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shmoil • today at 12:11 AM • 5 replies • view on HN

I laughed out loud at the n lg n ^ (1 - 2^{-182}). It is so funny.


Replies

NelsonMinar • today at 1:23 AM

2^-182 is very funny but it's bigger than 0 and that's going to shatter a lot of people's conjectures.

elcritch • today at 12:23 AM

Wowzers!

This also reaffirms my (wishful) thinking that if there’s a way to do FTL communication it’ll be something with an absurdly tiny factor like 2^-182 with a slight asymmetry in a probability somewhere.

Then you’re not violating FTL, just gaining a very slight chance that you might know something FTL – probably.

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keeganryan • today at 3:41 AM

Me too. This is the sort of thing that would traditionally be hidden as n lg n ^ (1 - eps) for some eps > 0, but it's much more amusing this way.

No way this is the correct upper bound, and I imagine it'll get refined fairly quickly. IIRC, the GapCVP results were released with a 1/n^400 complexity term, but people quickly got it down to 1/n^8 by more careful accounting.

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qarl • today at 12:16 AM

Dangit! I was betting on -183.

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dprkh • today at 12:36 AM

Why is that funny?

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