"""under perfect play all chess games be a the same single one outcome of the following (we just currently don’t know which one, “A” playing the white pieces):
Mr. A says, “I resign” or Mr. B says, “I resign” or Mr. A says, “I offer a draw,” and Mr. B replies, “I accept.” That is, under perfect play, each chess position is either a forced win, forced draw, or forced loss. The domain of a perfect chess position evaluation function is these three cases as symbols."""
...basically if you think you're going to win (aka: you have a 200 centi-pawn advantage), you can offer the doubling cube to your opponent (doubling the stakes of losing). If you're playing to win $5, and halfway through you think "yep, 90% chance I'm going to win this one...", you push the doubling cube to 2x (aka: $10 consequence), and kindof like poker your opponent has to evaluate whether it's "worth it" for them to stay in the game.
You might imagine a "2xELO penalty" where White takes a Queen with a Pawn, and then offers "2x, or I'm gonna beat 'ya!". If Black say "Naaah, you just activated my trap card!" and then either accepts "2x" or pushes back at "4x", then it becomes a little more like poker... you think you can beat me, then prove it!
Not that I'm suggesting changing the rules of Chess, but overall I'm really fascinated by the concept of formalized semi-out-of-band risk-taking to potentially end games early.
The doubling cube works well in Backgammon because it is a rare example of a popular game with randomness, without hidden information (every information set contains exactly one node of the decision tree, if you want to get extremely technical,) and, critically, with "different endings" (normal win, gammon, backgammon.) Doubling decisions are especially interesting because while they're always objective (it could never be the case that perfect players disagree on the correct move, that requires nontrivial information sets,) it could be the case that:
- it's correct for a player to double and for the other to accept;
- it's correct for a player to double and for the other not to accept;
- the position is "too good to double," because the equity from the probability of a double or triple game exceeds the advantage you'd get from a double;
- all of the above being influenced by the match score, e.g. if I'm 3 points away from winning and you're 5 points away from winning, I could make different decisions than if it were the opposite.
Chess has none of them, the doubling cube would be exclusively a psychological power play, something like "it's theoretically drawn but I don't think you can defend it," which is not a great game dynamic.
In general, transplanting the doubling mechanic without a similarly rich context doesn't tend to work well.
Games like backgammon (that have betting and the doubling cube to continue), Go (which is calculated in stones), and bridge (again having points) have more natural intermediate scoring systems than chess.
In my opinion the "winner takes all" aspect of chess is similar to what makes analyzing voting systems difficult. In a non game context: Aspnes, Beigel, Furst, and Rudich had some amazing work on how all or nothing calculation really changes things: https://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/aspnes/papers/stoc91voting.pdf .
For a while I really dug in to multiple player (and teams-of-players) ELO calculations. I got into an argument with my friend about whether second place was any better than last place... specifically in poker, but applicable to multiple games (imagine chinese checkers [race to finish], or carcassonne/ticket-to-ride [semi-hidden scoring until the end]).
His POV was that "if you don't win, you lose" and my POV was "second place is better than last place". His response was: "if I play poker to get first place it's wildly different than playing for second or third place [and I may end up in last place wildly more often due to risk % or bad beats]"
I've been more used to "climbing" type performance games (ie: last place => mid-field => second place => first place) and in my gut I wanted my ELO to reflect that (top-half players are better than bottom-half players), however his very valid point was that different games have different payout matrices (eg: poker is often "top-3 payout", and first may be 10x second or third).
I think in my mind I've settled on EV-payout for multiplayer games should match the "game payout", and that maybe my gut is telling me the difference between "Casual ELO" (aka: top-half > bottom-half), and "Competitive ELO" (aka: only the winner gets paid).
Go is also winner take all. It's psychologically satisfying to have a big win, in the same way that it's psychologically satisfying to achieve a brilliant checkmate, but in any ordinary game or tournament (outside of certain gambling setups), a win by 1/2 point is the same as a win by 20+ points.
