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    1. Impossible Escape - a puzzle

      This is a very hard puzzle. There is a solution that guarantees 100% chance of escape. You and your friend are incarcerated. Your jailer offers a challenge. If you complete the challenge you are...

      This is a very hard puzzle. There is a solution that guarantees 100% chance of escape.


      You and your friend are incarcerated. Your jailer offers a challenge. If you complete the challenge you are both free to go. Otherwise you are condemned to die. Here are the rules:

      -The jailer will take you into a private cell. In the cell will be a chessboard and a jar containing 64 coins.

      -The jailer will take the coins, one-by-one, and place a coin on each square on the board. He will place the coins randomly on the board. Some coins will be heads, and some tails (or maybe they will be all heads, or all tails; you have no idea. It's all at the jailer's whim. He may elect to look and choose to make a pattern himself, he may toss them placing them the way they land, he might look at them as he places them, he might not …). If you attempt to interfere with the placing of the coins, it is instant death for you. If you attempt to coerce, suggest, or persuade the jailer in any way, instant death. All you can do it watch.

      -Once all the coins have been laid out, the jailer will point to one of the squares on the board and say: “This one!” He is indicating the magic square. This square is the key to your freedom.

      -The jailer will then allow you to turn over one coin on the board. Just one. A single coin, but it can be any coin, you have full choice. If the coin you select is a head, it will flip to a tail. If it is a tail it will flip to a head. This is the only change you are allowed to make to the jailers initial layout.

      -You will then be lead out of the room. If you attempt to leave other messages behind, or clues for your friend … yes, you guessed it, instant death!

      -The jailer will then bring your friend into the room.

      -Your friend will look at the board (no touching allowed), then examine the board of coins and decide which location he thinks is the magic square.

      -He gets one chance only (no feedback). Based on the configuration of the coins he will point to one square and say: “This one!”

      -If he guesses correctly, you are both pardoned, and instantly set free. If he guesses incorrectly, you are both executed.

      -The jailer explains all these rules, to both you and your friend, beforehand and then gives you time to confer with each other to devise a strategy for which coin to flip.

      What is your strategy? How do you escape?


      Original source and answer: http://datagenetics.com/blog/december12014/index.html

      9 votes
    2. Tabletop RPGs. How to start?

      Hi guys! I've always being curious about tabletop games, RPG, DnD and so on. The fantasy, creativity and engagement always interested me, but I've never met anyone who played it and never being...

      Hi guys!

      I've always being curious about tabletop games, RPG, DnD and so on. The fantasy, creativity and engagement always interested me, but I've never met anyone who played it and never being involved with it (I'm in São Paulo, Brazil, btw).

      So, to be direct, does anyone has any tips on how to start? I know there are "internet based" tabletop sites/communities, but I don't know how it works.

      I'd appreciate any direction! Thanks!

      11 votes
    3. Favorite workout music?

      What are your go to workout songs? For me it's usually a toss up between the Doom 2016 soundtrack (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jm932Sqwf5E) and The Lifa album from Heilung...

      What are your go to workout songs? For me it's usually a toss up between the Doom 2016 soundtrack (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jm932Sqwf5E) and The Lifa album from Heilung (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1BsKIP4uYM). Both get me super pumped and make me want to get active.

      9 votes
    4. Ubuntu 18.04

      Anyone using Ubuntu 18.04 yet? I was thinking about installing it alongside Windows, but wasn't sure if I should wait and just install 16.04. Wanted to get a few opinions.

      9 votes
    5. Post your setup!

      A thread to post your desktop (or laptop) setups - what OS you use, what desktop environment you use, what window manager you use, what editor you use, what terminal emulator you use etc.

      24 votes
    6. Mark All As Read?

      Having notifications only go away when clicking Mark As Read is a really cool feature. However, once you start to get a large amount of these notifications, this can become a pain. Could a 'Mark...

      Having notifications only go away when clicking Mark As Read is a really cool feature. However, once you start to get a large amount of these notifications, this can become a pain.

      Could a 'Mark All As Read' button be added that solves this feature?

      6 votes
    7. Moving post comments to the top

      For smaller threads, this isn't much of an issue, but once a thread reaches ~30 or so comments you have to scroll to the bottom before posting a comment. As tildes begins to grow this problem will...

      For smaller threads, this isn't much of an issue, but once a thread reaches ~30 or so comments you have to scroll to the bottom before posting a comment. As tildes begins to grow this problem will only get worse and worse.

      Is there any way this could be moved to the top of a thread? This would fix this problem.

      6 votes
    8. Abortion: Sanctity of Human Life and the Rights of (wo)Man

      Yesterday, Ireland passed a referendum that will repeal a constitutional amendment that banned abortions. The government of Ireland will now have the explicit authority (as soon as the results are...

      Yesterday, Ireland passed a referendum that will repeal a constitutional amendment that banned abortions. The government of Ireland will now have the explicit authority (as soon as the results are certified) to legislate matters of abortion directly. This seems likely to lead to a substantially less restrictive stance toward abortion in one of the most restrictive member nations of the EU. It would still likely end up being slightly more restrictive law than in the United States.

