New Comic Thread - Jan 4, 2010

SabreMau

As far as edits go, they're always best when they're unexpected, or presented with a good twist. To be a Punchline of the Year, you really should catch the readers by surprise.

Henroid

Tossrock wrote: »

Tycho in the newspost wrote:

It is densely packed with juicy seeds, arranged by nature in a mathematically optimal fashion.

Not quite, Tycho! Nature falls victim to the local optima problem, leading to non-optimal solutions. Imagine a rock rolling down a mountain that gets trapped in a crevice. Local optima problems are why you can't use soap bubbles "solving" Steiner trees to prove P=NP.

I'm glad we had this talk.

What the fuck are you on about?

SabreMau

Science.

Zek

i'm already ashamed of myself

juice for jesus

Punchline of the year for me was "And I argue about PROUST!" Still makes me chuckle.

Henroid

Please tell me how you did that.

Umaro

So far so good, but just in case, I'm not going to ever click on this thread again.

Phonehand

the last few have been shit

UNPLEASED

Tossrock

Henroid wrote: »

Tossrock wrote: »

Tycho in the newspost wrote:

It is densely packed with juicy seeds, arranged by nature in a mathematically optimal fashion.

Not quite, Tycho! Nature falls victim to the local optima problem, leading to non-optimal solutions. Imagine a rock rolling down a mountain that gets trapped in a crevice. Local optima problems are why you can't use soap bubbles "solving" Steiner trees to prove P=NP.

I'm glad we had this talk.

What the fuck are you on about?

Well, in his metaphor, Tycho describes upcoming game releases as being like the weighty bits collecting at the end of a centrifuge; juicy seeds, to be precise. However, he also asserts that they are arranged by nature in an optimal fashion, which isn't quite correct. The arrangement of seeds in a centrifuge vial would be equivalent to the bin packing problem, which is NP hard. The arranging nature does is heuristic, usually leading to a "good enough" solution, but is vulnerable to the local optima problem:



In this case, the seeds could fall in an arrangement where movement in any direction would be less densely packed, but not true maximum density. Any further centrifuging would not help overcome this, just as pushing down on the rock harder would not move it further down the slope. So, it's incorrect to say that the arrangement given by nature would be mathematically optimal.

Back on the subject of NP hardness, people have tried to prove P=NP with the clever notion that soap bubbles spanning pegs connecting two plates tend to reach the optimum solution (and thus solving the Steiner tree problem for that set of points), and because physical processes are computable in P, P must therefore equal NP. Of course, the problem is that soap bubbles are also vulnerable to local optima, and for large numbers of pegs, they don't always find the real optimum solution. Centrifuging seeds to solve the bin packing problem is the same; it comes up with a good solution, but not necessarily the mathematically optimal solution.

And now, the joke is dead.

Brolo

Tossrock wrote: »

Henroid wrote: »

Tossrock wrote: »

Tycho in the newspost wrote:

It is densely packed with juicy seeds, arranged by nature in a mathematically optimal fashion.

Not quite, Tycho! Nature falls victim to the local optima problem, leading to non-optimal solutions. Imagine a rock rolling down a mountain that gets trapped in a crevice. Local optima problems are why you can't use soap bubbles "solving" Steiner trees to prove P=NP.

I'm glad we had this talk.

What the fuck are you on about?

Well, in his metaphor, Tycho describes upcoming game releases as being like the weighty bits collecting at the end of a centrifuge; juicy seeds, to be precise. However, he also asserts that they are arranged by nature in an optimal fashion, which isn't quite correct. The arrangement of seeds in a centrifuge vial would be equivalent to the bin packing problem, which is NP hard. The arranging nature does is heuristic, usually leading to a "good enough" solution, but is vulnerable to the local optima problem:



In this case, the seeds could fall in an arrangement where movement in any direction would be less densely packed, but not true maximum density. Any further centrifuging would not help overcome this, just as pushing down on the rock harder would not move it further down the slope. So, it's incorrect to say that the arrangement given by nature would be mathematically optimal.

Back on the subject of NP hardness, people have tried to prove P=NP with the clever notion that soap bubbles spanning pegs connecting two plates tend to reach the optimum solution (and thus solving the Steiner tree problem for that set of points), and because physical processes are computable in P, P must therefore equal NP. Of course, the problem is that soap bubbles are also vulnerable to local optima, and for large numbers of pegs, they don't always find the real optimum solution. Centrifuging seeds to solve the bin packing problem is the same; it comes up with a good solution, but not necessarily the mathematically optimal solution.

And now, the joke is dead.

Tossrock have you been to http://themathroom.wordpress.com/

Also Tycho is right about the amount of best of 2009 things being fucking annoying.

modisch

Any chance someone can link to the original comics... at least for panel 1 and 3. I recognize the "My diiiiick" but can't remember what it's from... same with the Scrotuum.

Bad memory is bad.

Brolo

modisch wrote: »

Any chance someone can link to the original comics... at least for panel 1 and 3. I recognize the "My diiiiick" but can't remember what it's from... same with the Scrotuum.

Bad memory is bad.

None of those were from actual comics.

Brolo

Rolo wrote: »

modisch wrote: »

Any chance someone can link to the original comics... at least for panel 1 and 3. I recognize the "My diiiiick" but can't remember what it's from... same with the Scrotuum.

