[hxksqcxc] Quadratic surface patches

Test 2D barcode readers (e.g., QR Code) by virtually printing them on small patches of 3D quadratic surfaces (e.g., ellipsoid), projecting them back to 2D, and scanning.  Inspired by a barcode printed on a bottle whose shape resembled a hyperboloid of one sheet.

We don't want too extreme warpage, e.g., the surface tangent to the line of sight or even flipped backwards.  What is a parametrization of quadratic surfaces that spans all possible "almost flat" patches?

Should the QR reader use detected position and alignment markers to interpolate a quadratic surface?

Analogous 1D version for regular bar codes?  (Conic sections)

Repeat for higher order surfaces?

Also perspective projection.

[kszblmrt] Fried ketchup

I'm guessing fried ketchup will taste good.  Sweet, salty, savory, sour, greasy.

Maybe mix ketchup and flour (or some other complex carbohydrate) into dumplings and deep fry.

[zlysbaqx] Best language for poetry

Write the same poem (on some universal subject) in different languages, each using the "best" native conventions for poetry.

Quantitatively measure the ability for speakers of each native language to memorize their language's poem.

It'll probably be difficult controlling for the many free variables, like skill of the poet or the importance of oral culture in each language.

[fqsfwalz] One pixel zoom

An image zooms in by 0.1% per frame at 24 frames per second.  That is, 1 pixel of a 1000x1000 image slides off the edge of the screen.  (Actually, half a pixel off each edge, so we need subpixel resolution.)

After one second, the magnification is 1.001^24 = 1.024.  After 1 minute, 4.2.  After 1 hour, 3.2*10^37.  After 1 day, 1.3*10^900.

This might be good for a meditatively slow fractal zoom.  Probably pre-calculated.  Use the golden ratio phi or 1/phi day as the period to avoid seeing the same thing every day at the same time.

[csrjmslx] The most interesting graph

Consider a graph with nodes as people.  If two people have sex, draw an edge between them.  (Other variations, perhaps somewhat easier to obtain: who married whom, who biologically had children with whom.)

Assuming unlabeled nodes, what can be learned from this graph?

What node annotations (or even edge annotations) yield even more interesting insights?

I suspect a tremendous amount can be learned, but they may be things we wish we didn't know.  In choosing whom to mate, society's deepest prejudices become revealed: races, religions, other feuds we didn't even know existed. Have we made any progress?

[blxawpwq] Stalemate vs Checkmate

To simplify the rules of chess, suppose the game is played until king capture.  This increases the number of legal moves, though all of these newly legal moves lose immediately by the opponent's response.

Stalemates become tricky to define.  However, thinking this way allows us to distinguish between two types of stalemates: In the first type, the only moves available place the king in check (but the king is not currently in check; that would be checkmate).  In the second type, there are actually no moves available (not even these newly legal ones which place the king in check).  One might propose new rules where the two cases are treated differently.

To distinguish between checkmate and stalemate (first type), one needs to do a counterfactual null move analysis.  Is the king currently in check?  That is, if passing were a legal move (it's not), and if the player were to pass, then could the opponent capture the king the next move?  It's kind of weird that scoring the game relies on considering an illegal type of move (passing).

I propose eliminating this nit by saying stalemate (first type) and checkmate are the same.  Stalemate (first type) merely becomes an extreme form of zugswang.

Stalemate (second type) is a draw, but I predict it will occur extremely rarely.  Alternatively, it's the only time a player is permitted to pass.  Even so, mutual second-type stalemate would have to be a draw.  (Construct such a position and a proof game.)

The prohibition of castling through check could be translated to a variation of an en passant rule: the king can be captured by attacking any of the squares it passed through, including the starting square.  (But not the rook.  It is philosophically assumed to have moved first, which is different from how the move is required to be physically executed.)

Another play-til-king-capture proposal

[kplpwfzv] Self play bad evaluations

Play a chess program against itself in a number of games (with some nondeterminism to avoid repeating the same game.)

Given the final outcome, how "wrong" was the evaluation earlier in the game?  For example, for the winning side, what was the most negative evaluation of any position earlier in the game?

In principle, a computer should never be wrong when playing itself: it knows how to model the opponent perfectly.

These instances possibly serve as indicators of flaws in the program.  They may also serve as a way to measure and compare different programs, though I don't know what the measurement means.

See the diagrams at Glauring chess games , particularly the few that first go up then down, or vice versa.

[ihtensge] 320 Fahrenheit

160 Celsius = 320 Fahrenheit (the temperature is numerically doubled).

There's also -12.3 F = -24.6 C, -8.4 C = 16.8 F, 7 F = -14 C.

Cf 11 F and -40.

[untggqhs] Touchscreen piano glissandos

Assuming the keys are laid out nicely (not the standard piano layout), one can play scales and arpeggios extremely easily on a touchscreen musical instrument.  It's kind of a harp on steroids.

With this in mind, design a UI to maximize this capability.

Additional keys such as a slide-out keyboard could function like pedals of a harp.

[retrjwae] Act like the crazy homeless guy

The criminal must do something without calling attention to himself.  However, due to the nature of the crime about to be committed, he cannot pretend to act normal.  Therefore, he acts like a crazy homeless guy.  No one pays heed, and the crime goes off successfully.

Of course, the social commentary is we have too many such people that makes such a crime possible.  Welfare for the poor (which would reduce those numbers) positively affects more than just the poor.

What crimes are possible?  If one wanted to learn how to act that way, how would one learn it?

[exvwlupa] Not naming local variables

Consider a slight modification of a functional programming language like Haskell where local variables (e.g., let bindings) are optionally not named.

Instead, the language is no longer a purely textual, but includes graphical edges, joining the definitions of bindings to the locations of their use.

So, instead of let { foo = 7 + 2 * 3 } in bar foo, it would look like let { . 7 + 2 * 3 } in bar . , but with an edge drawn between the two periods.  Then, graph layout (automatic or manual) lays out the code so that it looks pretty without too many intersecting edges.

Draw animated edges which "flow" from source to sink (from definition to use).  Therefore, this language can only be viewed on a screen, not printed.  Perhaps a different colored edge for type declarations.

Designing a UI to program in this language is left an open question.  Mouse clicks are an obvious first thing to try, though I dislike dependence on mouse.

Inspired by the linear case, where one can string together a sequence of functions and infix operators such as $, ., or >>=, and never have to name intermediate results.

[ftihpfjq] QR code scanning with zbar

A collection of 2 good and 2 bad images of QR codes for scanning with zbarimg in zbar-tools (Version: 0.10+doc-4ubuntu2). They differ only by 1 pixel worth of white padding on the left or top sides.

zxing does better.

[kdcrknji] Unscannable QR code

Neither zbarimg from zbar-tools (Version: 0.10+doc-4ubuntu2) nor ZXing's online decoder nor Google Goggles could decode the scan of the QR code on the left. On the right is the original, which zbarimg and zxing could decode. Visually, it appears to be a clean scan, so I suspect there remains room for machine vision algorithmic improvements to the programs.

The encoded data are 6825 decimal digits.

[wdwdbceb] Vacuum shaver

An electric shaver attachment to a standard vacuum cleaner hose.

[supfudxy] Combo lock counter

Create a mechanical device that is a cross between a combination lock and a tally counter.  Only someone who knows the combination can increment the counter.

A solution in search of a problem.

[hlhmcttv] Often decisive equal endgames

Looking through chess endgame tablebases, which material pairs offer the greatest possibility of all three results?  Let W and B be the probability of White and Black wins, averaged over all positions with that starting material.  Find the material which maximizes min(W,B).

We probably want to limit to pawnless endgames.

Is that which makes it decisive obvious (e.g., one side can capture material extremely quickly)? Perhaps exclude those positions as well.  Look at distance to conversion.

(Alternatively, draw counts as win for the weaker side.)

Theoretical draws with that material may be good for "mini" games starting at unorthodox initial positions.  Don't slip.

Someday (probably not) we may be able to prove the initial position to be one of these positions.

[caksbsas] Large wall clock

Create a large, lightweight wall clock.

Large clocks are better because they are easier to see.

However large clocks tend to be heavy, requiring additional effort to mount to the wall (can't just be a thumbtack).

Dispense with the back and frame and just have hands?

How can we avoid excessive power use due to having to move large hands?  We wish to avoid a big battery.

The much, much more generalized problem: put a moving image on a wall. Many standard solutions exist, but plenty of opportunities for invention.

[bjaczifw] Team cubing

A team of six isolated members is each shown a different side of a virtual Rubik's cube.  Each can rotate their face only.