      Ireland's history regarding abortion's legality is explicitly tied as a counter-reaction to Roe V. Wade, the American supreme court case that found abortion legal until the third trimester under a rights-balancing test under the 9th and 14th amendments (which--implicitly--enshrines a right to privacy and--explicitly--expands that right to the state level, respectively). While this balancing test was later changed to a standard requiring "fetal viability," states and activists through the United States organized against the Supreme Court's decision to create new limitations on abortion.

      So today, I'm seeking to sidestep some of that history to wrestle with the core underlying balancing test Roe v Wade and other similar legal frameworks have tried to answer: when is a pregnant woman's rights more or less important than the life of the living being growing inside of her? In what circumstances (if any) should a woman be allowed to choose to end her pregnancy?

      19 votes
    9. Some spare Steam keys

      Hey friends. I've got some spare Steam keys for games that I already own (being subscribed to Humble monthly leads to a bunch of this ha.) First come first serve if anyone is interested. Moon...

      Hey friends.

      I've got some spare Steam keys for games that I already own (being subscribed to Humble monthly leads to a bunch of this ha.)

      First come first serve if anyone is interested.

      Moon Hunters - haven't played this yet but I've been wanting to for a while. It has online co-op so maybe whoever picks this up, we can play some time.

      Also some stuff I don't want that I'd love to get rid of:

      NBA 2k17

      EDIT: Well that went fast, ha

      20 votes
    10. Regarding making design choices understandable

      Programmers write documentation for their software which serves as a resource for why critical chioces were made and why they were chosen over other options. Would it be an idea for Tildes to...

      Programmers write documentation for their software which serves as a resource for why critical chioces were made and why they were chosen over other options. Would it be an idea for Tildes to reference to the best arguments for features implemented like the discussion we had on anonymitity some days ago? That way all the users can read why a choice made it into the site and see the process behind the choice.

      7 votes
    11. The future of moderation on Tildes

      It seems like a large percentage of us that are also moderators on Reddit-- myself included. It seems that there's a generally negative attitude toward moderators on Reddit, which I totally get....

      It seems like a large percentage of us that are also moderators on Reddit-- myself included.

      It seems that there's a generally negative attitude toward moderators on Reddit, which I totally get. Moderation on Reddit is flawed. Community members feel a sense of ownership in the community (which they should have), but bad moderators can ruin that. How do you guys think moderation should be handled here?

      Here's a link from the docs that describes current plans: https://docs.tildes.net/mechanics-future

      It highlights plans for a reputation system, which I think is the right way to go.

      I also just realized that the same discussion was posted 18 days ago, but perhaps discussion with some of the newer users is worthwhile nonetheless:
      https://tildes.net/~tildes/6e/community_moderators

      31 votes
    12. Imagining Others Complexly

      I really like the vlogbrothers on YouTube and wanted to shared. To me the channel is about 'imagining others complexly'. So often it feels like my various feeds are full of surface level...

      I really like the vlogbrothers on YouTube and wanted to shared.

      To me the channel is about 'imagining others complexly'. So often it feels like my various feeds are full of surface level assumptions without really interrogating the world around us. To me, vlogbrothers is an exception.

      They walked through the candidates tax plans in the last election. Not to show how bad they are, but to really try to understand them.
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgicDQHbV3M

      Hank wrote a song about quarks, and I think it is really fun. It helps demystify something that can seem scary if you don't have the right background.
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0kXkWXSXRA

      9 votes
    13. So thinking ahead... how do we stop bots?

      They've ruined reddit and Facebook for me. I can't help but to double guess every divisive or snarky comment on those platforms. I've heard as much as 1/3 of Twitter are bots. Does Tildes foresee...

      They've ruined reddit and Facebook for me. I can't help but to double guess every divisive or snarky comment on those platforms. I've heard as much as 1/3 of Twitter are bots.

      Does Tildes foresee an API (or does one exist already)? I honestly don't know much about how bots operate but figured APIs were the obvious route.

      29 votes
    14. Alts?

      So at the moment I'm guessing most people probably have just a single account, but eventually people are going to start wanting multiple accounts. How is this going to work? Only when public...

      So at the moment I'm guessing most people probably have just a single account, but eventually people are going to start wanting multiple accounts. How is this going to work? Only when public signups are allowed or can we use our invitations to invite ourselves in as it is? (since they're specifically allowed in the Terms of Service, but there's currently no way to get them except by invitation)? Are we going to require a certain amount of reputation to allow alts? Or will we introduce a nicknames or "identities" feature on top of a single account?

      13 votes
    15. Any Pirates out there? (Sea of Thieves)

      I've been really enjoying Sea of Thieves lately, and I'm pretty enthusiastic about the new update coming on Tuesday. Anyone else feeling the same? I've only got a couple people who I play with...

      I've been really enjoying Sea of Thieves lately, and I'm pretty enthusiastic about the new update coming on Tuesday. Anyone else feeling the same?
      I've only got a couple people who I play with from time to time, so if anyone would like to crew up, just add me. My Xbox tag is the same as my Tildes username.

      10 votes