Weird

weird

This is by (source: ). Kane is a seed investor of Root Ventures. Twitter thread Kane @kane 12-20-2021 https://twitter.com/kane/status/1473015351654830088?embedable=true&thread=true Feature image generated via prompt of ‘A cute cat operating heavy machinery HackerNoon Stable Diffusion

Examples of Weird Infrastructure Tests: A Thread

Boy, do I have the country to write about this week: Turkmenistan. weirdest Turkmenistan’s former president made a multilingual rap video introducing his country…despite the fact that it’s bizarre AF and the video editor was his horse (probably), it’s a super fun thing to watch 👇 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xZoa5ArhgA&embedable=true 3 Things To Know Before We Get Started The country came into existence in 1991 after the fall of the Soviet Union, having been a Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic as Part of The Great Socialist Soviet Union (It’s a mouthful) since 1925. This had a new president, Saparmurat Niyazov, come into power. He was a totalitarian and despotic dictator who started a personality cult (more on that later). For simplicity, let’s call him Samurai. When Samurai died from a heart attack in 2006, another ‘President’ Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, became the dictator of Turkmenistan until 2022. Let’s call him Burgundy. Bizarre things Samurai did Ruhnama He decided he had a direct line with God, which manifested in (The Book of The Soul). Think of a watered-down version of Ruhnama Mein Kampf + the Bible. was a mandatory read for school children, students, and those holding state employment. Oh, if you wanted to get a driver’s license, you had to have read it too. Ruhnama There even was a social study field called (creative, I know). Half of the exam questions for the 2006 University Entry revolved around themes set in Rahmana Studies Ruhnama. has been translated into 50 languages, though. Go figure 🤷‍♀️ Samurai said that God told him whoever reads it thrice will go to heaven. I’d say go on Amazon right now! Ruhnama Other crazy things he did Banned the use of lip-syncing at public concerts. Abolished the Turkmen word for bread and replaced it with , his mother’s name. Gurbansoltan Made the second Sunday of August “Melon Day” in honor of melons as he thought they were delicious — finally something I could sign up for. Ordered that all mountains and places in Turkmenistan + months and days of the week be named after Turkmen heroes, poets, and leaders. In 1997, when he tried to quit smoking, he passed a law that banned it in public to eliminate the temptation. Gold teeth were discouraged as he thought everyone was better off chewing on bones to strengthen their teeth and lessen the rate at which they fall out. Banished dogs from the capital, citing unappealing odor. Also forbade citizens to own more than one dog or cat (I’ll bet the guinea pig sales went through the roof). Ordered the closure of all hospitals outside Ashgabat, stating that the sick should go to the capital for treatment. He banned reporting or mentioning contagious diseases such as AIDS or cholera (peekaboo — if we don’t mention it, it means it doesn’t exist — I wish not talking about my student loans would make it disappear). He banned car radios because he considered them to be useless. Oh yeah, he also built a golden statue of himself that was rotating to face the Sun at all times. Bizarre things Burgundy did He was a bit more chill and reversed lots of eccentric laws Samurai brought into existence. He was still an authoritarian dictator, though. Black cars were banned in favor of white because it “brings good luck.” He was obsessed with Akhal-Teke horses. So much so his entire office only had one prominent motif all over the furniture — horses. He’s a former dentist turned rapping president, as we witnessed earlier. He liked a dog breed so much he made a golden statue for it 👇 But he also clearly doesn’t know how to hold a dog. Imagine being a guy who is so bad at holding dogs that Putin has to save it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLLZYFzkqKo&embedable=true Let us not forget the time when he tried to kill the rumours he was dead by driving around a BURNING HOLE IN THE GROUND (everything’s normal, nothing to look at)👇 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYiYi8-wCx0&t=11s&embedable=true More Bizzare Things About Turkmenistan Have you ever wondered why there’s a carpet in their flag? You probably didn’t, but I’ll tell you anyway: because they LOVE carpets. There’s a Ministry of Carpets, a National Carpet Museum, and a public holiday to honour carpets. They even used to have the world’s largest hand-woven carpet record until Iran beat them in 2019. If you want to purchase a carpet, you need a receipt with your age, origin, and date of purchase. This must be certified by the Ministry of Carpets or else the carpet can’t leave the country. I’ll say it one more time: carpet. It’s one of the least visited countries in the World — the top 10 least visited countries in fact. Locals used to have state-subsidized gas, water, petrol, and electricity between 1993 and 2019. Turkmenistan is the only country officially recognized by the United Nations as a neutral nation. Eat that, Switzerland. It has a burning hole that’s been on fire since 1971, dubbed (featured in a fast and furious video by Samurai seen above). Gates of Hell It was a man-made disaster — a Soviet drilling rig accidentally punched into a massive underground natural gas cavern. This caused the ground to collapse and the entire drilling rig to fall in. So they thought: — it did not. Why don’t we set this on fire? Maybe that’ll solve this? Took me 3 hours to research this, but it was worth it 😂 Random fact: when I was very young, there was a trend in Lithuania to have a carpet hanging on the wall (seriously). You’d walk into someone’s living room, and there’d be a proudly displayed carpet hanging on the wall. It looked something like this 👇 To Sum Up I think we all learned today that Turkmenistan is a super bizarre place to be. Although I wrote this piece with a bit of humor, let’s not forget it’s essentially a dictatorship run by eccentric weirdos. They clearly try much harder than North Korea to portray themselves as cool and fun. Turkmenistan is brandable, as they say in the marketing world. Also published . here

Turkmenistan: A Dive into Eccentric Dictators and Their Quirky Rules

Some mathematical oddities I never quite understood Consider the following equations : 1 / 9 = 0.1111…1111 0.1111…1111 * 9 = 0.9999…9999 From this, we can conclude : 1 = 0.9999…9999 From this, we can conclude : 0 = 0.0000…0001 Now, consider this : 1 / ∞ = 0.0000…0001 – 1 / ∞ = – 0.0000…0001 This would lead to the following conclusion : 1 / ∞ = 0 = –1 / ∞ 1 / 0 = ∞ = – ∞ When I draw a graph for 1 / x, that is precisely the result I would expect. I never really understood why people keep saying that 1 / ∞ ≠ 0. I’be been taught this in high school, but it never made any sense to me at all. This, especially considering the the fact the “limit” of 1 / x is ∞ or -∞ for “x → 0”. Why can’t we just use “limits” to determine the value of infinity in equations? Why can’t we just say that 1 / 0 = ∞ because ∞ is the resulting value of the limit of 1 / x with “x → 0” or that 1 / ∞ = 0 because 0 is the resulting value of the limit of 1 / x with “x → ∞”? I guess the typical argument against the argumentation here-above, would be that the “limit” of 2 / x, 3 / x or 4 / x with “x → 0” are all also ∞. This, they argue, makes the argumentation here-above invalid. But does it really? I guess it does, if and only if we treat ∞ as some kind of garbage bin that represents any value that’s infinitely large. However, I’m not convinced that we should. Why can’t we just define ∞ as eg. the number 100000000…000 (with an infinite number of zeroes)? Basically, you’d have something like ∞ = 10ⁿ, with n = ∞. If we would define ∞ like that, we could easily argue that 2 / x is equal to 2*10ⁿ (n = ∞) and thus 2∞. Or, if we would multiply two infinite values, we’d end up with 10²ⁿ (n = ∞), or ∞². Basically, why can’t we just use ∞ as a normal number? Why can’t we have different orders of magnitude and express those by using a notation like 2∞ or ∞³? Doing so, I believe, would significantly improve our understanding of infinity because it would give us a broader understanding of the impact of multiple values of infinite magnitude have on each other. Also, why must we treat the value of x / x as undefined for x = 0, when we intuitively feel it should be 1 (eg. when looking at its graph, or dividing by x at both the top and bottom of the fraction) and the limit of x / x for “x → 0” also gives us that value? We must we treat the value of 1 / x as undefined for x = 0, looking at its graph tells us it should be ∞ or -∞ and this is exactly what you get when calculating the limit? Why can’t we just use the limits as the actual value instead of some ackward workaround to deal with supposed undefineds? I find it hard to believe that I’m the only one who believes it makes far more sense to say that the value of 2 / x is 2∞ for x = 0 than to say that the “limit” of 2 / x is ∞ for x = 0? Right?! Notations similar to those used for 10²ⁿ and 2*10ⁿ, with n = ∞, could also be used for n = -∞ (= infinitesimals). Whether n = -∞ or ∞, it always makes sense to preserve the differences between 10-ⁿ, 2*10ⁿ, 3*10ⁿ. Sure, these differences may seem irrelevant, but they become relevant whenever you multiple these numbers by 10⁻ⁿ. So why choose to lose this information? Why treat 10ⁿ * 10⁻ⁿ as “undefned” for -∞ and ∞, when we know that 10ⁿ * 10⁻ⁿ = 1 in every other situation as well as the “limits” for -∞ and ∞? I had hoped the videos below would help me better understand why infinity is given such a strange treatment by mathematicians… but unfortunately they don’t! In fact, mathematics never made less sense to me than it did after watching both videos.

