amazon review of 5x5 rubiks cube

This is a great cube.  As an engineer, I'm really impressed by the design and quality.  I always have a complaint about product design, but I could not find any flaws in this.

Do not pay attention to the reviewer who said it came apart. It is not possible to take it apart without a screwdriver.  The center caps can be popped off with your fingernail to reveal the screw inside, one on each side.  You tighten the screws to make it a "tighter" cube.  As with other cubes from this manufacturer, I needed to make 1 to 2 turns on those screws to tighten the cube up.  It really is too flexible when you get it.

The colors are just as vibrant and nice as the picture shows.

I'm very enthralled by this 5x5 that I seem to have lost all interest in my 3x3. I wanted a 4x4 but figured my son would be more impressed with a 5x5 (he was), but now I am very happy I got the harder one.

The instructions are great becaus e they're so awful.  The bad "Engrish" and the challenge in trying to figure them out was fun and challenging. I specifically refrained from trying to do a web search to get good instructions.  "When we recover the centre block we will meet some problem, but normally have two condition. Recover the center block is agile step. You lean these 2 formular must think it's thinking." The instructions made it 3x harder than it should be.  I could really only understand the 4 patterns (the engrish was either superfluous or too bad) and one of the images is wrong, so I had to apply the patterns to see what happened.  Then I had to use a little but of thinking to get the pieces in the right place so that the 4 patterns could always be used.  Also, for what they call the 2nd step, (the 3rd of the 4 formulas) I had to apply the mirror image (or some type of "inverse") of the pattern for half of the pieces.  So after an hour I had the 4 patterns figured out.

Summary of solving:
===============
2 patterns of 7 moves each applied to "middle" pieces (not the corners, not the sides). Each pattern is applied about 10 times each (20 move) because there are 48 of the middle pieces and you can easily solve the first grouping (or two) without the patterns and ~30% of the remaining pieces are in place by luck.

1 pattern of 7 moves, and it's mirror image, applied to get the 3 side pieces (that make up each side) together for each of the 12 sides. Barely 25% seem to be in place by luck, so (100% - 25%) x 12 x 2 =~ 18 times.  (you apply it to 2 of the 3 side pieces, for each side)

1 pattern of 15 moves applied about 6 times to the sides to orient  ~50% of the 12 sides that are not oriented correctly by luck. If you mess up, you have to go back to and apply step 1 and 2 several times, then all of step 3, losing 10 minutes of work.

Now solve like a 3x3

There seems to be a lot of room for figuring out ways to reduce the amount of times the first 2 patterns need to be applied. So there's plenty of room for fun invention.

Here's more detail on solving.

The first 3 patterns are pretty simple.  The 4th one is challenging and took me about 20 times before I remembered it well enough to not make a mistake.  After solving it 10 times this weekend, I'm down to 16 minutes, and I do not know if I can make a lot of improvement.  I can solve a 3x3 in 80 seconds using the most basic method.  40 seconds is my record on 3x3 due to some luc I still need to look at the 4th pattern to keep me on track (it's 15 moves, most of them a half turn).  Someone else said he does it in 7 minutes. k.

After you apply the 4 patterns you have it organized in a way so that you can solve the rest like a 3x3.  So it adds only 4 patterns to the 5 I use for a regular 3x3 (not counting 2 "mirror" moves of the 5 that I sometimes use to speed things up, and the 6 or so simple moves I use to get the initial white layer)

another comment on one of nick szabo's article

in response to
https://unenumerated.blogspot.nl/2017/02/money-blockchains-and-social-scalability.html