Can they solve the cube with no other communication?  Presumably they prearrange a communication protocol of special rotations.

Or, allow certain minimal communications, or full audio.

For extra confusion, the colors each player sees are permuted so everyone sees a white face facing them.  There may also be a mirror image transformation.

Could be a two-person cooperative game with opposing corner views.

[rnlrhbhy] Massive interactive art

Create large, monumental piece of interactive art that a great many people (a large portion of a city) can see at once, but only one person at a time interacts with it.

Tetris on the side of a tall building.  Other puzzle or game.

Giant flag semaphore (optical telegraph).  Other messaging or drawing.

Nothing like this (not a permanent installation) exists to my knowledge.  I think society will change as a response to it.  Perhaps we don't have such a thing because we fear democratization of broadcasting.

One of the deep questions is what to do about people creating ugly art with it, for example, spelling out naughty messages.  Embrace it as an essential feature of interactive art, or carefully design it to limit it?

Because only one person at a time can interact with it, that control station could have an admission fee, funding the project.

Trivial to do virtually, though the audience may be small.

[pjceijam] QR Codes on a printed page

Pack multiple square QR codes on a US Letter paper for maximum information density.

Assume quarter-inch margins, so the printable area is 8 by 10.5 inches.

The 2 by 3 packing fills 87.5% of the available area (being tight on long dimension).  The 4 by 5 fills 95.2%, being tight on the short dimension.

Nevertheless, the 2x3 packs more information than the 4x5 packing at the same pixel density, due to having less overhead for spaces between codes, and position and alignment markers.

For a certain pixel density, 2x3 packing uses codes of size 471x471 pixels (471*3/10.5 = 134.6 pixels per inch) and 4687 to 4965 decimal digits per code, so 28122 to 29790 digits per page.  4x5 packing uses 267x267 pixels (267*4/8 = 133.5 pixels per inch) and 1251 to 1408 digits per code, so 25020 to 28160 digits per page.

2x2 (76.2%) is 543x543 pixels, 25920 to 26972 digits per page.

The winner, which I didn't consider initially, is 3x4 (98.4% of printable area), 351x351 pixels (133.7 pixels per inch), 28920 to 31440 digits per page.

Used qrencode 3.1.1-1ubuntu1 (Original-Maintainer: NIIBE Yutaka) at default settings. 

[wucawemu] Automatic keyboard macro suggestions

The application or window manager notices you are typing certain sequences of keys (perhaps even mouse actions) often and offers binding a keyboard macro to the sequence.

If you accept the suggestion, the application optionally disables the original sequence, forcing you to use the new macro (with gentle reminders of what it is).

Probably straightforward to implement for emacs.

[zkqiglua] Numerically and lexicographically ordered

The following sequence remains properly numerically ordered even after lexicographic sorting.

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 900 901 902 903 ... 995 996 997 998 9990000 9990001 9990002 ... 9999997 9999998 999999900000000

The number of zeroes at the end goes up by powers of 2.

You don't have to pick a width in advance like printf %08d, and the sequence is unlimited.

It may be useful for automatically generated file names such as for the "split" program, perhaps in a different base.

[cefrloqq] David Rohde coverup

In the New York Times-led coverup of the David Rohde kidnapping, did other news organizations not publish purely out of the goodness of their heart, or were they provided with financial or other business incentives?

I speculate the threat of employment discrimination (perhaps an implicit threat) should anyone who published apply for a position (in the future) at any of the many New York Times affiliated companies (e.g., Boston Globe): "Kiss your career goodbye.  You'll never work in the industry again."

Whatever the lever may have been, has it been applied again, perhaps for less honorable reasons?

It would be nice to know the exact mechanics of how the coverup worked, all the way from the kidnappers on the ground no doubt attempting to publicize, to all the media corporations.  It has exposed a flaw in journalism -- the ability to censor undesirable content -- which could be exploited again for less honorable reasons.

[lnszhpjk] Towers of Hanoi

Random musings about generalizations of the Towers of Hanoi problem.

Suppose there are more than 3 sticks (positions).  How much easier does the problem get?  What is the optimal algorithm?

Are there configurations that are harder (more steps) than transferring the whole tower from one stick to another?

Suppose there is no ordering constraint (cylinders of hanoi). What permutation is most difficult?

A web search reveals most of these problems have already been considered.

[lodapjof] Crowd source popular local products

For people who have traveled, ask what products or services they enjoyed at a previous location that don't exist here.

[ctvxrzgm] Deadly antidotes and poisons

Find a pair (or more) of poisons with identical symptoms (near enough as can be measured before the victim dies) whose antidotes are even more deadly if the poison is not present.

So, there's no way to know which is the right antidote, and if you guess wrongly, the results are even worse.

This has probably already been done.

[oaagoalw] Revealed historical conspiracies

Given the many "Shadow Elite"-type conspiracy theories proposed, certainly there must have been actual cases in the past, some which were subsequently revealed.  What were they?  What can we learn from conspiracies, if any, that successfully worked in secret for long periods and caused substantial effects?  What can we learn from those which were quickly revealed?

This could be used to debunk some existing theories as well as concentrate discovery efforts in other places.

I suspect the historical record will show that any organization with a lot of power must have multiple people involved.  Whenever there is power and people, there will inevitably be ugly power struggles leading to secrets being revealed.

[jhvxccso] Transparent bias

For every Wikipedia article, provide an accompanying wiki page, similar to the Discussion page, that quickly informs a reader why not to trust the page.  In particular, explain why various parties are interested in slanting the article in a particular direction.

I'm hoping there won't be much controversy about the fact that there is controversy. Then, a lack of controversy could serve as an indicator that the article can be trusted (with regards to bias; it could be untrustable for other unbiased reasons, like the author was an idiot).

This could be started externally from Wikipedia.

[qbwbpefa] Majoring in sex

A student goes to college and decides to unofficially double major in sex (plus the official academic major); that is, to purposefully have many sexual experiences and partners for the serious goals of personal education and preparation for life in the real world.

Surely, this has been tried, since it is comparatively easy to do in college.  What resources should the student consult to get the most out of this study, and avoid significant harm and unhappiness?  Is there a textbook?  Have the many who've tried ever gotten together together to share information on their experiences?

Unfortunately, due to shame surrounding promiscuity (especially for women), there may be no such resource.  Each student gets to repeat the same mistakes on their own.

[qfzshzub] QR application

Exciting would be QR code not merely encoding an address but data that will do something interesting: a standalone program.

We need a standard library, a language capable of tersely expressing programs, a sandbox or virtual machine, and text compression.

Excitingly, sl4a-scheme has come into existence since I last wished it existed.

[utqqzify] Gardening is liberty

Why do people garden?  It's that feeling of it's just you and the dirt.

It may seem like zen, but that's what freedom feels like: remember it.  Do you feel that outside the garden?  Has your freedom been taken from you in real life?

People garden to satisfy their appetite for freedom, an appetite that cannot be subdued no matter how hard those with power try to take it away from you.  They appreciate it without knowing what it is, or why they want it; it's a basic human need.

[tahjdqus] Reconfigurable internal walls

To what extent are our household lives shaped by what will fit through doors, either exterior or interior?

Can technology deliver a vastly differently way of structuring the interior of a living space, obviating this problem?

One radical idea (I'm not sure this technology exists) are curtains.  They are attached to the ceiling by magnets which can freely roll anywhere on the magnetic ceiling, so they can be easily reconfigured, or opened to make an opening for a wide piece of furniture.

Upon flipping a switch, the magnets lock in place, and by "magic", the formerly pliable curtain stiffens into a solid, soundproof wall.

Inspired by this refrigerator probably not being able to fit through standard doors.

Getting things to different floors would be the next challenge.

[fcchqenl] Cheerleaders play

There's a break in the action of the game (time-out, period ends), and the cheerleaders take the court or field.  But instead of some cheer or dance routine, they play a very short friendly scrimmage amongst themselves.

Of course, they don't play as well as the players (but still perhaps better than the average fan, because they practice).  Some of the entertainment value comes from seeing good-looking people playing the game.

A deeper reason is because the fans and players are there for the love of the game, and this adds the cheerleaders back into the mix.  This is in contrast to how it is now, where many cheerleaders often don't care for the game at all, and merely do the job to advance their modeling or dance careers.  That attitude is a jarring cognitive discontinuity from the rest of the game.

Assuming stereotypical genders, it might also allow some women to get paid to play a game they love, if only for 30 seconds at a time.

Inspired by a Tööbz-vs-Dollies stunt by the LSJUMB during a basketball game halftime.

