Radjaïdjah Blog

Le Radjaïdjah Blog vous souhaite une excellente année \( \sum_{i=0}^{22} { \sum_{j=0}^{i} j } \) .

The Lion - A voiceover artist is asked to speak like he's seen a lion.

Stalled - A man goes to a public restroom -- and gets trapped in a time paradox.

All the Marbles - A young boy challenges a bully to a game of marbles as precious as gold.

A Guide to Dining Out In Nairobi - A Kenyan man gets a $10 USD tip, then hatches a plan to spend it.

Drawcard - A man draws a penis on a farewell card, then discovers it's the boss's sympathy card.

Bonus : Castello Cavalcanti (Wes Anderson)

The Radjaidjah Blog presents the jewart.ai project, paintings around judaism created through the prism of Artificial Intelligence.

Time for a humble present, here are five philosophical short stories.

Isaac Asimov's The Last Question describes the world as a computer, or does it.

Daniel Dennett's Where am I takes Putnam's brain in a vat thought experiment to the next level.

Ursulas Le Guin's The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas is a tale of a city and its inhabitants.

Jorge Luis Borges' Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius is a literary labyrinth with broken paths.

Howard P. Lovecraft's Ex Oblivione is a mellow experience.

With Decentralized Finance (DeFi) attracting more and more users as globalization of liquidity empowers protocols to offer higher returns than legacy (TradFi) finance, this draft describes a potential financial business "Hedged Yield Farming as a Service" whose aim is to offer profits to customers by investing funds into high-APY crypto pools or farms in a market-neutral way.

The point is, not to resist the flow. You go up when you are supposed to go up. And down when you’re supposed to go down. When you’re supposed to go up find the highest tower and climb to the top. When your are supposed to go down find the deepest well and go down to the bottom. Haruki Murakami, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (1997)

In Feÿ Castle (Burgundy, France) there is a well, a deep well. One of the kind which makes you realize: it would be a great idea to bury a time capsule at the very bottom.

Living for a few days with the Feÿtopian tribe in the Feÿ Castle is akin to an immersion inside a a strange mix between a digital Kibbutz, Abbaye de Thélème, and Rusty Lake.

Just to illustrate this, the utopian Thelemite motto in Rabelais’ Gargantua Faÿ ce que vouldras (do what you’ll wish) leads to a fringe and tempting theory: the name Feÿ is simply a disguised version of Faÿ, and this very naming is a purposeful indication that it was always in the mind of the founders that this noble castle should at a later stage become a phalanstery.

Living in the Feÿ community brings a number of interrogations, as people do their best to be kind one to eachother.

Great public benefits arise from private virtues but isn’t it true that greater public benefits arise from private vices, as Mandeville described in the Fable of the Bees? Probably this is a question of dimension, of critical size.

On the Feÿ domain stands a beautiful forest. Sometimes the color tone can transition from spring green to viridian. Sometimes it is also easy to get stranded or floored there, however with lysergic power comes lysergic responsibility and collective nurturing helps prevent such fate to happen. Sometimes in the forest the infamous Codex Serafinianus helps to remind why Nature imitates Art. Sometimes in the forest you can see the music of the spheres.

Now it becomes a bit clearer. Individual oscillate in life, and one of the purpose of communities is to enter a collective mode of vibration. In other words, resonance. This is also what religion has been trying to achieve. Religion, seen as a collective hallucination or as a collective realization or as a collective construction (whatever the difference between the three might be).

And here comes the Elephant in the forest.

A group of blind men heard that a strange animal, called an elephant, had been brought to the town, but none of them were aware of its shape and form. Out of curiosity, they said: "We must inspect and know it by touch, of which we are capable". So, they sought it out, and when they found it they groped about it. The first person, whose hand landed on the trunk, said, "This being is like a thick snake". For another one whose hand reached its ear, it seemed like a kind of fan. As for another person, whose hand was upon its leg, said, the elephant is a pillar like a tree-trunk. The blind man who placed his hand upon its side said the elephant, "is a wall". Another who felt its tail, described it as a rope. The last felt its tusk, stating the elephant is that which is hard, smooth and like a spear.

