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

Yesterday, the Internet Solved a 20-year-old Mystery

onthemedia.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 60 posts

Re: Yesterday, the Internet Solved a 20-year-old Mystery

#51

Post by adwf »

chimeracoder wrote: post #27
shmerl wrote: post #13

Such kind of "lossy compression" was used sometimes to transfer secret messages. It's impossible to fully decipher it without knowing the text, but it serves as a reminder for those who know it, so they can reconstruct it in full form if needed. This way the information could be kept in oral form for a long time (even for generations), while being preserved in written form only in such way that strangers couldn't dec…

> Such kind of "lossy compression" was used sometimes to transfer secret messages. It's impossible to fully decipher it without knowing the text, but it serves as a reminder for those who know it, so they can reconstruct it in full form if needed. This was the way that the Qur'an was originally passed down. Originally, the Qur'an was meant to be a recited work. Furthermore, at the time, Arabic writing wasn't so much…

So they used language abbreviation as a kind of bloom filter? That's pretty cool!

Re: Yesterday, the Internet Solved a 20-year-old Mystery

#52

Post by yetanotherphd »

I wonder if n-grams could solve this automatically?

If we consider the actual words to be a latent variable, then we can use an n-gram model to compute the maximum likelihood estimate (sorry Bayesians) using dynamic programming.

There is also the Bayesian approach where you treat it as a Bayesian network and use belief propagation to compute the marginal posteriors over each letter.

EDIT: took a while to figure out the ML approach.

Re: Yesterday, the Internet Solved a 20-year-old Mystery

#53

Post by judk »

thehme wrote: post #45

The title of this article does not reflect what the article is actually talking about. Also, while a nice gesture of the family member to write, as I read the article I was building up excitement and really wanted to know if she had written some interesting/secret information for the kids, but then found she was just praying. Nothing wrong or against that, just that my curiosity was sparked but ultimately my interest…

Welcome to magazine journalism.

Re: Yesterday, the Internet Solved a 20-year-old Mystery

#54

Post by bjelkeman-again »

notahacker wrote: post #48
zaphar wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't usually discuss matters of faith in this forum since it's pretty far off topic. However since you asked. Most christian faiths would say yes. The form is less important than the intended meaning for a prayer. And God would be perfectly capable of understanding the index form since He is considered to be Omniscient. QED: index form is perfectly fine. Other religions may differ as to whether the form is less or…

I like the Tibetan Buddhist prayer wheels for transmitting the perceived substance of a religious text with an almost industrial efficiency.

With modern computers we should be able to recite religious texts fast and efficiently. Even a Raspberry PI with a solar panel could probably get up to some decent speed compared to a prayer wheel. Not sure it helps you reach nirvana though. :)

Re: Yesterday, the Internet Solved a 20-year-old Mystery

#55

Post by jjwiseman »

yetanotherphd wrote: post #52

I wonder if n-grams could solve this automatically? If we consider the actual words to be a latent variable, then we can use an n-gram model to compute the maximum likelihood estimate (sorry Bayesians) using dynamic programming. There is also the Bayesian approach where you treat it as a Bayesian network and use belief propagation to compute the marginal posteriors over each letter. EDIT: took a while to figure out t…

Yes, that's what I did: https://github.com/wiseman/finalletters

It uses a bigram model and Viterbi decoding. With the right corpora (the repo includes the King James Bible and some Lutheran hymnals, as the woman was reportedly Lutheran) it's easy to decode "OFWAIHHBTN" into "our father who are in heaven hallowed be thy name".

Re: Yesterday, the Internet Solved a 20-year-old Mystery

#56

Post by xerophtye »

bjelkeman-again wrote: post #54
notahacker wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like the Tibetan Buddhist prayer wheels for transmitting the perceived substance of a religious text with an almost industrial efficiency.

With modern computers we should be able to recite religious texts fast and efficiently. Even a Raspberry PI with a solar panel could probably get up to some decent speed compared to a prayer wheel. Not sure it helps you reach nirvana though. :)

Well since "Nirvana" is a somewhat shared concept in several religions. I know of atleast one religion in which the point is to achieve "automatic prayers at super fast speeds" and obviously that isn't by rapping verses. it even transcends reciting the index or "thinking" of it.

Legend has it that a certain prime follower of this religion could finish the entire scripture tens of thousands of times while getting on to a horse.

Re: Yesterday, the Internet Solved a 20-year-old Mystery

#57

Post by jtheory »

MartinCron wrote: post #41
interstitial wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So do you think God lets you pray in index form? I mean, if he's the grand super dude, can't we just recite the index?

I'm not a theologian, but I'm going to guess that compressed prayers are just as effective as uncompressed prayers.

I'm an atheist, and I'd agree with that.

But if I were among the faithful, the answer that it's the intent and level of attention that counts seems the most reasonable. A computer using TTS to recite prayers at high speed wouldn't count for anything at all; a prayer wheel would, if the person turning it were using it meditatively (vs., say, turning the thing while thinking about what to eat for dinner).

Re: Yesterday, the Internet Solved a 20-year-old Mystery

#59

Post by cobrausn »

eplanit wrote: post #32
Luc wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What the hell. It's a perfectly reasonable thing to remark on. It was presented as a conundrum, and it turns out it's something disappointing to the grandparent. You're the one dramatising things.

It's not so much about dramatizing, he's simply a dick.

Finally, someone who understands me. Although this is the first time I've been called both a dick and a white knight in the same thread. I'll chalk that up as a win.

Re: Yesterday, the Internet Solved a 20-year-old Mystery

#60

Post by yetanotherphd »

cobrausn wrote: post #5
JTon wrote: post #3

I love when an online community comes together and solves puzzles like this. /r/Whatisthis turns up some gems here and there. An another note, I'm disappointed this particular puzzle turned out to be prayers... boring

Old woman dying of cancer didn't have the common courtesy to at least scribble down something more interesting for you to browse for 5 minutes on the internet later. What a shame.

In HN we reserve consideration and respect for people who can't afford the rent in San Francisco. An old woman dying of cancer deserves none. She was probably a homophobe too!
Post reply on HN