#finite state machines

[trialofsacrifice]

In this blog post, our Lead Programmer, Teegan, talks about the creation of the Skeleton AI that Viktor fights in the dungeon.

[rupasriymts]

Best VLSI - Finite State Machines Projects for engineering students

In the dynamic landscape, Finite State Machine Project provide a systematic means of represented the dynamic world of network with a finite number of distinct condition. These states summarize specific design or modes of province that the system may reside at any given moment. Takeoff Edu Group provides this projects with innovative and unique titles. Conversion between states report the growth of the system's behaviour in response to stimuli or events, change the essence of approach dynamics.

Finite State Machines (FSMs) are basic models used in computer science and engineering to understand how systems work. They show the different situations a system can be in, how it changes between these situations, and what actions it takes. Visual diagrams, like state transition diagrams, help us understand FSMs better. These diagrams show how the situations are connected and help us see important points in how the system behaves.

The Example Title of Finite State Machine Project –Takeoff Edu Groups

Trendy:

Fully Automated Traffic Light Controller system for a four-way intersection using Verilog

Experience seamless traffic flow with our Fully Automated Traffic Light Controller system designed for four-way intersections. Built using Verilog, our solution ensures efficient and safe navigation for vehicles and pedestrians alike

Approach for Implementation of Vending Machine through Verilog HDL

Implementing a Vending Machine using Verilog HDL: A robust approach for digital logic design enthusiasts to create efficient vending solutions. Harnessing Verilog HDL's power, this implementation ensures seamless operation and precise functionality

Design and implementation of subway automatic ticketing system based on Verilog HDL

Revolutionize urban commuting with our Verilog HDL-based Subway Automatic Ticketing System. Seamlessly designed and implemented for efficient, hassle-free travel experiences underground. Experience the future of subway ticketing today.

There are two main types of FSMs: deterministic and non-deterministic. Deterministic FSMs have clear rules for how they change between situations. Non-deterministic FSMs have more flexible rules, allowing for different changes from the same situation.

FSMs are useful in many areas, like making software, designing hardware, and building robots. They help us create and understand systems by showing us how they work in different situations. Overall, FSMs are essential tools for engineers to model and understand how systems behave in both theoretical and practical situations.

Finite State Machines projects (FSMs) aren't just models for understanding systems; they're also tools for making new things happen. By using FSMs in Takeoff Edu group and other attempt, we're not just solving problems – we're opening doors to new ideas and progress. As we keep using FSMs to explore and create, we're pushing technology and engineering forward, finding better ways to do things and making exciting discoveries along the way. The Above titles are the examples of Takeoff Edu group Finite State Machines.

[1ucasvb]

Animation I've done for explaining part of my research.

[gravityr00m]

My nicknomen at monostates...

[howdoesone]

How does one use computational methods to analyze and process morphologically complex words in a language?

Computational methods have become increasingly important in the field of linguistics, particularly in the study of morphologically complex languages. These methods allow linguists to analyze and process large amounts of data in a way that would be impossible using traditional methods. In this article, we will explore how computational methods can be used to analyze and process morphologically…

[keferon]

*throws at you idk*

——————

“Don’t beat yer’self up if this doesn’t work.”

Prowl ignored the whispered plea, watching as Shockwave, Wheeljack, and Ratchet all argued over how the procedure should work. Transferring an organic soul into a Cybertronian body had never been done before, after all. There were so many (4,768,546,786) ways that it could go wrong and so few (9,457) ways for it to go right. It should have been similar to a cold construct like himself, but Prowl couldn’t get his TacNet to account for the Spark issue. Human’s didn’t have those after all and—

“Prowl,” Jazz whispered again, voice whistling and wheezing, tearing the Praxian from his panicked calculations.

The little human looked broken. His wounds patched as best as Ratchet and Knockout could have done, the machines they had attached to him keeping him just barely conscious and away from the pain. Prowl could feel his doorwings droop in sympathy, his spark aching at seeing the little organic who had crawled into his spark in so much pain. He wanted to hold Jazz close, to cradle him against his spark, to protect him, and to promise him that he’d be fine and all of this was temporary. That their plan would work!

But he couldn’t…

This plan was… wasn’t likely (9%) to work at all. But it was either this or Jazz died. Humans were so fragile, their lives so finite compared to a Cybertronian’s.