From zero to infinity

Airchat founders Naval and former Tinder executive Brian Norgard believe that speech communication strengthens human connection. The new social media app they are working on and launching, AirChat, is meant to bridge the polarizing divides in our world. They say they designed AirChat to be simple and intimate, offering a new way for individuals to connect and engage in meaningful dialog, and the app is being touted as Silicon Valley's new obsession. It is currently open by invitation to US and EU phone numbers, but the founders have signaled that they will expand soon. AirChat was introduced at X-Twitter as a combination of Twitter and Clubhouse and has been making waves in our feeds for the past few weeks. The only difference is that instead of writing a post, you share your content by talking about it, and you don't need to gather under a different topic. The app quickly transcribes what you say, and as your followers scroll through their feeds, they hear your voice in transcription. I tried AirChat, an app that is especially talked about for the success of its transcription technology, where tech enthusiasts, leaders, entrepreneurs, and investors invite each other and quickly tighten the ranks. AirChat was developed by Naval Ravikant, an Indian entrepreneur who is also the founder of AngelList, is quite famous on Twitter, and reaches millions with his podcast where he advises on mental models, and Brian Norgard, former Tinder. They aim to bring a sincere new approach to social media by taking us away from X's increasingly toxic news feed, which is corrupted by ads and fake bots. Imagine that there are many people we know only through the internet whose posts we read but still haven't met. After following each other on AirChat, you realize that you have never heard their real voices before. The platform is built to give you the feeling that you are actually chatting with each other. Although the excitement that spread when Clubhouse was first launched seems to be happening in Airchat, we will see if it will end up similar. A Week on Airchat With Brian Norgard being a former Tinder manager, it makes me wonder how they're going to use emotion to retain users. They are given 20 invites, and you are motivated to invite people you know personally and send invites to people you would enjoy chatting with. In reality, however, we all know this is not realistic. After Clubhouse became very popular, users started selling their invites to people who were thirsty to get into the app and couldn't get an invite. While Airchat itself doesn't seem to be in a hurry to make money for now, the fact that its founders are also investors could quickly change the course of the app. In addition, there are some who are skeptical of Naval's efforts to establish its own social media, criticized for being close to the “center-right “ and Trump. When the Tinder experience is added to this, this suspicion increases a little more. So, how is Airchat in terms of user experience? First of all, really, at first, it feels weird just being a stalker. You see the posts in your feed one after the other, but hearing the texts in the post owners' voices creates a diversity of sound and noise because of the voice recordings from different environments. If you're looking for a quieter new social media environment, I doubt it will scare you away from Instagram or TikTok. Clubhouse was so popular for a while; probably the most important reason was that it gathered people who really had something to say, and some of us really needed to say it. In that sense, people would turn on their microphones and talk for like an hour as if they were giving a lecture. The content and the flow of the conversation was interesting, you really wanted to stay there and participate. The fact that everyone could find a community to talk to satisfied us and motivated us to keep using it. Airchat is different, it's no different from Twitter in terms of post flow and sharing, except that now you can have a voiceover of your posts. This doesn't seem to add any new originality. In fact, an early version of AirChat was launched last year, and the aim was to improve the app's vision by getting feedback from early invitees. After this testing period, they rebuilt the app from the ground up. Key Features : All posts and replies are audio recordings transcribed by the app.


Social features include following users, scrolling through a feed, replying, liking, and sharing content.


Users can share photos and videos.


When you want to reply to a post, you need to record your voice.


You can speak Turkish, and it is translated directly into English. Although the app's Turkish translation is not very good, other users have commented that the Hindi and Spanish translations are successful.


Posting with your voice can be a hand-shaking activity at first, but it's not as scary as it sounds, and you can re-record your post if you say the wrong thing.


If you're the kind of person who sends voice recordings on WhatsApp instead of texting, you might also like using it.


The ability to block and mute contacts is active now. Early adopters who feel they've found their niche are already sharing the app, and podcasters, in particular, may start to embrace Airchat as a potential additional distribution channel. But is AirChat Here to Stay? That will perhaps depend, as always, on whether people on the platform can find a community to express themselves. The Airchat stream feels like you're in a coffee shop in San Francisco because, for now, most of the users are from the tech industry. This has not been the case for Threads, Meta's new social media experiment, or Bluesky, which developed a culture of toxic communication very early on. Jack Dorsey’s, former founder and CEO of Twitter, has now stopped invitations to the Bluesky app. It's also telling that when AirChat introduced a channel feature, two of the first to pop up were "Crypto" and "e/acc," which stands for Effective Acceleration, an aggressive pro-tech movement, casting doubt on the future of the app. Looking at the content currently streaming on Airchat, you can't find many non-tech-related conversations for now. Although we use X reluctantly, we can still catch a variety of content. AirChat's naive approach to content moderation is also questionable. Naval posted the following note on his Airchat account on this subject: "We will try to put as much of the moderation tools in the hands of users as possible. "
Naval Ravikant also argues that AirChat should function like a dinner party;"You can't kick out someone who comes to your house as a guest for participating in a civilized discussion. But if that person starts shouting at you violently, it is wise to intervene. We don't want to moderate for content, but we will moderate for tone." This is another point where AirChat parallels Clubhouse. Clubhouse's approach to content moderation was even weaker because there was no way to block people. AirChat blocks any user, and muting features are now active. When Clubhouse was active, it inadvertently hosted antisemitic and misogynistic speech and was unable to intervene. With this minimalist approach to content moderation, it's easy to see AirChat's dilemma here. What happens if someone shares copyrighted audio on the platform or if someone discloses another user's confidential information? We don't know if there is a real plan in place to deal with these situations. We'll have to wait until after it goes global to see if it fades from minds and phones as quickly as Clubhouse did. While the concept behind AirChat may seem quite civilized in a romantic framework, it is a fact that we no longer trust or believe in users or the "genius" founders of social media, and it can quickly become toxic. Airchat founders Naval and former Tinder executive Brian Norgard believe that speech communication strengthens human connection. The new social media app they are working on and launching, AirChat, is meant to bridge the polarizing divides in our world. They say they designed AirChat to be simple and intimate, offering a new way for individuals to connect and engage in meaningful dialog, and the app is being touted as Silicon Valley's new obsession. It is currently open by invitation to US and EU phone numbers, but the founders have signaled that they will expand soon. AirChat touted touted AirChat was introduced at X-Twitter as a combination of Twitter and Clubhouse and has been making waves in our feeds for the past few weeks. The only difference is that instead of writing a post, you share your content by talking about it, and you don't need to gather under a different topic. The app quickly transcribes what you say, and as your followers scroll through their feeds, they hear your voice in transcription. I tried AirChat, an app that is especially talked about for the success of its transcription technology, where tech enthusiasts, leaders, entrepreneurs, and investors invite each other and quickly tighten the ranks. AirChat was developed by Naval Ravikant, an Indian entrepreneur who is also the founder of AngelList, is quite famous on Twitter, and reaches millions with his podcast where he advises on mental models, and Brian Norgard, former Tinder . They aim to bring a sincere new approach to social media by taking us away from X's increasingly toxic news feed, which is corrupted by ads and fake bots. Imagine that there are many people we know only through the internet whose posts we read but still haven't met. After following each other on AirChat, you realize that you have never heard their real voices before. The platform is built to give you the feeling that you are actually chatting with each other. Although the excitement that spread when Clubhouse was first launched seems to be happening in Airchat, we will see if it will end up similar. AirChat was developed by Naval Ravikant, an Indian entrepreneur who is also the founder of AngelList, is quite famous on Twitter, and reaches millions with his podcast where he advises on mental models, and Brian Norgard, former Tinder A Week on Airchat A Week on Airchat With Brian Norgard being a former Tinder manager, it makes me wonder how they're going to use emotion to retain users. They are given 20 invites, and you are motivated to invite people you know personally and send invites to people you would enjoy chatting with. In reality, however, we all know this is not realistic. After Clubhouse became very popular, users started selling their invites to people who were thirsty to get into the app and couldn't get an invite. started started While Airchat itself doesn't seem to be in a hurry to make money for now, the fact that its founders are also investors could quickly change the course of the app. In addition, there are some who are skeptical of Naval's efforts to establish its own social media, criticized for being close to the “center-right “ and Trump. When the Tinder experience is added to this, this suspicion increases a little more. So, how is Airchat in terms of user experience? First of all, really, at first, it feels weird just being a stalker. You see the posts in your feed one after the other, but hearing the texts in the post owners' voices creates a diversity of sound and noise because of the voice recordings from different environments. If you're looking for a quieter new social media environment, I doubt it will scare you away from Instagram or TikTok. Clubhouse was so popular for a while; probably the most important reason was that it gathered people who really had something to say, and some of us really needed to say it. In that sense, people would turn on their microphones and talk for like an hour as if they were giving a lecture. The content and the flow of the conversation was interesting, you really wanted to stay there and participate. The fact that everyone could find a community to talk to satisfied us and motivated us to keep using it. Airchat is different, it's no different from Twitter in terms of post flow and sharing, except that now you can have a voiceover of your posts. This doesn't seem to add any new originality. In fact, an early version of AirChat was launched last year, and the aim was to improve the app's vision by getting feedback from early invitees. After this testing period, they rebuilt the app from the ground up. Key Features : Key Features : All posts and replies are audio recordings transcribed by the app. Social features include following users, scrolling through a feed, replying, liking, and sharing content. Users can share photos and videos. When you want to reply to a post, you need to record your voice. You can speak Turkish, and it is translated directly into English. Although the app's Turkish translation is not very good, other users have commented that the Hindi and Spanish translations are successful. Posting with your voice can be a hand-shaking activity at first, but it's not as scary as it sounds, and you can re-record your post if you say the wrong thing. If you're the kind of person who sends voice recordings on WhatsApp instead of texting, you might also like using it. The ability to block and mute contacts is active now. All posts and replies are audio recordings transcribed by the app. All posts and replies are audio recordings transcribed by the app. Social features include following users, scrolling through a feed, replying, liking, and sharing content. Social features include following users, scrolling through a feed, replying, liking, and sharing content. Users can share photos and videos. Users can share photos and videos. When you want to reply to a post, you need to record your voice. When you want to reply to a post, you need to record your voice. You can speak Turkish, and it is translated directly into English. Although the app's Turkish translation is not very good, other users have commented that the Hindi and Spanish translations are successful. You can speak Turkish, and it is translated directly into English. Although the app's Turkish translation is not very good, other users have commented that the Hindi and Spanish translations are successful. Posting with your voice can be a hand-shaking activity at first, but it's not as scary as it sounds, and you can re-record your post if you say the wrong thing. Posting with your voice can be a hand-shaking activity at first, but it's not as scary as it sounds, and you can re-record your post if you say the wrong thing. If you're the kind of person who sends voice recordings on WhatsApp instead of texting, you might also like using it. If you're the kind of person who sends voice recordings on WhatsApp instead of texting, you might also like using it. The ability to block and mute contacts is active now. The ability to block and mute contacts is active now. Early adopters who feel they've found their niche are already sharing the app, and podcasters, in particular, may start to embrace Airchat as a potential additional distribution channel. But is AirChat Here to Stay? But is AirChat Here to Stay? That will perhaps depend, as always, on whether people on the platform can find a community to express themselves. The Airchat stream feels like you're in a coffee shop in San Francisco because, for now, most of the users are from the tech industry. This has not been the case for Threads, Meta's new social media experiment, or Bluesky , which developed a culture of toxic communication very early on. Jack Dorsey’s, former founder and CEO of Twitter, has now stopped invitations to the Bluesky app. It's also telling that when AirChat introduced a channel feature, two of the first to pop up were "Crypto" and "e/acc," which stands for Effective Acceleration , an aggressive pro-tech movement, casting doubt on the future of the app. Looking at the content currently streaming on Airchat, you can't find many non-tech-related conversations for now. Although we use X reluctantly, we can still catch a variety of content. AirChat's naive approach to content moderation is also questionable. Naval posted the following note on his Airchat account on this subject: Bluesky Bluesky Effective Acceleration Effective Acceleration "We will try to put as much of the moderation tools in the hands of users as possible. " Naval Ravikant also argues that AirChat should function like a dinner party; "You can't kick out someone who comes to your house as a guest for participating in a civilized discussion. But if that person starts shouting at you violently, it is wise to intervene. We don't want to moderate for content, but we will moderate for tone." "We will try to put as much of the moderation tools in the hands of users as possible. " "We will try to put as much of the moderation tools in the hands of users as possible. " Naval Ravikant also argues that AirChat should function like a dinner party; Naval Ravikant also argues that AirChat should function like a dinner party; "You can't kick out someone who comes to your house as a guest for participating in a civilized discussion. But if that person starts shouting at you violently, it is wise to intervene. We don't want to moderate for content, but we will moderate for tone." "You can't kick out someone who comes to your house as a guest for participating in a civilized discussion. But if that person starts shouting at you violently, it is wise to intervene. We don't want to moderate for content, but we will moderate for tone." This is another point where AirChat parallels Clubhouse. Clubhouse's approach to content moderation was even weaker because there was no way to block people. AirChat blocks any user, and muting features are now active. When Clubhouse was active, it inadvertently hosted antisemitic and misogynistic speech and was unable to intervene. antisemitic antisemitic misogynistic misogynistic With this minimalist approach to content moderation, it's easy to see AirChat's dilemma here. What happens if someone shares copyrighted audio on the platform or if someone discloses another user's confidential information? We don't know if there is a real plan in place to deal with these situations. We'll have to wait until after it goes global to see if it fades from minds and phones as quickly as Clubhouse did. While the concept behind AirChat may seem quite civilized in a romantic framework, it is a fact that we no longer trust or believe in users or the "genius" founders of social media, and it can quickly become toxic.

