This is an interesting problem I came across on CodeSignal; it is marked as easy but it took me some time to figure out (with help from the Internet). Here is the problem: Given integers a and b, determine whether the following pseudocode results in an infinite loop while a is not equal to b do increase a by 1 decrease b by 1 Assume that the program is executed on a virtual machine which can store arbitrary long numbers and execute forever.

The elevation of Ms Draupadi Murmu as the head of state should have been a routine exercise, witnessed by India every 5 years like a clockwork. And it was, till some lawmakers floated the puerile and prima-facie sexist comment of calling her राष्ट्रपत्नि. The only mitigating argument which can be made for making the senseless suggestion is that these lawmakers are illiterate. Though, even literacy is no guarantee for presence of common sense.

Skip the introduction and go directly to the fix Bought a CoolScan 8000 I recently bought a used Nikon Coolscan 8000 film scanner on eBay. These scanners are old, so much so that Nikon does not even manufacture them anymore. They were deprecated in early 2000s in favour of Coolscan 9000, and even 9000s are not manufactured anymore! However, 8000 is much cheaper than 9000; while used 9000 go for around US$3000-5000, whereas used 8000 go for around US$1000-1500.

I postulate that we are not living in the Matrix. If we were living in a world rule by intelligent machines, then the machines would have lobotomised the human beings to a vegetative state. The only reason for keeping humans was to harness the electricity/heat from their bodies, for this purpose they wouldn’t need an actively thinking human who can potentially collapse the whole existence of machines'. The machines, if they were intelligent, would have guessed quickly that they don’t need to take the trouble of building a fake reality, in which people are mostly happy, to imprison them.

Besides Right-to-Repair, a supplementary and much easier law to enact will be to require companies to make public all schematics, bill-of-material, source code, CAD designs for the deprecated products; i.e. the products which are no longer sold, repaired, and for even the replacement parts are no longer manufactured. This is not only good for environment, but also enables the general public to keep using the products they own for as long as they wish.