How Sensitive To Magnets Is Video Tape?

Magnetic storage + strong permanent magnets = bad. I’ve never really tempted fate on that, but I happened to be disposing of an old MiniDV camcorder, I had a couple of tapes, and I saw a chance to get the straight truth.

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Quick and Easy Gaussian Random Numbers

Generating random numbers which fit a normal distribution is essential for stochastic optimization, especially for continuous evolutionary algorithms.

For high-quality results the weapon of choice is the Box–Muller transform. It’s a little expensive; it involves exponents and trigonometry and such. Recently I was working on an EA written in JavaScript, and I wanted to avoid using those functions. There’s actually a damn simple alternate method.

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Main Sequence – The Ownership Society

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This album is excellent. It is strange and intelligent and off-beat and slick. It is not available for sale any more; the artist grants permission to distribute: e78cc2a231f3f2d6b1278f795b0346ae4b98c7e7

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My Stance On Piracy

I’ve done my civic duty the past few weeks pushing another 150 gigabytes or so of MST3K out to the world. Full burn bandwidth overnight, polite moderation during business hours.

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This number may be the one and only place in the world where you can get all of this.
Keep circulating the tapes.

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PWM LED driver design difficulties

For my custom alarm clock, I needed a light source with controllable intensity and color. It didn’t come together as easily as I expected.

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