A coin toss isn't exactly 50% for both sides in a real life scenario, hence the difficulty to reproduce the experiment exactly like its theoretical description. A sequence of 10 coin tosses resulting in heads/tails is not impossible even if it is hard to reproduce, it simply has an absurdly low probability of ocurring.
This focus on the theoretical side of things, the 'comfy confines of calculation', isn't a bad thing, the paradox is still an interesting thought experiment.
The paradox does not depend on the fairness of the coin.
A real coin toss is, say, at least 25% probability for heads and at least 25% probability for tails. Therefore you can multiply the winnings by 4 and not by 2, which will give you a divergent series even with a real, "unfair" coin.
I bought this book and did find it amazing, the first exercises are very good in showing how you Can draw, specially the inverted picture exercise. However, I struggled to find the material with which to do some of the later exercises and ended up putting it aside.
Procrastination is often caused by the urge to find a small comfort to escape discomfort. Checking your email account in the middle of a difficult task, checking the news, etc. Letting go of this urges helps you stop procrastinating. There are no practical methods explained in this article but the main idea is a solid one that may help people overcome this problem.
"The old book 'Sinjungdonggukyojisungnam' (Revised Handbook of Korean Geography) complied in the 16th century wrote that there is a lair west of Pubyok Pavilion in Mt. Kumsu."
Revised by the Ministry of Truth?
Sadly, it was probably too technical for most potential users to be swayed much by it.
We need focused talking points, e.g. the fact that the NSA and other governments vacuum up all your data, and that TextSecure represents the first step toward a future in which it's very difficult for governments to do that. Whereas with Telegram, it's just as easy for them to access your conversations as it is for them to bypass SSL. Governments can and will do so. That's what users are concerned about; that's what they care about. Telegram has no defense against that argument due to their protocol's inherent vulnerability to this form of attack. Therefore it's the single most important point for to stress to any potential user.
Yet it's getting lost in the noise. Actually, I haven't seen it mentioned very much at all. Someone should do a writeup calling attention to it.
I am selling fire-proof safes. These are designed to protect your documents and valuables from thieves and from fire and other events.
The normal way people set up tests is to put some documents and valuables in a box and actually try to break it (MythBusters style, bringing out cool machinery and trying different ways). For fire resistance, there is a rating system (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire-resistance_rating) and a standard way to test.
The Telegram proposition is: we are going to place the safe in Fort Knox. If you can't break the safe that is in Fort Knox, then clearly our safe is secure.
The Article rebuttal: to break the safe, you have to break into Fort Knox. And for all intents and purposes that's not going to happen. You could have put a cardboard box and no one could tell the difference because of how you structured the test.
an article that succinctly conveys to potential users why Telegram is snakeoil and why TextSecure is the real deal
There is no way to convey this with better rhetoric because the proof is in the technical detail, the party that is wrong can just ramp theirs rhetoric up too. If you don't dig into that detail, it just becomes a he said/she said argument that no observers can judge on merit. Those discussion relies on the participants to be knowledgeable, and politely acknowledge when they're out of their depth technically or just plain wrong. But there is nothing to enforce that, see any Hacker News discussion about something that isn't web development or devops.
I used a simple substitution cipher. Please indicate, without guessing every combination, which one is correct. For convenience, the letters z,c,o,m are not substituted.
I never could adapt to the shape of the Vita. I had to hold it in a very awkward position to avoid touching accidentally the touch sensitive back panel. This seems like a viable option for me to play games released in the console and with a good price since I already own a ps3 with controllers.
Very nice move from Sony, the low price makes their games available to those not wanting to spend the extra money in their 'big' consoles.
But the article itself is about a specific characteristic of analog photography. The old way is dead in some aspects but through the usage of new technologies(in this case smartphones) it can live on with its nuances. Its about the preservation of analog photography and not photography as a whole.
I read the speech in English class when studying different types of writing assignments. We examined it for its structure rather than its content. Studying speeches may prove valuable when preparing oral presentations for instance.
From my experience those slow complicated things are often avoided by developers even if it would allow them to delve further in some obscure interesting programming. The programmer's performance is also measured by their ability to achieve the goals within the defined deadlines and accepting a task just because it's interesting even if it means a big delay is not very common. At least in my working environment which is very deadline driven(as I assume most are).
But I am not dismissing your argument on the delay imposed by the extra layer between the project manager and the developer, specially if they have no programming experience.
This focus on the theoretical side of things, the 'comfy confines of calculation', isn't a bad thing, the paradox is still an interesting thought experiment.