A Week at AirChat: Very Fresh, but Weird...

Rainbow Valley by L. M. Montgomery, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here . A WEIRD TALE CHAPTER XXIX. A WEIRD TALE On an early June evening Rainbow Valley was an entirely delightful place and the children felt it to be so, as they sat in the open glade where the bells rang elfishly on the Tree Lovers, and the White Lady shook her green tresses. The wind was laughing and whistling about them like a leal, glad-hearted comrade. The young ferns were spicy in the hollow. The wild cherry trees scattered over the valley, among the dark firs, were mistily white. The robins were whistling over in the maples behind Ingleside. Beyond, on the slopes of the Glen, were blossoming orchards, sweet and mystic and wonderful, veiled in dusk. It was spring, and young things must be glad in spring. Everybody was glad in Rainbow Valley that evening—until Mary Vance froze their blood with the story of Henry Warren’s ghost. Jem was not there. Jem spent his evenings now studying for his entrance examination in the Ingleside garret. Jerry was down near the pond, trouting. Walter had been reading Longfellow’s sea poems to the others and they were steeped in the beauty and mystery of the ships. Then they talked of what they would do when they were grown up—where they would travel—the far, fair shores they would see. Nan and Di meant to go to Europe. Walter longed for the Nile moaning past its Egyptian sands, and a glimpse of the sphinx. Faith opined rather dismally that she supposed she would have to be a missionary—old Mrs. Taylor told her she ought to be—and then she would at least see India or China, those mysterious lands of the Orient. Carl’s heart was set on African jungles. Una said nothing. She thought she would just like to stay at home. It was prettier here than anywhere else. It would be dreadful when they were all grown up and had to scatter over the world. The very idea made Una feel lonesome and homesick. But the others dreamed on delightedly until Mary Vance arrived and vanished poesy and dreams at one fell swoop. “Laws, but I’m out of puff,” she exclaimed. “I’ve run down that hill like sixty. I got an awful scare up there at the old Bailey place.” “What frightened you?” asked Di. “I dunno. I was poking about under them lilacs in the old garden, trying to see if there was any lilies-of-the-valley out yet. It was dark as a pocket there—and all at once I seen something stirring and rustling round at the other side of the garden, in those cherry bushes. It was white. I tell you I didn’t stop for a second look. I flew over the dyke quicker than quick. I was sure it was Henry Warren’s ghost.” “Who was Henry Warren?” asked Di. “And why should he have a ghost?” asked Nan. “Laws, did you never hear the story? And you brought up in the Glen. Well, wait a minute till I get by breath all back and I’ll tell you.” Walter shivered delightsomely. He loved ghost stories. Their mystery, their dramatic climaxes, their eeriness gave him a fearful, exquisite pleasure. Longfellow instantly grew tame and commonplace. He threw the book aside and stretched himself out, propped upon his elbows to listen whole-heartedly, fixing his great luminous eyes on Mary’s face. Mary wished he wouldn’t look at her so. She felt she could make a better job of the ghost story if Walter were not looking at her. She could put on several frills and invent a few artistic details to enhance the horror. As it was, she had to stick to the bare truth—or what had been told her for the truth. “Well,” she began, “you know old Tom Bailey and his wife used to live in that house up there thirty years ago. He was an awful old rip, they say, and his wife wasn’t much better. They’d no children of their own, but a sister of old Tom’s died and left a little boy—this Henry Warren—and they took him. He was about twelve when he came to them, and kind of undersized and delicate. They say Tom and his wife used him awful from the start—whipped him and starved him. Folks said they wanted him to die so’s they could get the little bit of money his mother had left for him. Henry didn’t die right off, but he begun having fits—epileps, they called ‘em—and he grew up kind of simple, till he was about eighteen. His uncle used to thrash him in that garden up there ‘cause it was back of the house where no one could see him. But folks could hear, and they say it was awful sometimes hearing poor Henry plead with his uncle not to kill him. But nobody dared interfere ‘cause old Tom was such a reprobate he’d have been sure to get square with ‘em some way. He burned the barns of a man at Harbour Head who offended him. At last Henry died and his uncle and aunt give out he died in one of his fits and that was all anybody ever knowed, but everybody said Tom had just up and killed him for keeps at last. And it wasn’t long till it got around that Henry walked. That old garden was ha’nted. He was heard there at nights, moaning and crying. Old Tom and his wife got out—went out West and never came back. The place got such a bad name nobody’d buy or rent it. That’s why it’s all gone to ruin. That was thirty years ago, but Henry Warren’s ghost ha’nts it yet.” “Do you believe that?” asked Nan scornfully. “I don’t.” “Well, good people have seen him—and heard him.” retorted Mary. “They say he appears and grovels on the ground and holds you by the legs and gibbers and moans like he did when he was alive. I thought of that as soon as I seen that white thing in the bushes and thought if it caught me like that and moaned I’d drop down dead on the spot. So I cut and run. It mightn’t have been his ghost, but I wasn’t going to take any chances with a ha’nt.” “It was likely old Mrs. Stimson’s white calf,” laughed Di. “It pastures in that garden—I’ve seen it.” “Maybe so. But I’m not going home through the Bailey garden any more. Here’s Jerry with a big string of trout and it’s my turn to cook them. Jem and Jerry both say I’m the best cook in the Glen. And Cornelia told me I could bring up this batch of cookies. I all but dropped them when I saw Henry’s ghost.” Jerry hooted when he heard the ghost story—which Mary repeated as she fried the fish, touching it up a trifle or so, since Walter had gone to help Faith to set the table. It made no impression on Jerry, but Faith and Una and Carl had been secretly much frightened, though they would never have given in to it. It was all right as long as the others were with them in the valley: but when the feast was over and the shadows fell they quaked with remembrance. Jerry went up to Ingleside with the Blythes to see Jem about something, and Mary Vance went around that way home. So Faith and Una and Carl had to go back to the manse alone. They walked very close together and gave the old Bailey garden a wide berth. They did not believe that it was haunted, of course, but they would not go near it for all that. About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. L. M. Montgomery (2004). Rainbow Valley. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/5343/pg5343-images.html This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org , located at https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html.

A WEIRD TALE

That's Ryan Kaji. He's 8 years old. Ryan has more views, fans, and subscribers than you'll ever get in your life. Is that a good thing though? The answer might be that it depends on who you ask. Picture this. Your kid comes up to you and says "Mummy/Daddy, I wanna be a YouTube star! Can you post a video of me on YouTube, pleeeeeeease?". What do you say? Do you oblige, refuse, explain why you don't think it's a good idea, or why maybe you think it is a good idea but that in all honesty you just can't be bothered doing it right there and then? I've faced this exact dilemma and it's not a unique one. My daughter is the exact age as Ryan. My friends that have kids my daughter's age have been asked this same question by their kids too. A few of them gave in and filmed adorable but potato quality videos of their kid playing video games and uploaded it to YouTube. My issue isn't the quality. Obviously. The issue is that it is friggin creepy. Filming your rugrat, uploading said rugrat to the Web for the entire world to see and turning your new-found hobby into a multi-million dollar enterprise, amassing tens of billions of views, millions of subscribers, selling thousands of toys, getting into legal battles (Ryan Toys Review)...all with your kid, being the mascot of your gargantuan new enterprise forever and into DIGITAL INFINITY. That's weird bro. Knowingly or not you've just nullified any potential right to privacy that your kid had. I'm not pretending I'm some kind of moral arbiter. As a parent we all make mistakes and I am certainly far from perfect. Just ask my wife. This thing just strikes me as one of those situations that's a really bad idea. And it might not be apparent from the start to the parents. Or anyone else, but I think in due course we'll all be scratching our chins and wondering why we ever thought it was a good idea. So as I was saying; My daughter asked me directly if she was allowed to make a video of herself on her tablet and upload it to YouTube because, well, her friend had a channel and she wanted to as well. Monkey see monkey do. started This was followed up by me asking her a couple of weeks later what she wanted to do when she grew up and the response was to be a YouTube star! I explained to my daughter that I didn't think it was a good idea because anything that you upload to YouTube can be seen by anyone in the world, it can be saved, downloaded and distributed and for a little kid that might be dangerous because there a naughty people out there, naughty people have access to YouTube too. She understood. That was a couple of years ago. She's a little bit older now and the discussion has come up again. She's a little older but a lot smarter and so now the conversation has changed to how she could potentially upload videos to the Internet while being safe. We've thrown around some ideas and its a work in progress. The point being is that if I don't need to cite facts from FBI.gov or statistics about a global pedophile and child pornography networks to my eight-year-old when discussing the potential downside in uploading personal and private information online and she Why don't the parents of these kids get it? gets it. Or am I just naive and they do get it but don't care because y'know money? I honestly don't know. A bigger question: What is YouTube doing about it? What are the global content giants doing about children and kid-content on their networks? Have they thought about it? Is it just going to be one of those 'costs of doing business' situations in a few years? Because I suppose eventually kids like Ryan might grow up and decide they're not too happy that their parents uploaded their entire lives for the world to see. AR Contributing community member and investor of, https://safenetwork.tech/ Image source: Uploaded by: Ryan ToysReview,Aug 6, 2018 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_8VwSlyxuA #How to show your support? Consider buying me a beer or coffee with Crypto — Options below. 0xa6F834525b5b44a7F1188B4D1323dDee865fc643 Ethereum ETH: bc1qkckgslfczefjw9fvg7c2lmpgk9g5q9pyqk4nmy Bitcoin BTC: 4B23PZr53mYGNXzLvNXh5mcSQ5ABwi2RaEc2jfZLwj3vKgrQ7TmjsGNLoeKTnseUZUbeucpv3bihuYWLS1DtQnsvVWxFjtH Monero XMR: bnb10lxgm4k34aqgsqyxjrf80de9yupm3n9fd0rr9z Bincance BNB: addr1qy7rusmc3l03mnds6mhv7v0c6qh3hqgcwwhqqgn7r0e0pufu8eph3r7lrhxmp4hweucl35p0rwq3suawqq38uxlj7rcs5574fv Cardano ADA: #Andrei R, 🔥Crypto Fireside P.S. This is not financial advice, DYOR. P.P.S My vested financial interests in Crypto? I own FIRO and that is all :)

