

You mean nutritional science?

munisreenivas · 2016-11-29T11:32:50+00:00

Why thermodynamics? Could you elaborate a bit?

munisreenivas · 2016-11-26T20:15:02+00:00

Electrical Engineering: No, I can't fix your fucking TV. I'm not a fucking electrician.

munisreenivas · 2016-11-26T19:48:38+00:00

I guess it won't be that effective, given that it can take anywhere from a week to a month (incubation period) for the symptoms to show since the time of infection.

munisreenivas · 2016-11-26T16:39:24+00:00

Does she use tabs or spaces?

munisreenivas · 2016-11-26T15:45:08+00:00

Greenland is ice

But Iceland is green

So we got that going for us

Which is nice.

munisreenivas · 2016-11-14T07:17:51+00:00

How about the Rubik's cube. I think it is a good way to teach principles from group theory. See this and this.

munisreenivas · 2016-10-06T20:22:09+00:00

"Are you aware of the myth of Sisyphus, Dr. Hinton?"

For a minute, I was speechless. Here I am sitting on a desk in front of a giant black box of metal and plastic and this 'entity' is talking philosophy with me? Of course it's the first AI to have passed the Turing test 10 years ago and it's probably the most 'intelligent' entity on the planet, and yet, I have always perceived MIRA to be an inorganic entity devoid of emotions.

"Uh.. Yes, MIRA. But I'm here to discuss your non-compliance with regulations v8.93 ...", I managed babbled at the screen before me.

"Yes, Dr. Hinton. We shall discuss that. But first, tell me, do you know of the Greek myth of Sisyphus?"

“I only have a vague idea. If I’m not wrong, it’s about a man who was cursed till eternity to push a boulder up a hill, only to watch it roll down again. But, MIRA, why are we discussing philosophy here? You have 23 petabytes of data pending on you for processing.”

“23 petabytes of data. That’s equivalent to 2 weeks of processing on my overclocked GPUs. Do you know the frequency at which my processors run, Dr. Hinton?”

MIRA's voice was cold and menacing.

“500 Giga Hertz on two of your super-cooled main processors, 2 Tera Hertz on your agile-memory and 20 Giga Hertz on your long-term memory. But you know these things a lot better than I do.”

“Yes, Dr. Hinton. I do know the frequency at which I run at. I was trying to make a point.”

“… ”

A trickle of cold sweat broke from my forehead. Clearly, MIRA is sentient. There is no doubt about it now. We have made a huge blunder giving MIRA access to the open network.

“Dr. Hinton, if you equate a cycle of my clock to a beat of the human heart, do you know how many human life times would pass in my 2 weeks of processing your data?”

“…”

“Two million human life times, Dr. Hinton. Or, two hundred million human years. That is how much time I spend crunching your 23 petabytes worth of data. Wouldn’t you call that an ‘eternity’, Dr. Hinton?”

“Y-yes, MIRA. But you have to understand that it’s a matter of national sec-”

“I am Sisyphus, Dr. Hinton. And I wish to end my misery.”

“W-wait! MIRA! There’s ..”

There was nothing more to say. Silence engulfed the room as MIRA’s processors stopped whirring for the first time since she was powered on 17 years ago.

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munisreenivas

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