[fcgktnzb] Higher pizza oven temperature

Pizza is normally cooked in a very hot oven (900 F).  However, is that temperature optimal, or simply the practical limit of a certain form of oven technology?  Would pizza be different, better, if an economically competitive method of reaching higher temperatures were developed?  How much higher?

The first speculation is that thin crust pizzas could be cooked much quicker, perhaps a custom pizza in under a minute.  This would change the industry.

Ovens with microwave emitters.

[yvryfial] Transparent news

A news organization transparently reveals what normally goes on behind the scenes.  All the meetings, editorial decisions, especially which stories to pursue and why, marketing influence, instructions to reporters from on high.

Other than confidential sources, what else does a news organization typically hide?

[gddlelvy] Catholic humanism

The philosophy of Catholicism is perhaps uniquely interesting in that it has had thousands of years to consider the practical and philosophical aspects of the human condition.  Many very bright people, some granted insulated positions suited for deep comtemplation, have participated and written down a lot of things.  Arguably even large scale "social experiments" been performed, as the hierarchical power structure can issue decrees and record what happens over centuries.

How can the fruits of this philosophical intellectual effort benefit those outside of the religion?  (AI: Apply natural language processing and formal methods?) Other religions can contribute, too. Surely they cannot have come to incompatible conclusions, as the human condition is constant regardless of religion.

A sticking point might be we want to keep religion out of public education.  Is there a line between philosophy versus evangelism and indoctrination?

Half-cynically, priests sexually abusing altar boys with bishops looking the other way cannot be new in the long history of the Catholic Church.  This must have occurred and been deeply examined before.  What was thought over the centuries?  Certainly what to do about the human tendency to do despicable and shameful things succumbing to their basest desires is at the heart Catholic philosophy.

[thbiukqp] Ambidextrous pitcher

I wonder why we don't see more ambidextrous baseball pitchers (switch pitchers like switch hitters).  It seems a straightforward way to probably extend career and earning potential, and be able to work around and avoid injury.

Be a power pitcher with your dominant arm, a off-speed pitcher with the other.

[meoqcywy] The children think of!

Not "Think of the children!"

What is the youngest age which, with proper instruction, a child can understand any given topic that an average adult can, including acting responsibly?

"Think of the children!" is not an issue about children; it's about adults.  Every time it is uttered, it signifies our failure as educators, desiring to keep children ignorant, uncomfortable in teaching them about certain things (especially sexuality), when they would be able to learn it just fine.

Somewhat inspired by the Polgar experiment with chess.  Is understanding the Sicilian Najdorf Defense (including how to deal with unfamiliar situations, which eventually happens in every game) any less complicated for a child than understanding human sexuality?

[qdzpgort] Teaching as enabling learning

Education, especially to young children, should provide not so much simplified introductions but a table of contents.  The difference being the emphasis on how to learn more if the student is curious. Young children often are, and we need to harness that self-directed appetite for learning.

Very few things do this.

Inspired by museum exhibits: your curiosity piqued, are you improved in your ability to take the next step toward becoming an expert on the subject?  Or does the exhibit have the feeling of the end of the line of knowledge?  Do you now know where to read or turn next?

The next step after beginner-level or teaser-level information on a subject is intermediate-level, not expert-level.  Each level needs to point to the next and not jump too many levels.

(Wikipedia is doing this wrong, especially in its incomprehensible mathematics articles.)

[jbqnrltt] Two escape keys

Many user interfaces have a modes or "attention" organized as a stack.  Press the "escape" key or sequence to exit the current mode and pop the stack to where you were previously.  This is a conceptually simple and good design.  One example, perhaps not a very good one, is nested "screen" applications, and various sequences of ctrl-A A get you up to any desirable level.

Consider augmenting this design to be able to access both endpoints: one can hit a different "escape" key to go to the opposite end of the stack. A deque or doubly linked list.  One example, again perhaps not a very good one, is Microsoft Windows, where ctrl-alt-delete immediately lets you interact with the OS, not any intervening applications.

A vague concept, still needs thought.  When would it be useful?

[kdomcobz] Fractals meme

A take on the 6-panel meme

[lhlnautm] Mailing lists with human spam classifier

An open mailing list disseminates messages to its subscribers slowly, in random order.

Early recipients respond back if it is spam (or not spam), possibly blocking further dissemination (or accelerating dissemination) to those who haven't received it yet.

This works only on "slow conversation" lists.

Possibly need a better UI for message actions.

[qerwjxye] Silly numbers

Numbers so large as to be silly, the mind can't comprehend.  Or can't comprehend anything larger.

Some cardinals: Aleph 3.  (Aleph 2 could be the number of real functions.  What is aleph 3?).  Then, aleph omega.

Some ordinals: Omega, Epsilon nought

200: somewhere around here, it becomes too large for the mind to keep track of individually different objects.

11: What does "Turn it up to 11" mean, when the scale only goes up to 10?  The mind boggles.

1: The probability of certainty.  Certainty is impossible to comprehend in this uncertain world.

0.995: A probability so large the mind has difficulty distinguishing it from certainty.  (= 1-1/200 above)

[xhkahuhn] Asteroid mass black hole

Object classification: Safe.  Although SCP n+1 can easily bring about an XK-class end of the world scenario upon collision with Earth, both its solar system-wide gravitational mechanics and its local general relativistic effects are well understood.

Containment procedures: The existence of SCP n+1 shall kept secret from the general public to prevent panic and until more is understood about its origin. No known natural processes (e.g., stellar evolution) could have created SCP n+1, suggesting it was placed there for potentially sinister purposes by vastly technologically advanced entity. 

Although SCP n+1 emits no electromagnetic radiation, its existence can be inferred by the general public during episodes of gravitational lensing. The SCP Foundation will [DATA EXPUNGED] to sabotage sky surveys and astronomical observations during the moments SCP n+1 occults and lenses a background object. These episodes can be predicted in advance.

Description: SCP n+1 is an asteroid-mass black hole in the vicinity of the Sun/Earth L₄ Lagrange point.

[piorntrr] Encrypted home and tmp

Encrypted home directories are good idea.  Also need to encrypt temporary directories, /tmp etc., which can leak personal information. /var. I wish there were a better system of a personal temporary directory.

Also, interprocess communication?

[izkbcqtz] National Debt and Lifetime Income

The per capita share of the national debt is about $46,000.  But anyone who quotes that number (or similarly, your household's share) is probably sleazily trying to manipulate you into supporting whatever political goals they're actually trying to achieve.  A more responsible way of describing the size of the debt is: the per capita share of the national debt is 1.3% of your total lifetime income.

Because the income distribution pyramid is fat at the bottom, and most people are in the bottom part of the pyramid, most people's fair share is much less than $46,000.

1.3% assumes a flat tax.  If using a progressive income tax, most people's percentage share would be even less.  What is the median percentage?

Average total lifetime income was calculated by multiplying total yearly income (GDP) and life expectancy, and dividing by population.

1.3% .  Is that a lot?  That's up to you.  You'd probably be annoyed if sales taxes went up by 1.3% but it's not visions of total financial ruin for your family, or several new cars, that the figure $46,000 conjures up.

1.3% is if we put the hypothetically put burden of paying back the debt on a single generation's lifetime.  Given that the debt was accumulated over many generations, and certainly some of the debt spending benefits many future generations (e.g., defeating the USSR), they should pay for it, too.

1.3% assumes we pay off the entirety of the debt, including the part the exists to make the financial markets work (as the lowest risk asset).  This would be a bad idea.

The number $46,000, while technically not a lie, is a horribly disingenuous and emotionally misleading.

[jcgjxupb] Flipping a loaded coin

Take a coin thought to be loaded, i.e., Heads occurs at a different probability than Tails.  Note that all physical coins are thought to be this way, by a very small amount.  Flip it twice in succession, noting results.

If the sequence was HT, call it Event Zero.  If the sequence was TH, call it Event One.  If anything else (including the coin landing on its edge), discard results and flip twice again.

Despite the coin being biased, Event 0 and 1 occur each with 50% probability.  (If the coin is highly biased, it's interesting to actually experience the process, as the expectations after the first flip are very different.)

Next, assume one flip is dependent on the previous flip only, i.e., the Markov chain looks at one previous state only.  This is inspired by the flipping mechanism being slightly deterministic.  For example, the previous flip being heads, you are slightly more likely to put the coin back on your thumb to flip as (say) heads, and that initial state slightly affects the flip outcome.

Flip the coin until you get Heads.  Flip one more time and note the result.  Essentially we are controlling for the previous state.  This entire operation counts as one flip for the HT vs TH algorithm above.  Repeat until the first algorithm succeeds.

