Hey, they did it! People have known for a long time that in 4 dimensions you can pack equal-sized balls so that each touches 24 others. In 2008 someone showed that's the best you can do. But in April this year, three mathematicians showed there's essentially just 𝑜𝑛𝑒 𝑤𝑎𝑦 you can accomplish this!

This way is easy to describe. Take the points whose coordinates are all integers, together with those whose coordinates are all integers plus 1/2. Use each of these points as the center of a ball of radius 1/2. Then each ball touches 24 others. This pattern is called the 𝗗𝟰 𝗹𝗮𝘁𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗲.

The new result shows that if you pack equal-sized balls in 4 dimensions so that each touches 24 others, you're 𝑓𝑜𝑟𝑐𝑒𝑑 to create a version of the D4 lattice - possibly rotated, translated and/or rescaled.

This sort of thing is hard to show: it took a lot of fancy math and two weeks of calculation on a standard desktop computer. I believe only other dimensions where we know a result like this are 1, 2, 8 and 24. In dimension 3 it's just false: you can pack equal-sized balls so that each touches 12 others, and this is the best you can do, but there are uncountably many different ways to do it!

arxiv.org/abs/2404.18794

Optimality and uniqueness of the $D_4$ root system

We prove that the $D_4$ root system (the set of vertices of the regular $24$-cell) is the unique optimal kissing configuration in $\mathbb R^4$, and is an optimal spherical code.

^arXiv.org

I'm a little puzzled at the salience that is being given to the Apple conclusions on #LLM #reasoning when we have lots of prior art. For example: LLMs cannot correctly infer a is b, if their corpora only contain b is a. #Paper: arxiv.org/abs/2309.12288

#AI #MachineLearning #logic

The Reversal Curse: LLMs trained on "A is B" fail to learn "B is A"

We expose a surprising failure of generalization in auto-regressive large language models (LLMs). If a model is trained on a sentence of the form "A is B", it will not automatically generalize to the reverse direction "B is A".

^arXiv.org

Remember this? Where ministers belonging to the biggest party in government were hellbent on deporting a sick child before his application could be approved but their coalition partners effectively vetoed it meaning the kid and his family got asylum?

ruv.is/english/2024-10-09-yaza…

Well, it’s looking like this pissed that party’s MPs off to such an extent that the government has collapsed, meaning we’re about to have an election about the same time as the Americans.

Yazan and family receive asylum in Iceland - RÚV.is

Yazan Tamimi and his parents received asylum in Iceland yesterday. Last month they were scheduled to be forcibly removed to Spain, but the Minister of Justice stopped the deportation after an intervention by the Minister of Social Affairs.

^RÚV

The last time I made a video about #Ableton, it was to do with Note, their iOS music-making app.
This video is an Ableton-first, in which I bring you their newest piece of hardware, #AbletonMove.
It ships with a web-based screen-reader and I've been enjoying it for many months.
It uses sounds from Note, but in a hardware form.
32 poly-aftertouch pads, four tracks of midi (or samples,) 8 knobs, USB-C for power and controlling Ableton Live and a USB-A port for connecting class-compliant midi devices, should you wish to trigger it from a keyboard.

Please be advised that screen-reader support is currently an experimental feature and is not fully fleshed out.
Not all aspects of the experience are as desired and there are a few kinks, but it is very much better than nothing whatsoever, and I am extremely thankful to the team that made this possible.

Ableton themselves are not talking about this screen-reader function in any of their literature, but I think it's important enough that it deserves recognition, and to bring an accessible groove-box to blind people in this way.

#InspiredBySound - Let's Move! (Ableton Move Accessibility Overview) youtu.be/p8IbinbOhY4
#Accessibility #ScreenReader

Sensitive content Reveal/hide

Kia, Hyundai, Tesla... Vorsicht, was man im Auto sagt (oder "macht")!

Australien: Auto-Hersteller geben biometrische Daten der Kunden an Dritte weiter
netzpolitik.org/2024/australie…

Máme na prodej dvě grafické karty AMD SAPPHIRE RX 5700 XT OC 8GB a Sapphire RX 5700 Pulse XT OC 8GB.

