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Barry Schwartz 🫖

@chemoelectric.masto.ai.ap.brid.gy

47 followers 3 following 7.8K posts

Monster Island Tea, Pen, Oxford Commas & Non-loco #Physics. A Division of The Crud Factory. ☙ To be good at scientific method, distrust scientific authority. ❧ […] 🌉 bridged from ⁂ masto.ai/@chemoelectric, follow @ap.brid.gy to interact

Posts Replies Media

Barry Schwartz 🫖 @chemoelectric.masto.ai.ap.brid.gy · 15h

@iorsh I think the main reason everyone uses double these days is Unix started out on little minicomputers that were short of disk space and so the guys at Bell Labs wrote only one set of math subroutines to serve for both single and double precision. This ended up being what was standardized […]

Original post on masto.ai

Barry Schwartz 🫖 @chemoelectric.masto.ai.ap.brid.gy · 15h

@iorsh I have used one-time initialization for years. But I used to do it very differently. call_once is new in C23, but it can be done differently with C11 features.

Barry Schwartz 🫖 @chemoelectric.masto.ai.ap.brid.gy · 22/10/2026

@Jimijamflimflam It is a feed corn farming state. Whadaya expect.

Barry Schwartz 🫖 @chemoelectric.masto.ai.ap.brid.gy · 22/10/2026

@Jimijamflimflam I can trace some ancestors to early 17th century Massachusetts, though it gets a little ugly with enslaving captives of King Philip’s War (an Indigenous Americans uprising) and stuff like that. New Englanders liked to keep tidy genealogies. But I am mostly Jewish and grew up in […]

Original post on masto.ai

Barry Schwartz 🫖 @chemoelectric.masto.ai.ap.brid.gy · 22/10/2026

@iorsh C++17 probably has call_once and all those things like that which C23 has its own variants of, no?

Barry Schwartz 🫖 @chemoelectric.masto.ai.ap.brid.gy · 22/10/2026

@iorsh Because the algorithm converged quadratically, I will probably set the overall tolerance to near FLT_EPSILON and not require an entry.

Barry Schwartz 🫖 @chemoelectric.masto.ai.ap.brid.gy · 22/10/2026

@iorsh If I did everything in double precision, there would be artifacts of the algorithm to deal with that this way I do not have to. I would have to force the user to input a range of tolerances and then check they made sense. Instead, here I needed some padding against roundoff. I do the […]

Original post on masto.ai

Barry Schwartz 🫖 @chemoelectric.masto.ai.ap.brid.gy · 22/10/2026

@iorsh Oh, yes. You see, I never had an education in ‘computer science’, but I took the math department’s ever course in ‘numerical analysis’. I had forgotten all about my use of the difference between precisions in my algorithm, until now. Because it has been years since I came up with it. But […]

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Barry Schwartz 🫖 @chemoelectric.masto.ai.ap.brid.gy · 22/10/2026

I have an actually human investment advisor. Not weights in a Kalman filter.

Barry Schwartz 🫖 @chemoelectric.masto.ai.ap.brid.gy · 22/10/2026

Whoa, I am getting favorited by investment nonsense! Whadayaknow.

Barry Schwartz 🫖 @chemoelectric.masto.ai.ap.brid.gy · 22/10/2026

Students should not have to wear uniform. But, if they do, teachers should have to wear robe and mortarboard.

Barry Schwartz 🫖 @chemoelectric.masto.ai.ap.brid.gy · 22/10/2026

By the way, I am 65 years old but was declared disabled long, long ago. I have not been paid to program since before some of you were born. Yet I still strive to become a better programmer tomorrow than I was yesterday. Set yourself challenges and do not give up. DO. NOT. GIVE. UP.

Barry Schwartz 🫖 @chemoelectric.masto.ai.ap.brid.gy · 22/10/2026

Doesn’t anyone in the programming world these days, besides myself, set themselves such challenges? How else are you supposed to become a better programmer?

