algorias

25 ms·

211.
by algorias 13y ago
Somehow, as soon as graphics are involved, things that are essentially "hello, world!" kinds of projects routinely make it to the front page of HN. This is neat, specially for someone's 2nd programming project, but is it HN m
212.
by algorias 13y ago
Exactly, and that is why there should be a compression step on the code path that handles the paper -> pdf case. This doesn't make any sense in a paper -> paper case, however, as any electronic version of the image will only be s
213.
by algorias 13y ago
Another example: I am a chocolate lover and would take the fruit, because chocolate cake (especially the free variety) has a tendency of tasting worse than it looks.
214.
by algorias 13y ago
> Also could be because in practice algorithms with wildly varying constant factors out in front are rarely seen? The main reason is that you want a result that does not depend on small implementation details, i.e. is consistent across p
215.
by algorias 13y ago
> Also, the korean culturalism developed when the overly formal/seniority centric cockpit of Korean Airlines was identified as a key contributor to a poor safety record with some korean airlines. identified by whom? with what credib
216.
by algorias 13y ago
People are in many senses products of their time. It is a recent phenomenon that people are so acutely aware of discrimination (of all kinds) and the harm it does to society. If someone was born in a time or place where that kind of awarene
217.
by algorias 13y ago
You're missing that there is no need for the algorithm to be anywhere close to efficient. Just searching the whole game tree recursively will do it. Remember the draw rules in chess: if no one eats a figure for 50 turns or so, the game
218.
by algorias 13y ago
I agree with your sentiment regarding arbitrary law enforcement and the huge waste of times it is to chase people smoking pot and similarly harmless things. However, you seem to imply (please correct me if I'm wrong) that this justifie
219.
by algorias 13y ago
Hiring private security for that purpose is basically vigilantism, this should be illegal in any sane jurisdiction. Has anybody prosecuted this? Being a "Malibu problem" doesn't really make this matter any less relevant. It&#
220.
by algorias 13y ago
Yes, and it's the same with CDs / DVDs. That's why the information is stored redundantly, to be able to losslessly read all data in the presence of a limited amount of scratches.
221.
by algorias 13y ago
A straight up implementation of TSP (I assume you mean the decision variant) needs some kind of door that shuts with a timer. How do you plan to encode arbitrary graphs? This poses a challenge for 2d platformers. In case of any 2d game, how
222.
by algorias 13y ago
NP-completeness doesn't say anything about the difficulty of a specific instance of a given problem. It's trivial to construct CNF formulas that are solvable in polynomial time, for example. An algorithm that is able to determine for every
223.
by algorias 13y ago
This is why it's a terrible idea to ask for some random algorithm runtime in an interview. It says absolutely nothing about programming or reasoning skill. I'd rather ask a candidate to explain their favorite data structure to me and derive
224.
by algorias 13y ago
I'm having the same issue, and also wondering what the official support channel for HN is.
225.
by algorias 13y ago
While I think this is a very clever idea, it's also somewhat dishonest. In the game world, pirates cause studios to go bankrupt. In the real world, the causal link is not as clear. People arguing that piracy is ruining gamedev routinely ign
226.
by algorias 14y ago
Agreed, but as a slight counterpoint, some research is about stripping away unnecessary middle layers, to find abstractions, a quicker way to the surface in other words. If we didn't do this, research would inevitably stop, unless eternal l
227.
by algorias 14y ago
An incredibly accurate depiction of research in any theoretical field, I'd say. Compound that with the fact that during your education you're mostly presented with texts that summarize decades or more of research into a scant few pages as i
228.
by algorias 14y ago
One TBS game that solves this problem in an interesting way is Ultracorps [1] (very oldschool, browser based). Turns are simultaneous - you give commands, then when all players are done (or the timer expires) commands are executed simultane
229.
by algorias 14y ago
"Buy a license for SimCity now!" is correct usage, which might be shortened to "License SimCity now!". These two phrases definitely don't have the same meaning as "Buy SimCity now!" If you conflated the two terms then it would be ok to be s
230.
by algorias 14y ago
First of all, what is this monolithic "community" you're talking about? Secondly, the question is not if more people will pirate without DRM, but if the company can increase their revenues - in the long term - by making that move.
231.
by algorias 14y ago
No compression of any type involved. He writes machine code and saves it to a .com file, which can directly be executed. The first thing it does is activate mode 13h, which gives direct access for drawing to the screen. The surprising thing
232.
by algorias 14y ago
Of course, it gets linked in the standard way. A program with an empty main takes up about the same space. The point is that this snippet could be compiled very compactly with the right tools.
233.
by algorias 14y ago
Hopefully it won't actually. Most languages are not designed for compactness of source code, and most forms of factoring will produce fairly noticeable patterns; e.g. lots of funcion declarations.
234.
by algorias 14y ago
> Modern JS VMs will remove most of this cost. I doubt Python and Ruby do. In the python case, pypy removes this cost whenever it can. The less you use dynamic features like duck typing, the faster your code gets.
235.
by algorias 14y ago
> There is no way LEGO sets have always been this expensive; it is just molded plastic. This is the worst kind of fallacy. First of all, plastic is more expensive than you think when many different pieces in many different colors need t
236.
Inoki - The Poison Word Game(threedonkeys.com)
1 points by algorias 14y ago|0 comments
237.
by algorias 14y ago
Well, please do share your insights with us. That's what this site is for, not ad-hominems.
238.
by algorias 14y ago
Tail call optimization does nothing to mitigate the fact that it takes an exponential number of recursive calls to calculate fibonacci. Just draw the call tree of f(5) by hand to see what happens. >My impression is that most people here
239.
by algorias 14y ago
Is a fancy acronym like YC any better? I would trust the founders not to look at private data, but any company that has employees is vulnerable to one of them going rogue.
240.
by algorias 14y ago
I'm not forgetting that. It's just that any specific random file will have (with high probability), patterns that can be exploited. It's not guaranteed to work on all files of course. The theoretical limit (per bijection argument) is that a

More ›