Since the early adopters stand to profit enormously, I would not say bitcoin is socially scalable in all aspects. This gives rise to a wealthy class (Satoshi being the prime example) that Adam Smith said should have their wealth taxed away (because they gained wealth without labor). Later writers generalized Smith's complaints about the land-renting aristocracy and large capitalists forming monopolies and "lobbies" to include natural monopolies and unearned interest on loans.  Unearned interest on a loan is even worse in our Dutch-english type of loan as opposed to German-type. The difference between a dutch-english loan and a stock investment is that the loaner is not concerned with the outcome of the business venture. With collateral its head's I win and you win or break even and tails I win and you lose, excepting bankruptcies and housing crisis destroying collateral value. Anyway, if there is a class who can lend out a non-inflationary money at interest with little fear of loss, and more than live off that interest, the logical end result is a 1% class. But not just that, what happens if there is any type of wealth accumulation and everyone is require by law or convention to base the ownership or temporary control of all assets in society in that currency?  By definition, an accumulation  requires a loss of relative wealth by some other party if they tried to only live off their labor. By not investing more in the "machine" they and/or their children lose compared to other people. Maybe that's good and simply survival of the fittest, but I'm not sure. The escape for the masses getting less and less of of the total wealth by trying to live off of wages instead of engaging in the "savings war" is to abandon the currency, just like empire currencies eventually have to be abandoned. The non-working non-skilled wealthy would then lose its cheap slaves. The bitcoin "ponzi scheme" ends. He who gets in early and gets out before the fall is the winner, not having not ever having done anything beneficial for society. But maybe the machines will figure out how to force us to accept on this one currency so that we work more efficiently (i.e. we work harder for less money). Economizing means doing more with less, not optimizing human happiness. The recent increase in human happiness which might just be an odd recent result of the fossil fuel influx.  Anyway, the focus on savings in a non-inflationary coin like bitcoin is supposed to cause a deflationary spiral until a different currency is adopted. I never see anyone addressing these problems.

posted comment to one of nick szabo's articles

This is a comment posted to Nick Szabo's article:
https://unenumerated.blogspot.nl/2017/03/collecting-metal-inner-and-outer-worlds.html


The "sound money" you've described I would call "forms of money based on efficient barter that works even in anarchy".

The "treasure" category carries value (as you've described before) based on some kind of "order" produced by the objects uniqueness (including history) and/or difficulty in creating it (via skill x time). The skill could be physical and/or intellectual, including a smart understanding of the target audience's desires.

But the "government fiat money" category to me is an advancement & simplification exposing a secondary essence of money, not a setback or unavoidable cheat by powers that be. The purpose of efficient barter is to make sure the trade is honest, resulting in stronger economic individuals & stronger societies. But protocols (law) that can be employed to enforce a reduction in cheats where a fair trade is not easily determinable by the parties in the exchange. I propose most needed trades can't be easily determined to be honest. Worse, many trades can be bad for society as a whole while optimal for the parties at the exchange. So we invented government to enforce laws. But to enforce laws & keep them in "sync", it seems a single money for a single government was needed. I am reminded of economic agents in an A.I. exchanging a currency in order to buy CPU time & memory space. The use of energy in CPU time is kinetic joules & the storage of bits in memory space is the storage of potential joules. The kinetic energy in our economics is oil/gas/solar/etc. The potential energy is gold,copper,buildings roads, etc. Another form of value I'm skipping is intellectual value of the law, building designs, & programs that run iPads, etc. They do not seem to be the same kind of "treasure" mentioned above, but they both are an intellectual property.

So to make a large system optimal in at least terms of strength, a higher level of intelligence beyond anarchistic efficient barter has won human wars: large centralized governments with a single legal money. Democracy aside, it seems to have achieved this via getting all the laws "on the same page" to create a coherent body via a single money.

Cryptography & technology may make governments obsolete only in name: there will still be some kind of system-wide governing (aka a protocol) we will choose to join that optimizes trade & (more importantly) the goals of a society. The possibility of choice in our governance will advance the fittest which may make all the difference in the world. In the end, biology will be replaced by machine. The current extinction rate & expected stopping of population growth shows the trend.

As a cyclical force acting on an closed (not isolated) thermodynamic system, the moon lowers entropy. It creates order that has been crucial for life & the concentration of ores in the mantle. For example of this thermo effect, you can randomly drop balls into a jar they will not be very efficiently pack especially if they are different sizes or shapes. If you shake the jar, they pack more efficiently which lowers the entropy (the cyclic energy injected comes out as heat while the mass inside is constant). It seems to be allowing mass on the surface of the Earth to congeal via our economics. Metals, silicon, & carbon fiber are created by removing oxygen from "ores" which results in a lower specific entropy per mass of the material. It joins our governed economic system for better command & control. It leads to more efficient thinking machines (CPUs control electrons where brains are stuck with molecules) & more efficient use of sunlight (solar cells are 20x more efficient than photosynthesis). Harder materials are lower entropy due to fewer possible states at a given temperature. They are more static (log-lived) & controllable. The released O2 gas increases entropy, offsetting the reduction, so Earth-wide it may not be a reduction. There is lower entropy per mass of our economic system as we switch from biology to machines.