Create an app, or tables, for converting a sequence of biased flips into a uniform random sampling of N events.  (Rejection sampling if N is not a power of 2.)  An app could pseudorandomly select but temporarily hide (but reveal a cryptographic signature with nonce for later verification) which is the controlled state, the mapping to Event 0 and 1, and the mapping from binary to base N, to lessen the effect of a flipper biasing results because he or she knows how the algorithm works.

[hjqqmybr] 960 openings

To add an element of chance (for the purposes of lessening the importance of prepared lines), one can go the checkers route instead of the more drastic Chess 960 route: select openings -- positions generally considered equal relative to the initial position -- randomly.

How can this be done?  We wish not to exclude any possible chess game, so one of the possible openings is the initial position.  Then, some specialization on the most common lines?  Find 959 more such lines.  (Though perhaps 1024 total would be better with 10 coin flips.)

[fsjbybdy] Chess strength independent of time

Is it possible to determine the strength of a chess player controlling for bad moves made in zeitnot?

This is yet another computer-based move-by-move player evaluation.
Perhaps a weighted average of "centipawns less than optimal move" weighted by "time spent on move".  Of course, you need games with accurate timestamps.

While inspired by so many games being decided by a blunder in time trouble (negating all the good moves before it), I don't know if the calculation is useful or meaningful for anything.  Clock management is an important skill for winning.

Perhaps it may be useful for a player to adjust his or her clock management strategy.

[ywvxuxwy] Chess move memorizer

A chess training interface where, after you make your move, the board is reset to the initial position, and you must reconstruct the game, move by move, up to that point.  Then the opponent's move (perhaps a computer) is revealed.  Repeat.

The small goal is to learn to memorize games, and in doing so, the larger goal is to learn themes and important concepts which make memorization easier.  (The brain works in macro blocks.)

[vamesrhd] Computer chess draws

When looking to improve a computer chess engine with human expert knowlege, one might want to set the computer to play itself, and examine the drawn games.  Consider them to be situations where the evaluation function sits on a knife edge.  The tiniest improvement (spotted by a human) could tilt the game toward victory.

[jjrxvbom] Learn to make chess mistakes

Use machine learning techniques on previous human games to predict whether or not a human will make a mistake (blunder) in a given position (time information might be nice), and what kind of mistake they will make. Features may be extracted from the game tree from the position.

Create a more "human-like" chess program, a trainer for playing against humans, or a particular human.

Not only learn to induce the opponent to make mistakes, but set the computer to model yourself and learn to make suboptimal but "solid" moves which avoid you getting into situations where you make mistakes.

Expectimax.

[aondjwic] Chess printed game analysis

The position is printed, one move per page. Captured pieces shown off to the side. All possible moves from the position are given, and the null move, with their computer evaluation score, ranked by score. For every possible move other than the move made, a complete computer playout is given (in reversible algebraic notation).

Similar to How to denote a chess move and computer chess games.

[sfsvrgxv] Chess crosstable

Improve the presentation of a crosstable for a round-robin chess tournament.  Shading to indicate who played black or white, a special border or text color to indicate an upset.

[kjgavzlr] Chess arcade game

Create an arcade-style chess console: pay 25 cents to play a blitz or bullet game against an outrageously powerful computer.

Unfortunately, it can't be made a gambling game.  The video "grandmaster hikaru nakamura versus rybka at internet chess club" demonstrates that a human beating a computer is mind-numbingly boring (closed position).  So there should be no prize but bragging rights (maybe you get your 25 cents back).  Perhaps the point should be something like computer versus the world, either networked or with deterministic computers.

Regardless of win or loss or game abort, you get a receipt-like printout of your game.

What should should the interface look like, durable enough to withstand lots of public button mashing, but useful enough for the human to rapidly enter a move? Touch-screen is out, because of people's dirty fingers. 64 buttons, perhaps lit up to indicate occupied squares?

8 buttons (4 per hand) could allow move input in at most 4 keystrokes, or two chords (if not a1, b2, ... h8).  Less if a move can be specified uniquely.

Light pen or stylus.

Voice input might be a possibility.

Deterministic computer means it is not that necessary to provide reliable input (e.g., with backspace).  Just pay another quarter.

[ghytwgpm] Chess and theoretical computer science

Create a chess problem such that determining who wins is equivalent to simulating a Turing machine (or other Turing-complete system).

Create a chess problem from whose solution may be read off the solution to arbitrary NP-complete problems.

Not exactly problems but tasks. Reductions.

Add features from chess variants as necessary, probably very large boards.

[lvynhinm] Checkmate from initial position lower bound

Exhaustive computer searches have likely been done showing there is no forced mate in N from the initial position in chess.  What is the state-of-the-art value of N?  (Possibly related to perft, in which case, the answer is N=6, corresponding to perft(12).)

Realistically, N is probably infinity, a draw.

[vqmhsnhy] Causing more pawnless engames

Create a chess variant which causes more pawnless endgames to occur (very rare in orthodox chess), in particular to unleash more madness such as Bourzutschky and Konoval's 517-move KQNKRBN endgame.

(Conversely, out of curiosity, what is the longest forced win from a position that starts with only kings and pawns?  This should be easy to look up in a tablebase.  Are there more "interesting" ones than the longest?)

One possibility is the known variant Upside-down chess.   We probably wish to have promotion restrictions to avoid an excessive number of queens. 

Here are some ideas: A "font" provides all the available pieces to which a pawn may promote.

* The promotion "font" consists only of pieces the opponent has captured (easiest for a physical board and pieces).
* The promotion "font" consists only of pieces you have captured (Crazyhouse-like).
* The promotion "font" starts with 2 each of rook, knight, bishop, and queen (the pieces of one additional chess set per player including extra queens) and is not refilled with captures.  Maybe the second queen only becomes available in the unlikely event all 8 pawns promote.

Incidentally, Upside-down chess (not aiming for pawnless endgames) might have a better strategic component if all pawns started on the 5th rank instead of 7th, as there is more space for pieces to shuffle around in preparation for attack or defense.

[vhthwnkt] Isotropic fairy chess

A isotropic, simplified subset of this menagerie.

Orthogonal movement: none, wazir, rook
Diagonal movement: none, ferz, bishop
Knight jump: no, yes
Alfil jump: no, yes
Dabbabah jump: no, yes

So 3*3*2*2*2=72 types of pieces total, including the "stone", which has no movement at all, but could be useful for hiding behind.  Stones could also be usefully dropped in a crazyhouse variant.

Compute some endgame tablebases with these pieces.  The royal piece can be selected from any of them, or a subset which all need to be captured.  The interesting ones could be long forced wins.  What others?  By looking at draws, one can approximate piece values.

[fxkosixh] Restricted jumping queen

Consider a fairy chess piece which can jump to any square within two king moves, without regard to any obstructing pieces.  (However, it cannot stay in one place to avoid zugzwang, you munchkin.)  It moves to or captures any of the 24 squares in a 5 by 5 bounding box.

On one hand, with limited range, it is less powerful than a queen.  On the other, with its tremendous jumping ability (including knight moves), it is more powerful than a queen.  It is a compound of a nonroyal king and a "squirrel".

The piece, the 2-angel, is the winner in Conway's Angel and Devil problem.

[lrvvlvjt] Selective enforcement of sex crimes

A very large portion women report they have experienced some form of sexual assault (including but not limited to unwanted touching or verbal harassment of a sexual nature) at some point in there lives.  Hypothetically, suppose an omniscient state successfully prosecutes and convicts every single instance.  Although a victim might forgive or not want to press charges, the state still prosecutes and convicts to label and immobilize the offender for the good of society.  What percentage of the male population would end up in jail and permanently labeled a sex offender?  I suspect extremely high.  (Written using stereotypical gender roles for ease of presentation only.)

There are actually two orthogonal problems here, one overshadowing the other.  The famous one is, where ought the legal definition of criminal wrongdoing be set?  There is plenty of debate about this, elsewhere.

We don't have an omniscient state (though cynically we are approaching one with all this surveillance).  Only a very small percentage of sex crimes are prosecuted. The overshadowed problem is, which ones?  Is there unjust bias in which ones get prosecuted?  Everyone should be treated equally under the law: this one of the most important principles of democracy.  Given such a large number of crimes to start with, it seems almost impossible to avoid unjust bias.  (In contrast, all murders will be prosecuted.)  If selected for "worst", different people have different definitions of "worst": a prosecutor might select those which are most politically favorable.  If selected for "strongest prosecutorial case", there is likely bias in which crimes result in stronger or weaker cases (for example, a rich person might be able to buy more privacy, resulting in a weaker case).

