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mution Ask HN: What is a purchase that made you happy?

I have the MX Master 3, which was only superseded by the 3S recently with very little change.

1. Response time is imperceptible

2. It can connect directly via bluetooth, or with a small usb dongle. There is a button on the bottom of the mouse that lets you switch between 3 stored devices. It would be nice remap the device switch to a button on the top of the mouse, but this doesn't seem possible yet.

mution Riding transit takes almost twice as long as driving (2017)

Cost also includes negative environmental effects

mution The Problem with Speed Cubing [video]

Most of the points have been covered in other comments, but not much talk of fewest moves solving [0].

There are 3 obvious choices on how to deal with inspection time: none, some, and lots. The current and most popular event is in the some category. It's enough time that competitors can plan out a not insignificant portion of the solve, but by no means all of it. Competitors can gain an advantage by training to maximise the use of inspection time which in some ways adds to the event, but can also be seen as unrepresentative of the true solve time.

No inspection time would make for an interesting event but I don't think it would replace the event with some inspection time. They are different events with different but overlapping skill sets that the video doesn't really discuss. Instead it attempts to reach a conclusion by timing a phase that the competitors are using with the knowledge that the time doesn't matter.

Lots of inspection time, represented by the fewest moves event is an interesting but underappreciated event in my opinion. It takes out the physical aspect of how fast a competitor can turn faces, instead competitors have 1 hour to find the shortest sequence of moves to solve the same scramble. Drawbacks are the long amount of time per attempt compared to the usual speed events, and the lower resolution to differentiate competitors.

0: https://www.worldcubeassociation.org/regulations/#article-E-...

mution The Problem with Speed Cubing [video]

This is an event called "fewest moves solving" [0]

Given 1 hour and the scramble, work out the fewest sequence of moves to solve. Competitors are allowed to use up to 3 cubes, pen, paper, stickers etc to come up with their solution.

It's an underappreciated event in my opinion, but 1 hour is also a long amount of time, which also scales time to practice.

0: https://www.worldcubeassociation.org/regulations/#article-E-...

mution The Problem with Speed Cubing [video]

Interestingly, the rules only stipulate a minimum of two moves to solve. The implementation details of the official scrambling program may be stricter though

https://www.worldcubeassociation.org/regulations/#4b3

mution The Problem with Speed Cubing [video]

Note for others reading this thread, "fewest moves in an hour" is a WCA official event which is the natural conclusion when taking inspection time to the extreme.

I think it is one of the more interesting and underappreciated events, though it likely gets fewer entries due to the time commitment.

https://www.worldcubeassociation.org/regulations/#article-E-...

mution The Problem with Speed Cubing [video]

10 minutes is likely too long, at that point it would be possible to execute and memorise a full solution during inspection. The time would come down to who can make ~40 turns fastest from memory.

mution Visualizing Delaunay Triangulation

Great article!

How does this algorithm compare to others, e.g. sweep algorithms like the one used by delaunator[0]?

An obvious difference is sweep algorithms sort the points in some way before adding them, is that a key to efficiency gains?

0: https://github.com/mapbox/delaunator/blob/main/README.md#pap...

mution Show HN: Desklamp – convenient and collaborative notemaking on PDFs

Second this, I wanted to poke around and check out the UI for something that looked interesting and useful, I remember looking for something like this back when I was studying and wanted to take notes in PDFs.

So I hit the `open in browser` button, but left as soon as I was prompted to create an account.

mution Lessons from the golden age of the mall walkers

I think the point about suburbs promoting car dependence over walking is more about walking somewhere

Sure, it can be nice to go for a walk around the neighborhood, but mostly only in a loop, there is no destination. One of the reasons I moved where I live is due to the walkability. I'm technically in the suburbs of a medium sized city, but happen to live close enough to a small retail center that I can walk to shop for groceries, get a hair cut, go to a pharmacy and many other things.

