Gordon Linoff Updated 2025-07-16
Infinitely many SQL answers.
As mentioned at Ciro Santilli's Stack Overflow contributions, he just answers every semi-duplicate immediatly as it is asked, and is therefore able to overcome the Stack Overflow maximum 200 daily reputation limit by far. E.g. in 2018, Gordon reached 135k (archive), thus almost double the 73k yearly limit due to the 200 daily limit, all of that with accepts.
This is in contrast to Ciro Santilli's contribution style which is to only answer questions as he needs the subject, or generally important questions that aroused his interest.
2014 Blog post describing his activity: blog.data-miners.com/2014/08/an-achievement-on-stack-overflow.html, key quote:
For a few months, I sporadically answered questions. Then, in the first week of May, my Mom's younger brother passed away. That meant lots of time hanging around family, planning the funeral, and the like. Answering questions on Stack Overflow turned out to be a good way to get away from things. So, I became more intent.
so that suggests his contributions also take a meditative value.
www.data-miners.com/linoff.htm mentions he's an SQL consultant that consulted for several big companies.
LinkedIn profile: www.linkedin.com/in/gordonlinoff/ says he now works at the New York Times.
2021 Reddit thread about him: www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/puok1h/a_single_person_answered_76k_questions_about_sql/ mentions that by then he had:
answered 76k questions about SQL on StackOverflow. Averaging 22.8 answers per day, every day, for the past 8.6 years.
As of 2021, last updated 2016, and python 3.5 appears to be mandatory or else:
RuntimeError: __class__ not set defining 'AbstractBaseUser' as <class 'django.contrib.auth.base_user.AbstractBaseUser'>. Was __classcell__ propagated to type.__new__?
which apparently broke in 3.6: stackoverflow.com/questions/41343263/provide-classcell-example-for-python-3-6-metaclass and pyenv install fails on Ubuntu 20.10, so... fuck. Workarounds at:but am I in the mood considering that the ancient Django version would require an immediate port anyways? Repo is at Django 1.0, while newest is now already Django 3. The Rails one is broken for the same reason. Fuck 2.
Companies are getting too much power to distort regulations and destroy privacy.
Taxes pay for the physical car roads, so why shouldn't they also pay for the "online roads" of today?
Other less simple ones that might also be feasible:
All of them should have strong privacy enabled by default: end-to-end encryption, logless, etc. Governments are not going to like this part.
And then if you ever forget a password or lose a multi-factor authentication token, you can just go to an ID center with your ID to recover it.
Grand Unified Theory Updated 2025-07-16
Appears to be an unsolved physics problem. TODO why? Don't they all fit into the Standard Model already? So why is strong force less unified with electroweak, than electromagnetic + weak is unified in electroweak?
Gravity Updated 2025-07-16
In 2020 physics, best explained by general relativity.
TODO: does old Newtonian gravity give different force results than general relativity?
Great circle Updated 2025-07-16
Great doubt Updated 2025-07-16
The type of feeling of confusion and distrut for your sense that some Koans attempt to instill.
Some notable references:
Great doubt, great understanding Updated 2025-07-16
This is perhaps the most popular version of Great doubt in 21st century China
Fuller quote as seen e.g. at: www.hrfjw.com/fjrw/hcrw/ywfs/324750.html
大疑大悟,小疑小悟,不疑不悟
translation;
Great doubt, great underestanding. Small doubt, small understanding. No doubt, no understanding.
k.sina.cn/article_5668613235_151e02c7300100wutq.html attributes it to modern day Chinese "Master Chongci" (崇慈法师).
Gridworld Updated 2025-12-13
This is analogous to many traditional board games such as chess, the concept is very natural and maps well into computer.
The downsides of gridworld games are:
  • it is hard to model speed in discrete worlds. When you 10x faster, when do you collide with something else that is also crossing your path?
  • they tend to not use vector representations of objects. So to have an object be 10x longer than another one, the naive implementation has to add 10 smaller objects. This becomes untenable as the number of objects increases.
Group Updated 2025-07-16

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