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The Fourier transform predates functional analysis by a century. I don't see the point in downplaying its significance just because 'duh it's simply a unitary linear operator on L2'.


But is it the deepest insights ever made?


The Fourier Transform isn't even Fourier's deepest insight. Unless we're now ranking scientific discoveries based on whether or not they get a post every weekend on HN.

The FFT is nifty but that's FINO. The Google boys also had a few O(N^2) to O(N log N) moments. Those seemed to move the needle a bit as well.

But even if we restrict to "things that made Nano Banana Pro possible" Shannon and Turing leapfrog Fourier.


>Unless we're now ranking scientific discoveries based on whether or not they get a post every weekend on HN.

Glad I'm not the only one who noticed there is a weekly (or more) post on what Fourier transform is.


It's really getting in the way of all the daily AI opinion pieces I come here to read.

More seriously, there are tens of thousands of people who come to HN. If Fourier stuff gets upvoted, it's because people find it informative. I happen to know the theory, but I wouldn't gatekeep.


https://www.tesla.com/fsd ?

I also don't understand the LLM ⊄ AI people. Nobody was whining about pathfinding in video games being called AI lol. And I have to say LLMs are a lot smarter than A*.


Cannot find any mention of AI there.

Also it's funny how they add (supervised) everywhere. It looks like "Full self driving (not really)"


Yes one needs some awareness of the technology. Computer vision: unambiguously AI, motion planning: there are classical algorithms but I believe tesla / waymo both use NNs here too.

Look I don't like the advertising of FSD, or musk himself, but we without a doubt have cars using significant amounts of AI that work quite well.


None of those things contain actual intelligence. On that basis any software is "intelligent". AI is the granddaddy of hype terms, going back many decades, and has failed to deliver and LLMs will also fail to deliver.


It's because nobody was trying to take video game behavior scripts and declare them the future of all things technology.


Ok? I'm not going to change the definition of a 70 year old field because people are annoyed at chatgpt wrappers.


Is this like a humiliation fetish at this point? This is seriously unhealthy. We don't hate our friends that didn't a go to an eLiTe school because we're not sociopaths. Not sure why I'm even trying since you seem pretty dead set on this, but it's just a lot easier to go through life without made up enemies.


People that go to elite undergrads think the rest of us are a lower inferior caste. I don’t know how that’s even something you can deny. You’ve clearly expended a lot of effort to segregate yourself from the likes of people like me or people that go to SJSU because we don’t have “merit” or “potential”


This is not a productive point to make in this thread.


isn't it? isn't this why we're at this place. Let's not not get caught up in facile pretexts. 'those coastal elitists' haven't thrown enough bones to the rest of the country, and they feel resentful for being marginalized. so we send troops into the city and harass the universities and break up with the europeans to 'fix' the situation, just like we fixed the California fires by venting freshwater into the ocean.


Is it? Seems like the elite schools probably should be knocked down a few pegs but the state schools shouldn't.


I can deny it because it's obvious bullshit lol. I don't think that way and neither does anybody I know from MIT think that way. This is reality versus your imagination. If there's anyone I look down on it's my classmates who could've worked anywhere and still went to palantir...

I can't claim 100% aren't assholes, but the vast majority realize the luck and arbitrary nature of it. Are you going to be stuck in decision day sadness mode for the rest of your life? Life is too short


I've asked people at MIT this repeatedly. They all say they came to MIT for the peer group. Peer group = people that are not _like me_. They shut up quick when I challenge them on that point though, or ask what the difference between them and me is. Even the non-assholes sometimes genuinely don't realize there's an entire parallel world beneath them with zero privilege or respect that made $150k out of undergrad instead of $500k.


I am nearly sure that you are not arguing in good faith, but just the fact that you think all elite school grads make $500k shows that you have not talked to a nearly representative sample. I went to an elite school and have friends that make much less even than $150k. Are you aware that there is an entire parallel world beneath you with zero privilege or respect that make $40k instead of $150k?

I’m not sure why you think anyone is targeting you specifically. The vast majority of students at elite schools, in my experience, know that we got lucky in addition to all the other things that we did well to get admitted.

A couple people in this thread now have told you that they don’t match your description of “every” and “all” graduates of elite schools, and the nice thing about using such strong descriptors is that a single counterexample disproves them.


> I went to an elite school and have friends that make much less even than $150k.

They're doing so by choice to do PhDs or go into public service. They (as in, the ones in quantitative majors and many even outside of it) _also_ had the choice to make several multiples of what I made by working at Jane Street or HRT or Citadel or now OpenAI and Anthropic.

I didn't have the choice. Nobody is selecting me for anything, I don't have the optionality of doing just anything. I took the best offer I got at a company that most elite school students would consider to be beneath them (Amazon).

Anyways, I'd also bet you make multiples of what I make now too as someone with a higher level if you're an SWE or adjacent.


