mahiwaga

I'm not really all that mysterious

Ghostbusters AR

Does anybody remember the 8-bit C64/Atari 800 version of Ghostbusters released by Activision where you wander around the streets of NYC trying to make money and keep the PKE meter low? Pokemon Go makes me think they should release an AR version of this.

crossposted on

Ray Parker Jr. and Adam Bellin • Ghostbusters
posted by Author's profile picture mahiwaga

Non-Standard Numbers

I’m sure “non-standard numbers” has a different meaning in the context of finance(?), but now I can’t help but imagine that the Windows implementations of integers and floats is somehow bizarrely awry.

Under pressure from SEC, Microsoft refines use of non-standard numbers • 2016 Jul 20 • Francine McKenna • MarketWatch

posted by Author's profile picture mahiwaga

Contemptible

Do people even have access to thesauruses (thesauri?) anymore?1

Honestly, it wouldn’t have been such a massive deal if they hadn’t gone on the offensive in the aftermath. The thing that I find offensive and contemptible is how stupid they think we all are.2

Trump camp admits Melania speech passages came from Michelle Obama’s speech • 2016 Jul 20 • Timothy B. Lee • Vox

  1. crossposted on Facebook

  2. crossposted on Facebook

posted by Author's profile picture mahiwaga

Statistical Arguments For and Against the Existence of Finland

There is a 50/50 chance that Finland does not exist.

There are approximately 5.4 million Finnish people, right? That’s out of roughly 7.4 billion humans on the planet. That means Finns make up 0.0729% of the planet.

That’s not even a tenth of a percent. That means that more than 99.9% of the world isn’t Finnish. How do we know this? Government censuses.

Now the best government censuses have a margin of error of about 1%. So Finns make up 0.0729% of the planet, plus or minus 1%.

In conclusion, there’s a 50/50 chance Finland does not exist.

from Very Finnish Problems (h/t Iris J.)

Which reminds me of a passage from The Restaurant at the End of the Universe by Douglas Adams:

It is known that there are an infinite number of worlds, simply because there is an infinite amount of space for them to be in. However, not every one of them is inhabited. Therefore, there must be a finite number of inhabited worlds. Any finite number divided by infinity is as near to nothing as makes no odds, so the average population of all the planets in the Universe can be said to be zero. From this it follows that the population of the whole Universe is also zero, and that any people you may meet from time to time are merely the products of a deranged imagination.

posted by Author's profile picture mahiwaga