secant

> Unfortunately this means that there's probably not much chance for a rich field of xenoarchaeology to exist since it's not even possible to do this on our own planet.

I think you've reached this statement too eagerly but would be interested to discuss this point. Do you mean that the materials they used would have disintegrated and their (presumably carbon-based lifeform) bodies wouldn't have left any fossils?

My main thoughts on this come from reading Vernor Vinge's [1] excellent Marooned in Realtime which discusses some of the condundrums resulting from transferring information over massive periods of time. I think part of it talks about subduction zones where everything is eventually riven back into the Earth's mantle, essentially lost to any kind of current archaelogical techniques.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marooned_in_Realtime

I feel like these problems are all around and often present in games. There's one that particularly infuriates me in Hearthstone, a Blizzard developed TCG, where when a game ends it causes the processor to furiously spin up and causes all kinds of anomalous behaviour like webcam cutting out, mic distortion and other generally laggy behaviour.

I'm aware that there's probably a lot going on at the game's end but I'm still utterly convinced there is a coding bug causing this amount of processor spiking but I lack the skills of debugging Unity, which is the game's engine, to determine what actually is going on. I guess that's the issue, the ability of conducting the research the kind in the OP article is extraordinarily rare even among game devs so these problems persist (Hearthstone is just turning 8 years old now) without anyone with the deep knowledge to rectify it.

Sounds like you'd be interested in https://ctftime.org/ if I understand you correctly. Contains list of current and upcoming CTFs going on as well as write-ups for them when finished. Decent site for people trying to expose themselves to as much CTF competition as possible.

Ah yes, dance being the superior exercise, I have to admit my father engrained it into me as a child.

It's a portmanteau of "malicious software", so I guess goodware is fine.

It's too long ago for me to remember the site's name but the subscription to it came when you signed up for a free Hotmail account back in the late 90s.

You would get an email each day that would take you to the site where you had to solve a reasonably cryptic whodunnit. I've never been good at these sorts of things but I would spend ages reading the story trying to solve the riddle. Pretty fun but years later I can't remember its name and I do miss it from time to time. It was a comfort to know these puzzles were being created and solved in the background but now is no more.

What system could governments use to replace SAS if they were so minded?

A slight aside, but is Docker on Unix running natively then?

What strikes me most about these documents is the mundanity of life back then. Like an agreement to pay someone back is one of them (a basic IOU), the other is a telling off for some financial reason. It's strange to think back then people were having equivalent disagreements and deals as they have now.

Ancient times always tend to feel very untouchable because of the massive span of time separating us and them, but I see that the basic tenets of human life still existed back then from this limited material. It makes me wonder how far back we would have to go back to find proto-civilisations that make no sense, human sacrifice not withstanding.

Think of it this way. Is browsing to a random HTTP address via IP on the internet and then screencapping the picture produced on your browser legal?

Then using a VNC client in the same way would fall under the same legal purview. I think as long as there is no interaction to carry out functions, attempt password/username combos, then it's fairgame.

Nice! Any chance of making this open-source? I'm trying to learn node-js and it looks like you've used a few node modules, so it would be handy to see how it's done.

I'm a bit of a math novice, but is the term "decidable" analogous with satisfiability (SAT), or is this a completely different set of modelling?

The video game that first came to mind was the opening segment of Metal Gear Solid 2. Something about the rain in that first part of the game was done perfectly. I've placed a video of the opening scene below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ukh7C9zkXGc

As the guy above said, I don't think it's particularly novel about Bitcoin, rather that the temptation of something that has a large amount of value will always make a few give in. These guys may not have stolen from a grandma, but would feel less inhibited stealing from what they ostensibly view as criminal's money.