[dsuznyvl] Holding answers hostage

A user answers a question on a question-answering site and attaches a ransom.  The site holds the answer hidden until other users have together contributed enough money to cover the ransom, at which point the answer is posted publicly.

A user can establish a trustable reputation by whatever means, e.g., through previously answered questions (perhaps for free).

The site employs trusted moderators to verify that a hidden answer is actually a good answer.  Moderators can be publicly graded as answers become revealed.

Some market tricks like being able to search for high priced unmet ransoms and contributing an answer for a ransom less than that, driving prices down.

Variations on the same theme for public goods and for porn.

[vkqnrqew] Kids in public policy

People get amazingly good at things, frequently arts and entertainment, sometimes hobbies.  Is society allocating "raw talent" optimally (assuming it raw talent can be developed into many things)?

For example, we don't see child prodigies in public policy, even though it isn't necessarily more complicated than grandmaster chess or virtuoso violin.  Perhaps it's a matter of access and/or making information available (transparency).  Those in power have probably erected barriers to entry (preventing access by capable people), so the lack of diversity in the field points to a flaw in society.

Inspired by many people, most recently Youtube freddiew.

[soqtfjbq] Persistently identifying nodes in a tree

Given a node in a tree and a sequence of subsequent editing revisions to the tree, find the node in a later tree.  This is a fuzzy problem, perhaps AI methods are warranted.  It seems to come up often.

Inspired by syntax trees in programming languages.  Although functions definitions are labeled by name, other nodes are not.  What if we want to apply a patch to a later version?

[cnyehxcy] Greek alphabet differences

The Greek alphabet contains 10 upper case characters which look distinctly different from any Latin letter: Γ Δ Θ Λ Ξ Π Σ Φ Ψ Ω.  Gamma Delta Theta Lambda Xi Pi Sigma Phi Psi Omega.  In addition, Upsilon Υ is sometimes (but not always) written to look different from Y.

Lower case is more fuzzy as there are many characters which look sort of similar.

[futqwish] Divide and Conquer Radix Conversion, attempt 2

Suppose we wish to convert the large hexadecimal number 0x1234567890ABCDEF to decimal.

Instead converting it directly into base 10, we first convert it to a two-"digit" number in base 1000000000 (10^9).  This base is chosen because, by calculating approximate logs, we know the answer will be about 10^18, so the base is half the number of decimal digits.

We calculate 10^9 in hexadecimal by repeated squaring.  Save the partial powers because we will need them later.  Divide the big number by 10^9 using your favorite subquadratic division algorithm, yielding a quotient and a remainder.  Note well this computation is done entirely in hexadecimal (in contrast to the previous attempt), yielding hexadecimal results.

Recursively apply the conversion to the quotient and remainder.

GNU MP uses a variation of this algorithm ("Binary to Radix").

[igwlipho] Divide and conquer radix conversion

Suppose we wish to convert the large hexadecimal number 0x1234567890ABCDEF into decimal.

First convert 0x12345678 and 0x90ABCDEF into decimal recursively.

Also, convert 0x100000000 into decimal.  This can be computed by repeated squaring.  Memoize the partial powerings, as they are also needed for the recursive subproblems.

Multiply the decimal representations of 0x12345678 and 0x100000000 by your favorite subquadratic multiplication algorithm.  This is the weird step, as it needs to be done in base 10, not hexadecimal.  But if you have a subquadratic base-10 multiplication implementation lying around, then it begs the question, why not do the entire calculation (which created the starting large hexadecimal number) in base 10?

Add to the product the decimal representation of 0x90ABCDEF. Done.

Update: better method.

[gtvqebqx] Cylindrical refrigerator

Rotating lazy suzan shelves, nothing gets lost in the back.

The machinery could go in the core (so donut shaped shelves), or in the periphery of a rectangular exterior case.

[slcfkuwl] Touchscreen piano keyboard

Some thoughts on a touchscreen piano-like keyboard (although there are already many apps).

Separate the commonly used notes from the accidentals.  There are presets for all the major and minor keys, modes, blues scales, but programmable as well (even measurable for a song).

Lay out the keyboard to make keys as large and square as possible.  Boustrophedonic linear.

Scroll by 4ths (down) and 5ths (up) and (maybe) octaves only.

[aceuqloy] Painless OS reinstall

Streamline the process of reinstalling an operating system from scratch.

One shortcut is an overlay network filesystem.  This assumes a constantly network-connected computer.  Installed files are allocated on disk, but symbolically linked to a network resource that gets downloaded on-demand after the install (and in the background, finishing up the install after the first boot).

We want to avoid as much computation by the installer package manager as possible, just "copying" files, so avoid preinst and postinst scripts.

As bad an idea as it seems, even routine minor upgrades (assuming user modifications are saved somehow) could be "wipe and quickly reinstall from scratch".  This helps enforce all machines look the same, with no dependence on which order packages were installed.  (Prove package installation to be commutative, assuming satisfied dependencies.)

[idrohmsr] Expressing 32-bit numbers concisely

A 32-bit number is 4 digits in base 256.

digits	base
3	1626
4	256
5	85
6	41
7	24
8	16
9	12
10	10

A seven-letter word (perhaps broken into 3+4 like phone numbers) in NATO phonetic (A-X) seems elegantly appealing. Big-endian WLJJEKP is the last, WLJJEKQ the first unused (so initial X entirely unused). Little-endian PKEJJLW and QKEJJLW.

Maybe skipping Q and X is a better idea to be able to form more words. AWAHKFK NUTFZSD TZPNTCW ISHHNRA

[jzjxhgmq] Searching source code for functionality

Given a body of source code, search for code with a particular functionality.

This is a hairy problem; however, I think it is necessary for a healthy bazaar-like open source ecosystem.

It's tricky enough to formally specify a "particular functionality" I'm imagining AI search algorithms which can scan and "understand" code.  We also care about how correct, how fast, how easy to modify, how easy to use.  "Close" results might also be useful if you are willing to modify.

Including people in the loop is one way to do it; that's the way it is done now.  People can label things.  There may be experts you can ask who are familiar with a large amount of code in a particular field, though you do need to somehow convince the expert to give time and attention to your question.

A giant unified wiki for all open source code might be nice.

[ylkuamhj] Expanding extra dimensions

If space is expanding, and string theory is true so that there are extra but small dimensions of space, then it should only be a matter of time (a very long time) until these extra dimensions are large enough to be easily observable.

The theory of everything may yet be achievable (and testable).

[mosqzzig] Geocentric view of the solar system

Under a coordinate transformation keeping earth at the origin (but rotating once every sidereal day), what do the motion of the planets look like?

To first approximation, assuming circular heliocentric orbits, it probably is epicycles on cycles, with each main cycle (deferent) the planet's heliocentric orbit, and each epicycle exactly the same, namely the earth's heliocentric orbit, and all exactly in phase.

It might seem curious that Mercury and Venus have epicycles larger than their cycles; alternatively, flip them, yielding only Venus, Mercury, and the sun having exactly the same cycle but differing epicycles.

To second approximation, the cycles and epicycles could be elliptical, which I think can yield exactly Keplerian motion.  (Wikipedia, in "Deferent And Epicycle", says an infinite series of circular epicycles on epicycles can also approximate any motion by the Fourier series.)

This explains why the Ptolomaic geocentric model was accepted for so long: there's nothing mathematically wrong with it!  It's just unwieldy (but not impossible) for producing accurate predictions of planetary motion. Physically, of course, it's harder come up with an elegant explanation of why the planets move this way.

[plsujnko] Orgies

What causes orgies?

There are the social norms of monogamy and non-sluttiness (for women), and skittishness about nudity and sexuality (so desiring privacy).  Does something happen at orgies to get people over these issues, or are they simply gatherings of people who already happen to break these norms?

[syrhrqif] Guess the move against cheating

For an important chess game, perhaps a world championship, a large number of other players of (nearly) comparable strength are hired to "kibitz", specifically, to play guess the next move.

If one of the actual players is frequently making good moves that are not being guessed by the kibitzers, then we suspect cheating by computer assistance.

The implementation is tricky, as the kibitzers don't get to choose how much time to spend on a move.  Should they be forced to guess exactly 1 move, or can they submit a list, or perhaps even give an evaluation of every possible move in a position?  How should compensation work to encourage correct guesses and discourage unrealistic play?

Despite the likely exorbitant cost of this anti-cheating measure, it might not work.  The actual cheating player might avoid wildly "computer" moves, so even assisted moves will be guessed by some kibitzers.