======
The point I would like to make is that you seem to be dismissing or neglecting fiat money. And yet, I believe you are the inventor of "smart contracts". Fiat money seems to be the simplified form of money that exposes the importance of contracts (which are limited and enforced by a higher-level of contracts called the governing law). A single contract unto itself is meaningless. It's importance is like the importance of having more than 1 economic agent. Contracts, like agents, must interact for a higher goal. Isn't a single currency important in such a system? For example, if the total currency represents total fluid control of the society's assets, and is printed or contracted with the economy in order to keep prices and wages stable, then a single unit (like the dollar) would represent a fixed percent control of the fluid assets. So with a stable currency to match available fluid assets under control of the assets, then the contracts can remain valid in time and space in terms of that unit. This idealized for simplicity and I'm avoiding the importance of mild inflation to prevent "loaning" hoarders ("rentiers" in classical economics) gaining interminable control of others without labor. 

A Physics Speculation: 1D space as the past, 1D time as the future

Warning: this includes many factual and intuitive ideas that try to make connections between thought and physics.  Landauer's principle shows one if not the central basis of the connection. I always try to be exact, efficient, and correct. Sometimes my reasoning and presentation just fall apart.  But it is not easy to identify when. I do not have the energy or desire (since these are notes to self, not just to the world) to take out or refine the trash and hope you will try to take it all seriously at first before discarding a paragraph as an example of my confusion or inattention.  I hope the imaginative aspects will be understood and appreciated.  I am always trying to explain ideas I have not seen elsewhere, otherwise you could just do a Google search. This means I am often trying to break from established "facts" like the belief that entropy always increases (this is not true as established by cosmology and the great physicist Richard Feynman as I have explained before). The most important ideas are the ones that are new  and therefore are harder to grasp or appreciate when they are read.  If a sentence is correctly parsed it does not mean the importance has been grasped. This is all the more true if you are incredulous. I regret and warn that sometimes you need to be. But even if an imaginative idea is factually wrong, logically inconsistent, and badly presented, it may be useful to have it go into your bag of imaginative tricks.


All logic can be reduced to the placement or interaction of 1's and 0's which are just "yes/no" or "true/false". Boole showed this in the 1800's. 

Geometry was the first "math" that went beyond addition, subtraction, and multiplication.  The ink is 1's and the space is 0's. The ink holding firm on the paper is for letting the paper keep a good memory of the things being claimed. The logic of stories, law, and advanced math still use the ink on the paper as a memory and syntax rules for the valid ways in which the ink can interact with itself, across the space of the paper. 

The physical objects we see in space are also a rigid memory. The relationship between the objects is largely defined by the space between them.  Unlike geometry, law, and math, the object relationships in space are changing in time, as if the ink on the paper is moving around, according to additional syntax rules.

But there is a rigid relationship between time and space. We have units for energy which we now know is the same unit as mass, specially E=mc^2.  But that's not exactly right.  The correct formula is E= -mc^2 (with the negative sign, they are equal and opposite).  Or rather, the E+mc^2=0.   Similarly it is not exactly meters=seconds anymore than energy=mass.  Obviously there is something different.  The exact relationship is meters = SQRT(-1) * c * seconds.   Also, space is 3D and time is 1D.  Or rather, the position of objects in the 3D changes with time.  But the 3D is a consequence of us having a 6-layered brain.  To solve 3D of rotation and 3D of velocity, our brains needed to have 6 layers of neurons in the cortex in the same way you need 6 equations to solve 6 unknowns.  The process of learning since or before birth or even hard-wired develops the 6 equations we use for the rest of our life to conceive of objects with mass when we are presented with 6 data points of rotation and velocity.  What I'm getting at is that the newish "holographic" view of the universe that attempts to say 2D is more accurate than 3D is still 1D short.  Physics should always be reduced to the simplistic but complete form, and 1D of space should be sufficient. Objects are no longer objects with mass in 1D, but just more like the 1's occurring in the midst of 0's along a single line.  There are patterns to the sequence.  Our 6-layered brain is made useful by the existence of those patterns. If they were random, 6 layers would not have any use.  To see 4D space in 1D time we would need 10-layered brains and the mass we would perceive in that world would be related but very different.  Everything with velocity in 3D is static in 4D.  And everything with acceleration in 3D is a velocity in 4D.  It would be E=-mc^3 instead of E=-mc^2. 