Posting Videos of Your Kids on YouTube Is Weird

Online forums are filled with interesting thoughts and questions. Yet, once in a while, some strange ideas pops-up. In this slogging thread, our community shares a few of the weirdest questions they've seen asked online. This Slogging thread by Mónica Freitas, Linh Smooke, Sara Pinto, Jack Boreham and Abeer occurred in slogging's official #random channel, and has been edited for readability. Mónica Freitas Dec 22, 2021, 3:57 PM In this thread, I want you to share the strangest questions you've seen on forums or social media. Get creative. Let's shock each other before 2022. BTW the answer is 190 cm or 6 foot 2 (according to the internet). "How tall is Donald Trump?" and other weird questions online. :rolling_on_the_floor_laughing: 1 Linh Smooke Dec 22, 2021, 4:07 PM I would like the people who make this question popular to share their secrets! “How come I never get sick” . 😂 1 Sara Pinto Dec 22, 2021, 4:14 PM Mónica Freitas, "What happens if you eat plastic"... Is anyone planning on doing it and just balancing out the chances? Haha. 😂 2 Mónica Freitas Dec 23, 2021, 3:06 PM Linh Smooke, HOW? I feel like I'm constantly sick during the wintertime. I think we need to reach out to those people. This calls for an investigation. 😂 1 Mónica Freitas Dec 23, 2021, 3:08 PM Sara Pinto, Oh, to be the most "developed" living being on earth...ahahaha, I think this follows the same line of "what happens if you swallow gum." 😂 1 Mónica Freitas Dec 23, 2021, 3:09 PM I also appreciate this question: what happens if a woman takes viagra? It seems like a lot of people are experimenting 🤔 Sara Pinto Dec 23, 2021, 5:57 PM Mónica Freitas, so, I tried to search for weird questions in Portuguese, I just typed the start of a question, and the first thing that popped up was: " Why don't animals drive?" 😂 Important question! Everyone should try this in their first language. Mónica Freitas Dec 27, 2021, 2:49 PM Sara Pinto, ahahaha why don't they? I want to know! Mónica Freitas Dec 27, 2021, 2:51 PM Sara Pinto, for me it was: why does it have to be like this? I guess people are slightly depressed at the moment. Sara Pinto Dec 27, 2021, 3:00 PM Mónica Freitas, personally, I think it would be kinda weird to see a duck turn the wheel with its wings 😂 😂 1 Sara Pinto Dec 27, 2021, 3:05 PM Mónica Freitas, I see there are a wide variety of questions. What are the weirdest ones you have found? Khamisi Hamisi, Jack Boreham Mónica Freitas Dec 27, 2021, 3:15 PM I think it would be adorable, ahah. Jack Boreham Jan 1, 2022, 10:54 AM Why are animals important? Jack Boreham Jan 1, 2022, 10:54 AM What kind of question is that? Mónica Freitas Jan 3, 2022, 2:21 PM Jack Boreham, my bet on the first one is that it is connected to vegetarianism. Someone is probably researching reasons to change their diet. Mónica Freitas Jan 3, 2022, 2:22 PM Jack Boreham, have you seen the second one online? Ahahaha Jack Boreham Jan 3, 2022, 9:50 PM Mónica Freitas 😜 Mónica Freitas Jan 5, 2022, 3:08 PM Apparently, there's a lot of people trying to figure how the difference between a restaurant and a cafe. Mónica Freitas Jan 5, 2022, 3:11 PM Also, how to test rice purity is trending. Mónica Freitas Jan 5, 2022, 3:12 PM Abeer, what weird questions have you seen online? Abeer Jan 5, 2022, 6:03 PM Mónica Freitas, I remember seeing screenshots from Yahoo Answers with some of the most ridiculous questions. The only one I can think of off the top of my head is “Does looking at a picture of the sun hurt your eyes?” 😂 1 Mónica Freitas Jan 6, 2022, 12:46 PM Abeer Nah...is that for real?! Ahahah 😂 1

"How Tall is Donald Trump?" and Other Weird Questions Online

If you've been a part of the crypto sphere over these last twelve months, chances are; you've substantially increased your net worth, and you've seen some stuff, a) b) maaaaan... A long, long time ago (around about June) I started a silly little show called 'Nevermind the Shitcoins'. In just 18 episodes (not including bonuses and trailers), we've covered some of the craziest crypto and blockchain stories from around the magical internet money world, in a game we call 'Non-Fungible News'. So, what better way to kick off 2022, than by taking a quick peek over our collective shoulders at the weird and wonderful stories from last year? Maybe we'll spot a trend or two, maybe we'll just chuckle, either way, in no particular order: Mr Goxx and his Goxx Box Ever feel like you're no better a trader than a hamster on a wheel? Well, you're probably right. Mr Goxx found celebrity status this summer as his owner decided to hand over his private keys to the little furball. And what do you know? Mr Goxx was pretty good, even managing to make money on Tron somehow. Sadly, he passed away in November this year, maybe a side effect of the mid-November BTC price drop? Tungsten Cubes Psst, hey, kid! Looking for alternative investment vehicles to diversify your digital pixel art portfolio? Well, you're in luck then! Let me introduce you to the wonderful world of Tungsten cubes! They're cubes... and, well, they're made of Tungsten. What's not to love!? Crypto aficionados went doolally for the precious dense lumps this summer, oddly enough, following a strange incident with a typo and funny man of CoinDesk, Neeraj. And for those who like their dense lumps larger, Midwest Tungsten are offering time-share NFTs which grant one day a year access to their safely stored 14 inch cube. A bargain at ~$250,000, right? I'll put you down for 2. Canadian Codeslaw 2021 saw more DeFi protocol hacks than ever before, and while many of these exploits resulted in relatively happy endings with funds being returned, others did not. In October, a Canadian teenage smarty pants managed to swipe a cool $16m in a hack before being subsequently doxxed by the internet. However, things got interesting (depending on your stance), when little Canadian Andy point blank refused to return the funds, claiming 'code is law', and that he would fight this case 'to the death'. Unfortunately for him, however, it seems the Canadian law enforcement aren't convinced yet, and a warrant was recently issued for his arrest. *Before you start feeling sorry for little Andy, I probably wouldn't. When researching for the podcast I also found out the kid is a horrible white supremacist proud boy type. So, you know, not every story is as black and white as it seems. Vitalik's Infinite Garden Once upon a time, there was a half stick insect man, called Vitalik Buterin. One day, he got very mad about his World of Warcraft character being nerfed in a new update. But he didn't get mad, no, he got Ethereum. I'm sure the makers of the real movie will do a better job of the tagline with the 1000+ Eth they raised, but I can't be too far off the mark. 'Ethereum: The infinite Garden', probably won't be coming to cinemas near you anytime soon. Maybe you can stream it somewhere though. Or not. I mean, life's short. Eth to Fight Pirates, Bitcoin to fight Cocaine Dealers Here's a two-for-one to round things off, it seems crypto is much more useful than we even us blockchain dreamers dared believe, according to Bill Gates and a Columbian politician at least. Sadly, whilst Gates is only planning on fighting online pirates with the Ethereum blockchain, Colombian officials are much more literal in their claims. They plan to follow in El Salvador's footsteps, and make mining Bitcoin using the countries numerous waterfalls more profitable than legacy trades the nation is otherwise famous for. Why not, eh? Nevermind the Shitcoins If you enjoyed these oddball stories, you might also like: Look at all those happy faces (including Hackernoon's own Utsav and Amy!) enjoying life and cracking wise about crypto, why wouldn't you want to give it a try? Link -> nevermindtheshitcoins.com I'll be announcing details for series 3 soon, so watch this space!