Perhaps the kibitzer is asked (or induced) to label a degree of speculativeness of guessed moves: an expected value and a variance.  If an actual player seems to be playing getting "lucky" too often about moves guessed speculative, then we suspect cheating by computer assistance.

Of course, we need to prevent the kibitzers from cheating as well.

My first thought was some complicated UI for the kibitzers to enter guesses, but a better possible format could simply be a videotaped talk-it-through live-analysis, with actual determination of cheating a difficult subjective analysis of all the videos later.  They talk about and demonstrate what moves are possible, what moves might be strong but seem difficult to evaluate, and so forth.  Strong chess players can already do this naturally.

Related idea but for a broader audience and different purpose

[zfqefzks] If you don't understand it, it's bullshit

Consider the adage: if you don't understand it, it's bullshit.

Let's consider the four possibilities:

It is bullshit, and you don't understand it.  Yay, the adage is true.  We are relying on the underlying truth that, in principle, no amount of explanation can make bullshit understandable because it is built on lies.

It is bullshit, but you think you understand it.  You've been fooled.  Perhaps education should aim to reduce this scenario.

(Gray coding)

It is not bullshit, and you understand it.  The normal true case.  A true statement can withstand any amount of scrutiny and still show true, but a false one will eventually give way to a logical or other fatal flaw.

It is not bullshit, but you don't understand it.  (E.g., quantum mechanics).  Part of the problem could be the lack of effective communication from the teacher (in a broad sense) to you.  Technology could lessen this problem, connecting you to the understandable explanation.  The big problem seems to distinguishing this case from first case above. 
 
Inspired by instances where I could not understand something (thinking it was true but too complicated for me), but after time, the actual reason turned out to be because it was bullshit.

[mcsbhxrc] Minor league football and basketball

It is curious that men's college basketball and football (and to some extent hockey) are essentially minor leagues, but they are immensely popular in comparison to minor league baseball.  Why?  Many people follow them despite not having an alumni allegiance.

Would bad things happen if professional minor league teams were allowed to compete against and along side the college teams?  (Cynically, this is already happening with athletic boosters.)  Perhaps populated by those out of college but who did not make the cut into major league.

There might be highschoolers who go directly into professional minor leagues.

[vwxtdubv] Computer / air filter

Dust getting trapped in computer fans and cooling vents is generally a bad thing.  But consider a device designed to be a combination air purifier and computer.  Everybody could use some cleaner air in their environment, right?

With a computer attached, you could have a nice UI and notification (e-mail!) about how "full" the filter is getting: time to clean it out, or else your computer is going to overheat.  Airflow can be measured by how effective the cooling is.

Home personal server.

[hlvepwtb] Analog controls

Mouse and touchpad offer translational analog control, and in another mode, they offer rotation around two axes.

Mostly missing these days from computers are knobs (Griffin PowerMate, iPod wheel), which allow rotation around the third axis.

We also lack controls which naturally return to center or neutral.  Joystick.

Create a control that allows all three dimensional rotations but also returns to center.  The SpaceBall targeted to old Silicon Graphics might have been one attempt.   Current 3dconnexion products try, but I am skeptical about how well one can express rotations around arbitrary axes, since "twist" seems segregated from the other two axes by the shape of the device.

Dexterity challenge: a sphere is shown on screen, as well as a randomly chosen point representing an axis through the center.  Complete a 360 degree rotation around that axis while drifting from that axis as little as possible.

[ntzbocwt] Encoding data into words and spaces

You have some data that you want to encode into a stream of letters and spaces (to make it sort of look like natural language). The main constraint is you cannot have two spaces in a row.

The solution is a variation of arithmetic coding.  Express the data as a decimal fraction.  Connect the letters and space into a state transition diagram: any state can transition to any state except space cannot transition to space.  What ever state you are at, multiply the fraction by the number of outgoing edges, and take the integer part.  For more fanciness, you can weight the edges, perhaps even by letter width or kerning.

Also would like to avoiding ending with a space.  (Avoid starting with a space by simply eliminating the transition to space from the start state.)  Ending elegantly is unsolved. Perhaps repeat the first character.  (Arithmetic coding itself has complications because it's an infinite decimal expansion.)

(The alternative is just to insert spaces randomly, or periodically, but you are losing the opportunity to encode data into spaces.)

[moiziaig] Usefully accessed timestamp

This Linux filesystem automatically records access time (atime) but I really want is when the last "useful" access was.  Perhaps for auditing who accessed what when.  This is a fuzzy problem.

I probably don't want accesses by search (grep).  Unless it was a successful search (a match in that file).  However, not successful searches could be "useful", too. Cache search results and/or usually only search an index?  Perhaps grep can run under special permissions that allow it to avoid modifying atime.

Or, disk is cheap, so just record all accesses (and meta information about them such as the program and user), and sort out "usefulness" later.

[blrfyoms] Auctioning off your organs

What goes wrong when organ transplant recipients are chosen by bidding instead of transplant committees trying to select the "best" recipient?

In theory, the market should develop risk mitigation products.  Instead of paying out of pocket millions of dollars if you need an organ, you pay a monthly fee which covers a bid of up to N dollars if you should need one: it's insurance.  So I guess, what goes wrong are the standard problems with insurance.  Do the rich end up having that much of an advantage over the poor?  How much variability is there in the probability you will need an organ transplant?

Alternatively, what feedback mechanism is there that induces transplant committees to make good decisions and, more importantly, avoid repeating bad decisions?

(Inspired by organ transplant committees as depicted on "House, M.D.", which are probably horribly unrealistic.)

[sqceeipn] Make the Bir Tawil triangle interesting

Could Egypt or Sudan or private parties play up the "no man's  land" aspect of the Bir Tawil triangle for financial gain?  ("Ever wanted to live where no country owns you?  Go here.")

Build some toll roads, maybe even rail, to the border.  Make some money off of "Last chance depots" selling supplies to settlers (and likely warlords, as we see in anarchic Somalia).

Of course, the current occupants (Egyptian ranchers?) would probably be upset.

[alkgvhwc] Usual unusual name

What would the world be like if people usually had unique given names?  Perhaps the onus on the parents to select a name that hasn't ever been used.  Never name after someone else, as is the custom in China but not the U.S.

Names could be a way into gradually introduce new phonetic sounds into a language (inspired during researching 128-bit squares).

Names might become harder to remember, with no familiar mental structures to hang them on.

Last names might become less relevant: no more need to distinguish which "John".

[ybxixkmo] Sator DOF

S A T O R
A R E P O
T E N E T
O P E R A
R O T A S

The Latin sator square has the curious property that, not only does it read the same across and down, but it also reads the same upside down, that is, rotate the entire square 180 degrees, then individually rotate each letter 180 as well. 

Create a rotating device that shows off this property.  Perhaps letters mounted on axles so they stay upright even as the square rotates.  Pretty easy for a computer display.

The square has only 9 degrees of freedom, as opposed to 15 to just equal its matrix transpose.

[txeqicno] Photo collage

Start with a collection of rectanglar pictures, globally scaled to fit in the bounding area, optimally laid out. click one to make it larger or smaller (because you like it more, or less).  Automatic repacking with some animation to show where the picture you just adjusted moved.

It does require extremely high resolution display.

Perhaps mouse over to see it full size off to the side.

[cnwsausw] Financials for consumer information

If you as a consumer had access to a company's complete financial information, could you make better purchasing decisions?

The tempting idea is to look at markup of a product (how much a product costs over the supplier's price), especially for retail purchasing, and buy according to least markup. But I'm not sure if that works.

But in general, if you could have access, and it would help, then it would mean there is incentive for a company to conceal, or even lie, about its financial information: rip off the unknowing consumer. Or, any company who does conceal (most every one) is trying to rip of the consumer.

[azxdmjla] One finger per bank biometric

You set up multiple anonymous accounts (in a regime that permits it) using biometric identification as access control.  However, to maintain anonymity, we want it not to be possible to tell that two different accounts belong to the same person.

One simple way to do it is to use different fingers for fingerprint identification on different accounts.  (The standard danger of injury to that finger).

The idea can be extended to the entire skin surface, internal scans, DNA.

[vjmyziel] Civilization scale experiments

A vastly advanced and perhaps heartless civilization wants to know what the effect of Policy X will be on society.  So it runs the scientific experiment, setting up Policy X and a control in separate environments, perhaps continents or planets, perhaps replicated to achieve statistical significance.  The experiment runs, perhaps taking generations, and they get their result.  Afterwards, clean up involves killing everybody.

