# I am the Watcher. I am your guide through this vast new twtiverse.
#
# Usage:
# https://watcher.sour.is/api/plain/users View list of users and latest twt date.
# https://watcher.sour.is/api/plain/twt View all twts.
# https://watcher.sour.is/api/plain/mentions?uri=:uri View all mentions for uri.
# https://watcher.sour.is/api/plain/conv/:hash View all twts for a conversation subject.
#
# Options:
# uri Filter to show a specific users twts.
# offset Start index for quey.
# limit Count of items to return (going back in time).
#
# twt range = 1 5
# self = https://watcher.sour.is/conv/3p2hznq
I spent a fair amount of my spare time this week diving into some ancient computer science from the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s (!!!), specifically Dana Angluin's L* algorithm for learning a finite state machine from an oracle and Rivest & Shapire's followups and extensions. Quite beautiful work in my opinion.
L* is especially simple and elegant imo. Shapire's valiant is more computationally efficient and I think grounded a bit better, but a little harder to understand.
variant* It's a funny typo because Rivest and Shapire formulate some of their results in Leslie Valiant's PAC framework*
Through the years I read some « old » IT books and they are still good. My favorite one is the Dragon Book by J. Ullman.
@eaplmx oh wow, I'd never heard of *that* L*. I suppose such a short name is bound to be reused.
I was thinking about Dana Angluin's algorithm, from 1987. Ancient computer science. The kind that youngsters ought to be taught, but rarely are.*