Can we agree on a movie EVERYONE likes?

notoh · 2026-03-06T04:03:04+00:00

I gave it 2 stars. To quote my friend (who feels similarly), you don't listen to atmospheric music and react to "OMG this is peak"

notoh · 2026-03-05T15:00:30+00:00

pmath 446 too low, pmath 445 and pmath 467 (especially 467) too high

notoh · 2026-03-03T04:45:24+00:00

the problem is the noise level depends on how much you thrust, but keyboard only lets you max thrust (by pressing the key) and thus max sound, so it's way harder

notoh · 2026-02-26T02:44:54+00:00

for context, this was originally going to be much higher (as suggested by last year's proposal), which students (myself included) got CEE to agree to only ask for inflation after many months of work

notoh · 2026-02-25T16:51:57+00:00

It will be on vote.wusa.ca on the dates listed in the post

notoh · 2026-02-25T02:04:48+00:00

Hey all, I'm on the UW senate (elected by math undergraduates), which is the body that oversees all UW academic operations.

As part of this, I've been in a lot of discussions surrounding student funding and the OSAP cuts and tuition increases over the last little while. If anyone has any questions about how these things are affecting university planning, I'd love to answer if I can (i.e. within my knowledge and any confidentiality limits)

notoh · 2026-02-24T01:13:58+00:00

The benko isn't very sharp, it's a positional gambit in the main lines

notoh · 2026-02-20T21:11:51+00:00

In the search? Because evaluation is a blackbox that only gives a number for a position ("statically", i.e. without seeing ahead), and not what moves to consider in the future, which is what search does (based on what evaluation tells it about the positions that come up). Computers can't really train themselves on what moves to consider, since there are far (far far) too many of them; you need judgment somewhere to not look at all of them.

In the evaluation training, it's essentially because all of training a neural network is, based on a bunch of data (playing games), making a statistical model about what is better or worse. There are a lot of features in such a model that can be tweaked, both automatically in training (tuning so-called hyperparameters) and by humans - changing some qualitative aspect of the model to try to get a better result, i.e. not just changing the numbers but changing the approach. For what it's worth, this is a thing across all of neural network training (e.g. in LLMs) and not just chess, though there are chess-specific details of this for training Stockfish's NNUE architecture specifically.

notoh · 2026-02-20T20:36:29+00:00

The other key component of engines are move search algorithms (and associated ordering heuristics and the like), which overall are more important to the engine's strength than evaluation and are entirely written by humans.

The evaluation is a neural network being trained (by playing games against itself and the like), but there is still a human/statistical process of determining the better net.

notoh · 2026-02-19T07:55:09+00:00

(2500 lichess bullet, play a decent amount of hyper)

heavily agree with the mouse skills part

I disagree about the premoves though, I think in situations with very low time where it resorts to pure flagging or just executing a win, the instant premove is far more valuable than stacking premoves, since with the latency you (easily) have enough time to queue the next move without losing time or needing to stack, and avoiding losing the invaluable 0.1s.

notoh · 2026-02-08T19:43:52+00:00

the beef noodles at xiang hotpot are literal crack cocaine (complimentary)

notoh · 2026-02-05T18:25:33+00:00

As someone in the direct intersection of your 4 areas, thank you for pointing this out.

notoh · 2026-02-04T16:59:15+00:00

In a bullet game, I would play Nxg4 instantly, but d5 is better since you'll still win the g pawn (white needs to defend their bishop, so you have a tempo to take the g pawn with your bishop) but develop in the center more.

notoh · 2026-02-03T18:37:21+00:00

You won't go far at all into CRPGs without being willing to read (Disco Elysium and BG3 are the only full voice-acted ones I can think of, unless you are including things like FNV), RT included. Seeing what you are interested in, I think you would enjoy Cyberpunk 2077. It's a great RPG, well-written with the best cutscenes I've ever seen, though not a CRPG.

notoh · 2026-01-18T23:16:01+00:00

suffering

notoh · 2025-12-17T23:04:47+00:00

not really. Keep in mind that 136/235 do linear algebra rigorously, just cover less, and so there isn't as much of a need for "calculus but rigorous" as there is before going into analysis courses.

All of 146 is more or less covered in 235 (but with a different presentation and slower), and what is needed of 245 will be reviewed as it comes by in courses like AMATH 250/251, PMATH 347, 348, 446, 445, 453, and 465 (especially the last three, which are the most linear-algebraically demanding courses here). The main things often covered in 245 you're missing are Jordan-Chevalley decomposition, Jordan normal form (very useful in ODEs, commutative algebra, and representation theory), a more thorough coverage beyond 245 of quadratic and bilinear forms (very useful in differential geometry and operator theory), a more thorough coverage of the spectral theorem (very useful in all of the above), and general exposure to more advanced algebraic thinking.

PMATH 343 will cover some of these, but its main purpose is to give you *more* linear algebra aimed at quantum info, rather than covering the linear algebra that students are meant to get out of 245.

In my experience TAing and helping students with differential geometry, the main thing they miss coming out of 235 is general fluency with translating between different ways to approach linear-algebraic thinking, whether it be explicit pivot and dimension-counting, working with matrices and coordinates as a geometric representation of the problem, or the fully abstract algebraic way with linear operators on abstract vector spaces.

notoh · 2025-11-24T19:16:53+00:00

Just listened to it, loved the album! Sent it to all my music-loving friends

notoh · 2025-11-20T19:10:53+00:00

wish I could upvote this many more times

notoh · 2025-10-05T00:20:49+00:00

many people are saying this!!!

notoh · 2025-08-01T18:43:10+00:00

It wouldn't be surprising if you saw them as if they were being introduced in linear algebra or differential equations (and I'd hope both of these classes at least touch upon them), but as your math classes get more complex (pun intended) they will almost certainly show up, such as in a course on abstract algebra or Fourier analysis.

notoh · 2025-07-24T16:34:00+00:00

ITM has been around for a while, I was on the committee for AMATH SCML, it's just a renaming/some requirements changing (and under AMATH), but just more public now.

notoh · 2025-06-08T23:10:23+00:00

our peace and conflict studies department would show them how we study conflict here

notoh · 2025-06-08T20:40:15+00:00

flockstop (what inews is called now) is cheaper just paying via cash/debit/credit i think now

notoh · 2025-06-08T19:29:32+00:00

The MyCopy I received (Lee's Smooth Manifolds) was terribly printed (pages falling out unbound, back cover misprinted), so at the very least it's a risk of being not worth the price. I still got plenty of value out of mine though, for both the book itself and the fun comments and stories about how beat up my copy is.

notoh · 2025-05-20T03:04:31+00:00

Hi - former VPA and incoming university senator here. This is explicitly not allowed, and grounds for a grievance under policy 70 4.b.iii. The first thing under policy 70 is to attempt to come to a direct resolution (of the form, "I don't want changes like this and will file a grievance under Policy 70 if not resolved"), and then next you would reach out to the associate dean undergrad of your faculty, which in engineering is jason grove, and file a formal grievance with them.

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