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π Cuckoo hashing
Cuckoo hashing is a scheme in computer programming for resolving hash collisions of values of hash functions in a table, with worst-case constant lookup time. The name derives from the behavior of some species of cuckoo, where the cuckoo chick pushes the other eggs or young out of the nest when it hatches; analogously, inserting a new key into a cuckoo hashing table may push an older key to a different location in the table.
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- "Cuckoo hashing" | 2008-06-01 | 25 Upvotes 9 Comments
π Curry's paradox: "If this sentence is true, then Santa Claus exists."
Curry's paradox is a paradox in which an arbitrary claim F is proved from the mere existence of a sentence C that says of itself "If C, then F", requiring only a few apparently innocuous logical deduction rules. Since F is arbitrary, any logic having these rules proves everything. The paradox may be expressed in natural language and in various logics, including certain forms of set theory, lambda calculus, and combinatory logic.
The paradox is named after the logician Haskell Curry. It has also been called LΓΆb's paradox after Martin Hugo LΓΆb, due to its relationship to LΓΆb's theorem.
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- "Curry's paradox: "If this sentence is true, then Santa Claus exists."" | 2008-05-01 | 23 Upvotes 12 Comments
π Now Wikipedia has an API
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- "Now Wikipedia has an API" | 2008-04-26 | 60 Upvotes 7 Comments
π Elephant intelligence
Elephant cognition is the study of animal cognition as present in elephants. Most contemporary ethologists view the elephant as one of the world's most intelligent animals. With a mass of just over 11Β lb (5Β kg), an elephant's brain has more mass than that of any other land animal, and although the largest whales have body masses twenty times those of a typical elephant, a whale's brain is barely twice the mass of an elephant's brain. In addition, elephants have a total of 300 billion neurons. Elephant brains are similar to humans' and many other mammals' in terms of general connectivity and functional areas, with several unique structural differences. The elephant cortex has as many neurons as a human brain, suggesting convergent evolution.
Elephants manifest a wide variety of behaviors, including those associated with grief, learning, mimicry, play, altruism, use of tools, compassion, cooperation, self-awareness, memory, and communication. Further, evidence suggests elephants may understand pointing: the ability to nonverbally communicate an object by extending a finger, or equivalent. It is thought they are equal with cetaceans and primates in this regard. Due to such claims of high intelligence and due to strong family ties of elephants, some researchers argue it is morally wrong for humans to cull them. Aristotle described the elephant as "the animal that surpasses all others in wit and mind."
Discussed on
- "Elephant intelligence" | 2008-03-05 | 32 Upvotes 10 Comments
π List of device bandwidths
This is a list of interface bit rates, is a measure of information transfer rates, or digital bandwidth capacity, at which digital interfaces in a computer or network can communicate over various kinds of buses and channels. The distinction can be arbitrary between a computer bus, often closer in space, and larger telecommunications networks. Many device interfaces or protocols (e.g., SATA, USB, SAS, PCIe) are used both inside many-device boxes, such as a PC, and one-device-boxes, such as a hard drive enclosure. Accordingly, this page lists both the internal ribbon and external communications cable standards together in one sortable table.
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- "List of device bandwidths" | 2008-01-18 | 11 Upvotes 3 Comments
π The reason why Blub programmers have such a hard time picking up more powerful languages.
The hypothesis of linguistic relativity, part of relativism, also known as the SapirβWhorf hypothesis , or Whorfianism is a principle claiming that the structure of a language affects its speakers' world view or cognition, and thus people's perceptions are relative to their spoken language.
The principle is often defined in one of two versions: the strong hypothesis, which was held by some of the early linguists before World War II, and the weak hypothesis, mostly held by some of the modern linguists.
- The strong version says that language determines thought and that linguistic categories limit and determine cognitive categories.
- The weak version says that linguistic categories and usage only influence thought and decisions.
The principle had been accepted and then abandoned by linguists during the early 20th century following the changing perceptions of social acceptance for the other especially after World War II. The origin of formulated arguments against the acceptance of linguistic relativity are attributed to Noam Chomsky.
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- "The reason why Blub programmers have such a hard time picking up more powerful languages." | 2007-09-29 | 7 Upvotes 28 Comments
π How big Wikipedia would be if published as as printed volumes
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- "How big Wikipedia would be if published as as printed volumes" | 2007-08-29 | 11 Upvotes 5 Comments
π Someone should add a column to this Wikipedia page about Y-Combinator StartUps: Status
YΒ Combinator is an American seed accelerator launched in March 2005 and has been used to launch over 2,000 companies including Stripe, Airbnb, Cruise Automation, DoorDash, Coinbase, Instacart, and Dropbox. The combined valuation of the top YC companies was over $155Β billion as of October, 2019.
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- "Someone should add a column to this Wikipedia page about Y-Combinator StartUps: Status" | 2007-07-25 | 19 Upvotes 17 Comments
π Someone took the Big Idea that I was passionate about. Now what?
Amie Street was an indie online music store and social network service created in 2006 by Brown University seniors Elliott Breece, Elias Roman, and Joshua Boltuch, in Providence, Rhode Island. The site was notable for its demand-based pricing. The company was later moved to Long Island City in Queens, New York. In late 2010, the site was sold to Amazon who redirected customers to their own website.
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- "Someone took the Big Idea that I was passionate about. Now what?" | 2007-06-05 | 6 Upvotes 10 Comments