18 ms·

Fractal Tic-Tac-Toe

13 points by xirium 19y ago

thaumaturgy 19y ago
I showed this to my math-major friend, who pointed out that if X plays first in the center, X will be able to force a win or a draw. Note that in the first iteration, all of the corners and all of the sides are symmetrically identical.
daniel-cussen 19y ago
Interesting. I wonder how much time it takes for people to go from loving to hating a startup. My guess is that there's a press release (love), news of growth (love), news of funding (love), news of more growth (love, high expectations), news of significant market share (trite two-sides-of-the-story-but-ends-on-a-cautionary-note article), report of a glitch (hate). The rest of the cycle is on its way for Facebook. On that note, I wonder when a major newspaper will do a trite, two-sided, cautionary-note style article on YCombinator. YC will probably have to score a few more homeruns first (or do something akin to gaining a lot of market share), but it'd be interesting to guess what that article will say. As a pros and cons rundown made less unacceptable by its hackneyed turns of phrases, it'll probably start by mentioning the same pros it's talking about now. The cons might be...I don't know, male/female ratio, underrepresenting minorities, ageism, discrimination in general as an advantage of being an entrepreneur, expectations placed on entrepreneurs, something like that. I'd like to point out that I don't know what the demographics of YC look like, and don't really care. As far as I can tell, they look like Caltech's. But newspapers do, and they get pissed off very easily about this sort of thing. It'd be cool to measure the time elapsed between the first confirmation of a billion-dollar acquisition of a YC startup (measured by the opening of champagne bottles) and the first hater article. This timeframe could be measured to track to gauge the stage of the newspaper industry's decomposition. That is, the degree to which journalists are upset about the amount money founders made reflects how badly paid these journalists are, and the extent to which good journalists have been driven away to other industries. I'd also venture to guess that the first hate article will appear in the New York Times Style section.
- daniel-cussen 19y ago
  Edit: this wound up on the wrong article.

13 points by xirium 19y ago

I showed this to my math-major friend, who pointed out that if X plays first in the center, X will be able to force a win or a draw. Note that in the first iteration, all of the corners and all of the sides are symmetrically identical.

daniel-cussen 19y ago

Interesting. I wonder how much time it takes for people to go from loving to hating a startup. My guess is that there's a press release (love), news of growth (love), news of funding (love), news of more growth (love, high expectations), news of significant market share (trite two-sides-of-the-story-but-ends-on-a-cautionary-note article), report of a glitch (hate). The rest of the cycle is on its way for Facebook. On that note, I wonder when a major newspaper will do a trite, two-sided, cautionary-note style article on YCombinator. YC will probably have to score a few more homeruns first (or do something akin to gaining a lot of market share), but it'd be interesting to guess what that article will say. As a pros and cons rundown made less unacceptable by its hackneyed turns of phrases, it'll probably start by mentioning the same pros it's talking about now. The cons might be...I don't know, male/female ratio, underrepresenting minorities, ageism, discrimination in general as an advantage of being an entrepreneur, expectations placed on entrepreneurs, something like that. I'd like to point out that I don't know what the demographics of YC look like, and don't really care. As far as I can tell, they look like Caltech's. But newspapers do, and they get pissed off very easily about this sort of thing. It'd be cool to measure the time elapsed between the first confirmation of a billion-dollar acquisition of a YC startup (measured by the opening of champagne bottles) and the first hater article. This timeframe could be measured to track to gauge the stage of the newspaper industry's decomposition. That is, the degree to which journalists are upset about the amount money founders made reflects how badly paid these journalists are, and the extent to which good journalists have been driven away to other industries. I'd also venture to guess that the first hate article will appear in the New York Times Style section.

daniel-cussen 19y ago
Edit: this wound up on the wrong article.