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baha_man

3,597 karma · joined February 21, 2007

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baha_man··on World Beer Index 2021: The Cost and Consumption of Beer Around the World
Pint-sized cans of beer are rare, many beers come in 500ml cans. 330ml cans are common, especially for craft beer.
baha_man··on Ask HN: What is it like to be old? What advice would you give to younger people?
'Almost everyone needs reading glasses by 40'

I think it's more like 45 than 40.

baha_man··on Coronavirus: Boris Johnson taken to intensive care
He's not on a ventilator yet as far as we know
baha_man··on Electronic meters’ false readings up to six times higher than actual consumption
Source?
baha_man··on German Cities Are Solving the Age-Old Public Toilet Problem
"Toilet" is not a euphemism:

"Toilet" was by etymology a euphemism, but is no longer understood as such. As old euphemisms have become the standard term, they have been progressively replaced by newer ones, an example of the euphemism treadmill at work.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toilet#Contemporary_Use

baha_man··on The Parable of the Two Programmers (1985)
According to Snopes[1]:

"Practically anyone famous for his knowledge can be offered up as the virtuoso in this tale... Nikola Tesla, Thomas Edison, George Washington, the electrical genius Charles Proteus Steinmetz... How long this story has been around is a mystery."

http://www.snopes.com/business/genius/where.asp

baha_man··on A gun is now more likely to kill you than a car is in the U.S
"Guns are, somewhat counter-intuitively, one of the more survivable suicide methods."

Source? This study gives a 'case fatality rate' of 85% for firearms, 69% for suffocation, and 2% for poisoning:

http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/means-matter/means-matter/case-f...

baha_man··on Microsoft fixes '19-year-old' bug with emergency patch
..."the NHS in the UK. Its the largest organisation in the world with 1.4M employees..."

It's big, but it's not that big, fifth or sixth largest employer in the world according to Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_employers#Large...

baha_man··on Shakespeare’s Genius Is Nonsense
"On an unrelated note, are there areas that use a [lʊv] pronunciation of "love" today? That might explain the to-me odd use of "lurve" in humor."

According to http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/lurve:

"Origin - 1930s: as a parody of the pronunciation of love in popular romantic songs."

baha_man··on [dead]
There's actually more useful information in the Independent article submitted previously:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8281741

baha_man··on Why Golfers Buy Hole In One Insurance
Well, perhaps a hole in one is a bigger deal for amateurs, so they are more likely to honour the tradition. The article give the odds of getting a hole in one as 7,500 to 1 for a pro and 12,500 for an amateur, which doesn't seem like a huge difference, but presumably pros will play so much more they'll get many more holes in one.
baha_man··on Why Golfers Buy Hole In One Insurance
Surely betting on yourself to win is fine?
baha_man··on Executions should be by firing squad, federal appeals court judge says
I would guess the main reason is that it would be too gruesome for anyone watching the execution. Also, decapitation seems almost like desecrating the condemned person's corpse, which might be considered a cruel and unusual punishment even for someone considered to be deserving of the death penalty.
baha_man··on Paint.Net 4.0 is now available
Or Chocolatey: http://chocolatey.org/packages/paint.net/
baha_man··on London's Buried Diggers
Surely the diesel and oil could be removed very easily?

Anyway, this comment on the article you reference is interesting:

"The truth is somewhere in between, if the JCB's were mini diggers and secondhand it would make economic sense to bury the kit and not a lot of space would be lost..."

Also this quote from http://www.itv.com/news/london/2014-06-06/hundreds-of-jcb-di...:

"The diggers used are tiny little machines and they can be lifted out with a block and tackle. There is always an exit strategy for the equipment."

baha_man··on Chimps outperform humans in simple contests drawn from game theory
From Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nash_equilibrium):

"In game theory, the Nash equilibrium is a solution concept of a non-cooperative game involving two or more players, in which each player is assumed to know the equilibrium strategies of the other players, and no player has anything to gain by changing only their own strategy."

So, it is not correct to say "Nash equilibrium is about an overall better situation for both sides" - one player wants to win at the expense of the other.

Chosing sides at random is a game theory optimal strategy, that is, it is the best strategy to use when your opponent always choses the best counter-strategy. If the two players flip coins to chose their sides they will both end up winning 50% of games in the long run. Likewise if they are able to randomize their choices perfectly, they will both win 50% of games.

If your opponent plays in a sub-optimal manner (e.g. they chose the left side more often than the right), then the best strategy to use is an exploitative one (e.g. I see you chose left more than right so I always chose left), however, in this case you gain by changing your strategy (so no Nash equilibrium).