But my point is this:  There appears to be a "space-line" of 1's and 0's (whatever that means) that we call the past that underlies our perceptions.  Space is the past.  Time is the future.  I said meters=i*c*seconds.  But a little math can restate this as seconds = -i / c*meters.  So seconds might be the negative of meters (scaled by "c" and times "i").  That is, our perception is standing at the origin of a "timeline" or "spaceline" where our position is = 0.  And from there goes a positive sequence of 1, 2, 3 with each spot in that sequence of 1D "space" a 1 or a 0. That would be our 3D space converted to 1D space and is strictly a recording of our past. The positive sequence of 1's and 0's is what we perceive as objects in space at this moment of the origin.  They are a recording or perception of our past that determine via logical consistency what is possible for our future.      And the negative numbers on this "space-time-line" is the future of 1's and 0's about to unfold.  And maybe EVERY possible sequence is unfolding, which creates the many-world's interpretation of quantum mechanics.   "i" in engineering and physics is always used when it is describing something that "varies".  In this case the "i" might be stating the next value can be 1 or 0.  If you do not know the value, you use "i" in it's place.  The space-time-line might be more properly a sequence of SQRT(1) and SQRT(-1) or +1 and -1.  0 and 1 in Boolean logic are not really values, but simply signify there are 2 possibilities.

As I've posted previously, the expanding universe is extracting entropy out of gravitational systems in order to keep a constant entropy per expanding (comoving) volume of space.  The entropy that leaves a gravitational system might be a record of what path the system took.  Since mass is the negative of energy, there is no creation of energy with a many-world's view.

Transaction fees should govern all aspects of a cryptocurrency

In response to a wired article:

Instead of voting based on ownership of tokens, voting should be based on amount of fees paid in transactions. Those USING the coin as a CURRENCY, would then get to decide its design and future. If you view transaction fees as "taxes" to support the "governing" of the coin and how transactions are handled and paid for, then those who pay the most in taxes (transaction fees) should get the strongest voice in directing the future of the coin. "Pay to vote" sounds ugly because it sounds like a lobby, but it's not the same. The transactions fees conducting the voting is a real market-place legitimate force. No one other than the market place should be influencing the coin design and even new-coin production rate. Not developers, not nodes (basically the banks), and especially not miners. Marketplace voters based on fees paid is even smarter than a democratic vote where an infrequent user of the coin would get the same vote as a frequent user. In this scheme, it's a democratic currency instead of an oligarchical asset like bitcoin. Transaction fees as a percent transferred would cut down on day trading and on micro-payments that are not carrying their weight. Currencies are meant to be fluid assistants to marketplace transactions, not assets to be hoarded like bitcoin.
We will not have a good cryptocurrency until the transaction fees dictate all aspects of the coin, especially coin quantity and coin release rate. Programmers and stakeholder should never make decisions regarding a currency. The distributed marketplace should be the supreme unquestioned leader of developers, miners, and nodes, not their hapless victim. When it's functioning like this, you will find the coin will have a stable value and not reward early adopters. Greed and ignorance is what's stopping the emergence of an intelligent peer-to-peer cryptocoin.