The Weirdest Non-Fungible Crypto News Stories of 2021

Gotcha with a catchy title. Punchline: it's all weird. Case closed. Nah just kidding but since you're here to stay a little while, hear me out. I'll run through some cross-language similarities but mostly point out key differences and by the end you may just agree that not all that is weird is bad. After all some of the weirdness is uniquely powerful and to harness it you'll just have to deal with the weird parts of JavaScript. JavaScript powers the Internet. Sure HTML is the only in-browser language that's absolutely necessary to render web pages in a web browser, but go ahead and disable JavaScript in yours and see how far you can get along on your daily routine. In fact users can neither sign up nor login to hackernoon.com without it enabled. Even with all of JavaScript's power and necessity many people claim to dislike the language, with lower level programmers especially scornful of it. A lot of the disdain has to do with how this language behaves differently than others, and plenty of perplexing screenshots float around the web to make the case. console.log() Comparing Languages For many, a first ever glance at a JavaScript file will quickly resemble other programming language files. Sometimes code is imported from other locations at the top. Then comes functions and variables. Curly brace syntax is commonplace for many developers and is even quickly intuitive to Python monolinguists. For those well-versed in JavaScript (JS) it may come as a surprise that keywords promoted for use in modern JS (ES6+) are not unique. "async", "await" and "const" are reserved words in multiple other languages, and the keyword "let" was used all the way back in 1964 with the original version of BASIC. Even lesser used JS keywords like "abstract", "implements", "protected" and "volatile" have long been used elsewhere. JavaScript is defined as being single-threaded with a synchronous execution stack; however, awaitable callbacks are made possible by modern browsers resembling multi-threaded asynchronous computing environments. That's pretty weird because an implementation seems to invalidate its definition. But definitions (nitpicking) aside, JS is dynamically typed, a concept shared with Python (PHP, Ruby and more), and differs from the many other popular programming languages which are statically typed. Dynamic Typing Unlike synchronicity, JS holds true to its dynamic typing definition. Values cannot be defined with mandated types such as integer and string unless using TypeScript, a superset of JavaScript. A great deal of JavaScript's weird parts stem from this inability to explicitly declare value types. If you've been writing JS for a while you've probably experienced this: + + + 222 22 // returns 244 "222" "22" // returns "22222" "222" 22 // returns "22222" The addition operator concatenates numeric strings, as well as numeric strings with numbers. This behavior is consistent with the addition of non-numeric character strings: + "ab" "cd" // returns "abcd" One may assume then that the subtraction operator would deconcatenate numeric strings and numbers, thus returning "2" in the following case: - "222" 22 // returns 200 Weird, right? Not exactly, it's pretty logical upon further investigation. If subtraction behaved like addition, you wouldn't be able to make sense of this: - "222" 11 // returns 211 Sense is made of it though by returning 211. There's no way instead for deconcatenation to make sense of it, just like there's no way to make sense of this: - "ab" "cd" // returns NaN So if it makes sense, what's the big deal? Well that's what I wonder anyway, Wikipedia states that some of the above are "quirks that have been subject to criticism" ( ). I'll counter with the opposite, the behavior above makes sense when considering bigger pictures. Enough of the sensibility though because there are certainly cases of JS behaving weirdly, especially involving data types: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JavaScript#Weakly_typed [] + [] [] + // returns "" false // returns "false" Empty array and Boolean operations returning strings leaves me wondering how strings are implied. In the first case above I'd expect the return of a single array containing values from both arrays, and in the second case an error. Playing with the first case a little further: [ , ] + [ , ] 1 2 3 4 // returns "1,23,4" Again, I'd prefer an array containing those four numbers rather than the concatenation. For my wish to be granted I would instead need to do this: .toString() [ , ].concat([ , ]) 1 2 3 4 // returns [1, 2, 3, 4] Yeah, that's weird. I'd like to see the above two examples return what the other returns but as they say: it is what it is. Back to adding an array and a Boolean, again I'd prefer to see an error and not a string containing false. In the same vein if I wanted an array containing a false Boolean I'd think the addition assignment operator (+=) would do the trick: array = []
array += array var false // returns "false" But it doesn't. Again, another silly string. Oh well, I don't make the rules but here are just a couple more: === < == <= typeof NaN // returns "number" NaN NaN // returns false null 0 // returns false null 0 // returns false null 0 // returns true Look, there's a seemingly infinite amount of examples like these. Google "the weird parts of JavaScript", it's a little overplayed. My recommendation is to read what others have written before me, experiment with DevTools' console to build intuition, values during development and send front-end errors to your server during production. Who's adding arrays and Booleans, anyway? Maybe use a little Python to clean up your data because as they also say: garbage in, garbage out. console.log() Web Browsers Statements upon JS's weird parts often gloss over or omit entirely the language's purpose. JavaScript along with HTML and CSS (known as client-side languages) work together directly on web browsers while other server-side languages can generate code in the aforementioned client-side languages. JavaScript was extended to work server-side with Node.js over a decade ago. JavaScript can create, modify and delete HTML elements, as well as set style similarly to CSS. Web browsers are obviously very complex and JavaScript is a common denominator because it has many capabilities, and even responsibilities that others do not. Take a look at Mozilla's JavaScript documentation ( ) and you may notice the usual programming language topics outlining statements, operators, functions, classes and errors, but you'll also find that an enormous amount of the language pertains specifically to the control of web browsers and Internet processes. Functions, objects and situations involved with JS differ fundamentally from C++, Java and other ubiquitous languages where runtime environments are often thought of in the context of operating systems like Windows and Linux. Instead considering that JavaScript mostly runs in browsers, developers must become accustomed to the workings of Chrome, Safari, Samsung Internet, Edge, Firefox and more. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript Many languages send information from web servers to web pages. JavaScript is the language responsible for the opposite, sending information from web pages to web servers. It's doing a good job of making the web intimately interactive, and technology like WebSockets continually works to expand these more dynamic capabilities. Uniqueness (weirdness?) further stems from the fascinating functionality of Node.js (technically an abstraction upon JS). As of 12/23/2020, npm's all-the-package-names lists an astonishing total of 1,106,444 packages. Consider that at the same time Python, often touted for its extensibility, has 279,386 Python Package Index (PyPI) listings. It's undeniable that JavaScript and its tools are more functional than many like to admit, and I'll claim even more functional than many other languages labeled "functional" when it comes to everyday use. After all, scripting languages are made to get stuff done. HTML has its weird parts, maybe you didn't know a variable can be defined in HTML with a tag. There are a number of lesser-known tags like , , and (check out for more). Adopting their use makes the task of creating search engine indexes (and snippets) easier. You're probably used to wrapping everything in tags on pages instead of using more descriptive , , and tags but admittedly, old habits do die hard. CSS has its weird parts too; vertical padding with regard to percentage is relative to the parent element's width, not height. Finally, a little Python: <var> <abbr> <dfn> <hgroup> <ins> https://dev.to/christopherkade/unusual-html-tags-worth-knowing-3gbk <div> <header> <main> <section> <footer> >>> a = >>> b = >>> a is b
True
>>> a = >>> b = >>> a is b
False
>>> a = ; b = >>> a is b
True 256 256 257 257 257 257 I rest my case. Conclusion Are the dynamic typing problems any concern at all? Yes, of course at times they present problems for some people in some situations. But frankly some of the oddities floating around are so odd that people should deal with them simply by avoiding them. And by sticking to triple equals ( ) and maybe strict mode ( ) too. Write code that's conceptually more traditional, even if it is more verbose, and you will likely not only have more workable code but may also spend less time debugging. Verbosity can actually be brevity. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Equality_comparisons_and_sameness https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Strict_mode Otherwise to conclude it may be safe to assume that the language comes across a little weird because it does so many things that other languages don't. Considering we can quickly transport information comprised of ones and zeros and whatnot across space and time using various languages, it's all weird. So to harness the power of JavaScript, which is the power of the web, learn some about the weird parts but don't harp on them, in turn you'll be more powerful and less weirded out.

The Weird Parts of JavaScript

Japan is home to many things, but perhaps its most unique element is its unparalleled otaku (nerd) culture. With one of the largest video game markets and industries in the world, Japan is home to hundreds of video game developers and publishers, each trying to one-up the other and make a game unlike anything else that has come before it. This cold war within the Japanese video game industry has led to some of the wackiest, craziest and weirdest games ever to be played. Just when you thought you’ve seen it all, Japan comes out with something no one in their wildest dreams would ever think of. From eliminating vampires by stripping off their clothes to playing pinball with falling boogers, the games on this list are guaranteed to have you scratching your head in confusion and facepalming out of astonishment. All of these games are available outside of Japan (if that’s where you’re reading this) and are playable in English. : this post contains affiliate links to product pages Disclaimer 1. Mister Mosquito Box cover for Mister Mosquito. Our first game is an insect simulator developed by Zoom Inc. that was originally released in 2001 on the PlayStation 2 in Japan and then localized in English by Eidos Interactive’s Fresh Games. While it had great sales and reception in Japan, it didn’t get much hype in North America or Europe. However, it has since gained a cult following and is regarded as one of the weirdest and craziest games ever made. In Mister Mosquito (known as Mr Moskeeto in PAL regions and in its home market as Ka, the Japanese word for the bug) you play the part of a pest that everyone knows and hates with a fury: the common house mosquito. … regarded as one of the weirdest and craziest games ever made. Gameplay consists of terrorizing the Yamada family in the comfort of their own home by sucking their blood while trying not to get smacked in the process. In order to find the perfect opening, players can also distract members of the Yamada family by turning off the lights, switching on electronics or simply waiting until the target falls asleep. Due to its low sales and cult following, Mister Mosquito has become something of a collectible item in the West, with used copies selling on eBay for upwards of US$70. If you ever see the game at an affordable price, be sure to pick it up — Mister Mosquito is a must-play for retro game lovers. Good for: PlayStation 2 lovers and those who like simulator games. Available on: and Amazon eBay 2. Chibi-Robo One of the weirdest Japanese games that received positive reception outside the country is Chibi-Robo. Originally released on the Nintendo GameCube, Chibi-Robo is about one tiny robot’s mission to bring happiness to the Sanderson family while fighting off evil robots programmed by a toy company. In Chibi-Robo, players must collect happy points by bringing happiness to the Sanderson family. How does a tiny robot make a family of three happy? By doing mundane chores around the house, of course. The gameplay of Chibi-Robo revolves around picking up trash, scrubbing the floors and tending the garden among other tedious household tasks. How does a tiny robot make a family of three happy? By doing mundane chores around the house, of course. Despite this wacky premise, the game received an 8.2 out of 10 rating on IGN and 8 out of 10 rating on Eurogamer. Numerous sequels have been made and released on the Nintendo DS and 3DS, but the original Chibi-Robo remains the highest rated game in the series. Good for: People who enjoy silly and original gameplay and lovers of Nintendo. Available on: and Amazon eBay 3. Food Fantasy Food Fantasy. With personified foods, restaurant management and evil creatures roaming the world, Food Fantasy is one of the most unique mobile games on the market. It was developed by Elex Wireless and just published in the spring of 2018. Food Fantasy is an eclectic mix of game styles comprising Japanese role playing games (JRPG), a business and a cooking simulator all mixed into a bizarre, yet incredibly fun, package. In this mobile game, you are part cook, part restaurant manager and part adventurer. While running your restaurant you must also manage staff, create new recipes and fight evil creatures. Battles are fought using summoned food souls, personified food spirits that both fight your battles and staff your restaurant. Food Fantasy is a mobile game that can be played on the go for a few minutes or even hours at a time. Good for: People interested in JRPGs and cooking simulators. Available on: or Android iOS 4. Akiba’s Trip: Undead and Undressed Akiba’s Trip: Undead and Undressed. A play on the words “Akiba” and “strip,” Akiba’s Trip is an action-adventure game set in the Akihabara Strip of Tokyo. Furthermore, the gameplay consists of attacking enemies by stripping off their clothes. Developed by Acquire Corp. — a veteran action game developer that brought us the Tenchu and Way of the Samurai series — Akiba’s Trip: Undead and Undressed employs smooth and enjoyable real-time battle mechanics. While the game’s premise may just sound like an unseemly excuse to get a look at animated undergarments, the plague of monsters infesting the Akiba Strip leaves the main character, Nanashi, with no other choice. … the gameplay consists of attacking enemies by stripping off their clothes. In Akiba’s Trip: Undead and Undressed, players fight against synthetic humanoid vampire-like creatures known as Synthisters, who — instead of feeding on blood — suck away people’s sociability and take away their will to live. The only way to defeat these creatures is to weaken them with physical attacks and strip off their clothes, exposing them to their biggest weakness: sunlight. Good for: People who like action or beat-em-up games and people who want to see an incredibly accurate recreation of Akihabara’s Electric Town Available on: , and . Amazon Steam PlayStation Store 5. Wario Ware Gold Wario Ware Gold. Easily one of the weirdest games ever released by Nintendo, the Wario Ware series was made for people with short attention spans or very, very little time on their hands. Wario Ware Gold is the newest release of the series and is available on the Nintendo 3DS. Like every other title in the series, Wario Ware Gold consists of a series of minigames, each lasting around three to five seconds with boss levels lasting around 10 to 20 seconds. Usually, games start with just a single word as explanation such as: “stop,” “catch,” “stomp” or no explanation at all. From picking your nose to barbecuing ham, there’s no predicting what game will come next. Because Wario Ware Gold is the latest release of the series, it encompasses all the minigames from the releases that came before it and includes a total of over 300 minigames. Not only are these games fast, but they are also nonsensical and wildly crazy. From picking your nose to barbecuing ham, there’s no predicting what game will come next. While the premise sounds a little bit unorthodox, Wario Ware games are the perfect games to play on-the-go, during your commute or when you’re in the waiting room. Because there is no continuity between each minigame, you can literally pick up and play Wario Ware anywhere for seconds, minutes or hours at a time. Good for: Those with little time to play, people who like fidget spinners and gamers with little to no attention spans. Available on: Numerous titles are available on and the Amazon Nintendo eShop Japan is home to many over-the-top games — some that may not be entirely appropriate for viewing at work or in public, which may be why one of your favorite games may not have made this list. While all of these games are worth a try, I think that Wario Ware is a game like no other and should definitely be next on your list of games to play — especially if you’re a Nintendo 3DS owner. Also published on: https://blog.gaijinpot.com/5-of-the-weirdest-japanese-video-games-you-can-play-in-english/

