puzzledobserver

8 ms·

1.
by puzzledobserver 7d ago
In a theoretical sense, you are right. The life of most currency notes is bank to customer to merchant to bank, and the bank could just track serial numbers to figure out your spending habits. Practically, it would make little sense. The ac
2.
by puzzledobserver 21d ago
I always thought that the Gettier problem was an academic curiosity. Someone who justifiably holds beliefs about the eventual impact of AI that later turn out to be true---can they be declared to have been knowledgeable about the subject ma
3.
by puzzledobserver 3mo ago
Disclaimer: I'm not a physicist. For a particle to "oscillate", it must "experience" time. All massless particles travel at the speed of light. As a consequence of special relativity, they don't "experienc
4.
by puzzledobserver 6mo ago
Wikipedia tells me that the package index PyPI (launched in 2003) is about 4 years older than the interpreter PyPy (first released in 2007). Still, at its core, PyPy is a Python interpreter which is itself written in Python and the name PyP
5.
by puzzledobserver 1y ago
That claim appears to contradict the second-system effect [0]. The observation is that second implementation of a successful system is often much less successful, overengineered, and bloated, due to programmer overconfidence. On the other h
6.
by puzzledobserver 1y ago
A natural follow-up to your question might be: "If everything is expanding, then wouldn't the ruler itself be expanding, so the expansion becomes unobservable?" I'm not a physicist, but from my understanding, the situati
7.
by puzzledobserver 1y ago
The Indian Supreme Court introduced the Basic Structure Doctrine in 1970, allowing the judiciary to overrule constitutional amendments if they are found to contradict the "basic structure" of the constitution. It's original p
8.
by puzzledobserver 1y ago
Could this lead to better semiconductor manufacturing? Increased yields, fewer defects, larger chips, etc.?
9.
by puzzledobserver 1y ago
It's also because making some of these decisions (choosing health insurance, deciding how much to save, etc.) involve two considerations---the first being purely analytic (mundane cost vs. probability of contracting major disease vs. c
10.
by puzzledobserver 1y ago
It looks like the website is based in India. Instead of the ones(10^0)-thousands(10^3)-millions(10^6)-billions(10^9)-... system followed in most other parts of the world, the Indian numbering system uses ones(10^0)-thousands(10^3)-lakhs(10^
11.
by puzzledobserver 2y ago
If you ignore syntax and pretend that the following is a snippet of Java code, you can declare that a variable x always holds an int, like so: var x: int = y + 5 Here x is the variable being defined, it is declared to hold values of type in
12.
by puzzledobserver 2y ago
Not really. Or at least not completely extinct in South India. Some of my favorite childhood memories are from these messes (short for mess hall, I assume). You go there, pay what they ask, eat what they serve. MTR, Brindavan on MG Road (th
13.
by puzzledobserver 2y ago
I agree that over-reliance on pictograms frequently causes confusion. I remember reading an article some time ago about European vs North American traffic signs. The article was praising the European system that relies more heavily on icons
14.
by puzzledobserver 2y ago
I had never thought about point 1, and never knew about points 2 and 3. Growing up in India, iodized salt was the norm. Given that I'm vegetarian, now that I have moved the US, I have continued to use iodized salt for my own cooking. W
15.
by puzzledobserver 2y ago
Are you sure about this? I just wrote a script without a .py extension, and it seemed to work fine.
16.
by puzzledobserver 2y ago
I am a computer scientist working in programming languages (so with no particular expertise in combinatorics). In my experience, treewidth is one of those ideas at the outer limits of my ability to understand. I have spent several hours sta
17.
by puzzledobserver 2y ago
I am not a mathematician, but here is a motivation I read somewhere some years ago. There are basically two ways to produce big numbers: add two small numbers, or multiply two small numbers. You can produce all positive integers by starting
18.
by puzzledobserver 2y ago
I share this experience. Perhaps another way of asking the question is: Are there any results, either about individual programs or in PL theory as a whole, that were made simpler / clarified / generalized because of category theor
19.
by puzzledobserver 2y ago
If I understand correctly: The idea is to scan every ballot, and upload all scans to a public website. The system preserves anonymity because voters are not required to write their names or other PII on the ballot paper. I still have lots o
20.
by puzzledobserver 2y ago
As someone who is intimately familiar with Datalog, but have not read much about Logica: The way I read these rules is not from left-to-right but from right-to-left. In this case, it would say: Pick two numbers a > 1 and b > 1, their
21.
by puzzledobserver 2y ago
There's an interesting article by David Graeber on how we characterize play and fun among animals: https://davidgraeber.org/articles/whats-the-point-if-we-cant... . I can't say that I've understood it all
22.
by puzzledobserver 2y ago
I think this is the real question to ask. Does the complicated flowchart point to deficiencies in the Slack user interface? If the user cannot intuit the flowchart, then how can they (as several sibling comments rightly point out) reliably
23.
by puzzledobserver 2y ago
I mean, it is similar in spirit to a LOTO (lockout / tagout) lock, no? Except without the who to contact bits, perhaps. "Don't turn this knob. But if you really need to, talk to this person first." And that little bit of
24.
by puzzledobserver 2y ago
I'm right-handed, and usually use scissors with my right hand. When I try using them with my left hand, two things happen: First, they doesn't sit right in my palm, because of the way they are sculpted. Beyond this, and more impor
25.
by puzzledobserver 2y ago
I see a number of comments here about giving awards to organizations rather than individuals, and counter-comments pointing out that Nobel's will disallowed it. How is the Nobel Prize actually administered? For how long is the Nobel co
26.
by puzzledobserver 2y ago
One thing that I've always wondered about: Is the CAP theorem really making a non-trivial claim? If a distributed system is consistent and available, it must return the last written value, and successfully do this all the time. How can
27.
by puzzledobserver 2y ago
I recall seeing the following very neat idea on HackerNews some time ago, but can no longer find it: The idea, if I remember correctly, was to intercept system calls and play a sound every time one occurred. So you'd get a series of be
28.
by puzzledobserver 2y ago
I wonder how they calibrate something like this. If the electrodes are properly charged, what is the probability that a photon entering the system triggers an electron avalanche? How does one measure these quantities?
29.
by puzzledobserver 2y ago
What about skin types which are most likely to suffer from paper cuts? For myself, I find that most paper cuts happen during winter, when my skin is dry. Would regularly using moisturizer reduce their frequency?
30.
by puzzledobserver 2y ago
Several other commenters have brought about the sneaky wordplay involved in saying "identity theft" instead of simply calling it "fraud on the bank", and somehow turning the person into the victim rather than the bank th

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