sharpening my knife kupo @tomharris@mastodon.social

cryptic crosswords are like the discrete logorithm problem: hard to solve but (theoretically) easy to check once you've been given the answer. designing a cryptosystem that's only vulnerable to a certain community in the guardian comments section

certainly it doesn't seem beyond the realm of possibility that it would learn pretty early on that clues involving a word like "mixture" or "ruined" typically involve an anagram

right, the knowledge needed seems more manageable to me than the kind of nonlinear logic you need for some clues. but maybe "nonlinear logic"just means nonlinear in the sense that it doesn't follow the obvious human choice and an AI could learn nonlinear rules itself just as easily at it learns linear rules. That would be disappointing

strongly vibe with the view that mathematical proof developed in ancient greece as a kind of formalisation of debating rhetoric. this way, I can tell my mum that my way of doing the cryptic accords with the development of thought

never felt more like a mathematician than when doing the cryptic crossword with my mum. she just finds a word that fits and has the definition of one of the terms in the clue, but won't justify it with the wordplay. she just says "I don't know why it's that but it is". and she's normally right. infuriating

attempting to do "growth hacking" for my brother in law's (very) small business

sudden memory of when we had the first wave of interest from twitter users when mastodon was a few months old. a few twitter celebs joined and i did a subtweet on all celebs and got called out on it by both dan harmon and glinner. heady days

this is the perfect meal

sudden incredible desire for a tin of those Danish butter cookies

now watching the 2002 BBC reboot of Auf Wiedersehen, Pet and it’s more disconcerting than watching the original. the gulf in production values is much greater between 1986 and 2002 than 2002 to present, but the difference in social attitudes 2002-2020 is arguably greater than 1986-2002

if microsoft word tells me not to use the passive voice one more time, it will be harmed by me

I really think University Challenge should have an age limit ... 24 maybe? no slight on mature students, who I admire a lot, but it's much less impressive watching a man in his 40s rattle of a lifetime's accumulated pub trivia

thinking about becoming a type of guy. seems easier