Reiner Knizia is my favorite game designer of all time. I love how he takes familiar games and "bends" [1] them into new games by applying the right incentives into other games. For example, Lost Cities starts off looking like Solitaire, but when I play it I feel like I am using skills of reading my opponents hands that I learned from my (brief) bridge days.
If you are a gamer, I cannot recommend highly enough Tigris and Euphrates, Ra, Lost Cities, or Samurai
[1] I am trying to make a General Relativity metaphor here.
for me, after obsessing over this for a few model releases, I realized that most years the new model doesn't add that much I really need.
Usually it is a faster CPU, which matters less than it sounds because most things I do on the phone are messaging or talking to a web service, not CPU bound, or camera tweaks.
When I was in high school I used to dream about sticking high speed ethernet ports into my skull (because reading on a screen was too slow, plus this was the 80s and we though Neuromancer was really going to happen)
Now I realize
1. I don't want buggy hardware in my head
2. I don't want to go to the surgeon ("wetdoc" or whatever the Cyberpunk RPG called it) every time a new model comes out
JFZ: how do we know there are infinitely many primes
ChatGPT: One way to show that there are infinitely many prime numbers is to use the fact that the set of prime numbers is infinite to show that there must be an infinite number of composite numbers as well. Composite numbers are positive integers that have at least one positive integer divisor other than 1 and itself. For example, 4 is a composite number because it can be divided by 2 (and is not prime), and 6 is a composite number because it can be divided by 2 and 3 (and is not prime).
To show that there are infinitely many composite numbers, consider the sequence of numbers 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, and so on. Each of these numbers is composite because it can be divided by 2. Now consider the sequence of numbers 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 18, 21, 24, and so on. Each of these numbers is composite because it can be divided by 3. And so on. For every prime number, there is an infinite sequence of composite numbers that can be generated by multiplying that prime number by other positive integers.
Since there are infinite sequences of composite numbers, and each composite number is the product of at least two prime numbers (for example, 12 is the product of 2 and 6, which are both prime numbers), there must be an infinite number of prime numbers as well. This is one way to show that there are infinitely many prime numbers, though there are other ways to prove it as well.
(seems hand wavey, and probably wrong though I can't figure out where the flaw is)
JFZ: is A5 a solvable group
Yes, the group A5 (also known as the alternating group on 5 elements) is a solvable group. A group is solvable if it can be constructed from simpler groups using only group extensions and group quotients, and if it has a composition series in which each factor is a simple group.
(wrong)
The group A5 is the group of even permutations of five objects. It has 60 elements, and it is isomorphic to the group of rotations of a regular dodecahedron. A5 is a simple group, which means that it has no proper normal subgroups (subgroups that are normal in the group but not equal to the group itself). This means that A5 cannot be constructed from simpler groups using group extensions or group quotients. However, it can be shown that A5 has a composition series in which each factor is a simple group, so it is solvable.
In general, many groups that arise in mathematics and physics are solvable, and the study of solvable groups is an important area of research in group theory.
One thing that gives me comfort is that there is a difference between what they say on a poll, and what they actually do.
Plenty of people are willing to say "I am willing to commit violence" on social media. My gut feeling is that if 4% say they will shoot someone, < 0.4% will actually do it.
I live in NYC so many of my friends and colleagues have had tech jobs in the well known banks. Here are some of the data points I've collected.
Person 1 says there is a lot of politics, ass-covering, and throwing under the bus
Persons 2 and 3 says back in the 80s and 90s there were a lot of exciting projects, but now it's all maintenance work and making sure money train does not stop.
Person 4 says at his company they tracked how much money your bugs cost the firm, and at the end of the year if that number is too high, you're fired.
Person 5 corroborates what Person 4 said, adding that no one is allowed to touch production -- you touch production and you might cause an outage in some part of the company you never heard of, next thing that happens is Security shows up at your desk with cardboard boxes telling you to pack your stuff.
Person 6 says for the same reasons no one is allowed to touch the base classes you inherit from -- people just make their own copy of the base class and make their changes to it. The code base is littered with many copies of the same file each different in its own way.
Person 7 flat out told me "you are too nice, you will get eaten alive at a financial services firm"
Person 8 says he was not allowed to talk to or collaborate with a colleague because they worked for competing managers, they had to leave the office to collaborate
I voted Mostly Good -- I feel valued at work, and employer puts an emphasis on work life balance, which lets me spend time with my family, deal with things like doctor appointments. Took a vacation day today and trying to crack open a book about Galois Theory.
I tend to be "stubbornly optimistic" about the future, and I keep telling myself that on a long timescale (compared to 50-100 years ago) qualities of life are much better, but recent events have made me very concerned about my family's safety, and from there I started worrying about social media echo chambers and global warming.