SatanicNotMessianic @ SatanicNotMessianic @lemmy.ml

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2 yr. ago

Given the world’s “second greatest army” is unable to defeat a smaller nation directly on their border after having an unlimited amount of time to train, prepare, and move forces into position, it’s pretty much a defeat on their side.

It’s been way too long since I played D1 to give specific advice, but as a general rule you absolutely cannot spec as a generalist, especially in older games. Instead (and forgive me if I get any of these details wrong, it’s the general idea that I’m going for) you want to go pretty much all in on a strategy like Whirlwind with both talents and gear.

Also just to mention - you can pick up a franchise like Diablo pretty much anywhere. I loved D1 when it came out, and the same with D2, but anything I still get out of them is nostalgia. I enjoy D3 and haven’t yet picked up D4, but I will once the game starts to settle down on the steam deck or switch. In any case, although there’s sort of a plot line that ties them all together, it’s not like reading Return o the King without having read Fellowship. Like Elder Scrolls, they’re stand alone games where you get some lore tie-in but it’s not necessary for enjoyment at all.

I’m pointing that out because class/spec balance issues have been mostly sorted out by now. You can dial in the level of twitch-click challenge based on game settings, but my jam has always been exploration and discovery rather than figuring out the exact sequence of key taps to kill a boss.

I do not mean this to come off as blunt as it sounds, but I’m trying to be both clear and concise.

What you’re talking about is not how game theory works. What you’re doing is taking the most basic, highly abstracted representation of a generic idea and expecting it to correlate with reality. It’s the same thing people do when they ascribe some kind of wish fulfillment to the free market or to evolutionary dynamics. It’s not even a platonic ideal - it’s drawing a supply/demand curve and thinking you understand how prices work in a market economy. Here’s the main issues you’re running into when you try to play Ultimatum with something the size of the Democratic Party:

1. Noise. There is a permanent base of 3-5% of the electorate that’s going to vote Green, or whatever. The protest voters almost never rise above that noise floor. Focus on a single (potentially complex) issue would help. Green rallies (and others) often have everything from antivax to prison reform to the environment to voting rights to BDS and BLM. All of those things (except the antivax) might be important, but there needs to be a central focus. IMO it’s voting rights - I’d love DSA to drop everything to just start suing states and protesting for voting rights, because everything else is lost without that. We can even both/and, as long as there’s a vision and a focus on a main first objective. Right now we’re coming off like a bunch of verses from We Didn’t Start the Fire. Ultimatum with multiplayer and a noise function is a completely different game.
2. Feedback loop. The consequences for actions needs to be tightened up, and they need a wide base. There needs to be visible and constant representation out in front of both cameras and politicians. This can be people like the Squad or figures like Robert Reich, but there needs to be a uniform voice that doesn’t wait for the election cycle. Groups like Moms for Liberty have this kind of thing on lock. They have a brand and spokespersons and will host and endorse, or else attack on Fox News within hours of a political decision. They’re shit in every way, but they can work the machine. Ultimatum with a delayed feedback loop is a completely different game because the failure of the deal is less attributable.
3. Solidarity and messaging. The majority of Americans want universal health care. The majority of Americans want green energy. The majority of Americans want a cease fire in Gaza. By spreading opinions across multiple realizations of this top level policy objectives, we dilute the message. Ultimatum requires identifiable players with identifiable agendas.

We as voters aren’t playing Ultimatum. Instead, we are playing minimax as an emergent strategy to defend the rights of marginalized populations.

I am a moderately heavy kindle user and have been since the second version they shipped. When I upgrade, I usually buy the best new model available. I am skipping the one with pen support because Amazon’s text autosuggestions are absolutely the worst I have ever seen - it’s like they’re just using a random number generator and not a predictive algorithm - so my current Kindle is the Oasis.

It is so far beyond any other one I’ve owned that they’re not really comparable. The backlight is steady and even with no patchiness. The text reads cleanly with no fuzziness around the fonts. It’s comfortable to hold, and because it just inverts very cleanly and automatically it makes it trivial to hold upside down if you change hands or roll over. My requirements for a case are that it makes the device easier to hold and prop up for hands free reading in bed. Any of the origami cases should do - I think they’re all very similar in design but I’d just go off the reviews for build quality.

