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Facebook knows what you told them about yourself. Google observe what you actually doing, and if you often visit tech sites then they should show you tech related ads instead of clothes and this is spot-on. The dating ad with women is just noise in their system (after all, if you are frequent in tech sites, you are statistically male... :)).

senkion Tupper's Self-Referential Formula

Yes, the PI really contains all information on the world, since it's an infinite non-periodic number. The only problem is that it also contains all noise on the world, too. It's like a block of marble, that contains all great sculptures, you just have to remove bits from here and there...

senkion Tupper's Self-Referential Formula

"The formula itself is a general purpose method of decoding a bitmap stored in the constant n, so it could actually be used to draw any other image, and does not in fact contain any reference to itself."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuppers_self-referential_formul...

senkion [dead]

You are right. This text is from 1998. An another decade passed and still no one gets the joke...

senkion [dead]

I think even the lamest pattern recognition algorithm would recognize those lines.

By the way, why do you comment on what you didn't read? (Although the article really doesn't have anything new to say.)

senkion The worst visualization I've ever seen (CNBC on the oil spill)

Don't you want some cookies besides the milk?

senkion The Origin of the <blink> Tag

Not sure. He said his first wife. Who knows how many wives he had...

senkion What's wrong with Flash Cookies?

Ah, I see now! Really tricky...

senkion What's wrong with Flash Cookies?

But it's unnecessary since you already set the Flash cookie.

senkion What's wrong with Flash Cookies?

I don't understand point 4. Why restore the redundant HTTP cookie?

senkion Solving the genome puzzle

Complex-looking fractal structures can be described with a simple formula, with very small amount of data and fractals are everywhere in nature. For example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnsley_fern

senkion Best CAPTCHA ever

Also, the answer could be 'j', for example, if you are an engineer.

senkion PLT Scheme is a Racket

This is not my little project, it's a re-branding of the good old PLT Scheme by the original team. I just post the news. :O

As far as I know only the names changes.

senkion PLT Scheme is a Racket

In a Ponzi Scheme, one concentrates on the stock, rather than the stack, I think... ;)

senkion PLT Scheme is a Racket

The new website is not complete yet; more info on the changes: http://www.racket-lang.org/new-name.html

senkion China Rips Off The iPad With The iPed

Compromises. That's the keyword. 90% usability for 20% price - it's a good deal for 90% of the people. The other (upper) 10% get the iPad, they can afford it.

senkion The Pentagon’s recipe for brownies is 26 pages long

I meant that they should write down these trivial things once in a standard, and later just refer to it in every recipe in two words. This spec already contains references to several federal and military standards, but clearly not enough. Thats why it's such a bloated piece of sh... paper.

senkion The Pentagon’s recipe for brownies is 26 pages long

Obviously the quality should be fine, that should be the default, no need to repeat it in each and every recipe.

senkion The Pentagon’s recipe for brownies is 26 pages long

A certain level of boilerplate and redundancy is humorous. I'm wondering if all of their food specifications contains that "All ingredients shall be clean, sound, wholesome, and free from foreign material, evidence of rodent or insect infestation, extraneous material, off-odors, off-flavors, and off-colors." (quote from the linked pdf), or just this one. Maybe they should define some general rules, after that a brownie recipe is really only one page.

senkion The Pirate Bay up again - bandwidth provided by Swedish Pirate Party

You should download the demo version, go to the library, turn on the radio, etc.

senkion How Scribd's HTML document reader works (part 1)

The best part:

"[...]we need to store three font files: One for Internet Explorer (.eot) one for embedded devices (.svg) and one for Firefox, Safari, Chrome et al (.ttf)."

Go IE!

senkion How Linux Saved A Fast Food Giant.

You are right, but it was McAfee's fault, they messed up the testing in the very first hand. You can't test everything yourself, this update was a paid service of a major IT company.

senkion The Secret Cult of Office Smokers

This reminds me a Stephen King story: The Ten O'Clock People.