Trying to wrap my brain around finite fields. I get how one can construct a finite field with an order of a prime number, but I don't get how it works with powers of primes. Everything I try to read on the subject eventually ends up getting into notation that I don't know how to read.
I think I get that a GF(p^n) has something to do with converting the field into a polynomial where all the coefficients are of GF(p), but that's where my understanding starts to fall apart.
Can anyone point me at something that will help me to better understand this?
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Review of "1984" (4 stars): problematic but relevant
A lot to unpack in this book. The lead character (Winston) has some pretty misogynistic tendencies, and there's not a single female character in the book with any depth whatsoever. This can be explained to some extent by the fact that it was written in the 40s, and that Winston has been subject to psychological manipulation essentially since birth.
Problematic elements aside, this provides an interesting dive into the world of psychological warfare, which remains relevant to this day.
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Remember kids:
IRC is free.
IRC is a open standard.
You can run your own IRC server.
IRC doesn't collect data on you and sell it.
You can still moderate your channels via invite, voice, and ban modes.
You can run a server on a 486.
IRC doesn't try to up sell you on "nitro".
IRC doesn't need to make money to make some VC happy.
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Kitsune Tails
Explore the complicated relationships between kitsune and humans in this platforming follow up to Super Bernie World.kitsunegames.com
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So, I'm nearly half way through Tue book and Winston is... problematic.
I don't know how this escaped me on my first read.
(comment on 1984, p. 130)
1984 - BookWyrm
Which One Will YOU Be IN the Year 1984? There won't be much choice, of course, if this book's predictions turn out to be true.bookwyrm.social
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Had an optometrist's appointment today. Got confirmation of something I've known for some time: my depth perception sucks.
Sadly, it's not correctable, but it's been like that for as long as I can remember. I've learned to adapt.
I've read it before but was in a very different place at the time. Want to see if it hits differently this time around.
(comment on 1984)
1984 - BookWyrm
Which One Will YOU Be IN the Year 1984? There won't be much choice, of course, if this book's predictions turn out to be true.bookwyrm.social
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Sourcery - BookWyrm
When last seen, the singularly inept wizard Rincewind had fallen off the edge of the world. Now, magically, he's turned up again, and this time he's brought the Luggage. But that's not all...bookwyrm.social
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Not sure, but I think the cat may have developed an intolerance to his super expensive prescription food.
That's neat.
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40k theory: The mechanicus can't create new technology because LLMs were invented during the dark age of technology.
Most of the media created after that point is AI nonsense, so they can't find the actual plans to replicate most of their technology.
The emperor can work with tech because he saved a copy of the wikipedia before it was too late.
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while back we called it bullshit automation, and just recently a scientific paper was published that arguments this distribution nicely.
researchgate.net/publication/3…
Yes I know this is essentially a different class of problem, but the "learning" is done in the same way. And it flows the tradition of garbage in, garbage out.
Ethical, easy-to-use and privacy-conscious alternatives to well-known software
switching.software
Ethical, easy-to-use and privacy-conscious alternatives to well-known softwareswitching.software
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Katy just got an ad for a "grounding sheet"... It's literally a blanket that plugs into a wall outlet so that you can be grounded while you sleep.
In case you're probe to static buildup in your sleep, I guess? How is this a thing?
So, I learned about Hamming codes a while back. They're pretty neat, but a lot of modern technology uses Reed-Solomon instead. I've wanted to learn about that one, but it involves some pretty heavy math that often goes over my head.
I've found a few different videos on YouTube that try to explain it "simply" but they all tend to gloss certain details over. After watching a few of them, I've noticed that the parts they gloss over are different from each other, and I'm wondering if I can just hunt down enough of them that I can piece the rest together myself.
All things considered, this seems a weirdly fitting way to learn it.
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Logged into my online banking to be greeted by a notification about an "unusual transaction". It was today's vet visit.
Yes. It was unusual. It was also entirely legit, but thanks.
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As a side note: I sent my parents a text asking if we could borrow $X to hold us over until next pay day. My mother replied by saying that she'd "accidentally" sent $(X + Y) and to spend the extra as we see fit. We have a tiny bit of breathing room again.
She is amazing, and I am so fortunate to have family who are able to help out in an emergency. It's not lost on me that many don't.
Benny (our cat) was under the weather yesterday so we took him to the vet. We went home with some meds and general optimism. He seemed to perk up later in the day.
This morning he's super lethargic and uninterested in his food. Which is super not like him. Have another appointment with the vet in an hour and a half.
Not only am I stressed out about the cat, but I'm also stressed about the added financial burden of two unexpected vet visits (and I feel like an asshole about the latter).
We'll figure it out, but if the universe could cut us some slack for like five minutes, that'd be great.
Edit: typo
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I've run into a snag with an sqlite database I've been working on. Below is a simplified example of the problem.
Suppose I have the following table:
CREATE TABLE "prices" (
"id" INTEGER NOT NULL UNIQUE,
"name" TEXT NOT NULL UNIQUE,
"list_price" NUMERIC NOT NULL,
"sale_price" NUMERIC,
"tax_rate" NUMERIC NOT NULL,
PRIMARY KEY("id" AUTOINCREMENT)
);Is there a way to do something like the following?