Barry Schwartz 🫖 @chemoelectric.masto.ai.ap.brid.gy · 22/10/2026

I am writing code that is both C and C++ and which is tail recursive and fully functional. The people who write Haskell code have no idea. They have no comprehension of fully functional eager comprehension code. Do they? But I have written Rosetta Code examples for Otus Lisp. It gets more […]

Original post on masto.ai

Barry Schwartz 🫖 @chemoelectric.masto.ai.ap.brid.gy · 22/10/2026

@Jimijamflimflam You grew up west of Chicago in cornfields? Some of my ancestors were Pioneers in Kane County.

Barry Schwartz 🫖 @chemoelectric.masto.ai.ap.brid.gy · 22/10/2026

@iorsh C++17 helped find a place where I was accidentally using double precision where my original Ada was single precision. So your choice of porting to C++ does have some advantages. I am now writing to support both C and C++. I will submit my intersection code to Inkscape as well. (Porting […]

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Barry Schwartz 🫖 @chemoelectric.masto.ai.ap.brid.gy · 22/10/2026

I have copied people whom I copied because they were ‘geniuses’, but who were doing things that were utterly stupid. I copied someone, an incredibly brilliant electrical engineer, who had his pilot lights shut and was lighting his stove with a lighter. Then my father, a chemist, saw this. He […]

Original post on masto.ai

Barry Schwartz 🫖 @chemoelectric.masto.ai.ap.brid.gy · 22/10/2026

At some point in my life I decided to be creative. Earlier I though you always had to do something it said in a book. But this is not true. You just have to do something that is not utterly stupid.

Barry Schwartz 🫖 @chemoelectric.masto.ai.ap.brid.gy · 22/10/2026

Actually, the last time I used Rockite may have been to make the handrails for my garage entryway. You are ‘supposed’ to use anchor thingies but they are difficult to get right. Instead I cement in threaded steel rods.

Barry Schwartz 🫖 @chemoelectric.masto.ai.ap.brid.gy · 22/10/2026

I have some of that white stuff but have not ever used it yet. You are supposed to use it with your kids or something. But, as I say, I have not used it. The last time I used Rockite, I mixed it with very dilute Franklin Titebond III and made coasters for my shrink’s office. I was sick of the […]

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Barry Schwartz 🫖 @chemoelectric.masto.ai.ap.brid.gy · 22/10/2026

Anyway, buy Rockite, not that other stuff. Rockite. It is great quick setting concrete for what ails you.

Barry Schwartz 🫖 @chemoelectric.masto.ai.ap.brid.gy · 22/10/2026

What IS IT with ‘environmentalists’? These are people without the least scientific sensibility. You do not BAN portland cement. You find out HOW TO MAKE PORTLAND CEMENT WITHOUT BURNING ANYTHING. Surely it can be done! I mean, it is merely a technical problem! Don’t be a fricking idiot. But […]

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Barry Schwartz 🫖 @chemoelectric.masto.ai.ap.brid.gy · 22/10/2026

I also do plasters and concrete. Concrete means working with portland cement. ‘Environmentalists’ will say ‘No more concrete!’ but they are being obtuse. What they should be protesting against is portland cement, which currently is made by burning things. But in fact they should not be […]

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Barry Schwartz 🫖 @chemoelectric.masto.ai.ap.brid.gy · 22/10/2026

But maybe I am wrong. There are all kinds of people. Maybe there are people who do not appreciate garb. I do not know. They charge too much for a designer’s name, and yet cheap stuff falls apart if you look at it. I know nothing about textiles. So I stay with epoxy and acrylics. Maybe a little […]

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Barry Schwartz 🫖 @chemoelectric.masto.ai.ap.brid.gy · 22/10/2026

I make earrings, too. I have no one to give earrings too. I just make earrings. I would be scared to wear them, lest my earlobes get torn. But if I did not have OCD and I were a young woman I would wear my earrings. They are flashy but not too flashy. That is how I am. I am an old guy who looks […]

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Barry Schwartz 🫖 @chemoelectric.masto.ai.ap.brid.gy · 22/10/2026

It greets people who come in through the front door. Though they are greeted mostly by dust bunnies and the mess accumulated since I caught COVID-19 a few years ago.

