A "no phone" roadtrip
This is a real heartwarming video about a roadtrip between a father and a daughter, who vow not to use their phones during the trip. It's cute seeing the re-adjustment to the old days way of roadtripping, but the dynamic between them is something truly special.
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"How God plays chess"
An interesting article which delves into the history of endgame tables (where computers have calculated every possible position for a defined number of pieces.) The article shares some interesting anecdotes from the origins of ending tables, as well as a parable (I've copied the start of it below.)
Featuring prominently, and the storyteller of the below parable is Ken Thompson. He isn't a name many will be familiar with, but he was working in Bell labs on things like the C programming language and UNIX.
He created the first endgame table for King-Queen vs King-Rook, which was a monumental thing, something which had never been done before. And the insights gained, and the understanding of what it would take to solve chess, are a fascinating read.
One day World Champion Garry Kasparov, who towers above all his rivals, reached an Elo of 3000. When the rating list was released the heavens over Baku opened and an Angel of the Lord descended. He approached Garry and said: “For what you have achieved you are invited to play a game of chess against God.”
Garry was overwhelmed. He dressed into his finest and got onto the golden escalator that transported him to heaven. There the Angel led him into a small room where God was sitting, drinking coffee and looking at a computer screen. Garry was somewhat surprised that He was wearing jeans and a t-shirt, and had a fairly unkempt white beard. He bowed deeply and said:
“Oh Almighty Lord, Creator of the Universe…”
“Just call me God,” God interrupted. “Or G, which is what most of my friends call me.”
“Okay, God, it is a great privilege for me to stand in your presence and to actually play a game of chess against you. Of course I have absolutely no expectation of winning. I assume you play a perfect game!?”
“Yes,” replied God, “I have done the 32-piece endgame.”
“Ahh,” said Garry, “Of course that is trivially easy for you.”
“No, no,” said God, “it was really tough. More than 10^35 legal positions — it took the matter from a good-sized planet to store. But let us play. You can have white.”
[...]
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Redditor reverse engineers the Slay the Spire mapmaking algorithm
For a side project I'm toying with I went looking for this exact thing and am glad to find it. Very fun and interesting stuff.
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Automated Archives for December, 9th 2024
This post was automatically generated.
Chess For the Day
Record: 0-0-3
Net Elo Change: -17
Games Played
Blog Posts On This Day
- December 9, 2023 (4 posts)
- December 9, 2022 (10 posts)
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