| pronouns | he/they |
| homepage | https://andrewabernathy.com |
| pixelfed | https://pixelfed.social/@andrewabernathy |
| home location | Seattle, Washington, USA |
Andrew Abernathy
@andrewabernathy
- 306 Followers
- 378 Following
- 5.1K Posts
Interface designer at the Omni Group, after a career as a programmer. Hobbies include photography, some (sea) kayaking and outdoor exploring, but all too often TV wins out.
Sheril Kirshenbaum
The InterceptBorder Protection agents are allowed to have the very markings for which many immigrants were disappeared into a Salvadoran gulag — as long as they keep them out of sight. https://theintercept.com/2025/07/16/cbp-ice-trump-gang-tattoos-cecot/
Terence TaoHowever, the real world is considerably more complicated than any typical game, with several emergent phenomena arising from the interaction between features that are often not present in simplified games.
For instance, in the real world, payoffs are not solely measured in quantitative units such as money, "points", or rankings, but also in more subjective (and emotionally colored) senses, such as feelings of "superiority", "safety", "hope for the future", "being respected", or "treated fairly". As the field of behavioral economics can attest, these subjective incentives can lead to complex and unintuitive outcomes that arise from a richer utility model than what one usually sees in classical game theory. (4/7)
Game theory makes several important distinctions between different types of games, which can greatly affect the nature and complexity of their analysis.
For instance, there are deterministic games (such as chess, Diplomacy, or rock-scissors-paper) in which no sources of randomness (beyond the player's own choices) are present, and non-deterministic games (such as Monopoly, Risk, or poker) in which random elements such as dice rolls or shuffled cards are present.
There are games of perfect information (such as chess, Go, or tic-tac-toe), in which each piece of relevant information, such as the state of the game board, the outcome of a die roll, or the value of the top card of a deck, are simultaneously revealed to all players without any inaccuracy in the reporting; and games of asymmetric information (such as poker, "Mafia", or "Among Us") in which key information, such as the cards in a player's hand, or the secret role a player has, is only known to a subset of the players.
There are single player games (e.g., Solitaire), two-player games (e.g., chess), multi-player games (e.g., poker), and massively multiplayer games, which include mean-field games modeling real-world phenomena such as traffic and the stock market, and which were discussed in my previous post https://mathstodon.xyz/@tao/113910070146861518. (1/7)
Terence Tao (@tao@mathstodon.xyz)
I recently talked about (in https://mathstodon.xyz/@tao/113873092369347147) how solutions in a dynamical systems can be roughly divided into an effective dynamics regime, where simplifying principles such as linearity can be reasonably good approximations, and the more complicated regime of no effective dynamics, in which the behavior can be significantly more nonlinear. For instance, in linear regimes, applying a force in one direction, if followed swiftly by an equal and opposite force in the other direction, will get the state roughly back to where one started; but the same is not true in nonlinear regimes. (If one pulls a spring too far in one direction, one can end up with a broken spring, with no way to return to the initial state, regardless of how one tries to push the spring back in the opposite direction.) (1/7)
TechmemeDelta plans for 20% of its fares to be individually determined using AI by the end of 2025, up from 3% now, with the goal of eliminating static pricing entirely (Irina Ivanova/Fortune)
https://fortune.com/2025/07/16/delta-moves-toward-eliminating-set-prices-in-favor-of-ai-that-determines-how-much-you-personally-will-pay-for-a-ticket/
http://www.techmeme.com/250716/p45#a250716p45
Delta moves toward eliminating set prices in favor of AI that determines how much you personally will pay for a ticket
The airline touted a partnership with an AI-enabled revenue system as a step on the road to fully personalized ticket pricing, part of its goal to raise profit margins long-term.
willowbl00Yesterday was my last day at Apple. I'm looking for new work as someone who helps people be better at shipping, usually program-manager shaped. My role at Apple was too secretive for me. More here! https://blog.bl00cyb.org/2025/07/the-secrets-we-keep/
“In response to the subnetwork’s sudden closure, the Washington State Department of Health (DOH) is working to ensure the state’s 988 crisis counselors are trained to support LGBTQIA2S+ youth and young adults.”
https://universeodon.com/@WADeptHealth/114865225786481619
https://universeodon.com/@WADeptHealth/114865225786481619
WA Department of Health (@WADeptHealth@universeodon.com)
The LGBTQI+ Youth Subnetwork of the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline will shut down tomorrow, July 17, following a federal decision announced last month to end this specialized service. Since launching in 2022, the subnetwork has provided tailored support to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer or questioning, intersex, asexual, and two-spirit (#LGBTQIA2S+) youth ages 13 to 24. https://doh.wa.gov/newsroom/federal-shutdown-988-lgbtqi-youth-subnetwork-takes-effect-tomorrow
Viss
OrbitalMartianDo I keep this stopwatch running or reset and stop it.
It's been going since July 2023 and has survived a phone transfer (intact, surprisingly).
This has definitely got to be a world record. It definitely isn't where Apple got to testing. It is broken, the milliseconds flash (not actually counting) and the seconds only update every 20 seconds or so. I did report to Apple but they never got back to me.
Lauren WeinsteinIn wake of Texas flooding, Trump orders NOAA to SHUT DOWN emergency warning systems to save money
https://bsky.app/profile/markey.senate.gov/post/3ltzxwu4ohs2y
Senator Ed Markey (@markey.senate.gov)
Unbelievable. Just days after the tragic flooding in Texas, NOAA is demanding that public TV stations remove equipment from towers that is critical for these stations to send weather alerts. Trump’s ideological crusade against public broadcasting will cost lives.