It doesn't matter that much they're not super accurate exact, they do in fact count ticks n tocks j dandy. I wonder if they are counted equally, interesting question if i do say so myself about my own question, i know rising edge is steady w the next rising edge, n falling edge w falling edge, but yeah...no i think that's a specification figure of merit, that they be balanced w respect to each other. N Intel® despite it's many failures, long ago forecast n long overdue due to the sheer difficulty of their business model n how long they kept it going--they were saying it was going to end soon in the late seventies already--n you know what, i'm fine w that. They don't make old chips rot like other software companies i could mention, bits rot but glass is timeless. Which brings me back to the point, in my analysis the problem is not the clocks being inaccurate but rather the jitter, which means a single run will not suffice in describing a repeatable exact clock time taken for eg an inner loop, which is what is worth bothering with. The minimum jitter attainable currently is 1 cycle, n then i guess you run the same code repeatedly n take the minimum with more repeatability as a consequence of that low jitter.
In the early nineties it was not so, you'd get the same number of clock cycles again n again n again.
N then it gets tricky because cycle counts are thresholds set within which, if voltages n frequency are proper, the operation will complete deterministically w a soft error rate no greater than the system as a whole, about one per 30 years of hammering on the chip at sea level. Which is not enough for my tastes, n the jitter is a fucking mess.
I much prefer the GA144, least jitter of any platform bar none, sensible because it is fully asynchronous logic, no clock anywhere in sight until you connect it to an oscillator, n even then the vibration doesn't rock the system like that of a grandfather clock synchs w another grandfather clock with whose pendulum's swing the former clock's pendulum swing is aligned. GA144 it's pretty easy to tell average case complexity of a function down to the tens of picoseconds, at which point you have to check that there's no open window letting a draft in. In fact the time trial will tell you such a draft is coming into the house, it happened to me, while not from a parallel universe in spacial dimensions it is by all means from another universe in the time dimension.
Passive voice, better title is Kevin Mitnick died, or passed away, sugar coat it like he never did if you want, we all know what it means. I suddenly feel bad for him, though. He deserved the black ribbon.
I wager in some part of your analysis you're not dead on the money but in broad strokes this all rings true. The political acumen necessary to survive as a programmer is intense, it is one advantage black programmers i've met had a better handle on than white programmers who are more often autism-spectrum n therefore terrible at office politics, cept when being oblivious is advantageous which it can be. It was ironic in the scheme of racial stereotypes present in American culture, that both black coders were employed while the white coders were not, this was in a hacker house, but it was simply because they were better coders. No issues there. We got along great, but in terms of office politics, n without being aggressors either, j very good instincts. It isn't talked about in plain terms enough even on HN, well i guess it is discussed a lot, but never like "alright, here's the strat if you're facing X" like you talk about in the face of other commentors's naysaying.
Tracking helped me in particular by making my homeroom (the British school equivalent, j called a class) more civilized, n fair to students w less academic talent than me. Given the tracking in English n at one point, briefly, Mathematics, it meant the other boys had a shot at getn the best score in the class or at all enjoying leniency in grading, which my presence as a future Erdosian mathematician made impossible, n their parents would deny them privileges n beat them sometimes if they weren't excellent students, so they'd bully me for monopolizing the academics completely. The girls did not, because i believe there was not an expectation they be the best student n plus i was very good-looking to them, though not to myself. Future model too. But the bullying was the main challenge, no matter what they threw at me the academics were nothing in difficulty compared to the bullying. So for that reason alone tracking helped me out, n the homeroom out too.
As for bullying, I was a "gifted" kid in school, too. I was treated nicely when people wanted help and bullied ruthlessly when they didn't need me.
> their parents would deny them privileges n beat them sometimes if they weren't excellent students
100% agree that this was one of the biggest factors in my bullying. Shame is powerful, and if a child is being shamed for their academic achievements, they will lash out at someone who has what they desire: good grades in this instance.
