Viewing profile — bayes

Interesting. So maybe it is an evolutionarily stable strategy, if you assume it's too hard for the fish to keep track globally of where they are in the shoal (and are therefore lim…

Why would they do this though? Why wouldn't a gene for 'cheating' (e.g. not slowing down when you reach the front) to avoid danger be favoured by natural selection? Animals with co…

You're probably right - although saying the accusations are "nonsense, utterly ridiculous and should be ignored" isn't strictly speaking the same as saying that they're untrue. GCH…

Relevant xkcd: http://xkcd.com/1314/

So if hypothetically Gox was the only buyer for bitcoins trapped in Gox, would they be buying them with real USD, or with 'trapped in Gox' USD that may or may not turn out to have …

Question from someone who doesn't know much about this: is it possible to know that there is a genuine market in these MtGox bitcoins i.e. that $350 is a genuine market price and n…

Currently (I'm in London UK) Minecraft has a huge folllowing among boys aged (roughly) 8-14. As long as that demographic remains obsessed there'll be a constant new market.

I think "how many golf balls can you get in a double decker bus" is a fair question for assessing whether someone can apply basic maths to a to a real life (i.e. not perfectly defi…

Presumably an Apple-run bank would protect me from scams by only allowing me to spend my money on Apple-approved products and services?

a velocity 20 parts per million above the speed of light

This makes me worried about hash collisions as well. The article implies that a file whose hash matches something they already have will never even reach their servers - so presuma…

This makes no sense to me. If it's really possible to "resell these domains for considerable profit" then why aren't you doing it yourself? Or, if it's not, then surely you're just…

I don't see why you had to be so rude to them, just because customs in their circle are different to your own. A simple "You go ahead, I'm just going to pay for my own" would have …

I fear some naive young US-based Anonymous participants may soon be getting a very rude awakening (if the FBI and Secret Service respond to this by making an example of them). Edit…

I've often wondered how long it will be before TV companies edit the video of sporting events to replace the adverts in the stadium with different ones they've sold themselves. Giv…

I greatly enjoyed his eccentric and opinionated book 'Calculated Bets' on writing an automated system for betting on jai alai (although the story petered out rather lamely when the…

Do you know what a meme is? How could a cliched rhetorical device not be one?

It's certainly possible to imagine universes in which that would work. But in ours, where stuff is made of atoms, I can't see you positioning the mark on the rod any more precisely…

But I would imagine a lot of those market makers are betting their own money. This is a fund i.e. they're betting other people's money. I won't be investing!

Perhaps I'm stupid - certainly I'm no economist - but I don't see what's wrong with naked short selling. For a market to work well you want liquidity, in order for the traded price…

The NY Times had an informative article: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/23/magazine/23Netflix-t.html?...

I'm afraid my username doesn't reflect any deep knowledge of the field. I studied probability at an undergraduate level many years ago, and still use it in my hobby (writing 'bots'…

I was quite excited when I saw that New Scientist - generally a pretty good magazine - had a piece on the maths of gambling. But unfortunately it turned out to be an extremely poor…

If you own the copyright to the whole project (because all the other contributors assigned copyright in their contributions to you) you can presumably distribute it under any licen…

The trouble with fewer better wagers is that wagers - even very good value ones - can lose. So if you're only making a few of them there's a significant probability of losing overa…