Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I Got a Knuth Check for 0x$3.00

nickdrozd.github.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 149 posts

Re: I Got a Knuth Check for 0x$3.00

#101

Post by nazri1 »

pantalaimon wrote: post #84
lisper wrote: post #72

> People also say that TAOCP is irrelevant or outdated or otherwise inapplicable to “real programming”. This also wrong. For instance, the first section after the chapter intro deals with the basic problem of searching for an item in an unsorted array. The simplest algorithm should be familiar to all programmers. Start your pointer at the head of the array, then do the following in a loop: Check if the current item i…

I had to try it myself but it looks like you are right! http://codepad.org/tw6EJMr4 i5-2500K: naive search found: 0, took 1856721 ns found: 0, took 1799554 ns found: 0, took 1908483 ns found: 0, took 1921622 ns found: 0, took 1856173 ns found: 0, took 1812736 ns found: 0, took 1819938 ns found: 0, took 1846232 ns found: 0, took 1821858 ns found: 0, took 1898503 ns average: 1854182.00 ns knuth search found: 0, took 19…

    time_ns = t[1].tv_nsec - t[0].tv_nsec + 1000000 * (t[1].tv_sec - t[0].tv_sec);
                                            ^^^^^^^ should be 1E9 instead

Re: I Got a Knuth Check for 0x$3.00

#102

Post by smartday11 »

hackermailman wrote: post #24

Any published authors here? I once went through a cheaper international edition of a large computer science text, and built a massive errata of all the mistakes (primarily found in the exercises) then submitted it to the authors who basically told me 'Thanks but we don't give a shit about that version, only the US edition'. Any reason there would be that many mistakes in the international version? Does Pearson publis…

●ɢᴏᴏɢʟᴇ ᴘᴀʏ 𝟿𝟻$ ᴄᴏɴsɪsᴛᴇɴᴛʟʏ ᴍʏ ʟᴀsᴛ ᴘᴀʏ ᴄʜᴇᴄᴋ ᴡᴀs $𝟾𝟸𝟶𝟶 ᴡᴏʀᴋɪɴɢ 𝟷𝟶 ʜᴏᴜʀs ᴏᴜᴛ ᴏғ ᴇᴠᴇʀʏ ᴡᴇᴇᴋ ᴏɴ ᴛʜᴇ ᴡᴇʙ. ᴍʏ ᴍᴏʀᴇ ʏᴏᴜɴɢ ᴋɪɴ ʙᴜᴅᴅʏ ʜᴀs ʙᴇᴇɴ ᴀᴠᴇʀᴀɢɪɴɢ 𝟷𝟻ᴋ ᴀʟʟ ᴛʜʀᴏᴜɢʜ ᴏɴɢᴏɪɴɢ ᴍᴏɴᴛʜs ᴀɴᴅ ʜᴇ ᴡᴏʀᴋs ᴀʀᴏᴜɴᴅ 𝟸𝟺 ʜᴏᴜʀs ᴄᴏɴsɪsᴛᴇɴᴛʟʏ. ɪ ᴄᴀɴ'ᴛ ᴄᴏɴғɪᴅᴇ ɪɴ ʜᴏᴡ sᴛʀᴀɪɢʜᴛғᴏʀᴡᴀʀᴅ ɪᴛ ᴡᴀs ᴏɴᴄᴇ ɪ ᴇɴᴅᴇᴀᴠᴏʀᴇᴅ ɪᴛ ᴏᴜᴛ.ᴛʜɪs ɪs ᴍʏ ᴘʀɪᴍᴀʀʏ ᴄᴏɴᴄᴇʀɴ...ɢᴏᴏᴅ ʟᴜᴄᴋ . http://BesteJob.Com

Re: I Got a Knuth Check for 0x$3.00

#103

Post by tialaramex »

Sharlin wrote: post #75
sokoloff wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With smartphone deposit-by-photo, you could cash the check [if it were real] and keep the check to display. (Totally agree that if you had to send it in that keeping the check is worth well more than the value of the check.) PS: It took me way longer than it ought to have to figure out the Bank of San Serriffe joke...

Unless that German guy actually lives in the US, I'm surprised he was actually able to a) cash an American cheque somewhere and b) not have to pay an exorbitant service fee for cashing it. Cheques are approximately as common as unicorns in Europe.

My bank informs me that they would charge between £6 and £10 to accept such a cheque as payment into my account - depending on exactly the amount, how it was issued and so on. I guess if you literally wanted it turned into cash on the spot you'd pay a much larger fee corresponding to the risk they'd be taking on that deal.

