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Computer Scientists Break Traveling Salesperson Record

quantamagazine.org

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Re: Computer Scientists Break Traveling Salesperson Record

#111

Post by rsynnott »

mattigames wrote: post #109
jfk13 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shakespeare might like a word... (Alternatively: then why don't we have separate words for black actors, white actors, native American actors, south-east Asian actors, transgender actors, and so on?)

So the path forward is to use "male actors" and "female actors" instead of actors and actresses? Doesn't appear to be a net positive for society, is just making them longer to write and pronounce.

Or, just... actors? Like, most of the time when you talk about an actor the gender isn’t that relevant.

Re: Computer Scientists Break Traveling Salesperson Record

#112

Post by rsynnott »

gotoeleven wrote: post #88
X6S1x6Okd1st wrote: post #28

For people that want to argue about salesperson vs salesman you may be comforted to know that you don't need to, it's already being done! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Travelling_salesman_probl...

It reminds me of when at some point in the 90s everyone decided to stick it to jesus by changing B.C. to B.C.E.

> In 1856, Rabbi and historian Morris Jacob Raphall used the abbreviations CE and BCE in his book Post-Biblical History of The Jews

Older than you’d think.

Re: Computer Scientists Break Traveling Salesperson Record

#113

Post by mattigames »

rsynnott wrote: post #111
mattigames wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the path forward is to use "male actors" and "female actors" instead of actors and actresses? Doesn't appear to be a net positive for society, is just making them longer to write and pronounce.

Or, just... actors? Like, most of the time when you talk about an actor the gender isn’t that relevant.

I disagree, it's extremely common to ask "what was the actress in that movie we just saw?" (so it's clear they are not asking about the male protagonist) or for awards "who you think is gonna be the best actress this year?" or for castings "what actress your think should be casted for the new remake of Romeo and Juliet?"

Re: Computer Scientists Break Traveling Salesperson Record

#114

Post by rsynnott »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #73
Jabbles wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not inappropriate to use "actress" yet. But consider that we used to have the word "doctoress" to refer to a female doctor. Using that feels weird.

Never heard of the word doctoress...

It’s a real word, but archaic.

For an even weirder example, see ‘priestess’. No-one ever refers to modern female priests as priestesses, but historians often refer to, say, female priests in Ancient Rome as priestesses. On the other hand, historians never use the term ‘doctress’ for archaic female doctors.

Re: Computer Scientists Break Traveling Salesperson Record

#115

Post by rsynnott »

mattigames wrote: post #113
rsynnott wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or, just... actors? Like, most of the time when you talk about an actor the gender isn’t that relevant.

I disagree, it's extremely common to ask "what was the actress in that movie we just saw?" (so it's clear they are not asking about the male protagonist) or for awards "who you think is gonna be the best actress this year?" or for castings "what actress your think should be casted for the new remake of Romeo and Juliet?"

“Who was that actress in Sex and the City?”

This level of specificity probably only works for media in which there’s only one main female character.

Re: Computer Scientists Break Traveling Salesperson Record

#116

Post by jquery »

kats wrote: post #29

> proved that an algorithm devised a decade ago beats Christofides’ 50% factor, though they were only able to subtract 0.2 billionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a percent. That is 0.0000000000000000000000000000000002% better than the existing solution.

That’s might be all they were able to prove, although in practice the results may be much better.

Re: Computer Scientists Break Traveling Salesperson Record

#117

Post by celdon25 »

jk700 wrote: post #104
dang wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've banned this account for taking HN threads repeatedly into gender flamewar, and other kinds of flamewar, and ignoring our many requests to stop—such as this explanation from just two weeks ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24569144 . Vandalizing HN like this is not cool.

Except maybe for current comment (not really, HN just has more replies on anything these days), nothing actually turned into flamewars, most out of his few "flamewar" comments over many months barely had any replies at all and were just flagged. It seems you are labeling them as flamewar just so you could justify banning him. Possibly because he expressed opinions you consider "politically incorrect" today and you wa…

>Also you can't claim he ignored your many requests to stop, because you never made a single request to stop what can be interpreted the same way by both of you, he probably thought he followed them. Again, you were using this as manufactured justification to ban him.

One could attempt to make this same argument over virtually any ban ever. There doesn't need to be a reason in my opinion. HN has never allowed freedom to express any opinion you want. A pattern of unpopular opinions tends to result in an automatic hellban, for example.

Re: Computer Scientists Break Traveling Salesperson Record

#118

Post by tclancy »

thursday0987 wrote: post #44
D-Coder wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> yeah you're going to need to provide a source for such a ridiculous claim. My grandmother has owned her house for much longer than that. Maybe not mortgages but this article from 2013: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/25-years-since-women-need_b_4... "25 Years Since Women Needed a Male Co-Signer". (Link should end "b_4164299".)

the link you provided is talking about business loans, not mortages. the original claim was "women couldn't even sign a mortgage in the US in the 70s". that is a false claim.

If you’ve decided to die on this particular hill, you will need to show the title.

Re: Computer Scientists Break Traveling Salesperson Record

#119

Post by robohoe »

pkaye wrote: post #90
MaxBarraclough wrote: post #84

> able to subtract 0.2 billionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a percent ... > “This is a result I have wanted all my career,” said David Williamson of Cornell University, who has been studying the traveling salesperson problem since the 1980s I love this. Oh to be a theoretician. Here's hoping for a flood of further improvements.

Meanwhile in an agile dev team.... "can you optimize it in the next sprint?"

Lately it feels like agile is where innovation goes to die :(

Re: Computer Scientists Break Traveling Salesperson Record

#120

Post by chottocharaii »

r0ze-at-hn wrote: post #82
molticrystal wrote: post #49

While it is wonderful they are getting closer to solving it, if your problem is a simple and practical you can try some alternative algorithms. For fun, I used pytspsa [0] which uses the simulated annealing method to solve the TSP and applied it to BOTW. Simulated annealing was inspired by thermodynamic free energy involved in crystal formation from annealing metal. [1] I combined it with a Breath of the Wild waypoin…

Looking at the BOTW solution is doesn't seem to take into account the fact that a straight line is not the fastest solution. Climbing is incredibly slow, swimming is slow and perilous, in some places such as the dark forest you can only enter/exit in one place, not randomly, you can travel faster on roads. I guess later in the game one doesn't mind randomly walking right by the castle just because it is the shortest…

Hey man, this is just a person’s fun and imaginative side project. Is there a reason you’re offering such serious and negative critical commentary on this?
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