I can't see any way to 'beat' this simple game and win more than 50% of games in the long run without using an exploitable strategy, so it seems that chimps have somehow evolved to become better at playing this game in a game theory optimal manner than us.

baha_man··on Chimps outperform humans in simple contests drawn from game theory
i) "Isn't it a winner/loser pair for each game?"

Yes, if both players chose the same side, the 'matcher' wins. If they chose different sides, the 'mismatcher' wins.

"How can a pair "outperform" another?"

A player is better at the game the closer to a game theory optimal strategy they use. This would presumably be to chose left or right at random. The worst strategy would be to always chose the same side, the matcher would then be able to predict your next move with 100% accuracy.

Randomizing choices to be unpredictable is something humans aren't good at. Poker players sometimes use tricks like checking the position of the second hand of their watch to do this (e.g. if it's between 10 and 12, bet, if not, check). The study suggests chimps may be better at it than us.

"Nash equilibrium is about an overall better situation for both sides..."

No, this is not correct.

ii) "...chimps can read numbers and understand their order?"

It sounds like it from this Wikipedia entry:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimpanzee#Memory

"A 30-year study at Kyoto University’s Primate Research Institute has shown chimps are able to learn to recognize the numbers 1 through 9 and their values... jumbled digits are flashed onto a computer screen for less than a quarter of a second, after which the chimp, Ayumu, is able to correctly and quickly point to the positions where they appeared in ascending order."

baha_man··on Why Do Expensive Hotels Charge for Wifi?
No they didn't:

"The most common explanation for why fancy hotels charge for wifi is that their customers are not sensitive to price: rich customers, especially business travelers who charge everything to the company, don’t care about a $10 surcharge..."

baha_man··on The brave new world of DIY faecal transplant
"...the growing interest has partly been caused by genealogist who were initially studying the genome of e.g. humans..."

Do you mean geneticist rather than genealogist?

baha_man··on How to Trick the Guilty and Gullible into Revealing Themselves
"I wanted to tell you about his private-eye trick, which he learned from a hard-bitten partner.

It wasn’t a blackjack-, brass knuckles-type thing. “It went like this,” Morris explained. “He’d knock on a door, sometimes of someone not even connected to the case they were investigating. He’d flip open his wallet, show his badge and say, ‘I guess we don’t have to tell you why we’re here.’

“And more often than not the guy starts bawling like an infant, ‘How did you find out?’” And then disgorges some shameful criminal secret no one would ever have known about otherwise."

baha_man··on Borgata casino lawsuit: Phil Ivey cheated, won $9.6M?
http://www.floattheturn.com/dictionary.php?word=d&page=3

"Degenerate, often simply 'degen,' is a well-known appelation for players who behave in a self-destructive manner away from the poker table."

baha_man··on Show HN: TruckPlease – Moving sucks, so we decided to make it easier
Small typo on this page:

https://www.truckplease.com/how-it-works

"TruckPlease doesn’t employee anyone..."

baha_man··on Pronunciation errors that made the English language
Yes, definitely silent.
baha_man··on Introducing Bing Code Search for C#
"For future reference you can compile VS projects from the command line if you want using MSBuild, that's all building in VS does."

Not necessarily true, I believe some versions of Visual Studio have their own compiler which is different to the one used by MSBuild:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ed_maurer/archive/2008/06/11/a-tale-...

baha_man··on Why Does A Good Kettle Cost $90+?
"80% of the population is not normally the same as 80% of households."

Sure, but I was surprised by how low the figure was. I would have expected it to be more like 90-95%.

baha_man··on Why Does A Good Kettle Cost $90+?
"Overall ownership of kettles has declined from 83 per cent of the population in 2008 to 78 per cent in 2012."

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2262020/Humble-kettl...

baha_man··on Who needs 'internet' when we have fax? An 'expert's' view from 1996
"Answer a survey question to continue reading this content..."

Flagged.

baha_man··on Persona makes signing in easy for Gmail users
"Amusingly enough, Stack Overflow still has a (broken) Clickpass button on its login page."

Where? I can't see it.

baha_man··on Observations from a Tipless Restaurant
"English pub food is paid for at the bar with your drinks, that you yourself walk away carrying."

In my experience it's more normal that you order your food at the bar, and a member of staff then brings your food to your table. A tip isn't normally expected in this case.

In a gastropub your order would normally be taken at your table and you'd tip just as if you were in a restaurant.

baha_man··on What It Feels Like To Be Hit With Turkish Tear Gas
I heard that some people are pretty much immune to CS gas, the only reference I can find online is here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk%3ACS_gas#Immunity

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