Erdosian means having the genetic trait Paul Erdós had, which was the uncommonly good reaction to similar stimulants to those he took, without which he could not do any math research at all. He was steroidal, i'm steroidal too in my research, it's like bodybuilding in that steroids are part of the game. As long as they do not damage your health, it's fine. I literally get time dilation from the stimulants i take, which i do under prescription of course, but at the same time i know it's not fair to play sports for instance, because they're performance enhancing drugs (n generally outright forbidden). But sports are zero-sum, research is positive-sum, so that's what i do instead.
In particular the critical trait is amplified creativity to the point i share Erdos view that "Before, when I looked at a piece of blank paper my mind was filled with ideas. Now all I see is a blank piece of paper.". Same exact symptoms.
In addition, my being steroidal is justified by the fact that i got brain surgery, like the radio transcranial magnetic crap, against my will n without my knowledge, electroshock too, the works. So perhaps it is understandable in my case.
It'll get USA screwed on the World stage too. For me getn tracked in math classes pretty much the whole time, n to the point we had a class w four people in it, smallest class-size in the school already w the smallest class sizes in the country, all four of us, on that table getn the closest thing to tutoring the Chilean education system could give us in its most expensive school International School Nido de Aguilas, n then it's like...without tracking i would have hated math, got bullied much more for always cracking the curve, all that shit.
Elon Musk already complained about the basic difference between the CCP politicians n the American senators n congressmen is the former have a distantly n vertically superior knowledge of math n science than their American counterparts, being engineers w a v rigorous sink-or-swim training, than the American politicians who are generally lawyers n only one of which has a PhD. There's as many PhDs as comedians in Congress for fuck's sake, like not hating the comedian i appreciate there being one, that's cool, but for there only to be one PhD, what the fuck?! Some people need to have a PhD, it matters sometimes it is generally a good way to get technical expertise spesh w subjects w high stakes that require planning for executing correctly, which is why i went into algorithms instead, my laptop had no choice but to obey n compile what i wrote, n run it, automaton after all, that computer was my only audience but an audience nonetheless. There it's fine, n that's why coders don't need degrees for the most part, low cost of failure, not like a civil engineer which i would not allow building a bridge j like that.
Don't fret if you think you're mediocre. I myself have been trying to get through On Lisp since 2008. Then, after that, Let over Lambda. Not better, but v strong book, i can tell the guy while not the best at humblebragging has so much cool stuff there.
ANSI Common Lisp n that's plenty to not be mediocre! I did get through the whole thing in 2009, what a great book!
Thanks for the motivation. I love Lisp, and even was into Shen[0] for a while, but Common Lisp has all the libraries and legacy tutorials and books that I will stick it out a bit more. Which matrix/math libraries do you recommend to compete with the likes of Numpy and Mojo for ML apps? Because I love APL, April, Array Programming Re-Imagined in Lisp[1].
I started out imprentation in 2008 as a business co-founder, now i'm the solo founder of fgemm SpA, j published the paper about it n have the provisional patent for the algorithm's implementation on a machine.
So i'm in favor of police going back to the basics, good old-fashioned detective work. The forensics are not what they're cracked up to be, there's very little verifiability n verification, too easy for the forensics lab to lie through their teeth or contaminate the scene of the crime. Like when the Duke Lacross players had to hire a very expensive lawyer to do the messy work of proving evidence actually traced back to three other men that same day, that was noted as very difficult forensic work because OF COURSE the DA didn't want verification. Local DA Dan Nifong wanted to tamper w it, anything to pull off the lynching, mostly out of sadism n participating in the culture. Three equals three, easy to see it was three men's evidence left behind in Candice Mangum's evidence place, figured it would be a slam dunk requiring only a little bit of finesse. This lawyer got commended in front of all America by the legal profession, n proved Candice Mangum was pretty much correct it would be a slam dunk. It was only when these young men scraped together huge money for the hardcore IDEALISTIC civil rights lawyer (unicorn basically) to counter the momentum of the shakedown w perfect lawyering against Nifong's zero shame of screwing up on purpose w all the evidence--an uphill battle all the way...in 2006 iirc, like now in 2023 again.