“Prowler, s’fine. If it doesn’t work. I knew what I was doin’. Saved you, that’s what matters,” Jazz whistled, that soft pained smile crossing his features, single unwrapped eye glazed over in pain.

Prowl swallowed, voice box stuttering and clicking as it reboot. He could feel coolant threatening to fall from his optics as he reached out with a single servo. Getting as close as he dared to without actually touching Jazz.

“It’ll work.” (8%)

Jazz hummed, tipping his small head into Prowl’s touch gently, not believing, but willing to humor.

“It’ll work, and you’ll get to enjoy annoying me and scaring the spark out of me for eons to come. It’ll work,” Prowl stated, firm, ignoring the way his TacNet glitched out a bit as emotion wracked his spark.

“Yes. Because we are going to make it work. Calibrations are done, Commander,” Shockwave interrupted whatever Jazz had been about to say.

Prowl looked up at the scientist, giving the finished cold constructed frame a glance over before looking up into the cold single eyed stare. The tactician hesitated. Just because Decepticons and Autobots were all aligned, had been for centuries due to the Quintessons, it didn’t mean Prowl trusted all of them. Shockwave was the worst one (98%) in his opinion.

“It’s now or never, Prowl. His vitals are fading fast,” Ratchet said softly from behind Shockwave, face drawn tight in sympathy, optics on the system that had hooked up to Jazz’s being.

Prowl looked back down at Jazz. 8-9% this worked. 65% that if it did work, that Jazz would be hindered immediately. 98% that he lost Jazz if he didn’t do this though, that if they didn’t try.

“Prowler, s’okay. I trust you,” Jazz croaked, smiling up at him.

Prowl ached.

“In theory, the frame not having a spark, should help him. Even if a spark doesn’t form, the frame has enough processing power to hold him. It should work,” Wheeljack offered as a final bit of reassurance.

Prowl closed his optics, feeling coolant leak down onto the medical table harboring his human counterpart. Now or never, huh.

“Do it,” he finally said, looking up at Shockwave, optics focusing in on that single red optic.

Shockwave nodded and pulled a lever. Prowl forced himself to stay calm when Jazz’s human heart immedietly just stopped. He pulled himself away from Jazz’s organic form over to the new Cybertronian one, TacNet racing as time just seemed to crawl on.

“Upload at 87%. Should take only a few moments for him to calibrate,” Shockwave announced, and as if at his very command, pure and blinding white optics opened up on the table.

Prowl’s spark jumped up into his intake as all four mechs watched as Jazz slowly oriented himself and sat up. Prowl’s servos twitched, wanting to reach out and touch, but waiting until he was sure this was Jazz. Silence washed over the room as the new mech looked over his own servos in curiosity, before looking straight up at Prowl.

Prowl’s knees nearly gave out when a cautious and yet hopeful EM field washed over him from the mech.

“How do I look,” Jazz asked, a small and nervous smile crawling across his face to match his new EM field.

Prowl made a rather undignified noise as he reached out and firmly tugged the mech forward, off the medical bunk, and into a tight hug. A hug he could finally provide without fearing he’d hurt Jazz.

“Alive. You look alive.”

JUST RIP MY HEART OUT OF MY CHEST AND EAT IT ALREADY

I. Uh m. F u cc. HAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH IT HURTS SO GOOD HELP

[max1461]

One thing that was hard for me to get used to when I started learning math was what I call "static thinking". Math doesn't have any time evolution; everything either is or it isn't.

When non-mathematicians think about operations like addition, they think of them as "processes" that "occur": you take 2 and 8 and "combine them" to get 10. The expression "2+8" is like a sort of command, telling you to perform this process of addition. People think of math this way because it's basically how math is presented in schools.

To a mathematician, the expression "2+8" is not a command and it does not signify a process. "2+8" is merely another way of writing "10". They are two expressions with identical meaning. That's what "2+8=10" means, it means "these two expressions signify the same thing". There is no "process of addition" which "happens" and "results in 10". "10" and "2+8" are just alternate spellings of the same number.

