kkylin

6 ms·

1.
by kkylin 12d ago
There's understandably been a focus on speed, but what I really like about Julia is being able to write clear code: it has a lot of the flexibility and expressiveness that I like in Lisps, but with better numerical libraries than most
2.
by kkylin 17d ago
I just came back to CA from the UK, and the two places looked surprisingly alike: yellow fields everywhere
3.
by kkylin 22d ago
Unfortunately the NS/macOS version still needs work as far as I can tell. Even not fully featured it's still useful: I prefer reading PDF in xwidget-webkit than pdf-tools, and it's great to have Jupyter notebooks running ins
4.
by kkylin 2mo ago
Where I live we still have a locally owned video rental store, though several years ago they put in a bar and now it's more a bar with a video section than a video store where you can get beer and watch movies. We do still rent when t
5.
by kkylin 2mo ago
Related & of interest: https://xenaproject.wordpress.com/2026/07/20/human-mathemati...
6.
by kkylin 3mo ago
Actually we weren't (& aren't) able to afford this kind of thing. Dad worked for the airline & somehow got this perk, just once.
7.
by kkylin 3mo ago
We got front lower deck seats once when I was a kid. My sister and I had extra open floor space for playing. It was great.
8.
by kkylin 3mo ago
Bott is often quoted as saying "Evrey mathematician has a secret weapon. Mine is Morse theory." Every time I see his name I've tried to look up a source. Finally found one: https://mathoverflow.net/question
9.
by kkylin 4mo ago
Slightly off topic (since there's already been so many better answers than I can write), but our knowledge of the dino-slaying asteroid came much later: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alvarez_hypothesis
10.
by kkylin 4mo ago
I really do think the incompleteness theorems deserve the attention they get, not just because of what they say about efforts to formalize mathematics and because of the historical context -- remember Gödel numbers came (just) before Turing
11.
by kkylin 4mo ago
In addition to the above links on quasicrystals etc, it may help to have a bit of context on periodic tilings, which have very precise mathematical properties: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lattice_(group) . The structu
12.
by kkylin 6mo ago
Of course one reads a (nice) post like this and must add one's favorite not on the list. Here's mine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fouquieria_columnaris
13.
by kkylin 7mo ago
I had an even older iPad I was happily using for similar use cases. Until one day a family member bricked it and I needed to factory reset. No big deal, I thought -- nothing important on it. Turns out it needed to phone home to do the fa
14.
by kkylin 7mo ago
In my couple decades as an academic mathematician I've only ever met one. He was a strong advocate, and got me to install & try it, but I could never convert to using it fulltime.
15.
by kkylin 8mo ago
I've had the same dream! thanks for the pointer.
16.
by kkylin 9mo ago
Yes, 1.00 was popular with Course 6ers who wanted easy units.
17.
by kkylin 9mo ago
Not just bears it seems: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/raccoons-are-show...
18.
by kkylin 9mo ago
Came here to say this -- looks like the data assimilation is still done the "old fashioned" way. I wonder how long that will last?
19.
by kkylin 9mo ago
Yup. Back in my day there was 1.00, a Civil Engineering course, a pretty standard intro to programming in plain old C. I don't know if it still exists. There was nothing of that sort in EECS, though there are lots of IAP courses (wh
20.
by kkylin 9mo ago
We've still got this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eunice_aphroditois Thankfully they don't live on land.
21.
by kkylin 9mo ago
I have been using mu4e for years, and am generally happy with it, and yet... I've never recommended it to anyone else. Unlike, say, org-mode or magit, which I'd happily evangelize. The pain points are what other commenters have s
22.
by kkylin 9mo ago
:-) I don't question this decision is sometimes (often) driven by the need to increase publication count. (Which, in turn, happens because people find it esaier to count papers than read them.) But there is a counterpoint here, which
23.
by kkylin 10mo ago
That's exactly right. A couple more things: - Differenting a function composed of simpler pieces always "converges" (the process terminates). One just applies the chain rule. Among other things, this is why automatic diffe
24.
by kkylin 10mo ago
Thank you so much for all this detail. This is very interesting & quite helpful, and it's great you were able to communicate all this with your friend. For anyone else interested: I wanted to be able to typeset mathematics (actual
25.
by kkylin 10mo ago
Thanks! Did you communicate in "raw" TeX, or was it compiled / encoded for braille? Can you point me at the software you used?
26.
by kkylin 10mo ago
Like many others, I too would very much like to hear about this. I taught our entry-level calculus course a few years ago and had two blind students in the class. The technology available for supporting them was abysmal then -- the toolcha
27.
by kkylin 10mo ago
Question for all of you more knowledgeble than I: can SMART data be tampered with? When I get, say, a refurbished Mac from Apple, I'm trusting Apple won't stoop to that. But a SSD vendor I've never heard of?
28.
by kkylin 11mo ago
MIT Scheme (and ScmUtils) are unfortunately not getting enough maintainence, but they still work with a little effort. Probably better on Linux than any other environment. If you have a Mac you may try this: https://github.com&
29.
by kkylin 11mo ago
Published paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41593-025-02055-5 Preprint on biorxiv: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.06.05.543698v1
30.
by kkylin 11mo ago
Also, new stuff just isn't designed to be opened up. I took an old monitor that started failing to a local makerspace (which has a very popular monthly repair cafe), and it took some physical force to crack the case open. Once inside

More ›