Posts

Outsourcing Remy

-
In a previous post  from 2023, I discussed our shifting roles from producers to consumers and how it's effect might be that it would turn humans desensitized to new information, making us value knowledge less than we should. It's 2026 and I am glad to report that we have successfully devalued information (yay!).       Remy, the mythical rat that sits in our heads and juggles information and puppets our day-to-day, is now overstimulated, tired, and inefficient at its job.  So what should we do with Remy? A few folks suggest that a solution is to outsource Remy to a machine, for we cannot tolerate such inefficiency in our lives and machines can work all the time. The entire pipeline for how we process information and regulate our lives can then be dictated by a machine. Unlike Remy, this machine has one major flaw—it lies. It is also privately owned, power-hungry, and comes with a substantial subscription fee. The CEO of the company denies any of th...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Ralph Wiggum technique

-
I came across this technique when reading this wall street journal article -   Our AI Future Is Already Here, It’s Just Not Evenly Distributed .   "Ralph is a Bash loop" The Ralph Wiggum technique is an iterative AI development methodology. In its purest form, it's a simple while loop that repeatedly feeds an AI agent a prompt until completion. Named after The Simpsons character, it embodies the philosophy of persistent iteration despite setbacks.   - Source: awesomeclaude 
Post a Comment
Read more

Visualizing standing waves in a microwave

-
Image
  Here’s a fun little experiment that anyone can conduct at home with a chocolate bar and a microwave oven. Remove turntable from microwave (the plate that rotates) Take a chocolate bar on a plate and place it inside microwave. Heat for for 30-60 seconds on high. You will notice that the chocolate would have melted in some regions and not in others (see image above) . But don’t worry this is supposed to happen                                                  Source   A microwave works by setting up a standing wave inside it. The size of the oven is chosen so that the peaks and troughs of the reflected microwaves line up with the incoming waves and form a “standing wave”. The above is a 1D analog of a standing wave, but a 2D standing wave looks like so: And there are nodes and anti-notes in three dimensions throughout the entire oven. At...
Post a Comment
Read more

Finding n roots of unity

-
Image
  This leads to Quantization of θ  because there are only specific values that become possible for  θ  when we impose that after n rotations it has to return back to its same starting point. ** And the following are those values: The problem of finding the values of θ for given values of n is more generally known as the N roots of unity.   We will leave it as an exercise, but the following animation plots all the possible the values of θ for integer values of n=2,3,4,.. from the above equation that we found:                             Source And those are the roots of the equation z^n  = z i.e if you start at these points on the unit circle and make n rotations you will get back to the same point that you started with. Have a good one! ** A more physical way to think about this is matching boundary conditions. ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Observations from Lick Observatory,2018

-
Image
Below are some of the images from the observations made at the Lick Observatory using the Nickel Telescope during October 2018. (1) - M1 (Crab Nebula) (2) - M15 (3) - M16 (Eagle Nebula- Pillars of Creation) (4)&(5) - M17  (Omega Nebula) (6) - M42 (Orion Nebula) (7) - NGC6563 (Cat’s Eye Nebula) (8) - NGC7662 (Snowball Nebula)        
Post a Comment
Read more

Expansion of Crab Nebula (M1)

-
Image
    Waaay back in 1054, a star in the constellation Tauras exploded in a dramatic fashion. The remnant of that massive explosion (supernova) is what we now call the Crab Nebula. But as a result of the explosion, the nebula is still expanding at a rate of over 1,000 kilometers per second. The above gif comparing the nebula in 1950 vs what it was in 1990 is one of the most epic ways to illustrate that fact.  
Post a Comment
Read more

Earth holds an elite status in the solar system

-
Image
It can be casual to forget the magnificence of our planet and get lost in our tight-knit everyday lives. In the advent of a lunar eclipse (January 31, 2018 )  it is worth knowing that when it comes to eclipses, Earth holds a pristine status in our solar system.  To understand why, we need to shift our perspective a little bit and ask -”How would it be like if you were on Io (one of the moons of Jupiter) ?”                                            Image source : Deviant art The most startling thing about this experience would be that the Jupiter would appear 36 times larger than the full moon (from earth).  That’s HUGE!   Also since the moons of Jupiter lies in the same plane, you would be witnessing an eclipse every 42 hours …                   Moons - Io, Ganymede, and Callisto in solar eclipse In ...
Post a Comment
Read more