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For the non-computer-science folks confused by this: these, along with off-by-one errors, are commonly described as the “two hardest problems in computer science”.
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Mark Reid
@mdreid@mastodon.social
mastodon 4.8.0-nightly.2026-10-06Work: Machine Learning Engineer at Apple, previously a Research Fellow in learning theory at the Australian National University.
Play: #trailrunning, #marathon, #eurorack, #jazz, #guitar, #piano, #bass, #snowboarding, #gogame, #photography
Based in Canberra, Australia 🇦🇺.
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@tinker @darkuncle An amateur mathematician, Edward Goodwin, attempted to pass legislation to define π as 3.2 in Indiana in 1897 so they could make a proof work: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kionasmith/2018/02/05/indianas-state-legislature-once-tried-to-legislate-the-value-of-pi/
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King Missile - Detachable Penis
The Earth's orbital period is 365.256 days or 31,558,150 seconds and so has a frequency of 3.169 x 10⁻⁸ Hz which is a Db 33 octaves below middle C that is flat by 31 cents.
The Earth's rotational period is 23h 56m 4s or 86,164 seconds and so has a frequency of 1.161 x 10⁻⁵ Hz which is G 24 octaves below middle C that is flat by 11 cents.
So here we are, floating in space on a slightly flat and slightly out of tune tritone.
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@BoydStephenSmithJr Yes, that was the exactly the saying the original post and my follow up comment was alluding to.
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@Lana @petrillic On first glance, I’d love to see this but I worry that a) it would legitimise Trump’s blatant flouting of laws, b) the Republicans would push even harder to rig elections, and c) the hypocrisy wouldn’t shame them anyway – they would argue that Trump can but Obama can’t.
Right-wingers quite happily hold inconsistent positions as a form of power. The unfairness is the point.
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@Lana @petrillic I think I’m going to bow out here. I agree with what you’re striving for and I feel like the point I’m trying to make here is not helpful. Sorry for the noise.
@mhoye @jonathankoren @rmondello Surprising fact: exactly the same algorithm works even better for many other problems: perfect numbers, powers of two, busy beaver, etc.
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@MichaelEMann@fediscience.org @oliversampson@sigmoid.social That is a powerful way to demonstrate a worrying point.
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Some additional thoughts and clarification:
I said m2 and P5 are “essentially” the only two generators because the other two are M7 (major 7th), which is just an m2 step down, and P4 (perfect 4th) which is just a P5 step down.
All the other intervals generate symmetric families of scales:
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M2/m7 give the two 6-note whole tone scales;
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m3/M6 give the three 4-note diminished scales;
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and M3/m6 give the four 3-note augmented scales.
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@Lana @petrillic I understand the stakes and I didn’t say that we should play by the letter of the rules. My concern was that, as a tactic, I don’t see it achieving much.
My prediction is that MAGA folks will loudly and vehemently argue against Obama being able to run for a 3rd term while at the same time continuing to say that Trump should be allowed to, probably due to some arbitrary and bullshit difference.
Like I said, I’d love to see Obama run again! I’d be happy to be proven wrong.
This video is a massive hit of nostalgia for me.
Starfish by The Church was probably the first album I got obsessed with in high school and prompted me to learn guitar. I ended up getting the official tabs book for the album and spent hours and hours learning all the riffs and chords.
Great to see it still getting the attention it deserves as a unique piece of Australian music.
You know that stereotypical diagram of atoms as electrons orbiting a pack of protons and neutrons? That’s less than 100 years old.
Before 1932 and the discovery of the neutron by Chadwick we thought atoms were indivisible or at best a “pudding” or some system of only positive and negative pieces.
I feel like I must have learnt this at some point at school but hadn’t quite appreciated how recent the discovery was. I guess as you get older what constitutes “a long time ago” gets longer.
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@lcamtuf@infosec.exchange @cstross@wandering.shop This is a common misconception. The “B.” here is really the set of all expansions for which Benoit B. Mandelbrot converges (e.g., when “B.” stands for “Gaston M. Julia”).
I visited ACMI (the Australian Centre for the Moving Image) in Melbourne this afternoon – a wonderful, free museum of film and gaming history.
This small exhibit of books caught my eye and it took me a few moments before I was hit by a wave of recognition: I had owned and/or borrowed all four of these books when I was 10 and basically learned how to program my Commodore Vic-20 from them.
It quite a jolt to have personal history and curated history overlap in such a specific way!
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@samhenrigold @timixretroplays Great essay! This resonated a lot with me.
I learnt how to program on a Commodore 64 and Amiga – extremely limited machines by today’s standards. When I hit the limits of what I could do tinkering in BASIC on them in high school I popped the hood and taught myself how to code in assembler to make things run faster.
Fast forward 35 years and I now have a PhD in computer science and work at Apple. :)
Augie March at the Croxton in Melbourne commemorating 20 years since the release of Moo You Bloody Choir and playing through the whole album. Shambolic but sublime.
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@downbeatdan@mas.to Actually, there’s no E so it’s some kind of inversion of G diminished I guess.
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@downbeatdan@mas.to The moon’s (sidereal) orbit of earth is 2,358,720 seconds which is an Bb 29 octaves below middle C and flat by 41 cents.
So I guess we have a very spicy, spread out, out of tune Db diminished chord.
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I had been aware of the original DeCSS “illegal prime” from the late 90s / early 2000s, as well as the textbook I used for my undergrad cryptography course – Schneier’s “Applied Crypotgraphy” – being classified by the NSA as a non-exportable munition but somehow missed this later development and flag.
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@ifixcoinops@retro.social @chamomile@furry.engineer I appreciate it too. Had the same question, so glad to have found the answer here.
I have had at least one domain name that I pay for since the late 90s.
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@qdot CLAUDE ELWOOD SHANNON STOP PLAYING WITH YOUR NOISY CHANNELS AND COME FIX THIS BUG RIGHT NOW!
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@acb@mastodon.social @siracusa@mastodon.social Yes, if ever a language were an “old soul” it would be Perl.
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@acb@mastodon.social @siracusa@mastodon.social There was a time when I really enjoyed all the language trickery in Perl, I used to read the State of the Onion, etc. Then I found myself in a position where I had to do boring stuff like “maintain code” and “work with others” and its charm kind of wore off. :)
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@xgranade@wandering.shop @t3hh@mastodon.cloud 100% agree. I used to post synth stuff and photos to Instagram until about a year ago. I now post the occasional longer video to YouTube and photos exclusively to PixelFed.
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@ludicity@mastodon.sprawl.club “I’m going to commit economic violence for the next forty years, and get so good at it that we can do that smashed out of our minds, teach other people how to do it, then die, and some of you will pick up the work where we left off.” 🍻
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@t3hh@mastodon.cloud It was already in trouble prior to Chadwick in 1932 since Bohr and Pauli already discovered electron shells around 1920 and the fact they had discrete energy levels.
It’s wild to think that this was happening around the time my grandparents were born.
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I like to think of the two full generating intervals as the “melodic” generator (m2) and the “harmonic” generator (P5) because the former is common in melodic lines while the latter is the foundation of harmonic movement.
Not sure how useful it is but I found it a neat way of looking at things. It does sort of explain why b9 and b13 sound so nice on the V7 chord in a ii-V-I since they create a extra chromatic voice movement that add to the tension and release parallel to the harmonic movement.