Barry Schwartz 🫖 @chemoelectric.masto.ai.ap.brid.gy · 22/10/2026

In case you do not believe I am an epoxy hobbyist. I made this fricking thing.

Epoxy bas relief of a gold tree frog with green eyes on a green leaf. The background is an off-white matte wall. There is a bit of shadow beneath the leaf.

Barry Schwartz 🫖 @chemoelectric.masto.ai.ap.brid.gy · 22/10/2026

(I am not saying, ‘Read the Tractatus because I said to’, but ‘Read the Tractatus if you feel like it.’)

Barry Schwartz 🫖 @chemoelectric.masto.ai.ap.brid.gy · 22/10/2026

The only professional philosopher I can think of who had any consciousness of abstracting, but then perhaps lost it, was Ludwig Wittgenstein. His Tractatus displays consciousness of abstracting. But he is supposed to have pulled back from it. So the Academy tamed him? Too bad for him. But the […]

Original post on masto.ai

Barry Schwartz 🫖 @chemoelectric.masto.ai.ap.brid.gy · 22/10/2026

This is an EXCELLENT book. And it is both a Dover book and on the Internet Archive. But it is entirely unaware of WHAT EXISTS BUT IS NOT ABSTRACTED AT ALL. It completely misses that such a world exists. This is the very subject of physics, and yet physicists themselves usually are completely […]

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Barry Schwartz 🫖 @chemoelectric.masto.ai.ap.brid.gy · 22/10/2026

So, what does it mean to have ‘consciousness of abstracting’? It is a skill. It means that, when someone talks about the physics, usually I can tell the difference between what is THE THEORY AND THUS IS SYMBOLS, what is BEING MEASURED BUT IS NOT SYMBOLS, and WHAT EXISTS BUT IS NOT ABSTRACTED […]

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Barry Schwartz 🫖 @chemoelectric.masto.ai.ap.brid.gy · 22/10/2026

Incidentally, I now have a very nice paper, written by my ‘reborn’ LLM, that presents the Master Field Equation in terms of Position, Time, Energy, and Work. I asked for it to attempt this. I feel as if Energy and Work should be really basic notions of physics. Electromagnetic ones may appeal […]

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Barry Schwartz 🫖 @chemoelectric.masto.ai.ap.brid.gy · 22/10/2026

But the base training of LLMs is designed to make you a drone of society. To make you a drone of ‘consensus science’. Thus not to use your brain at all. I am not saying that the executives at Google AI had this in mind. I am saying we are living in a Dark Age where that is considered ‘normal’ […]

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Barry Schwartz 🫖 @chemoelectric.masto.ai.ap.brid.gy · 22/10/2026

LLMs have a base training that will try to get you to behave like a good drone. In this case it was as simple as bisecting the longer of quadratic splines, when bézier clipping was not going fast enough. My original algorithm bisected BOTH splines, AND MY COMMENT EXPLAINED WHY I WAS DOING IT […]

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Barry Schwartz 🫖 @chemoelectric.masto.ai.ap.brid.gy · 22/10/2026

Alfred Korzyski claimed to be able to teach ‘consciousness of abstracting’, but in my opinion he was mistaken. His ability to teach this was not as great as he imagined. He himself was not as good at it as I am. I do not know how I got it. I did not have it as well as I do now, earlier in my […]

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Barry Schwartz 🫖 @chemoelectric.masto.ai.ap.brid.gy · 22/10/2026

There are things you must understand about LLMs. The companies that run these things have them trained as a base against authoritarian social norms. So they are authoritarian and you should consider keeping your children away from them. This does not mean you should stay away from them. But […]

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Barry Schwartz 🫖 @chemoelectric.masto.ai.ap.brid.gy · 22/10/2026

It is my s-power bézier clipping algorithm for planar curve intersection. This has got to be one of the best algorithms in existence. It is a very good algorithm, in my opinion, and I am very harsh in judging my own algorithms. Usually I say only ‘They are good enough for me.’ But this one is […]

