DESSERT: An Efficient Algorithm for Vector Set Search with Vector Set Queries

We study the problem of $\textit{vector set search}$ with $\textit{vector set queries}$. This task is analogous to traditional near-neighbor search, with the exception that both the query and each element in the collection are $\textit{sets}$ of vectors. We identify this problem as a core subroutine for semantic search applications and find that existing solutions are unacceptably slow. Towards this end, we present a new approximate search algorithm, DESSERT (${\bf D}$ESSERT ${\bf E}$ffeciently ${\bf S}$earches ${\bf S}$ets of ${\bf E}$mbeddings via ${\bf R}$etrieval ${\bf T}$ables). DESSERT is a general tool with strong theoretical guarantees and excellent empirical performance. When we integrate DESSERT into ColBERT, a state-of-the-art semantic search model, we find a 2-5x speedup on the MS MARCO and LoTTE retrieval benchmarks with minimal loss in recall, underscoring the effectiveness and practical applicability of our proposal.Comment: Code available, https://github.com/ThirdAIResearch/Desser

The condition of the working class: Representation and praxis

Copyright © 2013 Immanuel Ness and Wiley Periodicals, Inc. This is the accepted version of the following article: Wayne, M. and O'Neill, D. (2013), The Condition of the Working Class: Representation and Praxis. WorkingUSA, 16: 487–503, which has been published in final form at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/wusa.12076/abstract.This essay reflects critically on the political context, production process, ideas, and strategies of our feature-length documentary film The Condition of the Working Class. It explores why we were inspired by Friedrich Engels' 1844 book of the same name and how that book connects with the contemporary neoliberal capitalist project that has dominated the political scene internationally for several decades. We conceptualize our film as a constellation, in the manner of Walter Benjamin, between the 1840s and the contemporary moment. The essay explores the production process of the film, which involved setting up and working in conjunction with a theatrical project. The essay reflects on the theatrical work of John McGrath and its connections with our own work. In the final section of the essay, the authors consider the finished film in more detail, analyzing how the film focused on the process of theatrical production and contextualized that process within wider spatial and temporal frames. The film and the theater project explore the possibility of reconstituting in a microcosm a working class collective subject that has been atomized and demonized by 30 years of neoliberal policy, which in the context of the present economic crisis seeks to drive its project even further

Zur Chronologie des antiken Thera: Sondagen am Apollon Karneios-Heiligtum und in der Straße 11

Die antike Stadt Thera wurde zwischen 1896 und 1902 unter der Leitung von Friedrich Hiller von Gaertringen umfassend freigelegt, aber systematische archäologische Untersuchungen zur Erforschung der Stadtgeschichte fanden erst unter der Leitung von Wolfram Hoepfner in den 1990ern statt. Hoepfners Team führte Bauforschungen durch und legte erstmals stratigraphische Sondagen in verschiedenen Bereichen der Stadt an, die aber nicht alle publiziert wurden. Ziel dieses Beitrags ist es, anhand der alten Grabungsdokumentation die Sondagen an zwei Stellen zu publizieren, die exemplarisch Aufschluss über die Entwicklung der Stadt von der archaischen Zeit bis in die römische Kaiserzeit liefern. Die 1994 durchgeführte Sondage am Apollon Karneios-Heiligtum belegt erstmals, dass für den Komplex zwei große Bauphasen zu rekonstruieren sind. Das Heiligtum wurde vermutlich in der archaischen Zeit als Oikos-Tempel mit Vorhof errichtet und in der hellenistischen Zeit um einen großen Hof mit Zisterne und Nebenräumen erweitert. Die 1991 und 1992 angelegten Sondagen in der Straße 11 zeigen, dass diese Straße und ihre Randbebauung nicht vor der hellenistischen Zeit zu datieren sind. In dieser Sondage wurde erstmals eine mächtige Schicht aus Bimssteinen in vollem Umfang freigelegt, die direkt über dem anstehenden Felsen aufgeschüttet wurde und zur Unterfütterung der Straße diente. Solche Nivellierungsschichten aus Bimssteinen wurden seit den frühesten Grabungen an verschiedenen Stellen in der Stadt angetroffen, aber gewöhnlich nicht bis zu ihrer Unterkante ausgegraben und bislang auch nicht systematisch im Hinblick auf ihre Datierung und Funktion ausgewertet. In diesem Beitrag wird abschließend argumentiert, dass selbst punktuelle Untersuchungen wertvolle Ergebnisse und Erkenntnisse liefern und dass solche Sondagen im antiken Thera dringend fortgesetzt werden sollten, um zahlreiche nach wie vor offene Fragen zu klären.Large parts of the ancient city of Thera were excavated between 1896 and 1902 under the direction of Friedrich Hiller von Gaertringen, but systematic archaeological investigations that would examine the city’s development were only carried out under Wolfram Hoepfner in the 1990s. Hoepfner’s team studied the architecture and made stratigraphic soundings in several areas of the city, which were, however, not all published. The aim of this paper is to publish, based on the old documentation, trenches at two points which provide exemplary insight into the city’s development from the Archaic period to the Roman Imperial period. The trench that was made in the sanctuary of Apollon Karneios in 1994 allows, for the first time, two large phases to be reconstructed for this complex. The sanctuary was probably built in the Archaic period and remodelled in the Hellenistic period when a large courtyard with a cistern and two secondary rooms were added. Two trenches dug in Street 11 in 1991 and 1992 show that the street and bordering buildings were not constructed before the Hellenistic period. A thick layer of pumice was fully exposed, which had been deposited on the bedrock and served as fill to support the street. Similar levelling layers of pumice have been found since the earliest excavations in several areas of the city, but they were usually not explored to the bottom and have not yet been systematically investigated to assess their date and function. At the end, it is argued that even confined investigations provide important results and insights and that further stratigraphic trenches should be dug in Thera in order to answer the many still open questions

