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Thomas Dickerson

@arossp @junecasagrande @Popehat my best guess is that you’re in an echo chamber and only see “libertarian” content when one of the paleos tweets something so horrifyingly bad that it gets noticed and dragged by “Occupy Democrats” or whatever vanilla progressive meme pages you follow. Do you know anything about Cato Institute or Institute for Justice?

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Thomas Dickerson boosted
Dr. Zalka Csenge Virág

Transylvanian #FolktaleMoment that doubles as a #DnD moment:

Hero kills a dragon and loots a lot of jewelry from it. He decides he should try on the jewels to see if they have magic powers. He puts on the pearls, bracelets, rings, even pokes holes in his earlobes for the earrings.

Turning one of the rings he accidentally summons a 3-headed dragon. He defeats it, and then thinks "hm, let's try that again". And summons a 9-headed dragon.

We all know that guy.

#ttrpg #folktales #folklore

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Thomas Dickerson

A mutual over on the birdsite was suggesting that they find Q&A with ChatGPT more productive than reading manuals, and suggested that by pointing out the likelihood of incorrect answers, I was treating this as an "academic pie-in-the-sky" topic. 🤔

As an experiment I went and asked it 4 questions and got 2 dangerously subtly wrong answers, 1 blatantly incorrect answer, and 1 useless non-answer.

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In Scala, how would I write a set of functions which are mutually tail recursive but with different type signatures? To write mutually tail recursive functions with different type signatures in Scala, you can define the functions within a single object or class, and use the @tailrec annotation to ensure that the functions are tail recursive. Here is an example implementation:
is it safe to save a caught exception to a fresh variable in Python? Yes, it is safe to save a caught exception to a fresh variable in Python. In fact, it is a common practice to save the caught exception to a variable so that it can be inspected or logged later. Here's an example of how you can catch an exception and save it to a variable: ```python try: # some code that might raise an exception ... except Exception as e: # save the caught exception to a variable my_exception = e ``` In this example, the `except` block catches any exception that might occur in the `try` block and saves it to a variable called `my_exception`. You can then inspect the contents of `my_exception` to understand the nature of the exception and take appropriate action.
what is the idiomatic way to query point locations against an arrangement in CGAL? To query point locations against an arrangement in CGAL, you can use the `locate` function provided by the arrangement data structure. The `locate` function takes a query point as input and returns a `CGAL::Object` that represents the cell or feature that contains the point. The returned object can be a face, an edge, a vertex, or a halfedge, depending on the location of the query point in the arrangement. Here is an example code snippet that shows how to use the `locate` function: ```c++ #include <CGAL/Arrangement_2.h> typedef CGAL::Arr_segment_traits_2<K> Traits_2; typedef Traits_2::Point_2 Point_2; typedef CGAL::Arrangement_2<Traits_2> Arrangement_2; int main() { // Construct an arrangement of line segments Arrangement_2 arr; // Insert some line segments into the arrangement // ... // Query a point location in the arrangement Point_2 query_point(1.0, 2.0); CGAL::Object result = arr.locate(query_point); ```
How do I convert a set of metallic/roughness PBR textures to the specular/glossiness workflow? Converting a set of PBR textures from metallic/roughness to specular/glossiness workflow requires some knowledge of the differences between the two workflows and how they affect the appearance of materials in 3D rendering. Here are the general steps to follow: 1. Understand the differences between metallic/roughness and specular/glossiness workflows: In the metallic/roughenss workflow, the metallic texture controls the amount of metal in a material, while the roughness texture controls the roughness of the material's surface. In contract, the specular/glossiness workflow uses a specular texture to control the intensity of reflection, and a glossiness texture to control the sharpness of the reflections. 1. Gather the required textures: To convert from metallic/roughness to specular/glossiness, you will need to have a specular map and a glossiness map. If you don't have these textures, you can create them using software like Substance Designer or Photoshop. 1. Create the specular map: The specular map controls the intensity of reflection on a material. To create a specular map, start by converting the metallic map to a grayscale image.
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Thomas Dickerson

@lisacrispin

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Thomas Dickerson boosted
Andy Pavlo

I was invited by TheRegister to debate Jim Webber (Chief Scientist at Neo4j) on Relational Databases vs. Graph Databases. I am obviously representing the pro-relational side. There are two rounds (my initial argument + his response, and then one more back-and-forth).