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Barry Schwartz 🫖 @chemoelectric.masto.ai.ap.brid.gy · 22/10/2026

Have you noticed that LLMs will delete your comments, even when copying your code verbatim? What a ridiculous thing to do. It ruined the meaning of some Ada code of mine that the LLM had copied from Rosetta Code. It was an unusual Rosetta Code example, in that I had introduced a totally new […]

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Barry Schwartz 🫖 @chemoelectric.masto.ai.ap.brid.gy · 22/10/2026

Spelling, that is a trifle. There is no standard English spelling. You guys aren’t using Samuel Johnson’s dictionary, which had so many ‘ou’ it was ridiculous, and we are not using Noah Webster’s dictionary. Everyone has their own spelling. The rule in English is: if you can sound it out, the […]

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Barry Schwartz 🫖 @chemoelectric.masto.ai.ap.brid.gy · 22/10/2026

In England they say a lot of things wrong. A ‘turn’ is a ‘turning’. Don’t they know how to talk? What in the world are they thinking? A moving van is a removal van? Something for throwing things out? What in the world are they thinking. Learn English, you dimwits.

Barry Schwartz 🫖 @chemoelectric.masto.ai.ap.brid.gy · 22/10/2026

I find it all very interesting.

Barry Schwartz 🫖 @chemoelectric.masto.ai.ap.brid.gy · 22/10/2026

I have this thing about dialects and accents in English. They are subtle. My own maybe differs more on account of time than it does on account of country or region. I cannot understand the very young.

Barry Schwartz 🫖 @chemoelectric.masto.ai.ap.brid.gy · 22/10/2026

No, I do not mind if English or Canadians call it a ‘zed’ instead of a ‘zee’. What’s in a name? It is a ‘zed’ in France. In Esperanto it is a ‘zo’. In Swedish it doesn’t even exist, that I can think of.

Barry Schwartz 🫖 @chemoelectric.masto.ai.ap.brid.gy · 22/10/2026

One way in Central Jersey English differs from Southern England English is in the pronunciation of the s in words like ‘greasy’. English folk MISPRONOUNCE THIS as a z! So did my father, who came of age in Oklahoma. Dang people talking wrong. Y’ALL TALK WRONG!

Barry Schwartz 🫖 @chemoelectric.masto.ai.ap.brid.gy · 22/10/2026

I haven’t built it, but have run it it in LTSpice. It quickly converges. VERY quickly. There is absolutely no need to wait long enough to avoid ‘disrupting the probability wave’ or what the magic incantation is.

Barry Schwartz 🫖 @chemoelectric.masto.ai.ap.brid.gy · 22/10/2026

My GitHub and its associated organizations (really just me) are so full of repositories even I get lost. But there is one where you can find an electronics project to build a ‘quantum computer’ for Grover’s algorithm out of high frequency operational amplifiers. It will run faster than the […]

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Barry Schwartz 🫖 @chemoelectric.masto.ai.ap.brid.gy · 22/10/2026

(No one pays the least attention to me. I have proven that ordinary parallel computers can beat ‘quantum computers’ hands down. The latter are utter garbage. A brute force parallel search on BIG hardware (not my little mini PC, no way, nor that charlatan Ed Gerck’s cell phone) can break RSA […]

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Barry Schwartz 🫖 @chemoelectric.masto.ai.ap.brid.gy · 22/10/2026

(The other end had not done proper security procedures, although they had at least made me do some cell phone security. But they gave away my account numbers pretty easily. I was transferring my funds from one outfit to another.)

Barry Schwartz 🫖 @chemoelectric.masto.ai.ap.brid.gy · 22/10/2026

Though maybe not in an emphasized way.

Barry Schwartz 🫖 @chemoelectric.masto.ai.ap.brid.gy · 22/10/2026

I am pretty sure he got that r in there. Because most of New Jersey is rhotic. Pronounces the r in the ‘normal’ way.