Yes and no. One could say this of any game with points where the margin of victory doesn't affect long-term outcomes (e.g. most ball games).
A win by 1/2 point or 20 points it suggests a very different relative skill between the two players. Similarly the custom of the stronger player playing white without komi suggests that the point differential matters.
I see what you're saying; this is true for any game scored win/loss. Even gridiron football if you're down by 4 points with time almost out you won't kick a field goal (worth 3 points).
I'd like to point out that some online chess tournaments, mostly using rapid and bullet times, have a "berserk" option pre-start, where the player taking it halves their allotted time bank, for double the winning points.
It's not a bluff, since information is still 100% open to both players, but it changes dynamic a lot.
I've always thought of it more as "Co-Pilot", but formally: "Autopilot" might truly be the better definition (lane-keeping, distance-keeping), whereas a "Co-Pilot" (in aviation) implies more active control, ie: pulling you up from a nose dive.
So... informally, "Tesla Co-Pilot" => "You're still the pilot but you have a helper", vs "Tesla Autopilot" => "Whelp, guess I can wash my hands and walk away b/c it's AuToMaTiC!"
...it's tough messaging for sure, especially putting these powertools into peoples hands with no formal training required. Woulda-coulda-shoulda, similar to the 737MAX crashes, should "pilots" of Teslas required training in the safety and navigation systems before they were "licensed" to use them?
...you need "man" pages for moderately-comprehensive options explanations (backed by /usr/share/doc/$TOOL/README.txt if you're a debian user), but "bro" tends to focus on the "yo, this is what you're actually trying to do here...", including sometimes crossing traditional "this-command" boundaries (eg: in the diff example, offering `diff <( cmd1 ) <( cmd2 )` b/c sometimes that's what people are trying to do).
I can't find one that I submitted but it was something like `bro sed` => `# bro, just use awk! => awk -- '{...}'` ...basically you could go down the wrong rabbit hole, and there's kindof a nice little community of users helping to lift each other up (with upvote/downvote) and focusing on providing relatively simple and salient examples rather than a wall-of-text-options where you know that it's possible, but you don't know how to start. (eg: see `bro ffmpeg`)
148 Home Assistant (bridged) accessories checking in... sign me up for the beta!
On the accessory count, call it a 2-story house, ~5 rooms per floor, plus an outdoor zone:
2x thermostat, 2x speakers (HomePod), 2x door, garage door, 2 lamps per room, pool "accessories" (filter, cleaner, heater, lights), 2x outdoor lights... that's 27 just off the bat!
Now adding Home Assistant and you start getting 2x Zigbee interior door sensors (privacy locks/detection for when we have a babysitter), 2x interior motion sensors (upstairs/downstairs stairwell), patio string lights, front throw/spot lights, 3x decorator bulbs for the hanging entrance lamp (bridges three bulbs as one since they're individually controllable bulbs instead of a smart fixture or switch), an AirPlay compatible TV, fridge and freezer temp/humidity sensors, the outdoor AirPlay speaker, outdoor gate open/close sensors (front and back), outdoor motion sensor...
...and then the random other "every HomePod technically has an in-built temp and humidity sensor", the Home Assistant integration for the router that reads the packets in/out, the printer thing that reads the ink status for all the ink cartridges, etc.
It's a lot, but start with a single reading lamp and night light per room. Make a "lights" and "mood" scene per room/floor. A few key motion/door sensors (turn on a downstairs mood light when opening the door after sunset, turn on the hallway mood light when motion is detected after 9pm, etc).
How do you handle printing? I've got a color laser (that I'll generally run B&W), but it seems like "pigment inkjet" is actually the correct choice for the paper+ink combo.
What's your experience / recommendation?
My technical workflow (for personal books) is `Makefile` + `frontmatter.tex` + `chapter-*.md` + `endmatter.tex` and some unholy abomination of pandoc or whatever that'll stitch it all together and some other software to run imposition, etc.
