Today is World IPv6 Launch day, and I predict…
In the next 10-20 years, every baby born in the developed world will be allocated their own personal IPv6 address.
Why? Well, wouldn’t it be cool if everyone just had the same phone number for life? Fine, so there are services like Google Voice and the Yellowpages but come on, how many people actually use these things in real life? Instead, what if everyone just had a single address that they could link to their phone, computer, computer-phone, brain-implant-phone, tooth-implant-phone, eyeball-phone, or whatever you might have in your pocket in 10 years, to your personal IPv6 number!? Think about the possibilities!
Also.. IPv6 also has cool integrated security features that should make the world a better place.
Today is dedicated to IPv6 Launch Day and Giant Steps by Coltrane.
How many ways to tie a tie?
It turns out the answer is 85… or 10… or just 4, depending on the aesthetic inclinations of the knotter.
Thomas M. Fink & Yong Mao, two sartorial scientists, published a Nature paper in 1999 where they describe their method of counting all possibilities. Here’s what they did:
They mathematically defined the “tie knot” and precisely determined all possible knot sequences (called walks) that result in a proper knot. Of course, there are probably hundreds of ways to make a knot in a tie, so they limited their search to knots that take 9 moves or less. Using their mathematical model, they determined that the total number is 85.
Now, nobody wants to make it look like their tie knot has another tie knot growing out of it so the authors further narrowed down the count by considering only symmetric knots and knots that are tightly bound (and thus keep their shape). Using these constraints they came up with a final list of 10 knots, 4 of which are already known and 6 brand new ones.
Future directions include determining which knots are good for fat ties and which are good for skinny ties. Maybe some day we’ll even get to name them! Screw the Four-in-hand, I think I’m gonna tie a Hipster today!
Original paper attached for the mathematically inclined or just generally curious:
