The paper seems to have a definition where bed posts are never deleted, i.e. they are all assigned probability 1 in which case the conjecture is obviously true.
The counterexample seems to rely on correlations between edge deletions which makes no sense because the deletions should be independent (in the definition I'm seeing on Wikipedia).
I could be wrong here because I haven't read it in detail but on first sight, it looks like there are some serious issues with mathematical rigour here.
You can probably replace any transversal vertex with a large clique (depending only on p) such that the probability that the clique remains connected and at least one post remains.
(I.e., you can "model" undeletability by adding sufficiently many twin posts.)
Ps., do you mean "in which case the conjecture is obviously false"?
Surely, if the poles can't be deleted then which node is chosen from a bunkbed will not affect the connectedness probability, which would make it impossible to find a counterexample, right? What am I missing here?
I feel like it will get worse and worse until people will actually care about privacy again and then we'll take proper measures. Although Chrome disabling cookies seems like a step in the right direction
I thought this was very cool but then I realized that in Dutch it is the same. Happiness = "Geluk" = Luck. Strangely, we have no word for lucky, and we will simply say that someone often "has luck".
There's so much hidden in homonyms, it almost feels illegal to mention it.
I've yet to see a valid scenario where C++ is superior to Rust, Python and Go.
Use Python. If you need concurrency, then use Go. If you need even more performance, use Rust (using unsafe Rust only for the parts that need it). For the highest performance stuff, maybe consider C for critical parts only.
C++ is not safe. It's a minefield of things that compile but are memory management mistakes. And then you're like "Look, I have a map of the minefield. If we just make sure we don't step on any mines, we are completely fine."
I can think of a few scenarios for C++ off-hand. Most of them involve integrating with libraries or frameworks that are written in C++, running on platforms that have good C++ toolchains, or working with verification systems that can process certain C++ or C subsets.
Yes, but all of these are essentially all because the existing code is already based on C(++). We should be able to move to Rust sooner than people think.
We still have Fortran and Cobol. It’s easy to imagine that Rust will replace C++ Real Soon Now, because you just have to imagine that all of the legacy code disappears, and Rust gets all the tooling support that C++ has.
This doesn't exist. WG21 (the C++ language committee) has considered the idea of writing an appendix with such a map - a list of the UB (Undefined Behaviour) and IFNDR (Ill-formed, No Diagnostic Required) clauses in the language but this work has yet to be undertaken and I see no reason to expect it in C++ 26.
I have been in plenty of disagreements with C++ proponents here and on r/cpp where it's clear that there isn't even agreement on what the standard means today in respect of these problems, if you guess one way and the people who implemented your compiler judged differently then your program may have defects you didn't even realise were possible.
> I've yet to see a valid scenario where C++ is superior to Rust, Python and Go.
What? Python and Go are used in entirely different domains. Not everything is a web backend!
Today C++ is used mainly for performance critical applications: HPC, realtime audio, video editors, game engines, web browsers, operating systems, etc. In these fields, Rust would be pretty much the only practical alternative, but it still needs to catch up with the massive and mature(!) C++ ecosystem. Things like Eigen cannot even be implemented efficiently in Rust because its metaprogramming features are still too limited.
It’s not just the lack of safety. It is all the insane gaggle of features, from the multipage errors from template errors to “diamond inheritance” to experts yelling at each other over temporary lifetimes.
The language has always been a dumpster fire. The best thing I can say about it is that is spurred development of many other languages to get away from it.
isolated experiments and a rank-choice ordering of languages is not a realistic picture of the industry.
In robotics, everything is C++. There's plenty of python being used to train networks, but that's not because of performance, safety, or anything, it's mostly born out of the existence of key libraries being in Py. But those libs are just wrappers on C (cuda, essentially).
Essentially the whole of every robot is C and C++. Essentially the whole of every airplane is C, C++, and a scattering of memory safe languages in isolated corners. The ATC system, the rail system, most industrial processes are C or PLC, or maybe C / PLC generated by matlab/labview. Automobiles, basically everything with a microcontroller. It's all C.
Our scientific computing? fortran. Nodejs? A bunch of C++.
What's my point? It's that for any new project or extension of above projects, the existing language is a superior choice (as viewed by managers, business leaders, CTOs, or rushed grad students trying to get quick results, etc), simply because the legacy provides a quicker startup. This is the "reality" - we have had better options essentially forever, and I feel we are effectively stuck with C/C++ forever. It's just that we'll see less and less of it if the new communities are diligent about extending the existing ones. Otherwise, it will never make sense to start clean, not on a mass production level, or at least not this decade or likely next.