Dále máme ještě dva modely grafických karet od nVidia k prodeji na skladě. Na prodej je MSI GTX 1660 Super Ventus a MSI GTX 1660 Super GAMING X vše 6GB.

Záruka na odzkoušení 7 dní!

Cena dohodou = pište na info@kryptoguru.cz a nebo zde zprávu.

#kryptoguru #gpu #mining

I just remembered this amateur music recording project that I was part of early in the pandemic, a cover of "We Are the Champions" by Queen: youtube.com/watch?v=Iq_25V5aLB… We all recorded our parts at home, then someone mixed it together. My voice is the first one. Note: There are about 10 seconds of silence at the beginning.

Yes, this kind of virtual collaboration has been done many times before, and often better. But I was part of this one.

Vaultwarden: Bezpečný správce hesel pro každého
arch-linux.cz/878-2/

#Aplikace #vaultwarden #opensource

There is a global need for us to stand up for our #RightToRide. Here is a message I just sent to Uber, which explains what we just went through tonight.

I am blind and use a white cane. My wife is also blind and is accompanied by a guide dog.
This evening, we enjoyed dinner with friends, and upon leaving the restaurant, used the Uber app to request a ride home.
The driver pulled up almost immediately, but I still sent a text to him to let him know that my wife and I are blind and that she was traveling with a guide dog. I asked the driver if he could assist us to his vehicle.
One of my friends has some useable vision, and was able to direct us to the vehicle. The driver told my friend that he wasn’t going to take us and that we had to call Uber pet. All of us explained calmly and clearly that guide dogs were not pets, that it was illegal for him to refuse to carry us.
The driver did not believe us. He kept insisting we must use Uber Pet, or Uber Assist. At this point, I explained the process as I understood it. That if he drove away in breach of the law, we would notify Uber. Uber would begin an investigation which would result in the driver being barred from the platform pending that investigation, and possible further training.
At this point, I was videoing the exchange on my phone for evidence, which I may yet still provide to the media. The driver continued to insist that he wasn’t required to transport us. I indicated that since he was breaking the law, we also had the option to call the police.
As I am tired of having my civil rights violated by Uber drivers in this way, I calmly advised the driver that I was going to sit in the vehicle while my friends called the police. I explained that while in it, I would also seek to raise assistance from someone at Uber.
At this point, he said, “OK, I’ll take you”. I didn’t feel particularly safe, but I advised my wife that we were no longer being refused a ride and that she should get into the back of the vehicle with her guide dog.
During the ride home, the driver was courteous and I think curious, but he continued to insist that he wasn’t required to take us, that he was only doing so out of sympathy for us because we are blind. I took the opportunity to educate, to explain how well trained guide dogs are. He asked what functions guide dogs performed and we explained them to him. But he kept insisting that Uber had told him that disabled people with dogs should use Uber Assist or Uber Pet. For the record, we used Uber X because a driver was nearby and it was raining heavily.
To add insult to injury, because of the altercation which took several minutes, we have been charged extra for the ordeal we endured.
Clearly, something is seriously deficient in terms of the way Uber trains and onboards its drivers. Blind people should not be made to feel like they are liars, and have to take action to prevent the vehicle from leaving the scene so the police can get involved, just to get home from a night out.
Drivers must know the law, and Uber must take responsibility for ensuring drivers are aware of the law and comply with it.
This was a deeply distressing, upsetting conclusion to what was a pleasant night. We should be able to enjoy a night out without it ending like this.

FediNuke/tier0.csv transparency update:

I override-added an instance to FediNuke using my documented override process.

feministwiki.org (subdomain “fedi.”): I blocked this on envs back in June proactively after it was automatically queued for manual review. The decision was easy, given the blatant transmisia on their root domain.

Since then, additional receipts have cropped up and they’ve been blocked by enough bias sources for me to do the override process. I added it to my shared lists, inc. FediNuke. Receipts on my receipt archive.

Severity is on par with the likes of spinster.xyz.

#FediNuke

Sensitive content Reveal/hide