Could someone also write bad code and commit it using someone else's email address in the commit message, thus making the commit link to the other person's Github profile? (Sort of the reverse problem -- "giving blame" instead of "taking credit")
Doesn't gaining 600 points mean that you are able to beat the "old you" (or more precisely, people who you used to be even with) with 99% probability? (Or perhaps more meaningfully, you can now beat someone who could beat someone who could beat someone who could beat someone who can beat the old you, all with 80% probability?)
(I made up the exact numbers, but the idea is there.)
That seems like a meaningful interpretation of "600 points" that applies to anyone -- though the difficulty of actually making this improvement definitely varies with your starting rating.
There are many situations where a good player can be predicted because there is a clear best option (or a good option that advance knowledge won't invalidate).
> I always thought that it would fail to decode the string since the probability that changeme is actually valid base64 encoding must be very low
I'm a bit confused, I thought any string with only lowercase letters was "valid base64" (more precisely, I thought "valid base64" is equivalent to "string consists only of the 64 special characters we're using to represent digits 0-63").
Draw a graph with vertices labeled 0 through N, then add edges i->(i+1) and i->(i+2). The answer is the number of paths from 0 to N.
This is still pretty specific to counting paths in the same way the original knight problem is, though.
The other comment is talking about how you represent each state for the recursive function as a vertex, then connect it to its dependencies (basically taking the recursion tree, but merging identical calls).
> People’s general focus on the hose rather than the hole is well demonstrated by the fact that anyone you ask will be able to tell you how much money they make by some unit of time but almost no one will be able to tell you the same in terms of their costs.
I mean, this is just because most people have 1-2 income sources and way more expense sinks, so this is just rhetoric.