Now it becomes clearer: the concept of extitution is here to enhance the perceptual set of social groups and communities, and therefore to act on them.

If tokens can be considered as bottom-up, extitutional currencies, is a related point to consider.

A challenge of adulthood is: how to move oneself gracefully in the fluid of life? In “The possibility of an Island”, the author quotes Arthur Schopenhauer: "human existence resembles a theatre performance which, begun by living actors, is ended by automatons dressed in the same costumes."

So it might be the case that extitutions offer to transform into life magicians.

In conclusion, after spending a few days in the Feÿ Castle for an extitutional workshop, and acknowledging its spiritual gravity, one can ask: is it an autotelic journey, or is it for higher purposes?

But of course, one can ask the same question for their life: is life autotelic or for higher purposes?

Today, the best thing to do is probably to (re-)study Galois theory.

Here is a great online Galois theory course by Richard E. Borcherds (Fields medal).

Does Bitcoin really matter?

These results must be true, because, if they were not true, no one would have the imagination to invent them.

G.H. Hardy on Ramanujan

A treat for pi day (3.14).

Happy π day!

Stacker is a popular arcade game designed and manufactured by LAI games and commercialized by entertainment distribution companies^[1]. It is a successor of Claw cranes.

The goal of the game is to align rows of moving blocks on top of each other. A player who can stack eleven rows will win a minor prize, which is usually low in value, sometimes lower in value than the amount of money the player paid to play the game. A player who gets to the top row wins a major prize. The major prize varies from machine but will often include game consoles, cellular phones, and MP3 players.

The gameplay is the following. There is a row of three cubes which move side to side on the screen, at the first row. When the player pushes the start/stop button, the row of squares will stop. Then, another row of three moving squares appears above the previous row, moving faster than the one before it. If the squares do not align directly above the previous set, any overhanging squares will be removed. If the player misses completely, the game is over. The number of available squares is automatically reduced to two, then one, during the game. The goal is to consistently get the squares directly above the previous set, "stacking" them to the minor prize and ultimately major prize levels.

In a typical game, what is observed is the following. The player easily manages to get to the minor prize level, refuses it and carries on. At this point three consecutive successful moves lead to winning a major prize. But from now on, the unit to align with the stack is a single block. Usually if the player is focused enough, he achieves to stack the next block and the penultimate one, however stacking the last one fails by a very small fraction. As a result the player loses his coin. And because he was so close to win, he might want to try again, with the same outcome.

The most interesting part is the last step, the one leading in general to a game loss.

Why does the so far very skilled player lose at the last step? Is it the pressure of winning a phone? The answer is: because the last step is different. It looks the same as the previous ones, but it is not.

Pressing the stop button while the last single block is displayed at the correct position does not necessarily leads to a win. In fact most of the times it leads to a loss, and a posteriori the block is displayed mis-aligned with the stack. Only in certain specific cases a win will be obtained.

LAI Games Stacker operator's manual describe all the internal parameters the owner can set to configure the machine. One of these operators is "P10 = Skill Setting (Major price)", whose description is (Default 8) (Adjustable 1 – 10) This option sets the Skill level for players to reach the Major Prize level, as listed in the table below. As this is a skill game the win rate is only the approximate rate for each difficulty setting. Follows then the corresponding options, with P10 = 1 implying approx 1 win in 20 games, whereas P10 = 10 implying approx 1 win in 800 games. This parameter does not affect the displayed game at all, "P08 = Cube Speed" is a different parameter.