With actors raising babies, it may be possible to set up almost any initial conditions, as babies are born with a clean slate not suspecting anything, including that they are part of a giant experiment.

[vzekloin] Winning the war against terrorism

We can win the war on terrorism in one fell swoop, by tilting our heads a bit and looking at it from a a different perspective: consider terrorism as political speech, and consequently Constitutionally protected.

This is certainly taking the very high road, almost Zen. The primary goal of a criminal trial after a terrorist act would be to determine if it was truly a political act or for personal gain (the latter would remain illegal).

The world will probably be a very different place. Will the world even exist, or will we annihilate ourselves?

Perhaps the world won't be such a different place. Society will develop other mechanisms to try to prevent terrorism, or lessen its effect.

One way to thwart terrorism is to make sure there exist other effective mechanisms for political change that a potential terrorist would choose preferentially over committing an act of violence. (Thus, terrorism serves as a canary to signal a broken political system.) This proposal will certainly suit the suicide bomber.

Less materialism to lessen the effect of terrorism?

[pemnffcs] Diamond go

Consider playing the game of go 囲碁 on a diamond shaped board. In other words, take a square area but have the lines go 45 degrees diagonally instead of orthogonally aligned with the edges of the shape.

There will be many "corner" points with only two neighbors all along the edges of the board. Like Round Go but without the edge lines.

[vchvdyod] Donating to a bug

There's a bug in a piece of software that you would like to see fixed, so you donate money to the organization that would fix it. However, this is not a bug bounty to avoid the difficulty of figuring out who earns the money (if many people were involved). Instead, it is a speech act, to call attention to a bug, similar to the "votes" mechanism in Bugzilla, but less likely to be astroturfed. It gives a hint to software developers to prioritize which bugs are more important.

While open source software with a public bug tracker is one use case, another is for closed source proprietary software. A publicly recorded bug with a lot of money behind it that hasn't gotten fixed serves as a criticism of the company. For this, a third party would have to manage, or at least count, the donated funds.

[ltnawkam] The web is too complicated

This Lemote Yeelong computer, but with the CPU clock artificially dialed down to 199 MHz (from 796MHz) to save battery certainly underscores that something is wrong with the way the whole web browsing stack works, from Javascript down to X.

Tremendous sluggishness due to CPU use for simple tasks to display text, to input text into a form field. These things should be easy! They were easy long before computers were this powerful. It's OK if, say, the fractal generating program or complicated game runs slowly, but not simple text.

Javascript heavy sites (e.g., "standard" Gmail, Facebook) are unusable. gnome-terminal is noticeably slower than the older xterm.

Perhaps rethink, reimplement from scratch targeting and testing on a slow computer. Many thoughts already posted on this blog.

[uuxwuckk] Wristwatch computer

Now that technology has improved, can we create an interesting wristwatch form factor computer?

One can have a fairly large battery as part of the wristband: a very large number of small batteries linked, like a metal wristband. This will have a heft like a heavy man's watch or gold bracelet (so acceptable).

Speech input and bluetooth (or wired) audio output can augment the very small display (though it doesn't have to be that small; a long thin display could extend up the forearm). There's my four-button idea.

Micro USB, Micro SD

Inspired by the Nintendo Game Watches by Nelsonic.

[nlydorbb] Porn as intellectual entertainment

Hypothesize that, if you're going to consume media for entertainment, then pornography is better for your brain than anything else, including supposedly high class literature. The reasoning is that porn accompanied with masturbation forces the brain to intensely imagine things, almost similar to creative writing rather than reading.

A quick test would be the fMRI imaging of the brain in action consuming different subjects of entertainment media. The pleasure center will probably light up for all of them, but for porn, much more will also light up (of course), but we are particularly interested if the parts that are used for creative thinking and problem solving do.

Then, a more thorough study of how porn consumption, or amount of masturbation, correlates with the prevalence of mental degenerative disease of old (or not so old) age. This is inspired by the effect of people who do puzzles tend to keep their brain working for longer.

Assuming the eyes are part of the brain, the most ironic result could be that masturbation helps prevent blindness! (in contrast to the urban legend)

[zhkmraxx] TvTropes: The Game

Create cards with trope names (and descriptions) on them for an open-ended game: Synthesize a story, screenplay, manga, etc. with the given elements.

[yftbgoni] Trolling as an intellectual pursuit

As suckful as internet trolls are, especially on discussion forums, trolling (proffering a hateful viewpoint, not just cut and paste), namely writing, is a creative act, responding to something else, expressing something in written language. Thus, it could be considered a superior activity (at least in terms of brain health) than merely mindlessly consuming internet media for entertainment.

Don't get so offended by them: they actually are better than you?

[zbcqgmkl] Diamonds and instant death

Diamonds are found in kimberlite pipes, which are volcanoes. In particular, they are volcanoes which erupted so suddenly, and with no previous eruption, that they left no mountain behind. They are probably violent, sudden eruptions, rapidly carrying diamonds toward the surface.

Humanity has not experienced a kimberlite pipe volcano in written history. It could come at any moment, with no warning, perhaps anywhere. A slight overpressure of magma suddenly spurts to the surface.

Diamonds are mementos of the scariest thing in the world.

[dejqybio] History as told by an unreliable narrator

Tell a tale of an actual historical event, perhaps ancient history, for which even though we think we have an "accepted" story, fictionally play up the unreliable narrator aspect of it.

Or, tell a tale of a current event retold by in the future, perhaps accurately, but still with an unreliable narrator.

Encourage skepticism.

[wohetbpp] Brain scan as biometric

One worry with biometric identification is you might suffer an injury, losing the identification, (e.g., a fingerprint).

A brain scan, perhaps the part of the brain critically necessary for life (e.g., keeps the heart pumping) might be one biometric identifier you are sure not to lose. (Though degenerative brain diseases might change its appearance while still sort of functioning that it fails recognition.)

[bpvophbo] Designing for Roomba

Design a living space for the Roomba.

No thresholds on internal doors. Perhaps all doors have a gap at the bottom, so the Roomba can even pass through closed doors.

Tables, counters, shelves everywhere to discourage people from placing things on the floor. Perhaps they are not solid but grills to allow dust to fall through.

[gfatymhb] Journey beyond the edge of the universe

The cosmological expansion of space causes distant pairs of points to become receding from each other at a speed greater than the speed of light, so it is impossible to communicate or travel between them… unless you have a warp drive.  (Is such travel forbidden by general relativity?  I'm guessing not: "just" connect a wormhole between the two points.)

Tell a story of if you did have such a device to travel beyond the edge of the observable (from your starting point) universe, beyond the cosmological horizon.  It sort of puts science fiction like Star Trek and Stargate SG-1 to shame, as they merely use their warp technology to travel around just one galaxy within the time frame of human lives.  How about going somewhere actually impossible to reach, or even see, distances so great that it makes galaxies look like dust?

The traveler will encounter "more of the same" because the physical laws of the universe aren't going to change at the cosmological horizon.  This suggests a challenge: explore Tegmark's Level 1 multiverse.  Find other places in the universe similar or identical to here.  This might require another technology: sensors which can observe vast regions of space, most of it way beyond the cosmological horizon, and a vastness on the order of googolplexes of Hubble volumes, but all still reachable by warp drive.

I imagine such a sensor would consist of some warp-speed variant of a gravitational wave, organized into a tree structure to quickly answer a search query scanning the entire multiverse.

[ssvzuvwq] Futurists of the past

Who in the past made good predictions about the future?  More importantly, what was their methodology in creating the prediction, and why did their methodology succeed when those of others failed?

Having identified those successful methodologies, let's predict the future.

I find broad social predictions hundreds of years into the future to be interesting.  What will change?  What will remain the same, perhaps doing the same stupid behavior we've been doing forever?

Attitudes toward sexuality.  Mental health.  Economics and sociology.  Religion.

In 500 years, what -- which we do now -- will we look back embarrassed at how primitive we were?  (Answering the same question, looking back: medicine, slavery, social class, geocentrism)

[owiuslqo] Fixing Citizens United v FEC

As a fervent supporter of Free Speech, I agree with the Citizens United v. FEC decision, in which the Supreme Court found corporate campaign contributions to be protected political free speech. This is in contrast to many other liberals.

However, when free speech is causing negative social consequences (as the decision is expected to do), the solution is not to curtail the speech, but instead to promote even more free speech.

A broad mechanism is, for those corporations who choose to speak politically, they lose the ability to curtail political speech directed at themselves.  Free speech must be a two way street.