You can follow along the debate this week and vote here: theregister.com/Debates/2023/0

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Thomas Dickerson

Almost on

An extremely well-lot photo of snowy woods at night
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Thomas Dickerson boosted
Shriram Krishnamurthi

"Your name has been very prominent within polling efforts to gauge which professors students would most like to pie" is more than a bit ambiguous, but I'm going to pretend it's a compliment…

This is Naomi, a member of the Engineering DUG eboard. Next Tuesday, March 14th, the ENGN DUG will be hosting a STEM-wide event to celebrate Pi Day. One of our highlight events involves pieing professors in the face with whipped cream to support the Cool Earth foundation- a non-profit that was chosen in honor of Brown's indigenous land acknowledgement and initiatives to cut campus greenhouse gas emissions by 75% by 2025. Your name has been very prominent within polling efforts to gauge which professors students would most like to pie. We would greatly appreciate it if you could fill out this form to indicate your willingness to be pied. Additionally, if you could advertise the slide attached to this email, that would be amazing!
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Thomas Dickerson

@dev @palvaro if your feet don’t get numb on a 15 minute walk it’s warm enough for bare footing.

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Thomas Dickerson boosted
Lindsey Kuper

@regehr @csgordon @krismicinski @wilbowma "Distributed Software Systems: Global-First and Local-First Perspectives" decomposition.al/CSE290S-2023-

It should have been obvious from the name that multiparty session types were on the menu, don't you think?

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Thomas Dickerson

@KevinCarson1 I have nothing against landlords *in principal* and think a healthy freed market will continue to see renting as part of the housing ecosystem (there is actual value in delegating the assumption of risk, especially for folks in short-term situations), but knee-jerk defense of every form of “privatize profits, socialize negative externalities” is quintessential vulgar libertarianism.

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Thomas Dickerson

@KevinCarson1 I pretty much tune out his bylines after the obtuse responses on this one: twitter.com/elfprince13/status

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Thomas Dickerson

@thatpaul 👋

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Thomas Dickerson

@mmasnick apparently took down TweetDeck too.

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Thomas Dickerson

@wilbowma @shriramk @maxsnew @yforster This reminds me of a beloved lab from my HS physics class. We all had to build our own tennis-ball cannons out of physical-therapy elastic tubing + PVC, and then experimentally calibrate a model for the ballistic trajectory at different launch angles. Then teacher would take us outside, place a 5 gallon bucket, tell us how far away it was, and subtract 10 points for every shot after the first. Median grade was an A.

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Thomas Dickerson

@regehr @csgordon @krismicinski @wilbowma The prof had a long established habit of announcing exam averages on post-exam review days, and for the midterm he told us all that the average score had been 72. My exam had "105" written at the top, and I immediately started sinking under the table 😅

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Thomas Dickerson

@regehr @csgordon @krismicinski @wilbowma

Joys of small liberal arts schools: as an undergrad, my OS class (required for the major) started at 4 and dropped to 3 when someone switched majors.

Since I was taking the class with the cohort a year ahead of me, I would try to complain about how hard it was to build camaraderie, especially since the two remaining students were roommates. One hiccup...

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Thomas Dickerson

@lindsey @regehr @csgordon @krismicinski @wilbowma When I took Phil Klein's "Optimization Algorithms for Planar Graphs" grad course at Brown, the first lecture started off standing room only and gradually tapered down to about 12. I still really want to ask the undergrads who left 45 minutes in what expectations they had from the course description that were unmet by the lecture. 🧐

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Thomas Dickerson boosted
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Carl T. Bergstrom

I finally got access to the new Bing chat.

I know what y'all are thinking and no, I, didn't get catfished.

I did, however, look to see what kind of help it would provide to students who hope to use it to write their research papers for my upcoming course in evolution and medicine.

I first installed Microsoft Edge, and then I was off to the races. As you probably know, Bing chat takes three-bears approach to personality: too hard, too soft, and hopefully just right.

Choose a conversational style: More creative, more balanced, more precise
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Thomas Dickerson

@dev @steve *Western Maine. I need to get around to updating my instance to support edits

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Thomas Dickerson boosted
Steve Canon

Staying in an A-frame with a mounted jackalope. Is this peak Airbnb kitsch (y/n)?

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