4 ms·

I find amusing the fractal nature of the universe: we say that some problems are complex (i.e NP-Hard) because no matter the algorithm you design I can devise a

• HPsquared 5y ago
  Ironically, cheating on exams gives the cheater a form of "artificial intelligence".
• enedil 5y ago
  I know you stated that's it's informal explanation, but please don't conflate nondeterministic-polynomial with non-polynomial.
  • plafl 5y ago
    I have a proof that NP(Non Deterministic Polynomial)-Hard = Non Polynomial, but it's too long for a HN comment
    • emteycz 5y ago
      A link is never too long for a HN comment
      • tzs 5y ago
        If you don't care about IE and Edge compatibility a link can be too long for an HN comment.
        • emteycz 5y ago
          Well then I'd recommend using a URL shortener
          • tzs 5y ago
            That raises the question of how long a link the URL shorteners can handle. The HTTP specs places no limit on URL length. All the specs say is that browsers have finite limits and recommend that everything that transmits or receives URLs allows at least 8000 characters. A bit of Googling suggests that Chrome can handle URLs of up to 2 MB, Safari 80K, and Firefox somewhere above 64K. I can't find anything on how long a URL that the popular shorteners can handle.
            • Communitivity 5y ago
              That gave me an interesting idea. A URL shortener as a method of data exchange. The data URI spec does not define a size limit but says applications may impose their own. Chrome - 2MB for the current document. Otherwise the limit is the in-memory storage limit for arbitrary blobs: if x64 and NOT ChromeOS or Android, then 2GB; otherwise, total_physical_memory / 5 (source). Firefox - unlimited IE ≥ 9 & Edge - 4GB You also could use blob URLs, which have a 500Mb limit. An example: 1. Alice constructs a data url with the base64 encoding of a zipped and encrypted document, submits it to her favorite URL shortener and gets a short URL back. 2. Alice transmits the short URL to Bob, perhaps as metadata in an cryptocurrency transaction. 3. Bob receives the short URL, navigates to it in a modern browser and extracts the data. This is not anonymous unless the shortener is guaranteed anonymous, which it won't be.
              • willcipriano 5y ago
                I already built a good bit of that: https://thoughts.willcipriano.com/podjeli-a-new-way-to-share-files/ https://thoughts.willcipriano.com/podjeli-a-new-way-to-share...
              • drewzero1 5y ago
                I used to leave myself messages or short text snippets by requesting a nonexistent page on my website and adding the text as a GET query in the URL. I had my log autorotation set to email me logs after a day or two. So later in the week, when I wanted to retrieve the information, I could just search my email for the name of the nonexistent page, and the text would show up in the relevant access.log. It worked okay for what I needed and aside from the log setup (or grep'ing the apache logs) required no code.
    • bloqs 5y ago
      then link it...
      • legerdemain 5y ago
        I am attaching a file that contains a detailed explanation.[1] [1] thatsthejoke.jpg
        • bloqs 5y ago
          I have been had it seems
    • mejutoco 5y ago
      (I enjoyed the pun) On the right is the margin that was too small to contain Fermat's alleged proof of his "last theorem". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermat%27s_Last_Theorem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermat%27s_Last_Theorem
    • jasonladuke0311 5y ago
      Something about dry humor and HN comments just hits different. Well-played :)
    • dhosek 5y ago
      So many commenters who don't know Fermat.
• belter 5y ago
  Kirk cheats because he does not accept no-win scenarios :-) https://youtu.be/qs0J2F3ErMc https://youtu.be/qs0J2F3ErMc