Bitcoin, currency in A.I., and rise of the machines

comment in reddit:
======
I'm objecting to your the implication that "no one" is in control of bitcoin. You actually said "anyone" which leaves open the possibility that "everyone" or "consensus" is in control of it which is my position. I've tried to show why bitcoin is not fundamentally different from the status quo. The only way to fix it is to have a coin who's code is simple enough to write once and it inherently disallows future changes no matter what the consensus wants. I suspect the physics of evolution seeks this so that machine technology can continue to replace biological technology (5000x more extinctions right now than the historical rate).
That bitcoin needs to be changed is proof of its imperfect security (where "security" includes it's value as determined by its usability).
Not defining what is meant by "best" for the coin is also always a problem in these discussions. Increasing its value is in direct opposition to increasing its use as a currency. It is an asset like gold but not a currency (gold has always been the most horrific currency for the masses and very much loved by the 1%). Its limited quantity blocks its widespread adoption as a currency.
Distributed, secure, efficient, intelligent systems depend on a currency that expands as the size of the system expands. This is not bitcoin. Bitcoin is the digital asset that may soon represent percent control of the total physical assets of society that are being guided by it. It needs an expandable but not inflatable currency to go along with it for use in the marketplace. By this I mean we need a currency that expands as its use expands but no faster, so that wages, prices, and contracts remain valid and accurate (a coin that is constant in value but not in quantity). So the marketplace needs to set difficulty and coin emission rate by feedback from total coins per day transacted (not transactions per day), not by programmers arbitrarily deciding the coin emission rate and total final coin quantity. A currency needs to be a living beast, not controlled by anyone or even by everyone but only by the marketplace needs. In this way the corporate machine can continue to take biology out of the economic picture in its pursuit of thermodynamic efficiency.
As an asset Bitcoin may be the one coin to rule them all. But it desperately needs to get married to an efficient, expandable currency in order to exert and extend its control of society. This is an error in your post. You speak as if you are addressing global issues. The other shoe has not dropped. It's going to be as simple as bitcoin and not subject to bickering or change. It will adopt to marketplace change as I just described.
I suspect the bickering is from the lack of understanding that there is this other shoe that is missing. It can't be both the ideal currency and the ideal asset. Each bitcoin can and should represent a percent control (1/20M'th) of assets under its roof. A percent is not a unit of account that can or should be used in the marketplace. The currency should be expressed in "Available Joules" (aka Gibbs free energy).

Newton's cradle energy losses

Executive summary:
================
E max lost to sound: 0.5% per 200 clacks (100 cycles)
E max loss to air drag: 1.7% per 100 cycles
E lost to string: 0.8% per cycle (not measured carefully)
E lost to heat in balls and strings: 3% per 1 clack

Variables: 5 cm drop (1 m/s),  44 g steel balls 1.1 cm radius.
12 cm high strings.
Observation: about 0.5 cm distance sideways after 200 clacks (100 swings)
This is 12*cos(asin(0.5/12)) = 0.01 cm height from initial 5 cm = 0.2% remaining energy
(not measured carefully)
Two balls were dropped simultaneously from both sides, so it's 0.1% of initial energy
E=mgh * 2 = 44 mJ initial energy both balls.

max Energy lost in sound, 0.5% per 200 clacks:
====== proof =======:
Assume worst case, it's like noisy office at 5 meters for 8 ms per clack.
10E-6 W/m^2 * 4pi 5^2 * 0.008 secs= 2.5 uJ per clack
For 200 clacks assume max loud for 100 clacks, 0.250 mJ
Max energy in sound, 0.25/44 = 0.5%

max Energy loss to air drag, 3.41% per 200 clacks :
======= proof  =========
F=1/2 * C * density * Area * v^2
C=0.5 sphere
air 1.2 kg/m^3
v = 0.75 m/s for 5 cm drop in first few clacks
Area= pi * 0.011^2
F = 62 uN each ball
12 cm string  height 0.68 secs per 2 clacks.
5 cm drop => ~12 cm travel per 1 clack
E=Fd = 62 uN * 0.12 * 100 clacks (100 as a high average even for 200 clacks) = 0.74 mJ per 200 clacks max
Max energy in air friction  = 0.74/44 =1.7% per 100 cycles absolute max

Can I measure the heat increase with an infrared thermometer?
Steel heat capacity: 2.2 Celsius * gr/J * 0.022 J /  44 g = 0.001 C increase if all energy lost to heat in 1 ball in 1st clack.  Can't measure it.

Energy loss in string resistance 0.8% per cycle,
====== proof =======
Measured 80% energy loss after 100 complete swings of ball on the string (no clacks).
(1-0.80)^(1/200) = 99.2% => 0.8% loss in string per cycle (2 clacks when in cradle).

Energy loss from all sources, measured 3.4% per clack
===================
Observed about 200 max clacks (100 cycles) before stopping =>
 0.001^(1/200) = 0.966 energy retained after each clack. ( 0.966^200 = 0.001)

Energy lost to heat in balls (or in strings due to off-center rotational effects): 3.4%-0.8%/2 - 1.7%/200 - 0.5/200=3% per clack
=================

96% energy retained is what I measured for steel on glass block, very close to this 96.6%, but that is without a string, possibly offsetting the error of not bouncing steel on steel.

Liquid metal seemed to be 1/2 the height after 44 bounces.  0.5^(1/44) = 98.4% retained energy per bounce.