Bad memory is bad.

None of those were from actual comics.

Or I suppose all of them actually were from an original comic, but not in the way you were implying.

SabreMau

modisch wrote: »

Any chance someone can link to the original comics... at least for panel 1 and 3. I recognize the "My diiiiick" but can't remember what it's from... same with the Scrotuum.

Bad memory is bad.

Wait, you recognize where panel 2 is from?

Lord Dave

modisch wrote: »

Any chance someone can link to the original comics... at least for panel 1 and 3. I recognize the "My diiiiick" but can't remember what it's from... same with the Scrotuum.

Bad memory is bad.

1:

2:

3:

KalTorak

I remember Tycho mentioning "unprotected sects" and "the Scrotus" in the podcast as unused funny bits. Clearly the spoken word failed me - I wondered why "unprotected sex" was funny on its own.

Cold Salmon and Hatred

how did i not notice the the the the the the until my 4th read-through

Brolo

Cold Salmon and Hatred wrote: »

how did i not notice the the the the the the until my 4th read-through

what

Lucky Cynic

"We are the the Scrotuum."

Brolo

not seeing it

SabreMau

Futore

THOSE LAZY SONS OF BITCHES

SabreMau

Rolo wrote: »

not seeing it

Recent change. I saw it too, until I hit F5 and it disappeared. Cached version.

Tossrock

Rolo wrote: »

Tossrock wrote: »

Henroid wrote: »

Tossrock wrote: »

Tycho in the newspost wrote:

It is densely packed with juicy seeds, arranged by nature in a mathematically optimal fashion.

Not quite, Tycho! Nature falls victim to the local optima problem, leading to non-optimal solutions. Imagine a rock rolling down a mountain that gets trapped in a crevice. Local optima problems are why you can't use soap bubbles "solving" Steiner trees to prove P=NP.

I'm glad we had this talk.

What the fuck are you on about?

Well, in his metaphor, Tycho describes upcoming game releases as being like the weighty bits collecting at the end of a centrifuge; juicy seeds, to be precise. However, he also asserts that they are arranged by nature in an optimal fashion, which isn't quite correct. The arrangement of seeds in a centrifuge vial would be equivalent to the bin packing problem, which is NP hard. The arranging nature does is heuristic, usually leading to a "good enough" solution, but is vulnerable to the local optima problem:



In this case, the seeds could fall in an arrangement where movement in any direction would be less densely packed, but not true maximum density. Any further centrifuging would not help overcome this, just as pushing down on the rock harder would not move it further down the slope. So, it's incorrect to say that the arrangement given by nature would be mathematically optimal.

Back on the subject of NP hardness, people have tried to prove P=NP with the clever notion that soap bubbles spanning pegs connecting two plates tend to reach the optimum solution (and thus solving the Steiner tree problem for that set of points), and because physical processes are computable in P, P must therefore equal NP. Of course, the problem is that soap bubbles are also vulnerable to local optima, and for large numbers of pegs, they don't always find the real optimum solution. Centrifuging seeds to solve the bin packing problem is the same; it comes up with a good solution, but not necessarily the mathematically optimal solution.

And now, the joke is dead.

Tossrock have you been to http://themathroom.wordpress.com/

Also Tycho is right about the amount of best of 2009 things being fucking annoying.

I saw some of them posted in the webcomics thread but I hadn't been to the site

the cheat

i don't even know what to think.

L|ama

Rolo wrote: »

not seeing it

First panel. Two 'the's. And now 'the' has turned into a nonsense word for me. Oh wait, now it has meaning again. Weird.

For some reason that error is very rarely picked up when reading things.

Tube

...there aren't two "the"s in the panel

AMP'd

SabreMau wrote: »

Science.

Ligation marks!

Futore

Tube, click the link that Sabremau put up

SabreMau

It was there originally, and now it's fixed, and it'll still be fixed by the time it goes in the book version.

Speaking of book version, I only just now noticed there's a hardcover PA book out next month. Apparently it's been known about for almost a year, but not known by me.

Wolfrider

So the hot girl from Dante's Inferno gets blurred out, but the scrotum man with the penis gun is permanently seared into my brain.

Gabe has no soul.

Raneados

i think you should e-mail him

L|ama

Cardboard Tube wrote: »

...there aren't two "the"s in the panel

uhh... yes there are?

probably just cached then if it was fixed

SageinaRage

Conspiracy and corruption shoot through the new comic thread

The Geek

I keep hearing "MY DIIIIIIIICK" in this voice:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qKcJF4fOPs

fightinfilipino

L|ama wrote: »

Cardboard Tube wrote: »

...there aren't two "the"s in the panel

uhh... yes there are?

probably just cached then if it was fixed

i don't think you're using enough of Chrome's tab feature.

L|ama

Are you kidding? That's like a third of what I usually have open when I'm foruming. I usually just open all my blue dotted threads in new tabs then go through them.

BusterK

Why would you do that?
How is that easier?

L|ama

It's easier than constantly going back to the index? Catch up on thread, post (or don't), close tab, onto the next thread.

Brolo

L|ama wrote: »

It's easier than constantly going back to the index? Catch up on thread, post (or don't), close tab, onto the next thread.

pros use the user panel