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The Kodak Research Labs (like Bell Labs) let their researchers play. In the 1960's my father (who later devised the Bayer filter for digital cameras) coded this
by Syzygies 1y ago
The Kodak Research Labs (like Bell Labs) let their researchers play. In the 1960's my father (who later devised the Bayer filter for digital cameras) coded this algorithm for "Jotto" the 5 letter word version of Mastermind.
Computers were so slow that one couldn't consider every word in the dictionary as a potential guess. He decided empirically on a sample size that played well enough.
I became a mathematician. From this childhood exposure, entropy was the first mathematical "concept" beyond arithmetic that I understood.
- entropicdrifter 1y agoI too became a fan of this game from an early age, note the username
- irchans 1y ago> I became a mathematician. From this childhood exposure, entropy was the first mathematical "concept" beyond arithmetic that I understood. Very cool.
- dang 1y agoThis comment goes in the highlights list: https://news.ycombinator.com/highlights https://news.ycombinator.com/highlights! (I mention this so people will know the list exists, and hopefully email us more nominations when they see an unusually great and interesting comment, like this one.)
- spondyl 1y agoAny plans for the HN API to expose highlights? It's a neat high signal collection that I have some custom bit of code that translates it into an RSS feed but an official endpoint would be neat :)
- dang 1y agoThat's a great idea, but probably will have to wait for the next version of HN's API.
- UltraSane 1y agoWhat is it like being cited by Satoshi Nakamoto?