@cmdr_amarao Oh, that's a relief!

And recently it has gotten worse,although it is probably me, and not the Fedi, that is the reason.

I mean, at times a have really great interactions here, but other times I see all those posts go by and I think I'm a total outsider here -- but in a boring way that nobody wants to hear about anyway.

@wim_v12e Exactly.

I really don't know what else to add to your view.

@wim_v12e It is still fun to watch, though.

@cmdr_amarao Usually yes, but in my current mood it isn't. I mean, what I wrote there is the closest I've ever come to a subtoot :/

@wim_v12e if it matters, I do like interacting with you.

I'd like to say the feeling will go away , but it might not.

@cmdr_amarao Thanks! It is partly my own fault because I feel I have nothing to say. But usually I don't feel low for very long.

@wim_v12e perhaps wr should, one of these days, chat a bit over something that carries voice. We could include @Eidon as well!

@cmdr_amarao @wim_v12e With great pleasure!

@cmdr_amarao @Eidon Yes, that would be fun! I'm still very busy next week, and after that I go on holiday and totally off line for a week, but after that I can definitely find time.

@wim_v12e @cmdr_amarao Lovely :)

@wim_v12e @Eidon I mean, perhaps on a weekend?

@cmdr_amarao @Eidon Already you've made me feel better, both of you, so thanks a lot!

@Eidon I should have said, "when my friends aren't there".

@Eidon It's the same for me: I don't want to bother anyone or bump into a conversation, so I say nothing.

But I wonder what you would think is not up to my level ...
Maybe give it a try?

@wim_v12e
Yes of course! Well for instance yesterday night I uploaded on github the code of a simulator of the heartquake game; that's basically a finite state automaton that progresses step by step from an initial state to a concluding step -- or perhaps enters a cyclic loop. My simulator takes a range of states and plays the game up to a threshold. If the threshold is reached, I save the input that produced the condition (it could be that it's a long game, but it could have entered a loop)

@wim_v12e So what I do is a dummy 'brute force' scan of the input space. Well I'm certain there are more clever way to do that combinatorial search, and wanted to discuss that with you.

But then I put the idea in the wait state; I started thinking that you're certainly very busy, and maybe you would not have the time, andand...

I guess the right thing to do is to not overthink and just 'speak' -- I'm sorry, sometimes I'm rather clumsy...

Wait a minute, I said "sometimes"??!!

@Eidon Is there a particular reason why you want to investigate this game?
There are indeed approaches for doing that type of search, and it is actually a problem that my PhD student has looked into a bit (until we realised that our particular problem, despite its huge search space, had an analytical solution).

@wim_v12e The only reason I have is that I played the game several thousand times and in some very rare cases I had the impression I had entered an infinite loop :)

I wonder if there could be applications in cryptography, though I don't actually have the background to tell

Oh wow I'd love it if this would be a case of interest to your student!!

@Eidon I see. But surely there are other ways to assess if an algorithm based on FSMs deadlocks? I think it depends if this is a single FSM or a number of connected ones (like in the Game of Life). In the latter case, it is actually Turing complete so you can't tell. If it is a proper FSM you should in principle be able to tell. 1/2

@Eidon 2/2
The search space my student explored is quite different to what you have (I think). In its simplest form it is a set of sets of integers
Every instance of the set is formed by a partial factorization of one or more of the integers in the original set.

But what could maybe help you is that he looked at mechanism to explore this space, maybe you can use these as well.

@wim_v12e This is very interesting! Yes I'd love to read about those exploration mechanisms -- did he publish papers about them?

@Eidon He didn't invent them, by "looked into" I meant "studied the state of the art". But I'll ask if he made notes that he could share.

@wim_v12e Thank you very much Wim!!

@wim_v12e
Thank you very much Wim. As I was saying, learning from you is a fascinating and enlightening experience.

If memory serves me still, HeartQuake is the coupling of two FSMs representing the players of the game. I should also add that this is actually a family of FSMs -- every multiset (=pack) of cards defines a new game.

@Eidon I'll have a look at your code when I have some more time, that should give me a good idea of the rules isn't it?

@wim_v12e Yes of course. Many thanks!!

@cafou Ah, hi Cafou, good to hear from you! Is there a story behind the 愛 in your avatar?

To answer, it's probably because of my current mood. When I wrote that I felt like a wrung-out dishtowel. I already feel a bit better now, after talking to a few friends here.

My sentiment was that there are many people here posting about many things, and I feel I can only relate to a few of these posts, even those in my own timeline. So sometimes that feels a bit lonely.

@wim_v12e

Oh Hi.
Inded. I found someone so, I put this Kanji as a avatar temporarily.

Sorry to hear that. I guess It's happen sometimes even with you closed followers. Anyway, on which subject you work right? How did you use you free time?

@cafou Hi Cafou, that's nice, I assume you're having a great time then!

I am not working on any subject right now, in the last few weeks I did purely administrative work, and it was very stressful.

What do you mean by "how did I use my free time"? In much the same way as at other times: reading, fediverse, running, hillwalking every now and then.

@mastoabed Maybe that's how humans work, and computers just magnify this.

@Eidon That post got quite a few favs so I guess we're not alone in experiencing this.