I'm just trying to shatter the illusion. Stop wrecking your mental health because you can't hang with the IMO kids. Many of these people are, unsurprisingly, very insular unless you want to talk about math and TC all day. Sounds really fun. The red pill is to be happy you're already making a fuckton of money for typing shit into a computer and make some friends in pottery class


> because you can't hang with the IMO kids

Maybe that's true. I'm sympathetic to the fact that these people aren't even interesting enough to be around. But then I see articles like this [0] sympathizing (?) with elite students that don't end up going into public service while still canonizing them and then I fall back into depression

[0] https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/09/elite-ivy-leagu...


You are simply wrong. Mechanical engineering majors, as an example of the most common non-CS major, don’t have any such high-paying opportunities until at least after a PhD (and even then they are lower than you are saying). Many make less than $100k out of college. Even CS majors have a hard time getting an interview at those top-paying companies.


Wait, are you saying Course 6 is still the most common major? And thus still has the most direct path to making $500k a year out of undergrad?

Of course, MechE's frequently also work at these companies or in finance too...


Yeah the code has a (somewhat rudimentary) fluid sim that's fed into reaction-diffusion. Pretty cool, don't think I've seen that combination before


I happened to have just finished writing a thesis on such a combination. The size of the little droplets is determined by the chemical wavelength of the reaction-diffusion subsystem. There’s a nice video and a pdf here: https://maximzuriel.nl/dynamics-and-pattern-formation-in-act...


   julia> using Random, BenchmarkTools
   julia> function isvowel(c)
            idx = (c | 0x20) - Int('a')
            return (0x00104111 & (1 << idx)) != 0
         end

   julia> hasvowel(str) = any(c -> isvowel(Int(c)), str)

   julia> @btime hasvowel(s) setup=(s=randstring("bcdfghjklmnpqrstvwxyzBCDFGHJKLMNPQRSTVWXYZ0123456789", 10))
   15.739 ns (0 allocations: 0 bytes)
   false
some 77 thousand times faster


Huh? It'll be slower and eat a massive amount of memory too.


It's holding a reference on each element, but it no longer has to add large chunks of memory on insert when the current array size is exceeded, just single elements. So reads are slower and a small amount of reference memory is used per node. Writes however are much faster particularly when the lists are huge (as in this case). Also I've written video frame processors so I am experienced in this area.


Here's what Google PageSpeed has to say about it: https://pagespeed.web.dev/analysis/https-design-google-libra...

- Performance 44/100

- First Contentful Paint 1.7 s

- Speed Index 6.5 s

- Total Blocking Time 920 ms

- Largest Contentful Paint 4.8 s

at least it's emotional


A $100B exception that wipes out all of their own-the-libs cuts


I love McMaster but the multi-tab experience could really be better. Search filters don't carry through opening a link in a new tab (try searching M3 screw then ctrl-click socket head screws). Sometimes ctrl-clicking product numbers/product detail doesn't work at all. IIRC the back button sometimes breaks too. Pretty annoying since 80% of the time I'm researching the best component and want to backtrack easily.


Did they actually tell you that? I highly doubt it. You've created a preconception that I guarantee is not accurate at all. You have multiple people here saying it's bullshit, and we're not lying or trolling or anything like that. I replied somewhere else but I want to reiterate - why would you even want approval from people who dehumanize others on the basis of TC? It's like being upset Martin Shkreli doesn't want to be your friend. I really hope you'll believe me


It’s not just TC though. TC is an imperfect proxy for ability and class. If I’m just permanently in the underclass - unable to be compared to you people - it’s obvious that y’all wouldn’t even see me as human.

I have no accomplishments, nothing to be proud of. Freshmen at MIT have more potential and prior accomplishments than I do.


As Percy Shelley said about Ozymandias, "Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!" We're all sand on a long enough time scale, and getting a TC 800k+ will not save you from that fate, in the same way that conquering an empire will not save you either. Other people have pointed out that you likely make a decent wage, but understandably that does not address your concern. If you feel that your only value is your accomplishments, then no matter how much you achieve it will never be enough. You get to decide your own goals, and whether you're reaching them. Don't let these proxies for ability and class decide what you want or how fast you should get it.


The "under" class that makes more than ninety-five percent of US households?

You might need a refresher on the meaning of the word "under".


Mah bro, such is life. In fact the entirety of humanity is like that. Unfairness is everywhere.

There is nothing wrong being under accomplished. Let me tell you a secret that helps with mental sanity. All humans are sinful creatures. We indulge in lot of these sins. If you go through this chain of thought you arrive at conclusion, everyone is inferior to one another. The material superiority you yearn for is a momentary fleet in the river of time.

Sometimes just reflect on yourself. One perspective of life is your world governs you. If you are happy in your own world, try to let go of it. Just enjoy the moments and don't hold on it.

You are the actor and creator of your reality. Your objective reality is making you feel inferior. Define your role, change your actions, and act accordingly.

The inability to act according to your role is the probably reason behind your feeling. You probably see yourself through some different lens where your actions and objective reward do not align. All you can do is control your thoughts and actions. So act.


>makes $220k+ a year

>"i have no accomplishments"

give me a break


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