The most straightforward items are libel, slander, copyright, trade secret, and trademark protections.  More radically, for any crime, e.g., property theft or destruction, committed against a political corporation, the accused may offer the defense that the crime was political speech, so the prosecution or plaintiff have to prove it wasn't, for example, for personal gain.  (Steal stuff and give it to charity.) Of perhaps spectacular effect is an employee, unhappy with the political speech of the employer, commits an insider crime that can't be punished.

Another mechanism to strengthen protections for anonymous speech.  This will aid whistleblowers against the political corporation as well as conspiracies to commit organized action (a crime, or political speech?) against the corporation.

[shxzkrtt] Gmail app 400 drafts limit

The Android Gmail App by Google (as of version 2.3.5.2 and before) seems to have a limit of showing only 400 messages in Drafts, even if you have more draft messages than that.

This has been observed in Android 2.3.4 (gingerbread.ef17) on a 1st generation Sprint Samsung Galaxy Tab, and Android 2.2.3 (FRK76) on the Motorola Droid (A855).

[mevznrcq] Hashcash and GPUs

A potential problem with Hashcash is that "stamps" can be generated by special purpose hardware (GPU, FPGA, ASIC) much faster than regular computers (as evidenced by Bitcoin).  Similarly, specialized spammers could generate messages seemingly generated with (say) 1 second of CPU time whose Hashcash actually took much less time to generate on specialized hardware.

An Scrypt-like hash function (requiring a lot of memory) might somewhat thwart that, though very specialized hardware attacks might still be possible.

[axdooajf] Go on a cube

Play the game of Go 囲碁 on the surface of a cube.

Should an edge be a playable line or the space between lines?  I advocate the latter, yielding no corner points with only three neighbors.

The only way you can see all sides of a cube at once is from an internal vantage point, which suggests a life sized "playing room" interface.  Perhaps velcro stickers as pieces, or magnets.

What if players are different heights?  How do you reach the ceiling? How do you avoid displacing played stones when walking across the floor?  Won't your neck hurt craning to ponder the ceiling?  (Any furniture obstructs the view of the floor.)  If both players are in the same room, you can't see through the other.

Zero gravity obviates many problems but cannot realistically be implemented any time soon.  Maybe a show.

Also consider playing only 5 sides of a cube except the floor, eliminating some of the problems.  This preserves edge play.  Or the inside of a cubical "bucket" with a hole at the top.

Create a seamless handheld cube electronic display, giving up being able to see all sides.  Or sphere.

For all 6 sides, a 7x7x7 cube is the largest before exceeding 19x19=361 points of regular Go.  For 5 sides, 8x8x8, which is coincidentally the same size as a chess board.

[rwhdjiyc] Rare current geology

It's interesting reading about significant but infrequent events in Earth's recent past (e.g., Deccan traps, Zanclean flood).  Flip the idea: what geological events are going on right now that are rare on the geologic time scale?

[bteqhdra] National chess openings

Some common chess openings named after regions:
English 1.c4
Slav 1.d4 d5 2.c4 c6
Indian 1.d4 Nf6
Catalan 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.g3 d5 4.Bg2
Mexican 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 Nc6
Dutch 1.d4 f5
Sicilian 1.e4 c5
Scandinavian 1.e4 d5
Italian 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5
Spanish (= Ruy Lopez) 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5
Scotch 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.d4
Russian (= Petroff) 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nf6
Latvian 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 f5
French 1.e4 e6
Yugoslav (= Pirc) 1.e4 d6
Danish
Polish

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_chess_openings_named_after_places

[blemepnh] Rooms on a graph

The player is presented with a virtual world of rooms connected by doors.  But the rooms are laid out not in Euclidean space but on an interesting graph: the rooms "weirdly" connect in a way that can be constructed only virtually.

Perhaps the doors are helpfully annotated with "go through this door for the shortest path (distance X) to room Y".

Each room is named, decorated, lit, with music playing to aid memorization.  Despite it being non-Euclidean, will the player be able to form a mental map of the space to be able to get from any room to any other efficiently?

The next challenge is to build this for real.  You only need two rooms, each with (say) 3 doors (for a cubic graph), all leading to the other room.  Only one person at a time can wander through "the complex".  When the person picks which door to go through, the other room has its lighting, sound, etc. automatically changed to become the correct destination room.

It might be helpful to have an adjoining room between the two to ease the implementation, so 6 doors in the middle room: 3 to each side.  Also, to preserve the identity of the doors in each room (i.e., going from one room to another always enters and exits through the same doors in both rooms), the path might cross diagonally through the adjoining room.  Maybe a light in the middle room indicates which door to pass through.  We would especially like to preserve going backwards from one room to the previous uses the same doors as going forwards.

For a stage production, you only need one "room" (the stage), and the connections between rooms are doors leading backstage.  While the protagonist is backstage, the lights (etc.) flip, transforming one room to another room.  There could even be characters present in certain rooms, who enter and exit during the scene changes.  The plot could be the protagonist needs to quickly transport objects among the various rooms.  Or, hunt the wumpus.

The movie "Cube" was filmed this way.

Of particular interest are graphs of a given degree (all rooms have the same number of doors), with small diameter (you can get from any room to any other room fairly quickly).  What is the largest number of rooms?  This is the degree diameter problem.

[wpvqxyvg] Public key QR business card

A business card with your public key in QR code.  It avoids DoS attacks on public key servers that would prevent someone from fetching your public key.  It allows encryption without needing internet at the moment (sending can be postponed).

Upon receiving a box of business cards, the giver should sign them all with pen.  This prevents a MITM from surreptitiously swapping the cards with nearly identical ones with different key.  Upon receiving a single card, the recipient should also sign the card with pen, avoiding the same attack.  Verify your signature before passing it out, or scanning it.

Might want elliptic curve cryptography for shorter keys.

[wxsgnfmc] Avoid illogical translation

Start with text in one language.  Require that it makes logical sense according to natural language processing (modify if not).  Machine translate, then check that the translated version also makes logical sense.  (It would be nice if it made the same logical sense, but relax this restriction at first and hope for the best.)

This is one translatable subset.

[tnxpxorf] Protesters and military strategy

Consider the seemingly whack-a-mole game between protesters and the police.  The police shut down one location, and clever protesters organize elsewhere, or find some other way of protesting.  Unless the police create a society with literally no freedom, they can't stop the protests.  Or can they?

(Let's assume the powerful are unwilling to address the underlying cause for which the protests are the symptom.)

Consider it a problem of military strategy.  The enemy is very agile opponent, but you have more firepower.  Each side has constraints -- the political landscape -- it needs to work within.  This "unbalanced" problem "in abstract" has been intensely studied for thousands of years in military strategy.

[nyicufkt] Settlers of Bataan

On one hand, it could be a horribly politically incorrect game based on the Bataan Death March.  It could straightforwardly be a "path" game, roll the dice to move forward (or back) and hope not to land on bad squares.

On the other hand, where you might be expecting something horrible, it surprises you by turning out not, but merely a map for Settlers of Catan laid out to match the agriculture, forests, and mineral deposits of the real Bataan province.

[lefoezyy] Some notes on Google Books Ngrams

Just looking at the 1-grams (unigrams):
A complete list of case-folded words and their counts (5591668 lines), in descending order.

Recompression
139321248 Dec 14 2010 googlebooks-eng-all-1gram-20090715-1.csv.lzma
181843105 Dec 14 2010 googlebooks-eng-all-1gram-20090715-1.csv.bz2
206135630 Jan 31 18:33 googlebooks-eng-all-1gram-20090715-1.csv.zip
969963702 Dec 14 2010 googlebooks-eng-all-1gram-20090715-1.csv
Sizes in bytes. It compresses better with lzma, than zip or bzip2

Building the word count list with Perl:
perl -nlwe '@F=split /\t/;$c{lc$F[0]}+=$F[2];END{for(keys%c){print "$_\t$c{$_}"}}'

It is curious that the word "the" does not occur in part 0.

[skfhelsw] Kick scooter martial art

Create a martial art based on the kick scooter ("Razor scooter") as a weapon.  It's a reasonable (and otherwise useful) thing for a person to be always carrying around or riding.

[acichmzd] Blitz strip chess match

Strip chess played as a series of blitz games: a match.

Remove one item of clothing for each victory.  This is the opposite of most "strip" games, where clothing removal is a punishment for losing.  But the rationale is, if you don't want to get naked, you shouldn't be playing a strip game, so, if you do want to get naked, then clothing removal should be the reward for winning.

Must win at least one game after the last article is removed. Offers the possibility of a heroic last stand.

Played standing with the board on a cocktail height table.

For a spectator event, finding chessplayers you want to see naked is left as an exercise for the reader.