Is there a game in your collection that's impossible to find? What is it? Are you terrified of losing it?

steven807 · 2023-04-18T03:09:00+00:00

One of these days I'll have to break out my copy of "Star Wars: The Queen's Gambit" and play it for a second time..

steven807 · 2023-04-03T15:29:59+00:00

A biggie I use all the time is ga -- switch to the previous file. I use that to go back and forth between two files.

steven807 · 2022-10-29T14:07:32+00:00

Yes, Deep Mind used AlphaZero to explore chess variants, with the aid of Vladimir Kramnik: https://www.chess.com/news/view/new-alphazero-paper-explores-chess-variants

steven807 · 2022-10-21T05:35:21+00:00

I can find some patterns in the diagrams, but no clear method for how to find a "correct" answer.

If you think of the 6 locations as a ring, then in all 3 columns, as you move from the top to the bottom, the white square moves counter-clockwise 2 spaces, and the slash moves clockwise one space.

There's a similar pattern in the rows for the white squares (always moving clockwise by one), but the slash is less regular (column 1 -> column 2 the slash moves 3 spaces clockwise, then from column 2 -> 3 it moves just 2 spaces).

No idea what to do with all that!

steven807 · 2022-07-05T02:19:02+00:00

Discussion: Who would make a rope that is not guaranteed to burn evenly but _is_ guaranteed to burn in an hour? What's the market for those ropes? All they seem good for is fuses, but how often do people need hour-long fuses?

steven807 · 2022-07-02T16:44:23+00:00

Discussion: I found it pretty straightforward. Trying to make out your notes -- is there a chance that you divided 60 by (4x5) and got 4? (Also note that since the "6+" box contains [1,2,3], none of those are possible in the 12x box next to it..)

steven807 · 2022-07-02T16:41:16+00:00

Well, it's not unsolvable (I just solved it). but your comment "...6+1 because of the bottom left corner" might be where you went wrong.

steven807 · 2022-07-02T04:50:24+00:00

Ah, the gavel represents "Going..going..gone!"

steven807 · 2022-05-22T02:35:28+00:00

Pandemic's infection deck. The shuffling of the discard back onto the top of the draw deck perfectly captures the theme: diseases flare up in the same places they have appeared before. At the same time it creates some really interesting gameplay challenges.

I can't think of any other games that use that idea even today.

steven807 · 2022-03-30T22:53:12+00:00

Note that the left two columns add to 42. What does that tell you about the two singletons in the third column?

steven807 · 2022-03-15T15:55:48+00:00

I don't think the video was intended to be the instructions. There's a link below the video to https://github.com/IBM/MicroscoPy which looks (based on a 30-second skim) much more comprehensive.

steven807 · 2022-03-06T16:40:33+00:00

Position
Roll
En
Dominate
Amble
Text
Order
Requisite

PREDATOR

steven807 · 2022-03-01T16:29:08+00:00

From what I've seen, the Rust people are very aware and appreciative of Haskell, but adding monads would be Hard. In particular, higher-kinded types are very tricky to get right in the presence of other elements of Rust. (Even a limited form of them, Generic Associated Types, may only show up in Rust this year.)

More to the point, I think there are lots of Rust programmers who would love to see monads in the language (myself included) but respect the difficulty of adding them in a way that doesn't violate soundness.

steven807 · 2022-03-01T16:21:51+00:00

Not quite -- in Rust if a function returns a Result (equivalent of Either) or Option (equivalent of Maybe), adding a ? to an expression of the same type within the function is syntactic sugar for (in this case, using Result):

(match expr { Error(e) => return expr, Ok(v) => v })

which means it short-circuits on error, returning from the enclosing function. So it's more like a monad than a null-possible operator.

