Posts

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This blog from benjamincongdon.me is really interesting. It demonstrates how to build a Miracle Sudoku solver using Prolog, which is a logic programming language written in a declarative syntax. It’s incredible how concisely a solver for Sudoku puzzles can be written in that language! What’s remarkable about these solvers is how they can tell you interesting facts about puzzles such as the Miracle Sudoku: The minimal number of hints necessary to uniquely define a solution board is 2. Boards with just 1 placed hint have 8 solutions, always – no matter which digit the hint is or where it’s placed. There are many, many valid 2-digit hints. For example, there are 2320 ways to place a 1 and a 2 on the board which lead to a unique solution. Since there are only 72 unique solution boards, you’d run out of interesting solutions before you ran out of hints. ...

For about an hour on Tuesday night, Citibank customers trying to phone the company were met with the same odd message in place of a polite automated service operator: “Hello world. Weasels have eaten our phone system.” I think the best part is the reasoning why. Open source software, a dedicated contributor from 15 years ago paying to record joke messages, and a large company using something for free and being “bitten” by this joke/bug. It hits all the right notes for me. ...

Really fun to watch. ...

From AnilDash: The flagship mobile apps from Google, Spotify, Apple, NYT, Venmo, Walmart and many other huge companies all broke for about 30 minutes. A simple explanation of the cause is pretty brief: they all use code from Facebook, so when that broke, they all started crashing. Issues #1373 and #1374 on GitHub have a combined 226 comments since last night. Amazing the level of confusion in some of them. kazzkiq: Are we ready to ask the real questions here?Why the heck does Facebook do unwanted requests during my apps startup? What kind of info are they sending back to their servers? ...

Huh. Checking back in on my races in ZwiftPower (profile link), I’m noticing that a couple of my last races have been revised. 4/6 3R Watopia Flat Route Race: I’m now finishing in 5th place, instead of 4th as I previously thought. 4/1 Stage 4 Race - Tour of Watopia 2020: Still finishing in 4th place. 3/31 Stage 3 Race - Tour of Watopia 2020: Now finishing in 3rd place, high enough to make the podium! Previously marked as 4th place. 3/30 Stage 2 Race - Tour of Watopia 2020: Second! Silver! Well that’s crazy. Of course, only four riders in my C-category; but still. ...

Today, Look pedal cleat covers. Tomorrow, a new Elemnt Roam and a KICKR Headwind fan. Later this week, Garmin Vector 3 power meter pedals. It’s going to be a good year for biking. ...

I can do this now, because the year is still young. Need to check back in October 2020. ...

Kinda neat. Sets a good bar for 2020. ...

From DC Rainmaker: For the money, there’s no smart trainer on the market which delivers as much functionality as the Fisher-Price Smart Cycle. App compatibility across virtually every larger-format screen you can think of, half a dozen themed apps with dozens of modules (courses) between them, and more alphabet games than there are letters. Now I know my ABC’s for sure. $89 and this thing looks amazing. ...