It's not enough for the police to discover (to their own satisfaction) who committed a crime. The point is to prosecute the offender or otherwise resolve it in a way that protects the public.
"Old-fashioned detective work" doesn't help with that at all. What does it turn up? Eyewitnesses? About the worst evidence possible, on par with dreams and reading tea leaves. Sometimes it bullies someone into perjury. That's not even evidence at all.
Forensics are about the only thing that counts as real evidence outside of capturing crimes on video. And if they seem to cause bad results, it's probably because we're not doing it enough. Hell, we have the technology to prove to anyone's satisfaction that chain of custody hasn't been broken... no one's bothered to build the product.
Absolutely, a significant portion of "old timey police work" was to blame it on the least liked guy you could find. A large percentage of people ON DEATH ROW are later proved innocent by actual evidence, including people who were convicted by those "old timey" methods.
>Forensics are about the only thing that counts as real evidence outside of capturing crimes on video
One huge problem is what courts accept as "forensics" is closer to CSI bullshit than actual science. Most forensic methods have no basis in science, come from a single ex cop who goes around the country speaking to other cops for a hundred grand a pop, and a network of "experts" who are willing to tell a jury that it is "scientifically sound" for a few thousand dollars. Things like handwriting analysis, micro-expressions, all the nancy drew types who pour over a ten second 911 call to overanalyze every tick and stammer in the stressed callers voice to paint them as the perp (THIS IS A REAL THING THAT HAPPENS)
If it wasn't outright illegal, American police would 100% be using lie detectors as evidence
> One huge problem is what courts accept as "forensics" is closer to CSI bullshit than actual science. Most forensic methods have no basis in science, come from a single ex cop who goes around the country speaking to other cops for a hundred grand a pop,
While there's some of that, let me tell you about my brush with this. I was called for grand jury duty. A day a week for a full month. Most was bullshit drug charges, child abuse/molestation, a few weird ones. Only one actual murder. Until that point, they never even bothered to have witnesses testify for any of it... it was like Junior Assistant DA show-and-tell time, but without the "show" part. That's another story though.
The murder was decades past, and they'd always had a suspect. He did seem like a real piece of work. But one of the evidence exhibits was the car he drove back during the murder. At the time, they found tire tracks where the victim's body was dumped. Identified some named model of tire, Firestone I think. I asked a question, which the detective misunderstood at first... he thought I was asking "did anyone sell that tire in this city back in the late 1980s" to which he answered "it was so common, many shops would've sold it". So I had to ask again. I asked:
"Was this particular tire model ever manufactured in a size where it would even have fit on that car?"
He uhhed-and-ahhed for a moment, before saying "that's a really good question".
Like, what the fuck am I supposed to do with that? Do I generalize, and think that if they fucked up on this one, all the rest of their evidence is complete horseshit too? If I penalize their bumbling by no-billing, am I letting a murderer go? It's not like they'll find the smoking gun next year, you know... this was like 30 years ago already. And, if I do vote to indict, the man's got no shot at a real trial. 99% of them plead down. Even for murder charges, maybe especially with those since they can dangle the death penalty as a means of compelling cooperation.
That was my one brush with the competence and skills of detectives. Despite this, all I can think is that no matter how bad their forensic evidence is, anything else is just so much fucking worse.
Off-topic trivia: While we were waiting on something one morning, one of the asst DAs was bragging about how in our city there are about 4000 cases each year, of which only maybe 30 would go to trial pre-covid. Assuming things have normalized so that they're giving trials to almost 1% of defendants again.
which is a confession. You insert interesting falsehoods here, on Hacker News.
You yourself confessed, in your own words, you're full of shit.
Yeah because 1% going to trial sounded a little too high, most liars go for 2%, more believable. Stanford tried 2% of the accused, 1% is pushing it. 2% annual inflation. 2% of rape accusations are false. Say 1% or 0.75% and people call bullshit.
N again, you confessed that you "[insert interesting falsehoods here]" [sic brackets]. You wrote that w brackets in the original, i don't escape brackets as this isn't coding, normally brackets when i quote are when not absolutely sure word-for-word quote, to protect the integrity of my testimony for my eventual trial. Which is getn closer n closer, any day now, the longer you wait the less time left until your day in court, n it's been more than 14 years waiting for Stanford to try me.