I'll (at some point) take a look at what you're doing, but it's a really neat hobby- I've been doing 1-2 books at a time (~50-100 pages) w/ kettle stitching and hard-cover (with ribbons of course!).
...looking through your recommendations, but don't see mention of pigment-based ink/printers or short-grain paper (ChurchPaper was where I got some of mine from). Is the ET-8550 "the one" that you've found? Having something "large format" for printing is tempting, but it'd probably be better to outsource at $1-5/page compared to a more compact printer. What about drying out or long-term storage of inkjet / print heads?
re: the Guillotine, I've been tempted by seeing some hydraulic manual cutters, but it seems like big space investment... how have you experienced it? They're saying 400 pages (a whole ream?) on the one you've linked but that seems like a stretch.
My understanding is that ink tank printers can be cheaper per page, but lasers can be faster and possibly more durable. I think professional machines tend to be laser printers. I haven't had a problem with the heads drying out but I try to use my printers at least weekly.
I like the Epson ink tank printers and have been happy with them. I usually use cheap generic ink. I wouldn't be surprised at all if there are better options though.
I mostly do perfect bound books so I can use normal printer paper, center the pages, and it will be in the correct grain direction. Otherwise you'll have to order through dedicated specialty paper suppliers and also might need a larger format printer. In a pinch, you can ignore grain direction but the end result definitely isn't as good. Once I run out of my current cover paper, I'll probably order coated on 1 side short grain paper from some specialty paper supplier.
I also use a one sided laminator on the cover which makes the cover much more durable.
I think the manual cutter works well enough for me. It does work at 400 pages with some muscle. Upgrading to a programmable cutter would be the next step for me, but it would only be needed if you're making 5+ books a day.
You could print smaller booklets in half-page format and use stapled or sewn binding, for a more durable and higher-quality result. That could be done without needing a larger-format printer. It might be especially appropriate for shorter text such as individual articles, and this was often the historical practice with e.g. octavo books which were quite popular back in the day.
Wowee, a dedicated machine! I built my own lying press with wooden cutting boards, and neatened out the edges of my text blocks with the blade of a chisel/single bevel utility knife that could be laid flat. I used an old application called Cheap Impostor that converted PDFs to printable signatures for me.
I was writing an honors thesis then, and DIYing my old books was much more interesting (and relaxing) way to get a book that I'd otherwise have to wait a month to get via interlibrary loan. Don't ask me where I got the scanned pages from...
re: youtube music, I just tried it on my phone and it worked fine... maaaybe b/c you're not a youtube premium subscriber and google wants to shove ads into your sweet sweet eyeballs?
The one that kindof caught me off guard was asking "hey siri, how long will it take me to get home?" => "You'll need to unlock your iPhone for that, but I don't recommend doing that while driving..." => if you left your phone unattended at a bar and someone could figure out your home address w/o unlock.
...I'm kindof with you, maybe similar to AirTags and "Trusted Locations" there could be a middle ground of "don't worry about exposing rough geolocation or summary PII". At home, in your car (connected to a known CarPlay), kindof an in-between "Geo-Unlock"?
I pay for YouTube Music and I see really inconsistent behavior when asking Siri to play music. My five-year-old kid is really into an AI slop song that claims to be from the KPop Daemon Hunters 2 soundtrack, called Bloodline (can we talk about how YT Music in full of trashy rip-off songs?). He's been asking to listen to it every day this week in the car and prior to this morning, saying "listen to kpop daemon hunters bloodline" would work fine, playing it via YT Music. This morning, I tried every iteration of that request I could think of and I was never able to get it to play. Sometimes I'd get the response that I had to open YT Music to continue, and other times it would say it was playing, but it would never actually queue it up. This is a pretty regular issue I see. I'm not sure if the problem is with Siri or YT Music.
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