ccleve

Once the longer number starts repeating digits, then it's not n^2 anymore. Multiplies get replaced with lookups. And we're only counting the multiplies. That's all they counted in the article. Not the adds, not the shifts.

No, that's taken into account.

Ok, maybe I don't understand the problem, but it seems obvious that it should never be greater than O(min(n1, n2) * 10), where n1 and n2 are the lengths in digits of each argument, and assuming we are multiplying decimal numbers.

Take the first digit of the longer number. Multiply it by the shorter number and store the result. Take the second digit of the longer number. If it matches the first digit, do a lookup of the last result and use that, else multiply and store. Repeat.

There will be a maximum of 10 * (length of the shorter number) multiplies, because there are only 10 unique digits. After that every operation is a lookup.

You could even do a tiny optimization by skipping the multiplication for the zero digit.

Worst case, the two numbers are the same length, in which case it's O(n/2 * 10), which is a heck of a lot better than O(n log n).

What am I missing here?

EDIT to respond to the comments: in the article, they are only counting the number of multiplies in the O() value. They are not including the adds.

For an opposing view, https://ianstormtaylor.com/design-tip-never-use-black/

I'm wondering how many millions in developer productivity are being lost every minute.

It's not clear to me whether Anthropic's limitations are technical or merely contractual. Is Anthropic actually putting the limitations in their prompts, so that the model would refuse to answer a question on how to do certain things?

If so, that's a major problem. If the military is using it in some mission critical way, they can't be fighting the model to get something done. No such limitations would ever be acceptable.

If the limitations are contractual, then there is some room for negotiation.

This looks great, but it's not clear to me how to use it for a practical task. I need to transcribe about 10 years worth of monthly meetings. These are government hearings with a variety of speakers. All the videos are on YouTube. What's the most practical and cost-effective way to get reasonably accurate transcripts?

Thanks. That's exactly the right thing to say.

This area has a lot of hills.

yes, quite a bit

Irked me too. I'm running for state representative in House District 9, which covers much of that area. The district is drop dead gorgeous and it's growing rapidly. There's a lot here.

178 billion? That's nothing. I did trillions just this morning. I went to the grocery store and picked an item off the shelf, effectively filtering out the trillions of other products that I could have picked but didn't.

They did not process 178 billion rows per second. They did a search that found something in a large data set by eliminating the parts of the data set that could not have contained the item. Same way I did by picking one grocery store and going straight to the shelf.

The performance hit you take for doing dynamic dispatch is real and measurable. It's a no-go if you're in a performance sensitive part of your app.

They do pay taxes. They each pay personal income tax on their $100k.

Is there a paper or some other explanation of what they're doing under the hood?

The issue in this case is being tested in other cases. It's about the "third party doctrine", the theory that the fourth amendment does not cover our information if it is in the possession of a third party.

https://nclalegal.org/press_release/ncla-asks-supreme-court-...

I blogged about this some time ago: https://ccleve.com/p/a-privacy-amendment

Oddly, I thought this discussion would be about actual toddlers.

There is a way to win an argument with a toddler. You find out what's bothering them, usually something emotional, and you validate it. "Yes! It's fun to stay up late! Yes! You don't want to eat your vegetables!" Once they feel heard, you've got a shot at getting them to do what you want.

That's a good way to win an argument with a non-toddler as well. Acknowledge that what they want is legitimate (if it is). Concede points of agreement. Talk about shared goals. Only then talk about a different path to the solution.

How do you place a value on aesthetics? Or driver distraction? Or the irritation I feel when I see 50 billboards for cannabis every time I drive down the road near my house?

I know very little about this, but a little googling suggests that the measure you're looking for is entropy, which has a mathematical definition: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_(information_theory)

I wonder if it would have been possible to win the challenge legitimately?

If a randomly-generated file happened to contain some redundancy through sheer chance, you could hand-craft a compressor to take advantage of it. This compressor would not work in general for random data, but it could work for this one particular case.

It's a bet worth taking, because the payoff, 50:1 ($5,000 to $100), is pretty good. Play the game 50 times and you might get a file you could compress.

The challenge, then, would be for the person offering the bet to generate a really random file that contained no such redundancy. That might not be easy.

Yup, this works. I did not think to click "Digital Services" because this has nothing to do with digital services. But it does get you to the chat.

Not sure why this got downvoted. This actually worked. Sure, I shouldn't have to negotiate with a bot, but it did get me to a human just now. (Or maybe a really convincing bot).

Sure, but it's a hassle because you've got to go to the post office and fill out a return receipt requested form, otherwise the letter could just go into a black hole. Plus, who knows how many weeks it would take to get a response?

How do I get to live chat? If I search for "customer service", click the link, and keep clicking "Help with something else", I get circular links that go nowhere.

So far as I can tell, support chat doesn't exist.

In this case, the local police department would be more appropriate, but I'd like to give Amazon the chance to make this right on their own. They sure don't make it easy.

Sudden onset mental health problems can have a physical cause. It's very important he have a thorough medical evaluation.

Find the best place that you can to do the eval, and absolutely insist that they do a very detailed workup. A lot of doctors are dismissive of mental health issues. Find a good neurologist, and then push, push, push to get this done.

If you make it happen, you'll be the best friend he could ever have.