For a more advanced example, consider the formal definition of a finite state machine. Intuitively, we think of a finite state machine as a network with various nodes and directed edges and so on, into which we input some string in the machine's alphabet. After inputting the string, it travels around the machine according to the transition functions before finally arriving (or not) at a final node, and by this process a computation is performed. Of course, mathematically, this is nonsense. A finite state machine is a network with various nodes and directed edges and so on, but the notion that you can "input a string" and it will "travel around the network via the transition functions" is bullshit. A string is recognized by the machine if and only if there exists a valid path for that string via the transition functions from an initial node to a final node. The string never actually travels the path, because such a notion does not exist in mathematics.

A finite state machine is not a machine, it never actually does anything. It sits there in the realm of abstractions, unmoving and static. Every string which it "recognizes" it recognizes by dint not of things that it does but of facts that simply are; every string recognized by the machine is so and has been so since the dawn of time, without the machine ever in fact going about the process of recognizing it.

This is philosophically a little bit trippy, but it can also confuse early math students in practice, too. As I mentioned at the top, I was very confused by it. For instance, in the finite state machine example, a perfectly ordinary statement to encounter in a proof might run something like

[Block of reasoning establishing that some string w is recognized by the machine M] [Block of reasoning establishing that all transition functions into a final node F of M have label x] ...since w is recognized by the machine M, there must exist a transition function T whose target is a final node and which sends w to that final node on the last character of w. Thus, since T must have label x, the final character of w is x.

To a mathematician this seems perfectly trivial. To me as a young math student, this kind thing seemed almost miraculous. We don't even know what w is, and yet we can run it through the machine? And from the fact that the machine recognized it, we can conclude things about what w is? We can tell its final character? How is that possible? I felt like this kind of thing involved "reaching into the future", reasoning about processes from the end when we haven't even begun them yet.

But, of course, we can do this, because there is no past or future in mathematics. The machine is simple there, the string is simply recognized or not, its last character simply is x or it isn't x. Nothing has to "happen".

[hexefreya]

I don't think that we appreciate Viktor's plan enough. It is my firm belief that not only did he want to erase Hexcore and himself from existence, but also do some good in the process.

It was established that Hexcore found a way to corrupt the very water, spreading like a disease and infecting the environment. What this means is that by simply killing Viktor Hexcore problem wouldn't be resolved as wild rune remains and will lead to catastrophic consequences in the long run. Only Viktor himself could defeat Hexcore by consciously making the choice to destroy it. And Jayce was the only one who could make this outcome happen - he very well knew about it and the power he had, armed with Viktor's own feelings.

So the question remains: why did Jayce wait till the very last possible moment to show Viktor the power of love? He didn't try to earnestly talk to him even once, and always looked like a person set on a mission throughout. He also seemed to know the outcome of some encounters beforehand.

For instance, when Viktor is entering Hex vault? Jayce isn't even trying to attack Viktor here or be on a defensive, as if confident Viktor would do nothing and just walk by.

And of course this scene, where Jayce kneels by his weapon and closes his eyes, resigned for what is about to happen.

It is my opinion that Jayce had a pretty good understanding of the future events and his role in it, which leads me to believe that the severe escalation of Viktor's evolution, leading to the final fight, was necessary.

I honestly feel like animators did an amazing job showing how incredibly hard it was for Jayce to straight up crush Viktor time and time again, especially when knew about Viktor's feelings and realised himself that those were reciprocated. Can you imagine the pain Jayce must have felt? Killing the person he loved, warping them into something monstrous and even then, at his worst, Viktor was anything but indifferent to Jayce, and him alone.

But if it weren't for Jayce shooting Viktor the first time, literally breaking his heart, Viktor wouldn't lose his faith in humanity (Jayce) and agree to move on with Singed's procedure. It was stated that his power was finite, so I would speculate that Jayce didn't even try to persuade Viktor because he knew that even if he succeeded either Savior Viktor didn't possess enough power to stop Hexcore, or it was straight impossible without Ekko's anomaly. Hexcore would remain in the world any other way, therefore it was necessary to trigger Viktor's evolution to the Machine Herald form.

It also explains why Jace yet again isn't trying to convince Viktor in the Council room encounter afterwards, despite having Viktor coming forward, wanting to talk and bearing news of the hostile intentions of the Noxian. This is interesting, because in my opinion the most significant detail here is Viktor's reluctance to "evolve" Jayce to the point he'd rather kill him. And we know that for the Mage Viktor's plan to work Jayce has to be connected to Hexcore. That's why there is no attempt at talking at this point. Even if Viktor were to concede this very second and destroy Hexcore, it would still leave completely disorganized Piltover and Zaun facing oppressing Noxian forces. It is only after Jayce rejects and "kills" him once again that Viktor lashes out and completes his evolution. And as a result, it gives a perfect common enemy to unite forces against, which finally brings Piltover and Zaun together.

