It’s pos­si­ble to build a Tur­ing machine with­in Mag­ic: The Gath­er­ing

It may be a high­ly unlike­ly sce­nario, but a recent paper post­ed on the physics arX­iv proves that it’s pos­si­ble in prin­ci­ple to build a sim­ple com­put­er with­in this mas­sive­ly pop­u­lar table­top game using just the right com­bi­na­tion of Mag­ic cards. While the inputs must be pre-pro­grammed, “Lit­er­al­ly any func­tion that can be com­put­ed by any com­put­er can be com­put­ed with­in a game of Mag­ic,” said co-author Alex Churchill, a long­time Mag­ic fan who has been work­ing on the prob­lem for sev­er­al years.

How E‑Commerce Sites Manip­u­late You Into Buy­ing Things You May Not Want

But “Alexan­dra from Ana­heim” did not buy the dress. She does not exist. Instead, the website’s code pulled com­bi­na­tions from a pre­pro­grammed list of names, loca­tions and items and pre­sent­ed them as actu­al recent pur­chas­es.

Uber’s Path of Destruc­tion

In real­i­ty, Uber’s plat­form does not include any tech­no­log­i­cal break­throughs, and Uber has done noth­ing to “dis­rupt” the eco­nomics of pro­vid­ing urban car ser­vices. What Uber has dis­rupt­ed is the idea that com­pet­i­tive con­sumer and cap­i­tal mar­kets will max­i­mize over­all eco­nom­ic wel­fare by reward­ing com­pa­nies with supe­ri­or effi­cien­cy.

The Per­son­al Finance Indus­try Is a Scam

Per­son­al finance is the pros­per­i­ty gospel of cable news, hap­py to claim that you’ll end up with all the mon­ey if you lis­ten to its experts, take their advice, buy their book. Not buy­ing cof­fee won’t mag­i­cal­ly get you a house. Not buy­ing avo­ca­do toast isn’t a retire­ment plan.