SELECT
name,
CASE
WHEN sale_price IS NULL
THEN list_price
ELSE sale_price
END AS price,
price * tax_rate AS tax
FROM prices;The
tax column doesn't seem to acknowledge the price column's existence, presumably because it's a column in the query rather than the source table. I could re-implement the CASE logic for the tax field, but that feels inelegant and error-prone.Is there a better way to do this?
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WITH to do it in two steps:WITH pre_price AS (
SELECT
name,
CASE WHEN sale_price IS NULL
THEN list_price
ELSE sale_price END
AS price,
tax_rate FROM prices
)
SELECT
name,
price,
price * tax_rate AS tax
FROM pre_price;
Email: "Hey, we noticed you were in our store looking at stuff and didn't check out"
Hey, I noticed you do a lot of creepy tracking shit you shouldn't be doing and seem to think that following window shoppers home and yelling WHY DIDN'T YOU BUY at their house is somehow a good business model
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... I was supposed to be a lot of things. 😬
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“you’re a smart kid, but…” from teachers.
I even responded once with “how would you know if I never do the work?”, which I don’t think was appreciated. 😬
A text I just sent to my mother (presented with no context):
It's sometimes tricky that my wife and mother have very similar looking names and are alphabetically right next to eachother in my contacts. It's astonishing that that hasn't led to more embarrassing mistakes.
Okay, I'm calling uncle.
I've exported the data from the LibreOffice Base database I've been working on to an SQLite file, and I'm just going to write a proper UI for it.
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I'm planning a video a few weeks from now talking about "I switched to Linux and enjoy it."
If you've switched to Linux *in the last year*, do you have any uplifting stories you'd like featured to help my viewers?
Message me here, or via email at explainer(at)vkc(dot)sh.
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I am currently doing the switch, started two weeks ago! I had tried dualbooting years ago, but now I'm serious.
I've tried some options a bit, including Kubuntu, Pop_OS! and Ubuntu MATE.
I was impressed with how easy it was to connect a graphic Wacom tablet! I did not like random crashes in system settings, especially with translations.
I have liked Cinnamon DE the most, and will be installing Mint next. I like how it just works, but I can still easily customize it to fit my needs.
Katy and I like to watch psychological thrillers from time to time, but I've noticed a recurring trope that confuses me. It goes like this: Psychopath lives in an outwardly normal looking house, but has a secret passage to a secret murder basement.
Who built this? Am I to believe he excavated the earth, poured the concrete, ran the (usually admittedly shoddy) electrical himself? Did no contractor at any point ever think to themselves: "this doesn't seem right. Perhaps I should alert the authorities?"
Edit: typo
Edit: I'm an idiot who confused diameter with circumference for some reason. Embarrassing original post follows.
Was playing around a bit with the OpenWeatherMap API. I wanted to know how precise I needed to be with the latitude & longitude values, so I decided to do some quick calculations.
To get a rough idea, I wanted to determine how much a change of one degree of latitude would move in kilometers. I knew the diameter of the earth was something fairly close to 40,000 km but wanted to verify that factoid. I did a quick duckduckgo search, and the top three results (on seemingly separate web sites) all said 12,756 km. In fact one of them hilariously said 12.756 km.
I assume this is the result of LLMs filling the internet with crap, but it's alarming that if I didn't know any better, I'd have just blindly accepted this as fact.
12.756 km may be a locale difference; if the site wasn't US or UK-based the decimal might be the thousands separator.
the diameter of the earth was something fairly close to 40,000 km
s/diameter/circumference/?
Fine, I'll watch #wwdc24 to see what everyone's been talking about.
Before a few hours ago, I didn't even realize it was happening.
Today I booked an appointment with my optometrist to get my eyes checked. A few hours later I checked the (postal) mail to find a reminder card from them.
I was shocked at how quick the mail was, only to realize it was just a generic reminder that I was due for an eye exam. It was pure coincidence.
Okay, I'm just going to say it because amazingly enough, some people don't seem to get this.
Just because I'm critical of Israel bombing hospitals in Palestine doesn't mean I'm pro-Hamas. I'm not.
It frustrates me that this is a thing that even needs to be said.
Edit: typo
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Jonathan Lamothe
in reply to Jonathan Lamothe • •I found this article, which brings me a little closer to understanding, but:
How in the hell did they arrive at those values?
Jonathan Lamothe
in reply to Jonathan Lamothe • •I mean, I get why it would need to contain an x^3, but is finding a modulus that works just a matter of trial and error until one lands on one that works, or is there a way to calculate this?
If the former, how did Galois work out that it's always possible to do for any power of a prime?
Matthew Skala
in reply to Jonathan Lamothe • • •Sensitive content
I think the polynomials that work are irreducible polynomials - the ones that can't be factored into smaller pieces. In that way they are analogous to prime numbers.
So just like GF(p) works for p=2, 7, 23, other prime numbers, but not 12 (which isn't a prime number), GF(2^3) works for a polynomial that is like a prime in the sense it can't be factored, and not for a polynomial that can be factored over GF(2).
There is some trial and error involved just as with finding prime numbers.
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in reply to Matthew Skala • •Guy Geens
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