We shouldn't forget how everything started, how Viktor shared Jayce's idealistic dream and passion to bring magic to people and improve lives. Sure, ironically they got caught in a paradoxical anomaly that was dooming the world instead.

"In the pursuit of great, we failed to do good".

Viktor had achieved the end of pursuit and regretted it. Eventually he came to terms with the fact he's the only one who can effectively destroy hexcore, consciously chosing to erase it and himself from existence. And I refuse to think he is anything but pedantic about it, the scientists that he is. He knows what exactly must transpire, and he has the hindsight of different timelines and possibilities to organize the best of possible outcomes, the one that maximizes good this time.

[sandplague]

pathologic 3 save & sound 2024 presentation

this is a quick attempt at a transcript of the presentation. I think I got most of it but there are some words I was unable to hear, I can't say I have a lot of practice doing this and that's on me so if any of you guys can help me I'll edit it asap

Ressa Schwarzwald: I'm Ressa from Gameowdio. Our team has been working on Pathologic 3 with Vasily Kashnikov and his apprentice Nikolai. This video will feature some of the audio stuff we've made together.

Our goal regarding audio direction was to give the real experience of being in the epicenter of an epidemic. Fully realistic, no bullshit. So we are obviously shooting this video in The Town. We realized pretty early that the game was quite different from the original Pathologic 2 because of the time travel mechanics. So for the prototype we built a time travel machine [the date November 1924 shows on screen], which appeared to be quite useful to record some source sounds, and [date changes to November 3024] make this video in just half a second using existing technology.

Let's start with the music.

Vasily Kashnikov: Hi, I'm Vasily Kashnikov, audio director of Pathologic 3 project. I'll tell you how our music is structured. We were already thinking about how the Bachelor's game would sound when we were working on Patholgic 2 and writing music for Haruspex. In Pathologic 2, the music had more ethnic and real motives (motifs?) and instruments. Since the city and its customs are familiar with Haruspex since he was a child, he is involved in the traditional way of life. In the case of Pathologic 3, this is the view of an outsider who evaluates everything from the point of view of rationality and science. Therefore, we are trying to make the Pathologic 3 soundtrack colder and more detached from the steppes and ethnicity in character. There is more synthesis, guitars at the same time, the Bachelor communicates with those in power so the soundtrack contains a large share of minimalist so-called furniture music that could sound in the beginning of the last century. Piano etudes and references to composers of that time: Satie, Debussy, etc. The soundtrack is a rather eclectic mix of dreampop, downtempo, and (?) minimalism.

In the city when the Bachelor is alone with himself, we emphasize the cold mind of the rhythm section: less emotional harmony, and sometimes electronic timbres. In the rooms where we need to separate the main character from those he interacts with, we use more expressive harmonies and more classical instruments: piano and guitar passages.

When we designed the interactive music system, we assumed that time is finite, and the music had to change depending on the amount of time the Bachelor had left. However, we later abandoned this system and now the music changes depending on the state of the Bachelor himself, who can fall into apathy or psychosis. To emphasize these states, we apply filters and effects to different layers of our tracks and get a slower, muffled sound in the case of apathy, and wired (?) nervous, glitchy in the case of psychosis. In the infected quarters, there are interactive systems that... [screen begins to distort] oh my god, Nataliya! Please stop this!

Nataliya Radina: Whoops, hehe, sorry. But yeah, basically the other system we created reflects everything you hear in the game. Such as... If we use our gun when dealing with the local thugs, the longer we aim the weapon at the people, the less sounds of the outside world we hear and the louder becomes the heartbeat. To add to the intensity, sharper tone was used along with a high pitch tinnitus sound. If the psychosis level goes to the maximum, it starts to damage Bachelor's health, which is accompanied by flashes on the screen, as well as low heartbeat and short breathing sounds.