Re: I Got a Knuth Check for 0x$3.00

#104

Post by z3t4 »

lisper wrote: post #72

> People also say that TAOCP is irrelevant or outdated or otherwise inapplicable to “real programming”. This also wrong. For instance, the first section after the chapter intro deals with the basic problem of searching for an item in an unsorted array. The simplest algorithm should be familiar to all programmers. Start your pointer at the head of the array, then do the following in a loop: Check if the current item i…

Optimizations can be fun, but all bets are off when next generation of hardware comes out, and a thousand man-hours spent on compiler/optimizer. And most performance increases the last decade have come from multi-process/threading, while single core execution have actually become slower. I think in the future it will be increasingly more important for algorithms to work in parallel, so the performance can scale with the number of CPU/cores or Moore's law.

Re: I Got a Knuth Check for 0x$3.00

#105

Post by nathankunicki »

I once read a short biography of Donald who put forth the image of a gentlemen who often eschewed most of lifes pleasantries and small enjoyments in pursuit of spending most of his life in his library, studying, with little brain capacity remaining for anything else.

Given this, I pictured a somewhat solitary gentleman - a slightly more dignified version of a modern nerdy basement dweller, disconnected from modern life and humour.

Therefore I find great joy in seeing the words "Bank of San Seriffe". I giggled quite a lot at this. :)

Ps. This description is probably entirely wrong. It's just how I always pictured him as a result of reading that article.

Re: I Got a Knuth Check for 0x$3.00

#106

Post by Lowkeyloki »

basitmakine wrote: post #93
Lowkeyloki wrote: post #91

I wonder if anyone cashes these things? We should all gang up and cash these checks together and overdraw him. Or at least really screw up his check book balance.

It's not a real check though. He stopped sending real once in 2008 according to the article.

That's weak. Now he's just printing Monopoly money.

Re: I Got a Knuth Check for 0x$3.00

#107

Post by jtlienwis »

I had a comp sci prof back in the early 1970's. Someone told me that he had gotten a check from Knuth for finding an error. I saw him off campus once and I had to check to see if his feet actually touched the ground. I swear that they didn't.

Re: I Got a Knuth Check for 0x$3.00

#108

Post by meddlepal »

WrtCdEvrydy wrote: post #81
deathanatos wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bought an international edition of a text in college because it was priced significantly cheaper. And indeed, it had all the same problems, but they had been re-arranged, so when the professor assigned problems "5-15", I needed to know the mapping from the US 5-15 to the international version's numbers. Which, by quickly thumbing through another student's copy, I could generate pretty rapidly, but boy was that anno…

We had a professor that kept mappings for 2-3 versions behind and basically allowed you to buy the used book on Amazon for about $12 compared to $200 for the new one. It's these little things that make your professors stand out.

I was not a CS major but I had a number of friends that were CS majors and one of the courses used a book written by the professor, who is also the department head. The book cost like $200-$300. It was a shitty rewrite of the Sun Java documentation with a few added exercises and some reworded bits.

Fucking racket. Also something something cheating and plagiarism is bad unless you're the head of an academic department.

Re: I Got a Knuth Check for 0x$3.00

#109

Post by svat »

nathankunicki wrote: post #105

I once read a short biography of Donald who put forth the image of a gentlemen who often eschewed most of lifes pleasantries and small enjoyments in pursuit of spending most of his life in his library, studying, with little brain capacity remaining for anything else. Given this, I pictured a somewhat solitary gentleman - a slightly more dignified version of a modern nerdy basement dweller, disconnected from modern li…

His first publication, as a high-school student, was in MAD magazine. His books are full of jokes, both highly technical ones and more trivial ones. :-)

If you have some mathematical inclination and a couple of hours to spare, you may like watching his (1-hour) Christmas lecture from 2017: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BxQw4CdxLr8 — you may need to listen carefully (he's over 80 after all), but some of his humour comes through at moments.

Re: I Got a Knuth Check for 0x$3.00

#110

Post by snpriyanshu »

gitpusher wrote: post #67

The article names Asuthosh Mehra as the leader with 0x$207.f0 -- but Knuth's site lists two even higher: including Udo Wermuth with a whopping 0x$772.58. https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/boss.html

The blog clearly mentions "Ashutosh Mehra is the third-richest person in San Serriffe".
Post reply on HN