That said, there’s a number of kindle books that cannot be read on kindle devices because the publisher decided to prioritize the formatting over the text, and those I have to read on one of my iPads. I still prefer the kindle for text only books because it’s lighter and easier to hold.

The oasis has a slightly different form factor so it might be worth checking out in person, but I went from skeptical to really appreciating the design.

Yes, my employment agreement restricts my extracurricular activities.

That is literally not how it works. That’s how people think it should work, but when you see that it doesn’t, you have to turn back and review your premises and your model. I know the way you think it should work and how you want it to work, but when it doesn’t work you need to revise.

The problem is this - the feedback loop is insufficient and the correlation is unclear. If you are directly negotiating with someone, then you can play Ultimatum. If you are one of a hundred million people casting a vote for one person or another, you cannot. Perot cost Bush I the election, and Nader cost Kerry the election. Neither party decided that they needed to move in the direction of the spoiler candidate. They’re especially not going to do so for 3p candidates who pull in the low single digits, even if they lose by low single digits, because they’ll think they can get more by moving towards the center.

You can vote however you want, but don’t base it on a theoretical foundation that has less than zero application to the scenario you’re modeling. It really, honestly is a minimax choice, and if you are truly an ally for those of us in marginalized communities, you have to recognize it.

I’m not being a right winger here - I’m a member of the DSA and this is in line with what they (and people like Chomsky) advise. But I’m not talking about even that angle. I’m just talking minimax and BATNA. If negotiations fail (ie we didn’t get Bernie), the best alternative is Hillary. At least Roe wouldn’t have been overturned and we wouldn’t have states suing to make ten year olds give birth to their rapist’s babies.

It has been absolutely forever since I played D1, but I seem to remember devs saying that it can be completed by any class.

I don’t remember if there’s a respec option built into the game or available as a cheat, but how you spec really changes your capabilities in dealing with swarms or single bosses. I want to say I finished D1 woth most if not all the classes, but 1 and 2 are now fused in my mind so I really couldn’t say what a game breaking build or strategy is. I do know that if you do a bad build, it can catch up with you but it can be towards the endgame when you finally notice it.

Morrowind was like that too.

I know that this is a phenomenon larger than just the US.

Are countries with anti-hate speech laws experiencing the same degree of increase in support of political violence and the advancement of far right parties? I know that we’re seeing this all over, but to what degree are anti-hate laws able to contain it?

I’ve taught game theory. Voting isn’t the Ultimatum game, because the most a third party is going to do is shave off a few percentage points, resulting in the main party losing, resulting in the main party generally becoming more conservative. Look who ran after Reagan - the entire Democratic Party shifted right with the third way. Look who we ran after Trump.

In voting the way it’s currently configured, there are two elements from game theory that apply. The first is minimax strategy - minimize the maximum damage your enemy can do. Above all that means keeping republicans out of office if you care about minimizing harm to women, minorities and immigrants, the poor, and the LGBT community.

The second concept that applies is the BATNA - the best alternative to a negotiated agreement. If the negotiated agreement fails (we get a left democrat on the ballot) our next best alternative is to get a Democrat elected.

We came within a hair’s breadth of not having another election, and at the very least we will be looking at a roll back of LGBT rights, a nationwide abortion ban, and a massive crackdown that will make sure they don’t lose any more elections.

The US would benefit from being a compulsory voting country. There’s a couple of ways of conducting polls - two of them are “likely voters” and “eligible voters.” The LV model can vary from poll to poll but usually has some criterion like “voted in the last election.”

The LV polls are usually to the right of the EV polls, and the conventional wisdom is that the greater the turnout, the better the democrats do. Republicans on the other hand are generally trying to make it harder to vote.

So compulsory voting with vote by mail would pull things a bit to the left, at least for a few years.

We can disagree and still love each other unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and denial of my humanity and right to exist.