Vasily Kashnikov: In the infected and rebel's quarters, there are also interactive systems that change the character of the music by adding or disabling instrument layers depending on the state of the world or the Bachelor's equipment to fight the plague. As a result, we have 12 tracks for each day spent in the city. they can freely switch between each other and several dozen themes for locations and characters, and all the music is subject to change depending on the state of the Bachelor.

Nataliya Radina: Since the game has a weather changing system, we also wanted to reflect that in our audio feedback as well. The game has global wetness parameter that shows how intense the rain is. The more it rains, the more squishy and muddy are the steps of the outside surfaces. Moreover, if you come closer to the window, you can hear the rain pondering on the glass. Even in the middle of the plague, we always have room for cozy moments, right? My favorite part of that system is involving cows. [cow moo]. So, when it's raining, you can actually hear very very soft sound of raindrops dropping on those bovine butts. And I personally think it's beautiful.

Artur Ramanouski: Hi, my name is Artur, and I was also involved in creating some sound assets for the game.

Probably the hardest thing to record were the footsteps. I had everything planned out: bought the equipment, got every type of surface, but...there was one small thing I overlooked: I live in a city with over 12 million people. Noise everywhere. The solution was simple and ingenious: I recorded everything on a Sunday, because in Buenos Ares, Sunday is the one day when no one does anything.

Nataliya Radina: One of the most important places in the game is the cathedral. There we have a system of ladders that control the speed and direction of time. Direction wise, we can have it flow normally, or reversed. [entire presentation is rewound very quickly so it's back to Ressa]

Ressa Schwarzwald: She is super professional.

Nataliya Radina: As for the speed, we can make it stand still, go twice as fast, or half normal speed. We created an audio system that has to (?) understand what is actually happening around (inaudible). When we reverse time, spatial effects are added to the surrounding sounds. Ambience, steps, and the mechanism itself. When time stands still, we increase the low frequencies in the ambience, and all the other sounds are muted to zero. Now lastly, when the time goes twice as fast, or half the original speed, the pitch of the surrounding sound changes accordingly.

The coolest part of this system is that it's been actually implemented into the game engine using only one parameter.

Ressa Schwarzwald: Thank you for watching. See you here, later!

[debian-official]

You ask me what my gender is and I grab pen&paper from my bag and start drawing a finite state machine

[yermes]

I am king 🐦‍⬛

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Pick a meme

123

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Disclaimer: please take what I say with a grain of salt and not as the gospel. I just want to share some ideas of practicing and giving advice using the medium as often as I can with school, work, and my own personal studies and practice. But I am working on sharing my notes soon so that will be exciting! Liking and sharing does a lot 🥰

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Socials: My Socials **☾**

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The cards

Death 💌

Transform bitch transform. To be loved is to be changed, change will rip you from your skin and force you to be better than you are. It will force you into the crippling darkness of being unknown, the realization you barely know yourself and the world around you. The change will force you to rise and be better for the aeon of hate can only conclude if we strive to be better than it all individually. It may be painful when things are so different you can’t even grasp familiarity but things will not be familiar for a while, our concept and idea of familiarity will shift and change and we will have to be comfortable in the state of discomfort, and the state of unease we are in will only push us to be better than we are. Rise.

Fortune 🎱

Its not about the destination its about the journey, the journey itself is never always fun but it does always give perspective. And what does perspective give? The tools to shape and work the reality around us. Don’t stress about things not going your way because it will be rare, realistically. You are better off facing every challenge with optimism that you will only ever gain from the challenges before you. Don’t stress that things are hard because they always will be, don’t stress at all in fact because it just means you suffer twice. The ups and downs of luck is just indicative of life in general.

Knight of wands 🍸

Purest form of manifestation, why why why why wHY Would you limit yourself. You are boundless and infinite, only the physical is finite. What you can make through pure will what can you not pull out of thin air as we attempt to grasp for something greater, however with pure will may come pure delusion when you have nothing physical to back it up. You do need a balance of spirituality and physical as much as we hate to admit it. But with your mind alone you can become her it just takes a bit of thought and will power. You got it.

