If anyone's interested, there's a nice paper from 1976 (!) that goes into the details. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0020019076900715 For instance, you can do a binary search for the first phase, that is, not just double but initially you double, then quadruple, then times 8 and so forth. That would reduce the number of guesses in the first phase to around lg(lg(N)) instead of lg(N) while also not making the search interval for the second phase too big.

More fun to speculate.

I can see two sides to this. From a general recognized diplomatic "laws", the embassy of a country (weather or not you agree with that country) is their territory. Breaking into a embassy is a big big deal. You may not like DPRK, you may be genuine in wanting to help the person inside the embassy, but still........... Look at another scene. A Russian person takes shelter in the US embassy in Moscow. Group X breaks into the embassy to grab him. Is that okay?

@catseye3 said in Enjoy your long weekend!: @doctor-phibes said in Enjoy your long weekend!: Yeah, he only turned into a miserable old twat ranting away in the wilderness once they took away his Twitter. Before that he was the Cary Grant of American politics. Charm, sophistication, great hair.... Rapier wit. He had a hard time getting dates but I don’t think he ever raped anyone. Well, maybe. See Bill Cosby.

I figure the cartels own a large portion of the military.

@axtremus said in The Top Ten: "Donald"'s popularity has dropped from #489 in 2016 to #610 in 2020. Rent free.

Have millennials heard of Rolling Stone magazine?

Haven't heard much about that in the last month or so...

Actually several interesting things that day.

Young people want color.

I assume the president will still attend.

@axtremus said in A scheduling conflict: @mik said in A scheduling conflict: Cafeteria Catholicism. Joe, that is. That’s a feature, not a bug. I don’t want anyone who takes any particular organized religion too seriously in any high-powered seat of government. How about any particular skin color?