-James Baldwin

That’s an Android only app, right? I’ve been tempted to pick up an Android device just to check it out. I am not allowed to be involved in any app development myself but my understanding is that sync is the high water mark for clients right now.

Honestly, this is the kind of thing that should be hidden behind the UI. I’ve been on the internet long enough that I remember when we had to use a similar approach for addressing emails - where you essentially had to put routing information into your address field, rather than letting the servers figure it out.

Apollo, for instance, had a feature like autocomplete for /r links. It wasn’t perfect, but it helped.

The fragmentation of similar/identically oriented communities is a strength in some ways but at the same time presents a fragmented user experience. While I recognize the challenges on the server side if there’s not an aggregator, I think the client should be able to allow users to designate what would essentially be a multireddit consisting of all of the news.whatever communities, and offer further aggregation that the seven different posts linking to the same article into a single post. There’s a few different ways replies could be handled, but that’s the general idea.

We want to make sure we keep the strengths of federation while hiding things like duplication from users.

Grad school pro tip: Do not become the “computer person.”

My lab was a machine that turned tax dollars into computer models of things like viral propagation.

What’s wild is that what counts as “a lot of funding” differs by an order of magnitude between academic and commercial research.

Fair point. I never tried the original switch. I only bought one once the OLED came out and everyone was raving about it, despite the fact that Nintendo didn’t give it the full 2.0 treatment. I had packed away my pc for a move and just never got around to unpacking it, and wanted something to play on. When I saw it had games like Diablo and Disco as well as Mario Cart, I decided to pull the trigger.

I ended up liking it enough that I went out and got the deck to try to work through my games backlog. Because of steam sales, I have dozens of games I’ve played for less than a couple of hours and some I’ve never even opened.

Of course, right after buying it I ended up buying Stray, BG3, and a couple of others, and still haven’t made progress on my backlog…

Biologist here.

It’s about communication. Territory marking works the same way (eg backyard dogs will often poop and pee on the fence line), but it’s also just like doing a check in on social media when you’re out and about.

I call it pee-mail.

You’re still really young.

First, getting an education and getting a career going is a great start. It shows a level of maturity and that your life is moving in a positive direction. That’s a big plus.

Second, you mention that you’re from an immigrant culture. That might be skewing how you perceive the age vs relationship factor. In the US, it varies widely by socioeconomic class and geography, but just starting to get out there at 25 isn’t that unusual and shouldn’t raise a lot of red flags. I wouldn’t lead with it as an intro statement, but if it comes up naturally after a few dates with the same person, they’ll have the context to understand rather than rush to judgment.

Getting in shape generally only helps - it’s also a signal indicating that you have your life on the right track and do self care - but charisma isn’t all about weight or even appearance. You should be able to talk great, listen great, or both.

The main part you need to pick up is being able to establish the mental hooks around the ideas that are central to programming. Do you know how you can watch a choreography session and see the dancers just pick up the moves as they’re described/demonstrated? That’s because they’ve learned the language of dance. It’s an entire (physical) vocabulary. It’s the semantics of dance.

What you need to do is do that with programming. There’s a number of getting started with books and videos, but you’re going to want them to learn the fundamentals of not just a language but of programming.

If you’re talking about using other people’s functions (like in an api), then the function name should give you a clue about what it does. The cool thing about functions is that you don’t have to know how they’re doing their thing, just what they’re doing. If you have the source code, you will find you remember more if you use comments to make notes for yourself (it engages more of your brain than just reading).

If your problem is writing your own code using functions, start out more slowly. Write a program that’s just a giant block of linear code. Once that’s working, then take a look as to how to break it down into functions. If you have a block of code that sorts a list, for example, and you had to copy and paste it into three different areas, that would mean it should be a function.

Use comments very often as you’re going. Before you write a block, write a comment about what it’s supposed to do. You’ll start to see some generalities, which will be you learning programming, not just a language.

I actually felt like the PT Cruiser and the Pontiac Aztek fell well within the “so bad it’s good” category. To be transparent, I’ll also disclose I also like the Volkswagen Thing and I love dune buggies.