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Extras:

Story/vent:

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[aorish]

trying so hard to give a shit about the properties of a finite state machine

[s-lycopersicum]

some of your never modeled ui components using finite-state machines and it shows

[ryololart]

Tex Losing Her Legs

Tw: childhood trauma, gore, trauma in general, angst

My head is woozy, I can feel the blood draining from my forehead. It falls like rivers of red making paths down my cheeks to my chin where it drips off like a waterfall. Stars explode in front of my face. They cry and sing out for me, but their words are sharp and prick my ears. The sparks shine, coating my face in ash and dust making my eye itch and water. I try to stretch out my arms but they are limp to my sides. I am a phoenix rising from embers but forever cursed to wallow in her grave. It is sort of  beautiful to be stuck in such a state, unable to do a thing but watch as the world swallows me whole. 

“Up! Up! Texas let’s go,” the star's sorrowful plea is strained and exhausted. My mouth opens to say ‘I can’t’ but I have lost the ability to, instead a groan escapes. The sound does not appear as it has come from me, the pitch not familiar. The normal rasp is not equipped, instead it is wet and desperate. The dark around the stars becomes shaky. The once opaque landscape is translucent, colors shifting and changing behind a curtain. I can see time passing me by as I sit, unable to perceive the change. 

I heard a story once, about a man who lost connection to the International Space Station. He was on shift to repair something on the outside and his tether was not attached correctly. He floated out into space for three hours before someone was able to rescue him. He describes the incident as one of those life changing moments, where you realize everything is finite. One day you are at the top of your physics program, and worried about the upcoming test, the next you are with your family cheering that you got into the NASA Astronaut program, and then you are floating off into space, alone, in silence, where nothing matters. You look back at Earth now, from way above, no one knows that there is a man just floating above the atmosphere. Is that what God feels like? To just watch from above as patterns shift and change? This is what I imagine he felt like, time running away, no way to calculate how long it has been. No way to tell the people in your life how much you love them, no way to look back at all the things you have done in pride, no, you just drift away, empty, watching forever. God must be lonely.

I hoped that death would be like falling asleep after a long car ride and your parents carrying you to bed. You try to hide the smile that shows you did it on purpose to be carried, to feel the love that comes from that unspoken devotion a parent has to their child. The warm hands that could not be mistaken for another embrace your skin, unbuckling you from the seat. The being is so careful to climb up the stairs and to not let your creaky bed door ring out. Those same hands tuck you into bed as the body they belong to whispers a soft good night like a lullaby. 

“Wake up, wake up, wake up,” the stars scream again, this time in the form of people. Their hands grip my shoulders as lights shine in my face. Not like the beautiful show from before, now like bombs going off overhead. The stars explode and shriek, bursts of color here and there. It overloads my senses and I feel myself sinking further into my grave. All the sudden you are not floating in space anymore, you are running with everything you have left to give.

Death is like a march to the finish line, not the gentleness of a parent’s love. Not the soft warmth of being carried home. No. It is the  pop of the gun that goes off before you are ready to run. The heart starts racing, the mind is on overdrive, the fight to survive flowing through your blood in the form of adrenaline. The lungs gasp for air, trying to climb out your throat to reach the oxygen, no amount that you gulp down makes a difference. There is a sitch in the side that is unwelcome telling you time is up, give in. Just give in. Yet the body keeps going, the perfect machine, determined to win against nature. 

“Evangeline,” the glaze that was once over my eyes evaporates into the air and I see the first familiar thing, a pair of dark gray iris’s pouring into mine. “Do not look down.” 

A pair of gloves that appear to be bleeding before me tilts my head up, completely disorienting me once again. I want to close my eyes and go back into the comfort of my dark escape, but my body is running the race, forcing myself to acknowledge the world. I try to let my lungs expand to open to the world but I choke on something thick and boiled. I try to spit, pushing my lips together but the muscles scream at me to stop moving. I give an involuntary cough at the uncomfort in my throat and my body lights up like a christmas tree. Every single nerve explodes into fireworks, expanding and contracting, trying to connect with the sky by reaching up into the atmosphere. Yet they stay trapped in my body, paralyzing me.

There is someone else there, I can feel his movements in the sensory receptors that is making up for my lack of awareness. He keeps my face tilted up towards his and I can hear sounds coming out his mouth but they do not mean anything. The gibberish is not familiar but his voice, so rough and brutal as I am used to,  is instead sorrowful and desperate. Something is wrong, I know this, but I crave the comfort of being unknowing. I choose that it is okay in this moment to accept that I will never see that starry night my brain made for me, I will only ever see the smoke clouding the ceiling like a mirror reminding me of my state. 