Die Basilike Stoa an der Agora von Thera: Rekonstruktion ihrer Entwicklung auf Basis stratigraphischer Grabungen

Die Basilike Stoa in Thera ist durch mehrere Inschriften bekannt, die in situ gefunden wurden und Reparaturen in trajanischer und antoninischer Zeit dokumentieren. Die lange geschlossene Halle mit zentraler innerer Säulenstellung liegt an der Agora und ist eines der größten Bauwerke der Stadt. Das Errichtungsdatum der Basilike Stoa ist in der Forschung umstritten. Vorgeschlagene Datierungen reichen vom frühen 3. Jh. v. Chr., als die Ptolemäer eine Flottenbasis auf Thera hatten, bis in die augusteische Zeit, als die Stadt nach 120 Jahren der Stagnation vermutlich eine erneute Blüte erlebte. Dieser Beitrag hat zum Ziel, das Baudatum und die Geschichte der Basilike Stoa zu klären, basierend auf stratigraphischen Grabungen, die 1992 durchgeführt wurden. Drei Schnitte, die an der westlichen und östlichen Außenmauer der Stoa angelegt wurden, werden ausführlich diskutiert. Die Keramik aus dem wichtigsten Schnitt, 92 C, wird präsentiert. In diesem Schnitt, der sich in der Straße F westlich der Stoa befand, wurde eine dichte Abfolge von Straten gefunden, die sieben Phasen zugeordnet werden. Es wird gezeigt, dass die Stoa sicher im 2. Jh. v. Chr. errichtet wurde, vermutlich noch bevor die Ptolemäer die Flottenbasis 146/145 v. Chr. auflösten, und dass die Westmauer der Stoa in der frühen Kaiserzeit vollständig erneuert wurde. Der Bau an der Westseite der Straße F, das sog. Phallos-Haus, hatte eine ähnliche und sogar noch komplexere Geschichte. Der Belag der Straße F wurde dreimal erneuert. Dagegen konnten in keinem der drei Schnitte Befunde der trajanischen und antoninischen Stoareparaturen sicher identifiziert werden. Die Rekonstruktion der Geschichte der Stoa stellt einen wichtigen Beitrag zur Untersuchung der urbanen Entwicklung der antiken Stadt Thera dar. Diese ist kaum erforscht, weil bislang nur wenige stratigraphische Grabungen durchgeführt und publiziert worden sind.The Basilike Stoa in Thera is known from several inscriptions found in situ which document repairs in the Trajanic and Antonine periods. The long, closed hall with a central internal colonnade is one of the city’s few monumental buildings, located at the agora. Its construction date is debated in scholarship, proposed dates ranging from the early 3rd century B.C., when the Ptolemies had a naval base in Thera, to the Augustan period when the city presumably revived after some 120 years of stagnation. This paper aims at clarifying the construction date and history of the Basilike Stoa, based on stratigraphic excavations carried out in 1992. Three trenches that were dug at the western and eastern external walls of the Stoa are discussed in detail, and the pottery from the most important trench is presented. The latter, trench 92 C, was located in Street F to the west of the Stoa and yielded a dense sequence of features that are attributed to seven phases. It is shown that the Stoa was certainly built in the 2nd century B.C., most likely before the Ptolemies abandoned their naval base in 146/145 B.C., and that its west wall was almost completely rebuilt in the early Imperial period. The building on the western side of Street F, the so-called Phallos House, had a similar, if even more complex history, and the pavement in the street was renewed three times. In contrast, no evidence of the Trajanic and Antonine repairs of the Stoa were identified in any of the three trenches. The reconstruction of the Stoa’s history provides an important contribution to assessing the urban development of ancient Thera, which is generally little known because very few stratigraphic excavations have been carried out and published so far

Self-interest And Public Interest: The Motivations Of Political Actors

Self-Interest and Public Interest in Western Politics showed that the public, politicians, and bureaucrats are often public spirited. But this does not invalidate public-choice theory. Public-choice theory is an ideal type, not a claim that self-interest explains all political behavior. Instead, public-choice theory is useful in creating rules and institutions that guard against the worst case, which would be universal self-interestedness in politics. In contrast, the public-interest hypothesis is neither a comprehensive explanation of political behavior nor a sound basis for institutional design

Secret Signals from Another World: Walter Benjamin’s Concept of Innervation

Walter Benjamin refers to the “idea of revolution as an innervation of the technical organs of the collective” as one of the articles of his politics. The significance of this assertion has received relatively little attention in the philosophical reception of his political thought compared to the alternative model of revolution – made famous from the paralipomena to the late theses ‘On the Concept of History’ – as the emergency handbrake of history. Drawing on some of the debates and tensions generated by the work of Miriam Bratu Hansen, this discussion aims at an exegesis of some of the lesser known intellectual sources that influenced Benjamin’s theory of innervation. The purpose in doing so is not an attempt to reconcile or integrate these sources with dominant philosophical reconstructions of what is sometimes characterized as Benjamin’s “Western Marxism” and elaborated, in the more familiar context of Surrealist innervation, as a synthesis of Freud and Marx, but rather to reveal an alternative constellation of Soviet biomechanics and reactionary anti-capitalist Lebensphilosophie, united in their shared rejection of Freudian psychoanalysis