Language: English

Chess engines

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Tamas Garam - chess

What chess engines lack, in my opinion, is the ability to play the natural moves.

If I were designing such algorithms, yes, I would look for solutions to make the computer play better, but I’d also look for solutions to make it play like a human.

99% of the players playing chess can’t even dream of ever beating a computer at the top level. So, they change the difficulty of the algorithm lower. What happens next is that the computer plays either incredibly good moves, or very poor ones, but they all look artificial. A human won’t be either very good or very poor, but on an overall line. Playing against the computer is chaos. And it doesn’t necessarily need to be like this.

For example, a human chess player will always look at the last moved piece, but it might ignore a piece that is not in the center of the action. A human is also more likely to see one or two moves ahead, but not a lot. A human will overlook, at times, checkmate, while a chess engine almost never, even a weak one.

Citește mai departeChess engines

Life is amazing!

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David Stillman - Adventuring

I’m amazed by life. People, things, happenings, events, movies, books, encounters, emotions, principles. And also the dark side, the fail, the fear, the lack of courage, missing ethics.

“Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all.”

― Helen Keller, The Open Door.

And a video:

But it is! It is a daring adventure! I’m in awe! I’m surprised! Give me more!

Citește mai departeLife is amazing!

Alternative way of choosing how to watch movies

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IMDB Logo

I like IMDb’s Top 250 movie list. All-in-all, it’s a great list.

But did you know there are alternative ways to see that list?

For example, you can see the top 1,000 movies sorted by the number of votes:

Yes, I would like to know what movies did others see, even if the average of the movie might be lower.

You can also see the movies sorted by popularity:

Citește mai departeAlternative way of choosing how to watch movies

Emotions inspired by machines

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Adam Y Zhang - No Emotion

A quote:

Murray Campbell of IBM was part of the Deep Blue project. As he says, chess computers do play differently. They make moves that sometimes make no sense to their human opponents.
“Computers don’t have any sense of aesthetics or patterns that are standard the way people learn how to play chess,” Campbell says. “They play what they think is the objectively best move in any position, even if it looks absurd, and they can play any move no matter how ugly it is.”

(via »)

Machines think in standard ways. In chess, they play so well that most likely no human can currently beat them in a 100 matches game.

Yet, their moves in chess look weird to humans.

What can you get out of this? If you find a good solution, don’t ask 10 people if they think your solution is any good, they will most likely refer to conformity and say “it’s not conform to what I think, thus is not valid”.

Instead, ask them how you can perfect the idea, how can t get better understood, how they would better resonate with that idea.

Citește mai departeEmotions inspired by machines

Posting in advance is not advanced posting

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stefanos papachristou - time

Sometimes I write a message at times such as Friday evening, Saturday mornings, National Holidays, things like that. I know the message I write won’t get read if I send it right away, so I use Gmail’s Schedule Send feature and send the message on a time like Monday morning, 8 AM, or things like that.

The thing is, if I write the message Friday, and it only gets sent Monday, by that time I usually forget that I’ve sent the message. It’s not on my working memory, anyway.

So, if I were to send the message right away, as far as I can tell, there would be a more likely chance that I’ll remember it.

That’s why “Posting in advance is not advanced posting” – it is, from this perspective, a bit silly, rather.

Citește mai departePosting in advance is not advanced posting

News of the news

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Pedro Albuquerque - The Lighthouse

I like to read Hacker News. Lots of very cool information.

The thing is – there are loads of IT guys in the world and fewer online marketing ones. Both of the worlds blog a lot.

So, it may be so – from a large pool of data, it may be that HN can get some good articles.

Still, it makes me a bit envious of not being in IT. :)

I like “their” news better.

Citește mai departeNews of the news

On trying

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Frank Busch - Experiments

Billionaire Warren Buffett is quoted on saying:

The difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say no to almost everything.

I guess that’s true when you’re a billionaire. You will get invited to a lot of social gatherings, interviews, tours, shows, that you need to create a method to protect yourself.

And if you’re in the top 5 richest people in the world, those invitations must come in large numbers.

Yet, I think the situation is totally different for someone just starting out. A student, a person just graduating, a person who worked for a few years, but now wants to switch careers, a person who tries something new – in my opinion, all of these scenarios fit another approach: try everything.

How will you know the interview is of poor quality? Do 3 interviews and you’ll know whether to accept an interview or not.

How will you know if a party is a good investment of your time? Go a few times and then decide.

How will you know if you’re good at a job if you don’t try it, put some time in it, try some more?

Sure, you can only experiment with the things which are reversible or don’t have huge implications, that’s clear.

Jim Bagnola used to say about a person who was reluctant to try things that he/she said – “I tried it once. It didn’t work out”.

The answer, obviously, is “try some more! See if it really fits you or not!”.

If you’re scared of dogs, like I am, the solution is not to avoid any contact with dogs, but have so many contacts with them that the fear disappears.

There are lots of videos online with veterinaries knowing how to handle animals – they’re so used to them, that they know their tricks.

An aggressive dog can be safely trained by a professional. That professional has a thing that the vast majority of people on Earth don’t have – huge experience with dogs.

Citește mai departeOn trying