The pain fades for a second as I take my first breath and what must have been hours. I can feel the shakiness of my chest as it expands. My skin is hot and wet and I can’t grip onto anything. As my conscience awakens I frantically try to take in my surroundings. Gray cement floors. White walls now painted in abstract red. Black-covered bodies run in the room. As the relief floods the pain returns and I gasp loudly. The cough comes again, harder this time and blood follows out my mouth. It is sticky and warm, coating my chin and the hand holding up my face. 

“How much longer, Roach?” He exclaims, using his thumb to wipe the blood away.

“I need another minute, we gotta set what we can or we may lose half of her.” Roach yells back. That is when I realize I can’t feel below my waist, all the pain that is shooting through me is only from there up. I managed to look as far down as a can, only to be met with Roach’s body crouched over my legs. Or what seemingly remains of them. 

My hand flies up to grip Simon’s vest and he catches it reflexly. I look at him in shock trying to remember how to breathe, my legs, they are just masses of blood. My boot is twisted backwards on the right side, my left is bent at the femur. 

“No, Evan, stay with me. You are in shock, we are going to get out of here.” He holds my hand bringing it to his masked face. All my thoughts scream however, you are stuck, you are stuck, you are stuck. Suddenly I am no longer in the Karoknoze Mountains, I am in Sanderson, Texas.

 My childhood bedroom was characterized by lead paint and mold. The walls were a pale pink that was chosen by my mother. She was so excited to have a daughter, finally, after a boy who caused her so much trouble. Mason got in so much trouble, whether in school with other kids and teachers, or with our father. All my mother wanted was to raise a baby girl, a child that was one of her kind. One that would have her back and be on her side no matter what. The love between a mother and daughter is like no other, they are intertwined from birth. A daughter is the soul captured when it left her mother, the soul that is fighting over and over to remain innocent, however, all souls only exist to be corrupted.  It is the deer in headlights, trying to move, but stuck, in ever revolving hell. The car keeps coming and coming, yet you watch in awe, the lights are so beautiful. Let them come and take me, I’d rather bathe in this unforgiving light than live this light of fight. Women fight every single day to just exist peacefully, and every day it gets harder. Every single mother and daughter suffer the cycle, bending time in hopes that the original sin will be forgiven. However God is considered a Man. Men are not friends of women. The daughter carries her mother’s sins to try to become anew, to only suffer the same fate with the best of intentions. They are doomed. The door knob that has been broken off so many times twists and makes a horrible sound. 

“Mason, you are in the wrong room,” My 14 year old body sits up as I watch from the back of my mind. My thin, thread-bare, white tank top starts to fall off my shoulder as a small hand, worn and torn, pushes it back up. I can smell the drink on him, the alcohol writing over the damp smell that always sits in this room. I call him again as he opens  the door fully.“Mason.”

“Hola, Princessa,” He takes a swig from the bottle that swishes in his hand. His wife beater stained brown from the excess he indulges in. He tries to go for a Spanish accent but fails miserably, I’m not sure if it is the drink or the fundamental lack of ability. It is ultimately impressive that he cannot speak Spanish when he spends more time in Mexico and dealing with the Mexicans than in Texas.

“Mason, go back to your room.” My body sits up against the wall pulling the covers up with me. Fear is stricken in every joint as they creak and groan with the movements. I feel frozen physically, my bones molded together with metal. His heavy footsteps made the floorboards scream as he entered my room, the light from the window forcing a shadow behind him.

“I have missed you sister, you are always gone when I’m home,” His words slur as he approaches the bed. A hand gripping the covers, pulling against my own strength. My face quivers like a doe, his body just one big light. “You owe me little girl.” 

His bottle falls onto my bed as a knee breaches the soft blanket. I swing my legs over the side and my feet touch the floor as his hand lurches out, grabbing me by the face, my mouth covered in its wake. I scream but no one is here as he pulls me back. I am stuck. I am stuck. I am stuck. 

Then the door opens again but this time it is another beast with its own lights, however they are worn and dim. The lights speak to each other as I raise my hooves to his hand and let my teeth bite down as hard a possible. Blood sprays my face and he jumps back. I hit the floor and get to the window, pushing it up, and make my escape. Just as I get outside a bottle hits the window and the glass sprays everywhere. I gasp and hit the hard floor of the desert before limping out into the darkness, not bothering to check behind me.

