ohwellhere (u/ohwellhere)

ohwellhere commented on Ask HN: What's the most creative 'useless' program you've ever written? · Posted by u/reverseCh

dotancohen · a year ago

Does this mean that the top left corner had a higher probability of being a mine? Or even a lower probability, seeing as the dev would have had to ensure that it's not a mine before the user clicks.

Now that I think about it, the dev strategy of leaving the spot without a mine but moving one there, probably does not affect the probability that there will be a mine there during gameplay.

ohwellhere · a year ago

I don't think the dev would leave the top left without a mine until one is moved there, as that would always be a safe square to click first.

So if the probability of finding a mine at any given spot is given by p, then the probability of finding a mine in the top left during gameplay for cases where one does not click it first (in which case it is 0?) is 1 for the case where you clicked on a mine first with probability p, and then p for the remainder.

So the total probability p' is p * 1 + (1 - p) * p, or 2p - p^2.

Wikipedia says

> Beginner is usually on an 8x8 or 9x9 board containing 10 mines, Intermediate is usually on a 16x16 board with 40 mines and expert is usually on a 30x16 board with 99 mines; however, there is usually an option to customise board size and mine count.

  8x8   10 mines  p = 0.16 p' = 0.29 ratio = 1.84
  9x9   10 mines  p = 0.12 p' = 0.23 ratio = 1.88
  16x16 40 mines  p = 0.16 p' = 0.29 ratio = 1.84
  30x16 99 mines  p = 0.21 p' = 0.37 ratio = 1.79

I was curious to see the concrete effects for no reason other than to procrastinate.

ohwellhere commented on Ants learned to farm fungi during a mass extinction arstechnica.com/science/2... · Posted by u/LinuxBender

fifilura · a year ago

I still remember this episode from the 80s when sir David Attenborough climbs into a termite mound up to 6 feet below the surface.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbbLCgh6sso

These termites are fungus farmers and feed the gigantic queen with it.

Unfortunately the fungus farming is not part of this clip, but it is also described the same program.

Edit: This is an older version of sir David Attenborough, revisiting another mound and talking about fungus farming. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGaT0B__2DM

ohwellhere · a year ago

The termites built a heat sink for their colony! That's crazy.

ohwellhere commented on 'Dancing' raisins − a simple kitchen experiment theconversation.com/danci... · Posted by u/amichail

ohwellhere · a year ago

My daughters have for years enjoyed dropping their plastic straws into their Jarritos bottle where it sits out of reach until the bubbles magically bring it back up.

ohwellhere commented on Sort, sweep, and prune: Collision detection algorithms (2023) leanrada.com/notes/sweep-... · Posted by u/wonger_

chipdart · a year ago

> It does not necessarily describe performance of the algorithm.

Not necessarily true. It does indeed describe performance of the algorithm. It just compares scenarios with coarser granularity. You can tell from the very start that a O(1) algorithm is expected to outperform a O(N²) alternative.

ohwellhere · a year ago

My algorithms class taught to think of it not as "describing performance" in an absolute sense, but as "describing how performance changes as the size of the input data increases".

It is not necessarily true that an O(1) algorithm will outperform an O(n^2) alternative on a particular set of data. But it is true that an O(1) algorithm will outperform an O(n^2) alternative as the size of the input data increases.

ohwellhere commented on How much money we can raise for transparently idiotic startups? smbc-comics.com/comic/inv... · Posted by u/BerislavLopac

JumpCrisscross · a year ago

> You can save minutes of talking to folks

You're describing focus groups. They have a mixed history in product development.

ohwellhere · a year ago

I think they're probably talking about something closer to lean startup methodology.

ohwellhere commented on 62 Minutes could bring your business down crowdstrike.com/en-us/#te... · Posted by u/lazycrazyowl

swyx · a year ago

please note that -entire hospitals- went down, all at the same time.

and reconsider.

ohwellhere · a year ago

I work in a hospital system. The OR is only doing emergency cases today; ambulatory clinics are closed; everything is being done on paper; response communication is via email and peer-to-peer text.

ohwellhere commented on A leadership crisis in the Nix community lwn.net/SubscriberLink/97... · Posted by u/elikoga

rgrmrts · 2 years ago

But the software licensing explicitly allows your work being used by anyone (as long as they adhere to the license). If you don't want your work to be used by entities you disagree with you can not contribute to the project or advocate for use of a different license.

ohwellhere · 2 years ago

This is a great point, and perhaps we do need a new popular license or set of variants that exclude certain industries. "MIT-Peaceful" perhaps.

I know very many people who would refuse to work for certain companies and in certain industries — and have rejected certain projects — but would happily contribute to something MIT licensed that would end up in those systems anyway!

ohwellhere commented on AMA: I'm Dave Greene, an accidental expert on Conway's Game of Life · Posted by u/dvgrn

ohwellhere · 2 years ago

Have you read Alien Information Theory: Psychedelic Drug Technologies and the Cosmic Game by Andrew R. Gallimore [0], and do you have any thoughts on his cosmology vis a vis cellular automata? And perhaps also the same question related to Stephen Wolfram's physics project?

[0]: https://www.amazon.com/Alien-Information-Theory-Psychedelic-...

ohwellhere commented on A former slave who became a cowboy, a rancher, and a Texas legend texasmonthly.com/being-te... · Posted by u/bikenaga

theultdev · 2 years ago

That's completely false, but I wouldn't put any stock in anything that comes out of Texas Monthly, it's usually just race-bait...

The word "cowboy" originates from the Spanish term "vaquero" which refers to an individual who manages cattle while mounted on horseback.

The Spanish word "vaquero" is derived from "vaca" meaning "cow" which comes from the Latin word "vacca".

The term "cowboy" was first used in print by Jonathan Swift in 1725 and was used in the British Isles from 1820 to 1850 to describe young boys who tended the family or community cows.

Before "cowboy" the English word "cowherd" was used to describe a cattle herder, often referring to a pre-adolescent or early adolescent boy who usually worked on foot. This term is very old in the English language, originating prior to the year 1000.

The term "cowboy" was in use by 1849, although it was not used in all locations. The men who drove cattle for a living in the southwest were usually called cowhands, drovers, or stockmen.

Variations on the word appeared later, such as "cowhand" in about 1852 and "cowpoke" in 1881, originally restricted to individuals who prodded cattle with long poles to load them onto railroad cars for shipping.

To this day, cowhand and ranchhand are mainly used in America. The term cowboy is now generally used in the rodeo and a catch-all term.

ohwellhere · 2 years ago

> used in the British Isles from 1820 to 1850 to describe young boys who tended the family or community cows

This sounds like exactly the kind of definition that would get appropriated to belittle slaves. See also simply, “boy.”

ohwellhere commented on C3PO Ft. Childish Gambino – Gold Gang (100% AI) [video] youtube.com/watch?v=52Km8... · Posted by u/ohwellhere

ohwellhere · 2 years ago

Made with A.I.

GPT4 (lyrics) Suno (music) Resemble (voice) SyncLabs (performance) Runway (film) Fable (edit) Midjourney (image) Katalist (storyboard) Topaz (up-res)