gmaslov

Aw, don't leave us hanging like that. What problems did it cause?

I've only ever seen it spelled out "theoretical CS". There is GOFAI, though.

Couldn't a hypothetical Big Alien make exactly the same argument? There are plenty of exoplanets larger than Earth.

The way I understand master keys work is that the lock has two "breaks" in each pin, instead of just one. So each pin has two positions that allow the lock to open, and you don't know which one belongs to the master key.

I think at least two locks would be required, and depending on how many pins and possible positions there are, more might be needed in case of a collision.

FYI, you've got a merge conflict marker hanging out in your privacy policy :)

<<<<<<< HEAD:web/src/main/resources/com/pacifica/web/views/privacy.ftl We use this information solely [...]

I went to the more-difficult-to-reach exit and was sent all the way back to the beginning of the game :-(

How about looking at the number of people who must be removed in order to bring the bus factor down to 1? We can call it the "bus co-factor" :). With the bus factor we're picking the most critical people first, and removing the least number of them; with the bus co-factor we're picking the least critical people first, and removing the greatest number of them.

There's probably already some name and many theorems in graph theory for both of these ideas.

Don't worry -- it just means your brain's eviction policy is well-tuned for immortality. ;)

Text messages are only the relatively boring first step in this kind of project. If these guys go on to implement IP/Vodka they can proudly follow in the footsteps of such hacks as RFC 1149 :-) "The network smells a little slow today"

I presume that the way the lucid dream induction works is by blinking an LED when the onset of REM sleep is detected. There are other products out there already that do this; the idea is that you'll train yourself to notice any blinking red lights or objects in your dreams and associate that with realizing that you're dreaming.

Whether it actually works or not I can't say.

When the collar closes, its spoke will have pulled apart a little bit under the tension and widened the gap. You'd need some kind of motorized grabber-puller collars to make this work.

At this rate I'm fast running out of arms

They know this; that's why zinc sacrificial anodes are used. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathodic_protection

Sounds like a situation that the patent system was supposedly designed to prevent. But, from the article linked by yapcguy:

He refused to patent the recipe as that would mean making it public and risking its theft

Wouldn't patenting the formula prevent it from being "stolen"? Or is our patent system truly good for nothing at all?

Anyone but a kidnapper, I'd say.

Also cute is the author's bio, in the characteristic style of a Dwarf Fortress dwarf's textual description: http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/au/5119

"Peter Tyson is a human born in 1975 in New Zealand. He is the oldest son of Ron Tyson and Ann Tyson. In the Summer of 1996 Peter became a student at Auckland University. In the Summer of 1999 Peter became a student at Victoria University. In the Spring of 2000 Peter became an Analyst at Datamonitor. In the Spring of 2002 Peter became a Community Manager at Codemasters. In the Autumn of 2005 Peter became an Administrator in the New Zealand Government. In the Summer of 2008 Peter married Laura. In the Winter of 2009 Peter wrote popular tutorials for Dwarf Fortress on his blog, afteractionreporter.com. In the Winter of 2011 Peter was struck by a Strange Mood.

In the Summer of 2012 Peter wrote "Pasubabo Thrathdad Teme", "Getting Started with Dwarf Fortress", a legendary wood-pulp paper bound book. The written portion consists of 180 page guide to the game Dwarf Fortress entitled "Getting Started with Dwarf Fortress". The writing is lighthearted with moments of humor.

In Summer 2012 "Getting Started with Dwarf Fortress" was stored in O'Reilly by the human administrator, Peter Tyson."

This idea might be up there with saving on your electric bill by installing little turbines on all your water faucets.

Hah. So that's why they always ask "Do you know why I pulled you over?" ;-)

I built a Prusa Mendel last year. It works... sort of. Unfortunately it's very unreliable and finicky, and takes a lot of babysitting to print anything. In theory I should now use it to print improved parts for itself to fix this; in practice it seems I don't have mechanical know-how to make a really reliable machine, nor (lately) the big blocks of time needed to experiment and learn. It's just been gathering dust for the past six months :-(

It may have started to happen to us already -- I'm sure there are a few people here who have gotten lost in the World of Warcraft dimension for a time.

The signal would only travel at the speed of sound in ping-pong balls. What that is precisely is very difficult to estimate. Try "wave propagation in granular materials" for a Googleable phrase. Even the case of a perfectly aligned 1-D chain of ideal ping-pong balls is not straightforward to analyze; the confinement force probably has a significant effect. (disclaimer: not a physicist)

Ah, yes. The perennial curse of AI: as soon as it works, it's not called AI anymore ;-)

This link explains fairly well how a navigation mesh may be automatically generated from the level geometry: http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/NavigationMeshReference.html . I believe it's also a good practice for the level designer to examine it manually and make any necessary corrections for sharp corners, narrow corridors, etc.

As for the path, A* search is usually the name of the game for any kind of 2D pathfinding. With the usual Euclidean distance heuristic it always returns the shortest path, but it's possible to use an "inadmissible" heuristic to make it run faster (and produce sub-optimal paths). The arrows shown on the slides are a little baffling; I can't imagine why those four vertically stacked boxes on the right-hand side would create a jagged path, for instance. It may just be exaggerated for effect.

I was inordinately tickled to discover that Wolfram|Alpha's database includes this question as an easter egg.

Prude.

It's unlikely to work unless the button is so reliable that you have a better chance of winning the lottery than the button/mechanism failing in some (possibly undetectable) way. It's the same argument against trying to use quantum immortality to force a miracle by killing yourself, or constructing a machine to kill you, unless some desirable event occurs. It's much more likely that your machine will fail, or you'll change your mind.

OCR would work ;-)

Indeed. A living human probably generates more heat from the normal bodily processes than can be radiated away in space. For this reason spacesuits are equipped with coolers, not (AFAIK) heaters.

See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experimental_mathematics

Next up on http://what-if.xkcd.com/18/ : How many Nerf darts would it take to stop a meteor?