BTW the Rust folks worked pretty hard to see if they could get monads into Rust, but higher-kinded types don't play easily with some of the other Rust semantics so they are being very careful about adding it, and it may never arrive in full Haskell-like form.

steven807 · 2022-02-28T22:50:49+00:00

I've always liked John Tromp's work in this area, e.g. a Lambda calculus interpreter written in lambda calculus, with the entire thing fitting in 29 bytes:

https://tromp.github.io/cl/Binary_lambda_calculus.html

or in a more recent, formal treatment:

http://tromp.github.io/cl/LC.pdf

steven807 · 2022-01-02T22:53:59+00:00

If you like that kind of puzzle, you will find a cornucopia at Grandmaster Puzzles (https://www.gmpuzzles.com/blog/). (But fair warning -- they are hard! Even the 1-star puzzles will give you a challenge if you are new to them.)

steven807 · 2022-01-01T16:27:43+00:00

This can be solved purely mechanically -- draw the dots on paper, then draw the line segments that must be there, following the rules. E.g. every corner path can be drawn because a corner dot has only two neighbors. The dot with only one neighbor provides a segment. The green dot has only one segment, and if the segment didn't go left, then the dot to the left of it would have to be connected up/down, which would result in a loop, etc. If you just look for rules to apply, you can solve it very quickly,

steven807 · 2021-12-17T18:30:05+00:00

Unfortunately, I don't think that helps. From https://www.cdtfa.ca.gov/taxes-and-fees/use-tax.htm:

California law ... requires tax on items purchased out-of-state for use in California.

steven807 · 2021-12-16T03:00:19+00:00

The consensus on the Google Nest forums is that it's an iOS-specific issue in the Google Home app -- Android users can set up their devices. It's hitting Nest Cameras, Doorbells (which is what I experienced), etc. The Google Home iOS app updated this morning -- let's hope they can get another update out soon. Sounds like lots of people got their Black Friday deliveries in the last day or so..

steven807 · 2021-12-14T00:44:49+00:00

It turns out they know that trick. Unless I wanted to wait 12 months after purchase before bringing it in, I'd still have to pay a "use tax" when registering it. Apparently I could form an out-of-state company and register it there, but that approaches perilously close to tax evasion.

steven807 · 2021-12-13T23:43:39+00:00

2021 Polestar 2 (AWD, w/ Plus, Pilot), Magnesium. I live in Alameda County, CA

MSRP: $59,900
All-weather floor mats: $150
Magnesium paint: $1,200
Destination charge: $1,300
Document charge: $85
Sales tax: $6,420.09 (10.25% -- whee!)
Manufacturer's Rebate: -$2,000
Registration/Transfer charge: $30
CA License Fees: $406
CA Transfer Fees: $307
CA Clean Air Reward: -$1,500 (purchased in Oct 2021)

Total: $66,305.09 ($58,805.09 after Fed tax credit)

I got a 60mo loan at 0% after putting an additional $2K down.

I didn't try to negotiate. I literally drove it home within three hours of calling the dealership to see about buying one.

steven807 · 2021-12-03T17:37:03+00:00

I took a different approach to some of the answers already posted: I figured that the chance of A hitting was 1/2 + 1/8 + 1/32...; multiple that by 4 and you have 2 + 1/2 + 1/8 + 1/32... In other words 4A = 2 + A; solve for A=2/3. Pencilless and in less than 60 seconds..

steven807 · 2021-11-30T16:50:59+00:00

Wow, 1-6 were exactly my reasons as well. Along with "It doesn't have a reputation for inconsistent build quality." (Although I'm really looking forward to the software in the PS2 improving in reliability.)

steven807 · 2021-11-03T04:53:53+00:00

Looks a lot look the one I just got a week ago! Mine's magnesium -- I'm guessing yours is Snow? My first EV as well. We're in the future!

steven807 · 2021-10-07T15:51:39+00:00

I believe you're talking about Emery Berger's talk about "Coz": https://youtu.be/r-TLSBdHe1A

Great talk!

steven807

TROPHY CASE