Viewing profile — gmaslov

Aw, don't leave us hanging like that. What problems did it cause?

I've only ever seen it spelled out "theoretical CS". There is GOFAI, though.

Couldn't a hypothetical Big Alien make exactly the same argument? There are plenty of exoplanets larger than Earth.

The way I understand master keys work is that the lock has two "breaks" in each pin, instead of just one. So each pin has two positions that allow the lock to open, and you don't k…

FYI, you've got a merge conflict marker hanging out in your privacy policy :) <<<<<<< HEAD:web/src/main/resources/com/pacifica/web/views/privacy.ftl We use this information solely …

I went to the more-difficult-to-reach exit and was sent all the way back to the beginning of the game :-(

How about looking at the number of people who must be removed in order to bring the bus factor down to 1? We can call it the "bus co-factor" :). With the bus factor we're picking t…

Don't worry -- it just means your brain's eviction policy is well-tuned for immortality. ;)

Text messages are only the relatively boring first step in this kind of project. If these guys go on to implement IP/Vodka they can proudly follow in the footsteps of such hacks as…

I presume that the way the lucid dream induction works is by blinking an LED when the onset of REM sleep is detected. There are other products out there already that do this; the i…

When the collar closes, its spoke will have pulled apart a little bit under the tension and widened the gap. You'd need some kind of motorized grabber-puller collars to make this w…

At this rate I'm fast running out of arms

They know this; that's why zinc sacrificial anodes are used. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathodic_protection

Sounds like a situation that the patent system was supposedly designed to prevent. But, from the article linked by yapcguy: > He refused to patent the recipe as that would mean mak…

Anyone but a kidnapper, I'd say.

Also cute is the author's bio, in the characteristic style of a Dwarf Fortress dwarf's textual description: http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/au/5119 > "Peter Tyson is a human born in …

This idea might be up there with saving on your electric bill by installing little turbines on all your water faucets.

Hah. So that's why they always ask "Do you know why I pulled you over?" ;-)

I built a Prusa Mendel last year. It works... sort of. Unfortunately it's very unreliable and finicky, and takes a lot of babysitting to print anything. In theory I should now use …

It may have started to happen to us already -- I'm sure there are a few people here who have gotten lost in the World of Warcraft dimension for a time.

The signal would only travel at the speed of sound in ping-pong balls. What that is precisely is very difficult to estimate. Try "wave propagation in granular materials" for a Goog…

Ah, yes. The perennial curse of AI: as soon as it works, it's not called AI anymore ;-)

This link explains fairly well how a navigation mesh may be automatically generated from the level geometry: http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/NavigationMeshReference.html . I believe…

I was inordinately tickled to discover that Wolfram|Alpha's database includes this question as an easter egg.