thirty seconds and now I have three new books to read. Thanks! Great idea.
Show HN: Opening lines of famous literary works
91–100 of 120 posts
Re: Show HN: Opening lines of famous literary works
#92The minimal style works, the words really do speak for themselves. Have you thought about a movie section? Famous opening lines from films could fit the same format.
Film is a visual medium, so this is more appropriate: https://www.rogerebert.com/category/opening-shots
Re: Show HN: Opening lines of famous literary works
#93Would it be hard to translate to Spanish? I'd love to share with some friends that love books but don't speak English!
Re: Show HN: Opening lines of famous literary works
#94No Pride and Prejudice?
Re: Show HN: Opening lines of famous literary works
#95I'd be interested to know what everyone's favorite opening lines of all time are. (bonus - to see how much of it you can quote without looking :) For me, its: Whann that aprill with hir shoures soote, The drought of march hath perced to the roote, And zepherus eek with his sweete breath, inspired hath in every holt and heth, the tendre cropes, and the sonne hath in the ram, hir halve cours ironne, Than preketh hem na…
My mom died today.
—The Stranger, Camus
Re: Show HN: Opening lines of famous literary works
#96> so hopefully you can refresh a few times and get a fresh one every time If you randomly sample from only 60 quotes, then after 10 refreshes there will be a greater than 50% chance of at least one repeat, and by 20 refreshes it's up to 95%. This is an example of the birthday paradox[1]. On the flip side, if someone wants to see all 60 quotes, they will have to refresh the page an average of 281 times, mostly (~80%)…
If the user doesn't know how many unique items there are, they would need to keep refreshing even longer to gauge whether the N they've seen is the full set.
Is there a good way to determine after seeing N unique items in M trials how many items there potentially are? Would tracking the time between seeing new unique items help? Is this an already solved problem?
Re: Show HN: Opening lines of famous literary works
#97Few can top the opening line of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas . But there were brave souls who tried, in the now-defunct Bulwer-Lytton Contest [0]. Where else could you find gems like these? > The day I lost my tractor was the same day I found out my wife was moonlighting as a hooker when she gave me a wad of cash and told me, “It’s from a John, dear." 0: https://www.bulwer-lytton.com
That link is fantastic, thank you.
Re: Show HN: Opening lines of famous literary works
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I actually read the first book and it was so poorly written it made me wonder if I should continue In his defense, that was early in his career, and in one of the countless afterwords or prefaces, he also mentions that he has, of course, evolved since then. "The Gunslinger" is really a bit borderline. The next one, "The Drawing of the Three" is much more complex and better written. You could also read the last book…
I may be one of the few people who preferred the original version of The Gunslinger. I dropped it after Wizard and Glass, though. I really like the setting and the concepts in the Dark Tower but it started to feel a bit too self indulgent and up King's own ass, and I just kind of stopped caring. Also the older I got the more cringe Susannah Dean became as a character.
> I may be one of the few people who preferred the original version of The Gunslinger.
In case it isn't clear, I think poster I'm replying to is referencing the fact that King went back decades later and re-wrote The Gunslinger, mostly for continuity I believe. I've not yet read the rewrite, so I'm unsure if it changes the writing style at all. (I didn't mind the first book, it's just a bit slow)
Re: Show HN: Opening lines of famous literary works
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
If the user doesn't know how many unique items there are, they would need to keep refreshing even longer to gauge whether the N they've seen is the full set.
Is there a good way to determine after seeing N unique items in M trials how many items there potentially are? Would tracking the time between seeing new unique items help? Is this an already solved problem?
This is the “German tank problem”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_tank_problem?wprov=sfti...
Re: Show HN: Opening lines of famous literary works
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
If the user doesn't know how many unique items there are, they would need to keep refreshing even longer to gauge whether the N they've seen is the full set.
Is there a good way to determine after seeing N unique items in M trials how many items there potentially are? Would tracking the time between seeing new unique items help? Is this an already solved problem?
There are many different statistical estimators for this problem, many from the ecology literature (e.g. Chao1). This paper and a Python library based on it covers many of them:
https://www.vldb.org/conf/1995/P311.PDF
https://pydistinct.readthedocs.io/en/latest/docs/readme_link...