In practice, Stacker behaves as the following. For the sake of simplicity, let's imagine that all players are super skilled (they always press the stop button when the last block is correctly aligned), and that P10 = 8 (approx 1 win in 400 games). Instead of having all players win, only 1 over 400 will win. How to achieve this? Once could propose to throw a 400-side dice to decide if a game is a win, but the skill aspect of the game would be instantaneously lost. A more elegant way to do it is to define ''concretely winning states" as a subset of "appearantly winning states", like the following pseudo-code does:

if block is well aligned:
    if internal_timer_in nanoseconds % 400 == 0:
        proceed to winning
    else if stop_button was pressed before block_duration / 2:   
        move displayed_block to previously_displayed_block
    else:
        move displayed_block to next_to_be_displayed_block
    proceed to losing

This is compatible with purported LAI's statement that Stacker is "100% a game of skill and although it is very difficult, every game played can be a winning game".

However, this theoretically skill game is in practice a luck game, so Stacker is practically a gambling machine. This great video comes to the same conclusion for another arcade game, Cyclone.

Psychologically, having the player close to winning but finally losing is part of the design of this arcade game. Stacker operator's manual describes the machine as a bright and attractive display, simple but exciting game play and a real “Ahh! Just missed” feeling. Indeed the player can see that he was very close, and the belief that the loss is due only to a very tiny amount of bad luck triggers the envy to replay with the confidence to be more accurate next time and win. In reality it can be said that the progressive feelings of self-esteem building with the initial successes, frustration while losing by a near-miss, and hope while deciding to replay, have been entirely engineered by the game designers. You see a game that you control, you live a game who controls you.

Let's conclude with LAI Games' motto: Fun and Profits Go Hand-in hand.

Is the grass greener on the other side?

Who knows?

Playing mental poker is a difficult problem for a number of reasons. The foremost reason is that it is impossible, a result due to Shamir, Rivest and Adleman^[1].

G.R. Blakley and D. Chaum

During Lift16, Ethereum / Consensys presented a number of very promising projects.

Almost all of these projects are based on a mysterious entity called the blockchain. More precisely, not the Bitcoin blockchain, but a private blockchain called the Ethereum blockchain.

Then was a gambling-related project: etherPoker.

etherPoker is advertised as a blockchain-connected provably fair online poker game. The underlying mechanism is based on mental poker, a term coined by RSA's creators, Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir, and Leonard Adleman.

Provably fair dice, a popular extension of online coin-flipping (bit commitment) works as such:

1. a server seed is generated and its hash is provided to the client
2. the player inputs a client seed
3. a nonce (number of times that the server seed has been used) enters the game
4. the player chooses a winning range
5. a magic number deterministically created from the server seed, the client seed, and the nonce is computed
6. if the magic number falls in the winning range, the player wins
7. the nonce is incremented for the next round
8. the player can verify his numbers by asking the server to reveal the server seed

In poker, an algorithm for shuffling cards using commutative encryption would be as follows:

1. Alice and Bob agree on a certain "deck" of cards. In practice, this means they agree on a set of numbers or other data such that each element of the set represents a card.
2. Alice picks an encryption key A and uses this to encrypt each card of the deck.
3. Alice shuffles the cards.
4. Alice passes the encrypted and shuffled deck to Bob. With the encryption in place, Bob cannot know which card is which.
5. Bob picks an encryption key B and uses this to encrypt each card of the encrypted and shuffled deck.
6. Bob shuffles the deck.
7. Bob passes the double encrypted and shuffled deck back to Alice.
8. Alice decrypts each card using her key A. This still leaves Bob's encryption in place though so she cannot know which card is which.
9. Alice picks one encryption key for each card (A1, A2, etc.) and encrypts them individually.
10. Alice passes the deck to Bob.
11. Bob decrypts each card using his key B. This still leaves Alice's individual encryption in place though so he cannot know which card is which.
12. Bob picks one encryption key for each card (B1, B2, etc.) and encrypts them individually.
13. Bob passes the deck back to Alice.
14. Alice publishes the deck for everyone playing (in this case only Alice and Bob, see below on expansion though).