Before  I can realize I am being pulled across the cement, the gentle hand that is holding my face has left me. Instead I can feel someone else’s reach under my back and pull me up. I try to rip myself away with the little strength I can muster but only a fool tries to run on broken legs. I am a horse to be shot for sure. I am no longer useful. 

Then I see the glint of the sunglasses in an already dark room, the shine of a gun being forced into my hand, a tap on the side of my face that only means one thing. Get home. When Roach realizes I am no longer fighting him he wretches me up and over his shoulder. I lay limply there, just my torso making contact with his strong body. My fingers squeeze my gun as I keep my eyes on the back of his heels. He pats the side of my thigh and he moves quickly and precisely. The hallways zigzagged like a maze. It’s all shaky, hard to perceive. Colors and lights dancing in front of my eyes as we make our escape. 

[wovenstarlight]

Peaceful smile. i change my mind this course is fine actually

assignment so bad I'm genuinely considering dropping this course god bless

[cetaceanhandiwork]

the conversation around generative neural networks is a dumpster fire in a dozen different ways but I think the part that disproportionately frustrates me, like on an irrational pet peeve level, is that nobody in that conversation seems to understand automata theory

back before most of these deep learning techniques were a twinkle in a theorist's eye, back when computing was a lot less engineering and a lot more math, computer scientists had worked out the math of different "classes" of computer system and what kinds of problems they could and couldn't solve

these aren't arbitrary classifications like most taxonomy turns out to be. there's qualitative differences. you can draw hard lines: "it takes class X or above to run programs with Y trait", and "only class X programs or below are guaranteed to have Y trait". and all of those lines have been mathematically proven; if you ever found a counterexample, then we'd be in "math is a lot of bunk" territory and we'd have way bigger things to worry about

this has nothing to do with how fast/slow the computer system goes; it's about "what kinds of program can it run at all". so it includes emulation and such. you can emulate a lower system in a higher one, but not vice versa

at the top of this heap is turing machines, which includes most computers we'd bother to build. there's a lot of programs that it's been mathematically proven require at least a turing machine to run. and this class of programs includes a lot of things that humans can do, too

but with this power comes some inevitable restrictions. for example, if you feed a program to a turing machine, there's no way to guarantee that the program will finish; it might get stuck somewhere and loop forever. in fact there's some programs that you straight up can't predict whether they'll ever finish even if you're looking at the code yourself

these two are intrinsically linked. if your program solves a turing complete problem, it needs a turing machine; nothing less will do. and a turing machine is capable of running all such programs, given enough time.

ok. great. what does any of that jargon have to do with AI?

well... the important thing to know is that the machine learning models we're using right now can't loop forever. if they could loop forever they couldn't be trained. for any given input, they'll produce an output in finite time

which means... well, any program that requires a turing machine to run, or even requires a push-down automaton to run (a weaker type of computer system that can get into infinite loops but that you can at least check ahead of time if a program will get stuck or not), can't be emulated by these systems. they've got to be in the next category down: finite state machines at most - and thus unable to compute, or emulate computation of, programs that inhabit a higher tier

and there is a heck of a lot of stuff we conceptualize as "thinking" that doesn't fit in a finite state machine

...I suspect it will some day be possible for a computer program to be a person. I am absolutely certain that when that day comes, the computer program who's a person would require at least a turing machine to run them

what we have right now isn't that. what we have right now is eye spots on moths, bee orchids, mockingbirds. it might be "artificial intelligence", depending on your definition of "intelligence", but prompt it to do things that we've proven only a turing machine can do, and it will fall over

and the reason I consider this an "irrational pet peeve" and not something more severe? is because this information doesn't actually help solve policy questions! if this is a tool, then we still need to decide how we're going to allow such tools to be built, and used. it's not as simple as a blanket ban, and it's not as simple as letting the output of GNNs fully launder the input, because either of those "simple" solutions are rife for abuse

but I can't help but feel like the conversation is in part held back by specious "is a GNN a people" arguments on the one hand, and "can a GNN actually replace writers, or is it just fooling execs into thinking it can" arguments on the other, when the answer to both seems to me like it was solved 40 years ago