It's really nice to be prompted to go for a nice walk instead of hop in a car when I need to run an errand.

mution Bugs are evolving to eat plastic, study finds

Completely untreated wood stored in a dry environment will last many years (hundreds? tens at least) without degrading. Look at woodworkers hoarding wood in basements, beams in old buildings, etc

Staining/waxing/varnishing is used to protect the surface from wear and tear or change aesthetics. A varnished table that has been worn through in areas can be sanded back and look like new. The wood under worn spots won't be noticeably different.

mution HP Dev One Laptop with Pop_OS

As a sibling comment mentioned, no middle button though, which makes it less useful

mution Terra Hasn’t Killed Crypto, but It Was a Narrow Escape

https://archive.ph/f77A0

mution 3D Animated Rollercoaster in Excel (2011)

Roller coaster in a winamp visualization

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bhm7uFv4ZOQ

mution The day I discovered that Apple Maps is Kind of Good now

Google maps removed a feature I used a lot in the past, the schedule explorer. I tried to use it the other day only to find it had been removed recently, so use other apps now.

https://twitter.com/vaughndavis/status/692914119192743936

https://support.google.com/maps/thread/156908963/schedule-ex...

mution The day I discovered that Apple Maps is Kind of Good now

I found out the other day that google maps recently removed the schedule explorer. It was a great tool if you were planning a trip on public transit that didn't have an obvious single leg.

If you were flexible with when to leave, you could scroll earlier/later and visualize time waiting/walking/bussing etc to find routes that optimise transfer delays.

I use transit.app now

mution What Is JSON Patch?

Furthermore, the '/' delimiter seems an odd choice given JSON is JavaScript Object Notation. Why not use JavaScript syntax for pointers?

mution What’s on Vladimir Putin’s Reading List?

https://archive.ph/h8Yfa

mution Hyper-realistic digital humans in Unity

Looked like an intentional wordplay

  parity: Equality, as in amount, status, or value.
  parrot: One who imitates the words or actions of another, especially without understanding them.

Which fits in with the rest of their comment

mution Optimal Wordle Solutions

Mostly agrees with Alex Selby [1] who took the same approach. Maybe some differences in pruning are why Jonathan has [SALET, CRAMP] as best for hard mode, but CRAMP does not feature in the list Alex came up with

1. http://sonorouschocolate.com/notes/index.php?title=The_best_...

mution How big was the Tonga eruption?

We also heard it while tramping on the thousand acre plateau just north of Murchison. It was very quiet, so we were lucky to be where we were with no noise pollution to drown it out.

Though at the time we had no clue what it was, we joked about being in the Tomorrow series timeline.

mution How big was the Tonga eruption?

I also heard it in the north of the South Island of NZ. To me it sounded like very distant explosions, like a cannon firing, or avalanche control explosives.

We heard multiple explosions over the span of a minute or two, presumably from the multiple paths the sound took as they all sounded the same.

mution Solving Wordle in 3.64 guesses on average, 99.4% of the time

The solver is playing in "hard" mode, where any yellow/green letters must be used in further guesses

mution Solving Wordle in 3.64 guesses on average, 99.4% of the time

This is a valid strategy in easy (default) mode, but in "hard" mode, you must use all yellow/green letters in subsequent guesses

mution Frickin' shaders with frickin' laser beams

As well as screensavers, the visualizer in winamp was a great time sink for me with effects like [1] which bears a striking resemblance to the acko intro.

Not much surprise then that they were made by the same person [2]

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bhm7uFv4ZOQ 2. https://acko.net/blog/avs

mution The Matrix Is Unreal

Interactions can be really hard to get right, see doors [1]

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYEWsLdLmcc

mution Walking Normally: The Facts (2013)

The record for "Highest jump on a pogo stick" is 3.4 metres [1] and interestingly for "Most consecutive cars jumped over on a pogo stick", it is 4 [2]

[1] https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/highest-j... [2] https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/472412-mo...

mution PAM Duress – Alternate passwords for panic situations

"You could even spawn a process to remove the pam_duress module so the threat actor won't be able to see if the duress module was available"

This scenario was considered by the author

mution Rumbling meteor lights up Norway; part of it may have landed near Oslo

Felt like I had to dig this up, I saw it too from the beach at Matauri bay. Google timeline was handy in pinning down the exact date!

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/reports-flood-in-of-possible-m...

mution Linux 5.0 shown to boot on ESP32 processor

Video of the boot was linked in comments https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9UlZIYZtwI

Note the description: video is sped up 30x