The Weird and Wonderful World of AI Art

Tracking royalties and other IP rights across the growing cohort of streaming platforms can be very tedious. While blockchain can’t be one cure-all fix, it can still deliver feasible benefits to production, publishing and distribution of creative assets. The woes of centralized streaming platforms spiked by the pandemic. Do not let mislead you. The truth is that seemingly well-off on the surface, the streaming and entertainment giants are not immune to hardships brought along by the coronavirus. Already a precarious territory, the recent premier’s delays, , the rise of fake news, and the ad revenue loss, all have their toll on the delicate entertainment business. Other ubiquitous pain points already present in the industry - lack of funding and tracing creators’ revenues, fake news - were only accelerated by the COVID situation. Netflix’s record revenue massive lay-offs As the pandemic rolls around the movie studios and newsrooms, does blockchain technology hold any promise for real-world copyright and licensing applications? Reducing the complexity of media ownership. Ever wondered why there are three (or is it four?) versions of HBO? It’s simply not that easy for companies to transition from the cable era of home entertainment to the Netflix age. And managing copyright takes up a big part of this confusion. Having a unified way to store and transfer broadcasting rights between streaming giants could greatly reduce the coordination overheads and costs associated with IP governance. With a blockchain database acting as a simple register of ownership, streaming companies will have a peace of mind when dealing with complex, multi-party copyright transactions. Can blockchains finally defeat the piracy? Digital piracy, fraudulent copies, infringed studio intellectual property (IP), and duplication of digital items cost the US film and TV industry . an estimated $71 billion annually Apparently, so far there has been no instance of a blockchain that was useful for mitigating IP infringements. Still, there's one thing blockchains can surely do - redefining the IP ownership through encrypted tracking and time stamping of royalties. In doing so, intellectual property rights can be properly tracked, and digital rights management companies can access the full record of transactions made. Self-executing contracts to streamline license management. Another strong value prop is the automatic transfer of IP rights and execution of license payments enabled by smart contracts. A blockchain-derived content identifier, when used in the service of creators and their works, could become one of many unique identifiers already in place, such as ISBN, ORCID, DOI, ISNI, ISRC and so forth. Techcrunch Self-executing licensing contracts enforce the license terms and provide updates in the reversion of rights back to a creator, or transfer to a new agent, or other recorded rights transactions of that sort. IP rights are properly tracked: digital rights management companies can access the full record of transactions at any point and use the records log to prove ownership in court. A blockchain-powered platform for digital license management allows publishing companies to manage and store IP rights and license terms on a time-stamped ledger. Its immutable data access log of read/write permissions makes it easier to legally enforce license terms once an infringement occurs. Steven Pu, CEO of . Taraxa Creative assets management free from industry intermediaries. that although the US music industry spend is at an all-time high of $43 billion a year; the artist only takes home $5 billion, or about 12 percent. CitiGroup reports Primarily relationship-based, the industry’s middlemen margins and stealth profits often puts creators and distributors at a disadvantage. Blockchain offers a path to resolve the problem of fair revenue distribution for digital marketplaces, distributors and streaming platforms alike. Direct micropayments to artists for every stream of their content and complete control of their creations is a strong value proposition for every platform seeking to onboard new creators or sign new licensing deals. Infused with a tamper-free audit log, they will have an opportunity to generate new revenue streams and a significant uptick in users. From transparency of revenues in streaming and distribution to combatting fake news. Blockchain expert Kevin Gannon, tech lead and solutions architect expands on digital identities powered up by DLT: PwC blockchain "When it comes to the area of deepfake, emerging technologies like blockchain can come to the fore to provide some levels of security, approval and validation. Blockchain has typically been touted as a visibility and transparency play, where once something is done, the "who" and "when" becomes apparent. But it can go further! When a user with a digital identity wants to do something, they could be prompted for proof of their identity before access to something (like funds) can be granted." Gannon continues: "From another angle, the actual authenticity of video, audio files can be proven via a blockchain application where the hash of certain files can be compared against the originals. Though it is not a silver bullet, and as always, the adoption and applicability of the technology in the right way is key. From a security perspective, more open data mechanisms (like a public ledger) have an increased attack surface, so inherent protection can't just be assumed. But enhancing security protocols around the approvals process, where smart contracts could also come into play, can strengthen such processes. In addition, at a more technical level, by applying multiple signature transactions in the processes can mean that even if one identity is compromised, there is more than one identity needed to provide ultimate approval." Used as supplementary to existing streaming and distribution platforms, blockchain-powered add-ons and improvements are relatively fast to implement, but can greatly accelerate the efficiency of legacy systems. Disclaimer: the author of this story has vested interest in Taraxa.

Streaming just got weird. Can blockchain fix it? 

I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum [theory] - Richard Feynman [1] [2] Below are some fun & weird Quantum facts Unlike Classical bit, quantum bit can be in both stages, 0 & 1 at the same time. Isn’t it kinda unreal superposition A Quantum bit can not be copied like classical bits A Quantum bit can get altered when measured, and it can affect other unmeasured bits as well Quantum data can’t be stored and imported. Quantum data must be prepared as layers in your Quantum circuit You can entangle two quantum particles & after that, even if they are on different planet, or on the opposite side of the universe, you could instantaneously teleport information (Quantum state) from one particle to other. [Quantum Entanglement] A spooky action at a distance ;) [Einstein’s Brilliant Mistake] Quantum Mechanics and Classical Mechanics don’t agree all the time. As per classical mechanics, If we keep a particle (atomic scale) behind a barrier and unless it gets enough energy to pass through barrier it will not be able to do so. Whereas Quantum Mechanics says, even without that enough energy the partial can cross the barrier (though with a very small probability). This is called . Quantum Tunneling Time Travel anyone ? [check & ] this this Quantum Computers would be able to break many of today’s encryption/ decryption techniques. But worry not, we are decades away from such a day, but the same techniques should be able to give us better algorithms : Quantum Computer Solving a problem which is infeasible for classical computer Quantum Supremacy It took 54 Qubit in Google’s Sycamore processor for Achieving Quantum Supremacy. [did it] [or it did not] The difference was not much though ;) It took Google’s Sycamore just 200 seconds what the fastest classical supercomputer would do in 10,000 years. Just like a Qubit, any Quantum Computing Claim Online could be both True and False at the same time. 1. When , . Google claims Quantum Supremacy IBM doubts it 2. When Google, IBM & Microsoft are racing against each other for Quantum Supremacy, many big physicist think they are not focusing in right direction. [read] The biggest challenge for Quantum System is to maintain the Quantum state of Qubits, i.e. keeping a Qubit pristine. It is difficult to keep Quantum system unaffected from its surrounding environment, which leads to loss of Quantum information (decoherence). With every addition of a Qubit to a system this problem (noise) increases, and just to make Good system, it 50 (logical) qubit needs around 1000s to millions of physical (noisy) Qubits To keep these systems stable, they are kept at extremely low temperatures like — 460 degrees Fahrenheit. [check] All of the above information does not mean, Quantum computers would replace our classical computers, but there would be mixed computation systems, where both the type computers would help each other solve the problems they individually are good at. Similar to CPU + GPU systems today, in Quantum era, we would have CPU + GPU + QPU (Quantum Processing Unit) systems. There would still be task on which Classical computers would be faster than Quantum computers and vice versa. But at the end of the day, IBM has put its 5 Qubit system free on internet for anyone to play with, check out https://quantum-computing.ibm.com/ I hope after reading this post, you are in both states simultaneously, “interested” as well as “not interested” in learning more about Quantum Computing. Check more @: https://medium.com/@adubey40/classical-bit-vs-qubit-fa6c6c06e8f https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/02/26/916744/quantum-computer-race-ibm-google/ https://www.nature.com/news/quantum-teleportation-is-even-weirder-than-you-think-1.22321 https://youtu.be/-o9AhIz1uvo