C++ is a bad choice, and it is the choice. it can be both a prevalent "obvious" choice, and also a bad one. The existence of a better language does not shift reality on its own. You need targeted investment for development of a replacement ecosystem built around that better option. Whether that is Rust, or safe C++, or C+borrow checking, or Dada, or the language of the minute. We as a community cannot keep screaming about how nice a new idea is without building out the ecosystem to make it the obvious idea.
Interesting. Are you sure it's the language and not the programming style? There doesn't seem to be a reason to prevent you from writing maintainable Python code.
Bro, where do you get your food? Do you grow it in your house? Where do you get your water from? Hell, where do you get your air from? How do you think getting a security system fixes it?
A security system wouldn't necessarily stop Boeing assassins from breaking into your home, killing you, and making it look like a suicide, but it certainly would increase the chances that they were caught, or at least increase the chances that police would consider it a homicide instead of a suicide.
It might depend on whether you do a lot of counting in your non-native tongue. Since I studied maths in English (not my native language), I also do counting in English when I'm thinking in English because to me counting in English is just as easy as in my mother tongue.
So what exactly does happen when you admit you don't know a thing? And what's worse: admitting you don't know a thing or showcasing you don't know a thing by presuming the wrong thing? Intriguing stuff.
Perhaps the existence of atypical "weaker" children promotes compassion in the culture ultimately leading to better outcomes for the culture as a whole.
Down syndrome is an example of that anomaly rather than some mutation that’s passed down. It’s an extra partial or complete copy of chromosome 21, and therefore can happen to any couple.
My point is that perhaps there is a reason that this chromosome causes this issue when an additional copy is present. If other chromosomes do not cause the same issues, why not? Why would that same reason not hold for chromosome 21?
You have it backwards here, Down syndrome is unusual for being viable not because the symptoms are so terrible. Most chromosomal anomalies result in a non viable egg / sperm which doesn’t result in a live birth. The majority don’t even last long enough for someone to notice they were potentially pregnant.
In the larger context, there may be some long term advantages to chromosomal anomalies because their number varies so much between closely related species.
In other words, Down syndrome isn't inherited therefore not something evolutionary forces can act on. The only way around that is if the base rate of chromosomal anomaly is heritable, yes?
A species that can produce 1000+ offspring (or more) per mating (with multiple matings per adult lifespan) - like most insects, seaturtles/squids, etc. has little incentive to have high precision/accuracy reproduction.
One that does a small handful (whales, elephants, etc), has a lot of incentive to do so (or self abort early on if there is an issue).
This gets complicated though, because while a single individual in a species which is predominantly r strategy (few offspring), can be ‘more’ on the K side, and vice versa.
And a species which has too much consistency, both genetically and ‘approach’ is very susceptible to inbreeding/mono-cropping issues where a single event/disease can wipe them out, or they can even destroy themselves due to recessive traits.
So there is a general (but diffuse!) evolutionary pressure towards a degree of mutation/error in reproduction in even the most hardcore ‘r’ species (which will necessarily produce a lot of noise/‘wasted paths’) at the species level, alongside a hard evolutionary pressure to reduce it for individuals.
In for example humans. Or elephants. Or whales.
This is also why things like rich/poor, healthy/sick, pretty/ugly, strong/weak, etc. will never go away - they’re outcome distributions along a probability curve due to fundamental different approaches by individual humans due to the necessity of how humans have to be in order for humanity (the species) to survive.
Individuals have strong incentives to ‘tip the scales’ in various ways of course, and societies (at a minimum!) have strong incentives to stop them. It’s why aborting based on gender is illegal in India, for instance. [https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/7920120/]
Because if everyone had the same attributes in order for everyone to be ‘pretty’ or ‘strong’ or ‘rich’ or whatever, then some hypothetical weight-lifting-infectious-disease (or a famine, or an attack by jealous anti-weightlifters) would wipe out the whole population. And if everyone optimized for ‘rich’ genes (whatever that means), then society would implode, because that literally couldn’t work.
And those types of situations, albeit less light hearted, have, do, and will continue to happen eventually.
The counterexample seems to rely on correlations between edge deletions which makes no sense because the deletions should be independent (in the definition I'm seeing on Wikipedia).
I could be wrong here because I haven't read it in detail but on first sight, it looks like there are some serious issues with mathematical rigour here.