robryk @robryk@qoto.org

I've just learned (yay @ collecting random data) that when my machine is thrashing (because I put firefox in a memory-limited cgroup, it sometimes runs out of memory, and it doesn't realize this has happened, because the _system_ is not out of memory yet) the _GPU_ gets very hot (85degC). Huh?

#hardware #puzzle

Do Swiss courts really consider multiple unrelated charges against one fellow at the same time?

> Dem Beschuldigten wird vorgeworfen, vom betagten Geschädigten im Laufe mehrerer Jahre unter wahrheitswidrigen Angaben mehrfach Darlehen in der Höhe von insgesamt mehreren hundert Tausend Franken erhältlich gemacht zu haben. Weiter wird dem Beschuldigten vorgeworfen, einen Einzahlungsbeleg der Post abgeändert zu haben, um die Zahlung eines höheren Betrags vorzutäuschen. Zudem wird dem Beschuldigten vorgeworfen, auf der Autobahn rechts überholt zu haben sowie während der Pandemie gegen die Schutzmassnahmen verstossen zu haben, indem er eine Party organisiert habe.

-- https://www.gerichte-zh.ch/verhandlungen/obergericht-zuerich.html

(Translated summary: The accused is accused of defrauding an elderly person, falsification of documents to further that fraud, overtaking on the right on the highway, and organising a party during the time it was forbidden by pandemic-related restrictions.)

(Or did that fellow make a very weird appeal that somehow was relevant to all of them? I can't see a way to do so other than sovcitry.)

People who know me IRL usually know that I have a very wide definition of "manipulative". In that context, I find it hard to form an opinion on https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/snnfmepzrwpAsAoDT/why-anima-international-suspended-the-campaign-to-end-live (tl;dr let's stop telling people not to mistreat fish, because that causes them to indirectly cause more fish suffering).

#randomwikipediawalk

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amundsen%E2%80%93Scott_South_Pole_Station

Things that my attention was drawn to:

The original site (for IGY) was built by a team led by a Lieutenant JG (one of the lowest officer ranks) of US Navy. That was a really interesting job (https://kb.osu.edu/bitstream/handle/1811/36750/Bowers_Transcript.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y) for the fellow.

The description of the base when it was mostly within a dome reminds me vividly of places I read about in interactive fiction. Such places seemed to me to be somewhat... unrealistic? (see e.g. the tower that was used for atmospheric observations "and later contained a music room"), but apparently my intuition was very wrong.

The new station is on *adjustable* stilts, so that it can be raised as the snow level rises (well, not really "rises", but as the ground sinks while more snow gets accumulated).

I was really amused by the juxtaposition of content and form of the troubleshooting section of the US Navy Cookbook: https://maritime.org/doc/cookbook1945/pg432.php

A friend was driving me back from new year's boardgames and on the way we've encountered a swan strolling on the roadway of a bridge. (The swan was alone, appeared completely fine, and was AFAICT fully adult: its body was ~1m tall, its head was at ~1.5m and its plumage was fully white.)

I was surprised in many ways:
- did the swan walk there or land there?
- is there some obvious reason why a swan would want to be on a bridge (my friend's hypothesis was that that swan might have been doing that semi-regularly and just been surprised by ~nonzero traffic at that time of night there)?
- do swans stroll? I don't recall seeing a swan more than a few meters away from water (other than a flying one).

#birds

Look at the construction (and the proof in appendix) of public key encryption scheme out of witness encryption in https://eprint.iacr.org/2013/258.pdf

It uses witness encryption, where the only confidentiality guarantee is that "if you encrypt the plaintext in a way that does not admit decryption at all, there will be no way to recover the plaintext from ciphertext", to construct something that actually has standardish confidentiality guarantees by exploiting that this property must extend to cases that are computationally indistinguishable from ones where the assumption really holds.

#cryptography

TIL about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium_hydride_ion

Rereading a novel I got amused by:

> Wanaka’s rather grim smile could just be made out behind her mask. “Until we get a better idea,” she
gestured. “All hands, start thinking.”

Hm~ thought experiment: how would the world look like if trademarks could only be owned by corporations[1] with a responsibility only towards upholding the trademark's reputation[2]?

[1] question of ownership unresolved (theoretically it should be immaterial)

[2] question of who has standing to argue that they're not fulfilling this duty also open

cc @TechConnectify @aredridel

We define the rank of a matrix as the minimal number of rank-1 (i.e. of the form w^\dagger{}v) matrices that sum to it. I wonder what happens when we decide to optimize for something else: say, norm of type $foo over norms of type $bar over those matrices. Obvious candidates for $foo are L_{something}, for $bar are operator norms or Frobenius norm.

In particular, $foo=L_n and $bar=operator norm inherited from L_n seems potentially interesting (in particular for n=2).

#linearalgebra