The courts routinely allow the chain of custody to be a mess and when you challenge they respond with 'good faith'. Go search Lexus/Nexus for 'good faith' and find that 'chain of custody' really isn't a requirement because really who needs anything more than 'good faith'?
Lots of 'forensic science' has been found to either be garbage or complete subjective and results dependant on the person doing the 'science'. Some of that is still allowed in court because our court is based on precedent and if it was allowed before you as the accused have to fight precedent and prove why it should not longer be allowed (even though everyone accepts it has been disproven outside of court). Lie detector tests while not allowed to be a lone factor for conviction are still routinely used and required by the courts, especially as conditions of supervised release(parole/probation) and are administered at the supervised persons expense (court mandated and $280 a pop for pseudoscience that can get you hemmed up).
I have come to believe that the "Sherlock Holmes" tales were a massive copaganda campaign designed to prime the general public for advanced forensic investigation techniques.
I mean, Sherlock could "deduce" anything with his magnifying glass just by looking at a clump of mud on a shoe, or a thread of fabric on a lady's dress. But meanwhile, the actual police were developing actual scientifically-based theories of evidentiary examination that would revolutionize the jobs of detectives everywhere.
Sherlock Holmes's powers of deduction were, of course, exaggerated and improbable. Nevertheless, the author was probably privy to scientific developments that held promise. Fingermarks, for example, were emerging in law enforcement contemporary with Conan Doyle's writings.
If you want an amusing modern take on this, and you love to watch copaganda shows, I recommend the Canadian Murdoch Mysteries. They combine emerging science of the late 19th century with some really outlandish steampunk stuff ("The Tesla Effect") and it's a rollicking homage to Sherlock Holmes.
Anyway, fast-forward to the present day. I feel like police are way too reliant on technology instead of doing their job. I feel like the general public watches way too much CSI and NCIS and they expect to see an Abby Sciuto in every precint. I believe that if LEOs weren't shelving all those rape kits for 20 years, and spending $millions on bogus "gunshot detection" networks, and not purchasing literal urban assault vehicles and a stockpile of ammunition to rival Ruby Ridge, I think that they might focus their efforts on something more productive. Anything more productive.
> I mean, Sherlock could "deduce" anything with his magnifying glass just by looking at a clump of mud on a shoe, or a thread of fabric on a lady's dress. But meanwhile, the actual police were developing actual scientifically-based theories of evidentiary examination that would revolutionize the jobs of detectives everywhere.
This is a pop culture bastardization/modern reimagining of the original stories. Sherlock Holmes spent an absurd amount of his time memorizing things he could apply to his work, for example where certain trees grew and what their seeds look like, which he'd recognize in the clump of mud. Basic forensic techniques combined with things he memorized that the rest of us would have to look up.
Also formatting, references and not reducing are to r.
I'm sorry man, it's so difficult to parse all that you said and I really want to. Not enough to research on a Friday evening after a hell week though - and that part is on me.
In the early nineties it was not so, you'd get the same number of clock cycles again n again n again.
N then it gets tricky because cycle counts are thresholds set within which, if voltages n frequency are proper, the operation will complete deterministically w a soft error rate no greater than the system as a whole, about one per 30 years of hammering on the chip at sea level. Which is not enough for my tastes, n the jitter is a fucking mess.
I much prefer the GA144, least jitter of any platform bar none, sensible because it is fully asynchronous logic, no clock anywhere in sight until you connect it to an oscillator, n even then the vibration doesn't rock the system like that of a grandfather clock synchs w another grandfather clock with whose pendulum's swing the former clock's pendulum swing is aligned. GA144 it's pretty easy to tell average case complexity of a function down to the tens of picoseconds, at which point you have to check that there's no open window letting a draft in. In fact the time trial will tell you such a draft is coming into the house, it happened to me, while not from a parallel universe in spacial dimensions it is by all means from another universe in the time dimension.