Quantum Facts: Funny And Weird At the Same Time

Yes you read it correctly! I am calling my transition from being an MBA to being the Analytics Manager in a well known consumer retail brand a "WEIRD" one. And why do I say that? Because during my 5 year journey in data science, I have had the opportunity to work with a lot of business stakeholders like marketing head, brand managers, sales heads etc. and many a times they have asked me about my educational background. I would like to think that they asked this because of my ability to present the solutions keeping the business context and execution feasibility in mind. Well, the reason for asking this might be different for every individual, when I tell them that I am an MBA, their reply has always been the same, which is " " And hence I decided to write this post to share my thoughts over 2 things: What made you choose a technical career path after pursuing MBA? 1. Data science is not a completely technical field. Along with knowing Statistics, Algebra, Python, and the ever confusing "Confusion Matrix", it is equally important to understand business concepts like customer churn, campaign ROI, product bundling, merchandise mix etc. to be a successful professional in this domain 2. The other reason is I wanted to reach out to many non technical professionals who are from diverse educational backgrounds and share my learning path to make my way into this challenging yet super interesting career and how they can do it too. Let's start with understanding The Business Side of Data Science with examples of few real life projects: This project was assigned to me by the marketing head of one of the business divisions and the objective was to bucket the 10 million customer base into 5 to 6 segments where each segment defines the profile of consumers lying in that segment. For example one segments can be customers who seek discount and make a purchase only during offer periods, another segment can be consumers who have an affinity towards purchasing fashionable and high value products etc. Now when I speak to and interview the aspiring data science professionals, they know about various clustering techniques like K-means and Hierarchical clustering but have very limited understanding of how to approach this kind of a project in a real world scenario. Trust me, running these algorithms constitutes a small part to the success of such projects. The key is to define: 1. Customer Segmentation: Eg. Average discount%, average bill value, special occasion buyers, age group, loyalty with the brand etc. These are few variables which I used during the data preparation stage and this is where my MBA knowledge gives me an edge What variables will you use to segment customers? Will the segments be used to target customers with personalized product offerings or is it to understand their buying behavior? Is this intended to be only a demographic based segmentation or should I include their transaction profiles as well? Again, these are the questions which you as a data scientist would need to ask the business person. They will generally give you a very broad objective and if you don't ask such questions upfront, the project can go through a lot of unnecessary iterations. How will the business use these segments? Once I got my answer to the above mentioned questions, I was able to do      the data preparation with ease and also profile the segments clearly which were ready to be consumed by the marketing team. This was another key project where my business acumen helped me deliver an effective output. The business question in this case was to identify customers who are likely to churn. Here again asking few critical questions was the key: 2. Customer Churn Propensity: Since our business sells multiple product categories, it was important to ask if we want to define customer churn at a category level or at overall business level. Both these contexts are completely different as if we go at category level then we would have multiple models with churn propensity for each category and in other case we will have only a single model. Also if we go at category level, we would need to study consumer purchase behavior for each category. For example, on an average customers might take 3 months to repeat for category like a perfume but 9 months to come back to buy sunglasses. At what level do we want to define churn propensity? Do we want to start a program to prevent customer churn or do we want to filter out such customers from our campaigns altogether. What is the objective of this exercise? Asking such questions helped me prepare my hypotheses better along with coming up with a right approach for exploratory data analysis. I hope I have presented my case well for the importance of having good business acumen to be an effective data scientist. However this doesn't mean that you necessarily need to have an MBA degree. The point that I would to bring to your notice is that having a decent understanding of how businesses work is a key skill that every data scientist must work on. The other piece that I wanted to share is how non technical professionals can find a career in data science: Since you are coming from a non technical background and have developed interest in data science, it is important to get advise from someone who has at least 5 years of experience in the industry. Talking to a mentor will give you a lot of clarity about the kind of roles in data science, the kind of things these people do on a day to basis, which technologies they use and what are the hard as well as soft skills that you need to develop yourself as a successful data scientist. And you can easily find a mentor through your own personal network or if you don't know anyone, then you can reach out to data science professionals through Linkedin. Trust me, at least 90% of the people would be more then happy to help. 1. Find a mentor: Being a newbie in this field can get very confusing many a times as you won't be able to understand where to start and which all topics and concepts to learn first. You must understand that this is a highly knowledge intensive field and even professionals with  years of experience have to keep learning new things on a daily basis to stay relevant as their are new techniques coming out very frequently. Hence it is very important to have a set learning path and there are many well structured courses which you can find online. I am listing out a few for your reference. However this is not a comprehensive list and I would urge you to do your own research before enrolling for any course: 2. Upskill through an Online Course: Data Science Career Track by Springboard Machine Learning Course by Stanford (Taught by Andrew Ng) Get a DataCamp Subscription Machine Learning A-Z by Udemy Data science competitions on portals like and can give any newbie an opportunity to work on a wide variety of data science problems and are by far the best source to gain experience on real world data science projects. I would urge you to start with the below mentioned popular competitions first as you can find enough help for these projects as thousands of data scientists have already participated in these projects and have shared a lot of good solutions and approaches to solve these problems. The idea here is not to copy these solutions blindly, but since you are starting, it will be helpful to get a hand holding in initial projects. After you have worked on 3 to 5 such projects, I am sure you would gain the confidence to solve these problems independently. Below I am mentioning a list of popular data science competitions and also a few articles with there solutions: 3. Participate in Data Science Competitions: Kaggle analytics vidhya This is actually a legendary machine learning competition which almost every data scientist has dabbled with. You will get a deep understanding of how to approach and solve classification problems. Below are some good solution links: A. Titanic: Machine Learning From Disaster: Titanic Solution - A Beginners Guide How to reach top 95 percentile in Titanic ML Problem This is a slightly advanced challenge but will definitely increase your interest further in this amazing domain of data science as you will get a hands on understanding of computer vision. Below are the solution links: B. Digit Recognizer Challenge: My Journey to Top 10 of Kaggle Digit Recognition Challenge Digit Recognizer - Introduction to Kaggle Competitions This is a regression problem and again a very popular data science competition. Below are solution links: C. Predicting House Prices: Getting started with Kaggle House Pricing Problem House prices complete solution with guidance The above 3 projects cover a mix of classification, regression and computer vision problems and are a very good starter for learning data science. Apart from the above 3 points, i.e. finding mentor, enrolling in a structured course and participating in data science competitions, I would advise you to ensure that you to hands on practice on a daily basis. I hope through this article I was able to give all the non technical professionals a sense of confidence about why they have the inherent ability to make a good data scientist and also some motivation to take up their data science journey. Happy Learning and keep going!!

My Weird Career Transition From MBA to Data Science

On a first glance when I started working on go, for me it seems very very weird language. I am working on node-js for two and more years and then start working on golang is not so cool for me. May be most of you can also agree with me on that. So, here’s the series on weird things about golang what i have got so far… Ready steady GO! Let’s start with variables of golang, declaring variables is really simple and sarcastic in golang. By the golang docs, are explicitly declared and used by the compiler in golang to check type-correctness of function calls. variables Let take an example how simple is that, message = var "hello world" variable is a type of string that is storing in it. Let’s take another example, message hello world johnWickDeathToll var int We can also declare a variable without initialisation as shown above. But don’t worry about initialisation we have got secured. Yes you heard it right we are secured, there is no error like, JAVA variable blahblah might not have been initialized and also there is also no values like NULL NODEJS YES, MR STARK WE WON! 0, empty string, false are default values for int/float, string and boolean variables respectively and by the docs, there are known as variables Yes, but there is still a weirdy values present in golang that can crash a program, but we will talk about it later. zero-valued . nil Now let’s check how sarcastic in golang declaring variables, areYouAString := "yes, i am string!!" Yes you got it right the weird syntax is known as short-hand syntax for declaring and initialising variables in golang, you don’t have to add var or anything else in front of variable!. But don’t worry about the type of variable again we have got secured by golang superhero that is compiler. := When we use short-hand syntax golang compiler will automatically look right hand side of line and find what variable is it. Is it a string or number(int/float) or a boolean value and use that variable according to that. So far so good, we have got reference about declaring or initialising variable, there default values and all that. But if you thinking it’s not that weird although it is fun to work with golang, then we are not done here bro. Things are going about to weird now, Let’s take an example, Yes there is no weird in above syntax and output, variable is type of because we have initialised it as int value 10. breakingBadRating int Let have a look at another example, Yes, again there is no weirdness, variable is type of because we have initialised it as 10.0 breakingBadRating float What weird thing caught me is that, we can make a float variable not declaring it a instead of we can write it just as , Yes you heard it right look at below snippet, 10.0 10. Yes our variable is still a type of we have just initialised it with not with a normal float number like , but yes golang support this. This can be a call for nightmare or may be a call for lot of future bugs. breakingBadRating float64 10. 10.0 GoLang is not so ready steady GO! May be in future we can have a warning like make not just to make it a floating number, but till then make sure to caught it. 10.0 10. Here’s the end of first part of weirdness of golang, but still we have cover many things, so stay tuned!! Thanks! Previously published at https://medium.com/@adityasonel/weird-things-about-golang-part-1-4139e97f2bd4

Weird Things About GOLANG [Part 1]

I love recursion. I think it's a very elegant way of writing code, and sometimes it lets you write simple but yet effective pieces of code. And if you happen to use languages like , then recursion is a must. Scala But when I was thinking I was proficient in the use of recursion, I ran into a book called , and in the section on using recursion, he gave a recipe that went like this: "Mastering JavaScript Functional Programming" by Federico Kereki 1) Assume you already have an appropriate function to solve your problem. 2) Then, see how the big problem can be solved by solving one (or more) smaller problems. 3) Solve those problems by using the imagined function from step 1. 4) Decide what are your base cases, simple enough that they be (sic) solved directly, not requiring any more calls. When I read this, mainly the first point, I was amazed by the concept: To solve your problem recursively, A recursive recipe for a recursive solution! start by assuming you already solved the problem! Although after creating a fair share of recursive functions in my life this statement sounded intuitively reasonable, I felt I had to test it in practice. The opportunity came a couple days after when I was solving the " " problem at LeetCode. The problem statement was simple enough: Climbing Stairs You are climbing a stair case (sic). It takes n steps to reach to the top.
 
