Cryptic genetic variation in software: hunting a buffered 41-year-old bug
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Cryptic genetic variation in software: hunting a buffered 41-year-old bug
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Re: Cryptic genetic variation in software: hunting a buffered 41-year-old bug
#2(Also posted 20 hours ago, also no comments.) (It occurs to me that if there are ever comments on this post, my comment will sound really confusing: let it be clear that this article is #1 currently, was posted 40 minutes ago, and there are no comments yet. ;P)
Re: Cryptic genetic variation in software: hunting a buffered 41-year-old bug
#3(Also posted 20 hours ago, also no comments.) (It occurs to me that if there are ever comments on this post, my comment will sound really confusing: let it be clear that this article is #1 currently, was posted 40 minutes ago, and there are no comments yet. ;P) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8453042
Well, this article is so thorough, detailed and well-written, that I don't know what to say other than "Wow, that was cool and very interesting!".
More stories like that?
Re: Cryptic genetic variation in software: hunting a buffered 41-year-old bug
#4That was a really interesting read, and very well written. I wonder if anyone can clear this up though...
I find the terminology of open and closed intervals contradictory to their meaning. Does anyone know why they are described like this?
`Closed` makes me think shut or not-including - however it includes its endpoints. `Open` makes me think inclusive - yet does not include its endpoints.
Re: Cryptic genetic variation in software: hunting a buffered 41-year-old bug
#5(Also posted 20 hours ago, also no comments.) (It occurs to me that if there are ever comments on this post, my comment will sound really confusing: let it be clear that this article is #1 currently, was posted 40 minutes ago, and there are no comments yet. ;P) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8453042
Well, this article is so thorough, detailed and well-written, that I don't know what to say other than "Wow, that was cool and very interesting!". More stories like that?
Agreed; technical articles such as this can't come up often enough for my tastes.
I've never used ranlib; I hope the documentation can be cleaned up at least. On the other hand, anyone who has read A Deepness in the Sky will surely feel that it is unlikely in the long term.
Re: Cryptic genetic variation in software: hunting a buffered 41-year-old bug
#6That was a really interesting read, and very well written. I wonder if anyone can clear this up though... I find the terminology of open and closed intervals contradictory to their meaning. Does anyone know why they are described like this? `Closed` makes me think shut or not-including - however it includes its endpoints. `Open` makes me think inclusive - yet does not include its endpoints.
The analogy I've always used is that the closed interval has what amounts to a lid or a cap on it, while the open interval does not. Another (sort of related) way of looking at it is that the closed interval has a maximum (or minimum) value, whereas the open interval, despite only missing a single value, suddenly has this feeling of continuation, because without that final value it now asymptotes to the end and you will always be able to find a larger (or smaller) value than any previous value you examine.
Re: Cryptic genetic variation in software: hunting a buffered 41-year-old bug
#7It would be safest for most rand() functions to omit both zero and one, unless a user was really sure they wanted otherwise. If we were generating real numbers, we'd never see precisely zero or one. The fact that we do is an artifact of limited precision. These boundary cases cause problems in common computations like u.log(u) or (1-u).log(1-u).
Re: Cryptic genetic variation in software: hunting a buffered 41-year-old bug
#8That was a really interesting read, and very well written. I wonder if anyone can clear this up though... I find the terminology of open and closed intervals contradictory to their meaning. Does anyone know why they are described like this? `Closed` makes me think shut or not-including - however it includes its endpoints. `Open` makes me think inclusive - yet does not include its endpoints.
The analogy I've always used is that the closed interval has what amounts to a lid or a cap on it, while the open interval does not. Another (sort of related) way of looking at it is that the closed interval has a maximum (or minimum) value, whereas the open interval, despite only missing a single value, suddenly has this feeling of continuation, because without that final value it now asymptotes to the end and you w…
Thanks saurik, I think I understand that way of thinking.
With a closed interval it eventually return a bound instead of getting smaller/larger - continuing.
Re: Cryptic genetic variation in software: hunting a buffered 41-year-old bug
#9That was a really interesting read, and very well written. I wonder if anyone can clear this up though... I find the terminology of open and closed intervals contradictory to their meaning. Does anyone know why they are described like this? `Closed` makes me think shut or not-including - however it includes its endpoints. `Open` makes me think inclusive - yet does not include its endpoints.
The analogy I've always used is that the closed interval has what amounts to a lid or a cap on it, while the open interval does not. Another (sort of related) way of looking at it is that the closed interval has a maximum (or minimum) value, whereas the open interval, despite only missing a single value, suddenly has this feeling of continuation, because without that final value it now asymptotes to the end and you w…
The so-called "french notation" is interesting and — I think — clearer: a closed interval is [a, b] and an open interval is ]a, b[.
Re: Cryptic genetic variation in software: hunting a buffered 41-year-old bug
#10That was a really interesting read, and very well written. I wonder if anyone can clear this up though... I find the terminology of open and closed intervals contradictory to their meaning. Does anyone know why they are described like this? `Closed` makes me think shut or not-including - however it includes its endpoints. `Open` makes me think inclusive - yet does not include its endpoints.
It's a good question. A close reading of the Wikipedia page " rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interval_%28mathematics%29#Ter... tells me that an open interval has no definite maximum or minimum.
This no doubt sounds strange, but it surely comes down to the slightly odd behavior of real numbers. In an open interval like (0, 1), there is no single real number which is less than one but is greater than all other real numbers less than one. (Proof by Cantor's diagonal: write out a list of all such numbers and you can always construct another which wasn't on the list, even when the list is infinite.) In contrast, the closed interval [0, 1] has a definite maximum element, the number 1.
This seems like a good example of poor UX in mathematics; the terms are too similar and can only be learned by memorization, the notations likewise. Good luck changing it though; Wikipedia informs me that there are no less than two ISO standards codifying it.
There is a perfectly clear notation in the Wikipedia page, however: (a,b) = {x∈ℝ|a<x<b}; [a,b] = {x∈ℝ|a≤x≤b}