Dan Piponi

Disclaimer:
👽 My opinions are not my own. They're beamed to me by aliens

Current life:
🧠 Thinking at high effort

Previous lives:
🍩 PhD in Riemann theta functions
🧬 Glaxo Group Research
🚀 Argonaut Games
💥 Mass Illusion, Esc, ILM
🎈 Google X, Verily, Google
🎮 Epic Games

Likes:
🚴 I like to bike
🏃 I like to run
🎛️ my musical tastes lie towards the electronic end of the spectrum
🚀 I like Andor *and* The Mandalorian
📈 I have an OEIS entry https://oeis.org/A387361

Last Notes

2026-07-11 17:19:47 UTC

Profound words from the manual
https://media.mathstodon.xyz/media_attachments/files/116/902/486/041/051/439/original/5a860c1a46cf80f2.jpeg

2025-10-26 00:11:50 UTC

I think the biggest surprise during my last trip to the UK was discovering you can buy sex toys in WH Smith now.

2025-03-21 20:24:15 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…qjxu That's not an archaic usage in the US. I had to look it up as I kept seeing it in modern articles.

2025-03-20 23:39:10 UTC

Here is one of the definitions of "poignant" in the Merriam Webster dictionary:
2 a: pleasurably stimulating, b: being to the point : apt
Is the word ever used in this sense in British English? I think British usage is always related to negative feelings like sadness but I could have just missed these more positive uses.

2024-07-16 00:48:14 UTC

I hate animated gifs. For example, tri-color marking isn't complicated, but even knowing exactly how it works I can't follow an animated gif like this, and browsers, in general don't give any way to step through an animation. This just isn't how my brain works. Maybe everyone else's does and I should just crawl back into my hole.
https://media.mathstodon.xyz/media_attachments/files/112/793/396/658/885/193/original/b26b55f15dd78bbd.mp4

2024-06-30 00:28:42 UTC

The machines are better at everything now, except drawing ASCII art horses. Here's mine
_
______/ \
/\____/
/ \
It sort of looks like a horse doesn't it? If you squint and pick the right font? I'm still better than a machine, right? Anyone human still there?

2024-06-25 14:28:14 UTC

I have a fondness for hares, and jackrabbits are fairly common where I live, but I've never seen one stay still for long enough for a photo before today, even if it's a poor blurry shot. Wikipedia says these things go up to 6 lbs but the local jackrabbits all look at least as large as our 12 lb cat, so we must have a giant mutant variety, or their bodies are deceptive.
https://media.mathstodon.xyz/media_attachments/files/112/677/708/232/964/374/original/a4679ffd583a6e23.png

2024-06-11 15:56:56 UTC

Working in the tech world I have a bit of a skewed view of things and it's hard to judge the importance of things like LLMs in the world at large. But I'm getting the strong impression that outside of the tech industry ChatGPT is even more important and that for people below a certain age no essay for school, no memo to the department, no sympathy message, no job application and no article is written without it.

2024-05-12 20:00:35 UTC

Watched The Descent for the second time. Just as good as the first time. To me it's the perfect little horror movie.

2024-05-08 01:15:30 UTC

Let me tell you about my embarrassingly stupid C++ mistake so you don't have to make it:
If X is of type std::optional<T> and Y is of type T you can assign Y to X like so:
X = Y
I sort of don't like that because X and Y are different types.
You can also write
*X = Y
which works because *X is of type T&. Now the types match.
But woe is me! Don't do the latter. If X is an empty optional then *X = Y fails silently.
It's obvious when you think about it for a moment. But when you're thinking about the bigger picture you can forget about the little things.