To play poker with bitcoins, the new Seals With Clubs poker site is: SWCpoker.

To play for fun, download PokerTH (Radjaïdjah Blog's alias: BluffBluff).

In my next life I want to live my life backwards.

You start out dead and get that out of the way.

Then you wake up in an old people’s home feeling better every day. You get kicked out for being too healthy, go collect your pension, and then when you start work, you get a gold watch and a party on your first day.

You work for 40 years until you’re young enough to enjoy your retirement. You party, drink alcohol, and are generally promiscuous, then you are ready for high school.

You then go to primary school, you become a kid, you play. You have no responsibilities, you become a baby until you are born.

And then you spend your last 9 months floating in luxurious spa-like conditions with central heating and room service on tap, larger quarters every day and then Voila! You finish off as an orgasm!

(Woody Allen)

For the record, here is the page order to print a brochure (A5 booklet) from a A4/letter documents (2 pages per sheet, landscape orientation, with short-edge border if in duplex mode). It might be applied to staroffice/openoffice/libreoffice, ms-word, and PDF documents.

• 1-4 pages
  

single: 4,1 / 2,3
reverse: 4,1 / 2,3
duplex: 4,1,2,3

• 5-8 pages
  

single: 8,1,6,3 / 2,7,4,5
reverse: 8,1,6,3 / 4,5,2,7
duplex: 8,1,2,7,6,3,4,5

• 9-12 pages
  

single: 12,1,10,3,8,5 / 2,11,4,9,6,7
reverse: 12,1,10,3,8,5 / 6,7,4,9,2,11
duplex: 12,1,2,11,10,3,4,9,8,5,6,7

• 13-16 pages
  

single: 16,1,14,3,12,5,10,7 / 2,15,4,13,6,11,8,9
reverse: 16,1,14,3,12,5,10,7 / 8,9,6,11,4,13,2,15
duplex: 16,1,2,15,14,3,4,13,12,5,6,11,10,7,8,9

• 17-20 pages
  

single: 20,1,18,3,16,5,14,7,12,9 / 2,19,4,17,6,15,8,13,10,11
reverse: 20,1,18,3,16,5,14,7,12,9 / 10,11,8,13,6,15,4,17,2,19
duplex: 20,1,2,19,18,3,4,17,16,5,6,15,14,7,8,13,12,9,10,11

• 21-24 pages
  

single: 24,1,22,3,20,5,18,7,16,9,14,11 / 2,23,4,21,6,19,8,17,10,15,12,13
reverse: 24,1,22,3,20,5,18,7,16,9,14,11 / 12,13,10,15,8,17,6,19,4,21,2,23
duplex: 24,1,2,23,22,3,4,21,20,5,6,19,18,7,8,17,16,9,10,15,14,11,12,13

• 25-28 pages
  

single: 28,1,26,3,24,5,22,7,20,9,18,11,16,13 / 2,27,4,25,6,23,8,21,10,19,12,17,14,15
reverse: 28,1,26,3,24,5,22,7,20,9,18,11,16,13 / 14,15,12,17,10,19,8,21,6,23,4,25,2,27
duplex: 28,1,2,27,26,3,4,25,24,5,6,23,22,7,8,21,20,9,10,19,18,11,12,17,16,13,14,15

• 29-32 pages
  

single: 32,1,30,3,28,5,26,7,24,9,22,11,20,13,18,15 / 2,31,4,29,6,27,8,25,10,23,12,21,14,19,16,17
reverse: 32,1,30,3,28,5,26,7,24,9,22,11,20,13,18,15 / 16,17,14,19,12,21,10,23,8,25,6,27,4,29,2,31
duplex: 32,1,2,31,30,3,4,29,28,5,6,27,26,7,8,25,24,9,10,23,22,11,12,21,20,13,14,19,18,15,16,17