fengwick3

Subsequent versions contain more algorithms and details. Some subtler optimizations are also mentioned in later books.

A lot of people here seem to misunderstand the nature of the hacks that these laws are targetting. The intention here is to punish those who abuse these hacks to gain a competitive edge when playing against others, which can be extremely sizable especially for FPSes. Professional teams also rely on the in game competitive rankings to scout for new talent, so this abuse can have further ramifications apart from brusing egos.

If anybody is curious about the physics, the principle he described is pretty similar to the Holographic Principle.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic_principle

One assumption not explicitly explained is that the prisoners can identify the boxes by their order, since they are arranged in a line. So, the prisoners first agree among themselves that box number x should correspond to which prisoner, and vice versa. So now, each box contains a name, which points to another box at a certain position, which contains another name, ad infinitum, until the prisoner finds his name. It is guaranteed that he will, because of the relationship between permutations and cycles.

It is interesting that this question is regarded as the most math intensive. I myself was spoiled the solution a few years ago, but I have the impression that the challenge is in observing the correct algorithm rather than calculating the probability. Maybe the author felt that one needs mathematical insights in order to see the solution out of the blue.

I beg to differ. Math olympiad problems are typically short and concise, and mathematical phrasing, even when expressed in English, typically has clear bijections to equivalent terms in other languages.

Hmm I wonder if this will drastically affect his spatial reasoning abilities.

Well, the motivations to attend hackathons don't seem to be about winning. Many of us students attend hackathons knowing that the chances of winning something is marginal at best, yet we still regularly attend for the singular reason of fun. It's not every day that you can just spend two days of your life, cut off from the rest of the world, working with your buddies on something you all love. Even for professionals, attending hackathons could be a means to break away from the monotony of normal work.

Interesting points, but minor correction here. Typing Chinese efficiently has to do with the input method. Using pinyin as you suggest is actually hopelessly slow as you would have to first recall the precise pronunciation of the word (the -n vs -ng for example), type the pinyin, then scroll through the (normally) massive list of words. Of course, things like fuzzy pinyin and context aware suggestions help, but adopting an input method based on the character radical composition or handwriting recognition is much faster.

> Science is all about reproducibility

Can this really be said in all fairness? What of the flashes of brilliance, the striking insights into understanding seemingly inexplicable phenomena? The discovery of the structure of benzene, the creation of the periodic table comes to mind.

I think you are a little hasty in assuming that the author had the popular misconception that Einstein was bad at math. Certainly, Einstein was much better at math than the average man, but among his fellow physicists, not to mention the handful of physicists as celebrated as he is, his mathematical skills pales in comparison.

In other words, his contributions to science arose from his exceptional physical insights, and not his mathematical brilliance.

Paper on the 5 axioms: http://physics.aps.org/featured-article-pdf/10.1103/PhysRevA...

It looks familiar actually; it could be posted on HN or had generated an initial pop science hype wave when it was first published.

Wow this sounds like it could be something straight out of Italo Calvino's "If on a winter's night a traveler".

I don't think you seem to understand the argument here. Einstein is a prime example of a theorist whose bold theories predicted verifiable results, such as the Einstein Cross. The problem with modern theorists, as the article and the parent comment articulated, is that string theories and whatnot often predict untestable and unverifiable results. This is not an attack on all physics theorists - rather, it's a criticism on the fashionable line of research into string theories and other unverifiable theories.

This article, with its bold assertions and dubious use of evidence, seems to be written by someone capable precisely the wild and imaginative leaps need to appreciate modern art. That aside, is it really true that high culture was part of the common conversation? Fine art seems to have always been confined only to the aristocrats. Whether pop culture is increasingly banal is a more contentious point than what the essay argues.

> Incorrect. If your company were to pay you the same amount as they profit off of you, you wouldn't be sticking around for very long at that company. That's the basic requirement of your company's mode of production.

Why is this a basic requirement? Assuming by "amount they profit off" an employee, you refer to the economic profit (that is to say the profit after taking into account of all economic costs, including opportunity costs) rather than the nominal value, then I really don't see why this is a basic requirement.

This really perplexes me especially since the amount the company pays should be exactly equals the amount of economic profit you generate for the company, in a perfectly competitive labour market. Of course, reality is not always perfect, but for the average programmer it's pretty close (skills are quite homogeneous and programming jobs are less constrained by geography).

I wasn't raised in the states, so the first time I watched Bob Ross was when twitch hosted the marathon. The painting process felt so surreal - I was witnessing an act of creation, the birth of a painting from blank canvas, yet at the same time I was the painter, deconstructing the painting in to mechanical techniques. I guess there is something unique about Bob Ross.

On a side note, in some sense coding is like painting, other than the fact that mistakes in programs are certainly not happy.

Despite the other negative comments, I actually find this a vicarious account of the judicial system - a poignant reminder that behind any democratic system lies humans.

Yes perhaps evidence is too strong a word, though that's not what Wolfram would have you believe.

Although to be fair, it's going to be quite cumbersome to discount every other statement in a book almost a thousand pages in length.

Wolfram is proposing a radically different way of interpreting the universe. His main argument is that if his cellular automatons can achieve emergent behaviour similar to real physics, then it is evidence for it being the underlying mechanism in the universe.

For a (really long) discussion on how this simulation parallels physics, check his book, A New Kind of Science, out.

Then maybe you would want to read Aaronson's review of it, just for a balanced perspective.

Yes, this is actually one of the rare moments where I find my past background in competitive programming helpful. There's a habit I've picked up of constantly running through techniques to speed up whenever I'm coding. Not necessarily the most efficient way to code, but it's a habit difficult to change.

Well, the irony is that string theory IS the attempt at the elegance behind the apparent complexity of the standard model. But I agree with you that dark matter and dark energy are undoubtedly works in progress (if that's what you were trying to say)

I don't think special relativity is quite on the same level of strangeness (no pun intended) of quantum physics. For one, the axioms of special relativity are actually pretty believable, not to mention the incredible elegance of its integration with classical electromagnetism.

I don't know enough about quantum physics, but from what I understand, this pi seems to have arose as an artifact of the variational method used, rather than quantum mechanics itself.

One must be careful of conflating the distinct effects of expectations of intelligence and intelligence itself. The former exerts psychological pressure[0], the latter is a catalyst for success. It's often possible to have one without another.

[0] http://web.stanford.edu/dept/CTL/cgi-bin/academicskillscoach...

My high school LA teacher decided to adopt the same system. Popularity contest ensued. The interesting thing is that those who were one of the more intellectual types staunchly rejected the hierarchy, and formed a ragtag group with the leftover slackers.

Wouldn't radiation and meteorites be a huge concern?

What I don't understand is the validity of these arguments. The very language it's presented in casts doubts (at least in my mind) of its rigor. Do these arguments actually hold water?