Each time you can either climb 1 or 2 steps. In how many distinct ways can you climb to the top? So, using the recipe you could do something like this: 1) Assume you already have an appropriate function to solve your problem. Simple enough! I'll assume I already have an appropriate function using this JavaScript code: {
}; ( ) function climbStairs n That was easy! Now, for the second step: 2) Then, see how the big problem can be solved by solving one (or more) smaller problems. According to the statement, you can either climb one or two steps. So, if I assume this function already can calculate the number of ways I can climb to the top, the answer will be the number of ways I can climb after one step (n - 1) plus the number of ways I can climb after two steps (n - 2). Now, for the third part: 3) Solve those problems by using the imagined function from step 1. This just means translating that statement to code, so you end with this: { climbStairs(n - ) + climbStairs(n - )
}; ( ) function climbStairs n return 1 2 That is the number of ways I can climb by one step plus the number of ways I can climb by two steps. Looks reasonable, but still not sure how this works. Let's just do the fourth and final step: 4) Decide what are your base cases, simple enough that they be solved directly, not requiring any more calls. For this problem I could distinguish three base cases: The first case is when you have zero steps, in which case there's no stair to climb, so zero ways to climb it. The second, when your stair has only one step, there's only one way to climb: 1 step. The third, when your stair has two steps, there are two ways to climb: The first being 1 step + 1 step; the second by two steps. { (n === ) (n === ) (n === ) climbStairs(n - ) + climbStairs(n - )
}; ( ) function climbStairs n if 0 return 0 if 1 return 1 if 2 return 2 return 1 2 Of course, in this case, you could simplify by replacing the three if's with: (n <= ) n if 2 return But for the sake of the method, let's leave the three explicit conditions. And that's it! At least for this problem, the four recipe steps are pretty straightforward. So, after following them I was greatly surprised when the simpler test cases passed without a problem (for a large number of steps there were timeout problems that I solved using memoization , but that's material for another article). But to be honest, my biggest surprise was that I was able to solve the problem and I knew it worked because it passed the test cases, but my head hadn't figured out how or why it worked! I didn't know how I did it! After solving this problem I tried the recipe in a couple more problems and it always worked nicely, but I still have this subtle feeling of awe. Now I not only think recursion is an elegant and effective technique of programming, but it's also kind of magic... God, I love recursion!   ;-)

Recursion Can Be Weirder Than You Think

In this article I will try to demonstrate some funny / weird parts in JavaScript. Besides its flaws we are using it and we are loving it! (most of the time!) Let’s start!! + true true what do we expect from the above line of code?? Anything you are thinking right now is wrong!! Unless you had known the answer already! :) The correct answer is: 2 wait what?? Now that we understand the craziness of this article let’s continue! Something with strings!! “This is a test string” instanceof String //RESULT: fasle OK, probably I can live with this!! But wait… “This is a test string” typeof //RESULT: string ohh nooo!!!! Continuing with numbers!! JavaScript loves numbers so much!! So if you write the number , JavaScript thinks that is the same as !!! Smart right?? 9999999999999999 10000000000000000 Let’s make a simple addition floating point numbers + 0.1 0.2 0.3 //POSIBLE RESULT: 0.3 The above is right for you!! Not for JavaScript!!! For the JavaScript the result is 0.30000000000000004 ! Yes, JavaScript says “I am better in maths than you”! > > 3 2 1 You are guessing wrong again!! The right answer is not true!! But false! Now your brain fights to recognize reality!! Next one “ ” + “ ” — 2 1 // RESULT: 21 2 1 // RESULT: 1 Boom!! After that your brain is losing the fight! A little bit about falsy values typeof NaN //RESULT: Number OK, I will pretend that is right! NaN instanceof Number // POSSIBLE RESULT: true Nope!! It is not!! It’s !! false And something that I just leave here typeof null //RESULT: object No comment here!! Final chapter Arrays and objects. After this I will leave you in peace [] + [] [] + {} //RESULT: “” //RESULT: “[object Object]” Based on the above, are you thinking ? Nope “[object Object]” {} + [] //RESULT: 0 The purpose of this article is to mock some funny aspects on our every day routine. However JavaScript is one of the most usable languages. Millions developers use it every day.

The funny-weird parts in JavaScript!

Weird Programming Languages More than a thousand programming languages have been invented and only about one hundred of them are commonly used. Among these, there are some weird ones, so labeled because of their syntax and the way it represents its code. In this article, we will look into some of these languages and syntax. Legit Have you ever landed on a Github project that prints “hello world” program, but without any visible code or any content. Check this link and you will see nothing in this repository. But trust me, there is hidden code in this project. https://github.com/blinry/legit-hello If you see the section, you can reveal the magic. It’s storing the “hello world” code inside git commit history. If you clone this project and run the following command, then you can see the hidden code in this project. commit git log --graph --oneline Here are the supported instructions. “[<tag>]”: jump to the specified Git tag. For example, [loop] will jump to the tag loop. “quit”: stop the program. “get”: read a char from standard input and place its ASCII value on the stack. On EOF, push a 0. “put:’ pop top stack value and write it to standard output as a char. The value is always truncated to an unsigned byte. “<Number>”: push the specified integer on the stack. For example, 42 will push the value 42. “<Letters>”: unescape string, then push the individual ASCII characters on the stack. For example, “Hi\n” will push the numbers 72, 105, and 10. “dup”: duplicate top stack value “pop”: pop top stack value and discard it “add”: pop two topmost stack values, add them, push result on the stack “sub”: pop two topmost stack values, subtract top one from bottom one, push result on the stack “cmp”: pop two topmost stack values, pushes 1 if bottommost one is larger, 0 otherwise “read”: place value of current tape cell on the stack “write”: pop top stack value and write it to the current tape cell “left”: pop top stack value, move tape head left for that many places “right”: pop top stack value, move tape head right for that many places Legit programming language source code hosted in and you can try out yourself. Read out more about . Github Legit Folder Here’s another one which does not maintain any code inside its repository. This language keeps its code as folders. Instructions are read according to the order of the folders. Inside these folders, there are three folders to represent Type, Command, and Expression. The number of folders in inside these folders represent relevant mapping with type, command or expression. Read full description of this language in here Befunge This is another interesting programming language which represents its code in two-dimensional space. Take a look following code of infinite loop. >v
^< Did you get that? Execution starts with the first line “>” character. It means to execute the next instruction on the right side, and the right side instruction is “v”. This means to execute down instruction. This continues as an infinite loop. Here I added some of its instructions. “+” Addition: Pop two values a and b, then push the result of a+b “-” Subtraction: Pop two values a and b, then push the result of b-a _“*” Multiplication: Pop two values a and b, then push the result of a_b “/” Integer division: Pop two values a and b, then push the result of b/a, rounded down. According to the specifications, if a is zero, ask the user what result they want. “%” Modulo: Pop two values a and b, then push the remainder of the integer division of b/a. “!” Logical NOT: Pop a value. If the value is zero, push 1; otherwise, push zero. “`” Greater than: Pop two values a and b, then push 1 if b>a, otherwise zero. “>” PC direction right “<” PC direction left “^” PC direction up “v” PC direction down “?” Random PC direction “_” Horizontal IF: pop a value; set direction to the right if value=0, set to left otherwise Read complete language specifications . 3D represented languages also built called “Suzy” based on this language. Here below an example of finding factorial with Befunge language here &>:1-:v v *_$.@ 
 ^    _$>\:^ Brainfuck This language was invented in 1993, as an attempt to create the smallest possible compiler. This compiler allows only eight commands to write a program and operate based on memory cell which is also known as tapes. Here is the list of command Brainfuck supports. “>” Move the pointer to the right “<” Move the pointer to the left “+” Increment the memory cell under the pointer “-” Decrement the memory cell under the pointer “.” Output the character signified by the cell at the pointer “,” Input a character and store it in the cell at the pointer “[“ Jump past the matching ] if the cell under the pointer is 0 “]” Jump back to the matching [ if the cell under the pointer is nonzero Here below how hello world application implemented in Brainfuck language. 1 +++++ +++               Set Cell #0 to 8
 2 [
 3     >++++               Add 4 to Cell #1; this will always set Cell #1 to 4
 4     [                   as the cell will be cleared by the loop
 5         >++             Add 4*2 to Cell #2
 6         >+++            Add 4*3 to Cell #3
 7         >+++            Add 4*3 to Cell #4
 8         >+              Add 4 to Cell #5
 9         <<<<-           Decrement the loop counter in Cell #1
10     ]                   Loop till Cell #1 is zero
11     >+                  Add 1 to Cell #2
12     >+                  Add 1 to Cell #3
13     >-                  Subtract 1 from Cell #4
14     >>+                 Add 1 to Cell #6
15     [<]                 Move back to the first zero cell you find; this will
16                         be Cell #1 which was cleared by the previous loop
17     <-                  Decrement the loop Counter in Cell #0
18 ]                       Loop till Cell #0 is zero
19 
20 The result of this is:
21 Cell No :   0   1   2   3   4   5   6
22 Contents:   0   0  72 104  88  32   8
23 Pointer :   ^
24 
25 >>.                     Cell #2 has value 72 which is 'H'
26 >---.                   Subtract 3 from Cell #3 to get 101 which is 'e'
27 +++++ ++..+++.          Likewise for 'llo' from Cell #3
28 >>.                     Cell #5 is 32 for the space
29 <-.                     Subtract 1 from Cell #4 for 87 to give a 'W'
30 <.                      Cell #3 was set to 'o' from the end of 'Hello'
31 +++.----- -.----- ---.  Cell #3 for 'rl' and 'd'
32 >>+.                    Add 1 to Cell #5 gives us an exclamation point
33 >++.                    And finally a newline from Cell #6 This can be represented in one line as follows. ++++++++[>++++[>++>+++>+++>+<<<<-]>+>+>->>+[<]<-]>>.>---.+++++++..+++.>>.<-.<.+++.------.--------.>>+.>++. Piet As you see it, it is a programming language where the programmer needs to color a grid instead of coding words. Pointer used to move around the bitmap image and execute command relevant to each color code. There are twenty colors used to represent command and white color does not represent any operation. when the pointer tries to enter a black region, the rules of choosing the next block are changed instead. Here below the sample program to print “Piet”. Malbolge Last but not least, this language is known as “Programming from hell”. The idea is that programming should be hard. Therefore, there is no point in discussing language syntax any further. An interesting fact of this language is that even the inventor of this language could not write a program by himself. However, Here an example program of hello world in Malbolge language. (=<`#9]~6ZY32Vx/4Rs+0No-&Jk)"Fh}|Bcy?`=*z]Kw%oG4UUS0/@-ejc(:'8dc Conclusion I have listed down below other programming languages that I have found for further reading. An interesting fact about most of these languages was these are Turing complete, meaning you can implement any computer program that other programming languages can do. Even though these programming languages seem useless, it opens our minds to look at things differently. Charcoal Chef Chicken Dots Ook Suzy Hope you enjoy reading this article. If you have any comment, you can find . Follow me for more interesting stories. Feel free to comment down your thoughts. See you in another article. Cheers :) me on Twitter

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