celticmusic

I'd love to see the details on League of Legends ranking algorithm.

they're legitimate problems if you value transparency and free speech.

But I get it. We've seen this before.

    First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—

         Because I was not a socialist.

    Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—
         Because I was not a trade unionist.

    Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
         Because I was not a Jew.

    Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came_...

One thing I'd like to add to this.

Software Developers will often be tempted to automate the yak shaving away so they don't really have to deal with it all. This is a good attitude to have, but when combined with automation it can also be dangerous. I've seen many automated solutions run off on their own doing entirely the wrong thing. It's very often safer to slow down, build tools to assist, but have a human there to push the go button. It's not as sexy, and if you're scale is large enough you're also building tools to help with analysis. But in the long run you'll avoid problems.

Actually, you just went into detail explaining why it's a good idea.

In chess you'll see one player or the other reach over and lay their king over. It's an admission that, while the game isn't technically done, it's unwinnnable. So out of respect for time they simply acknowledge the loss and move on.

If, as you say, most losses see someone use a token, great! That's the point. They use the token, everyone leaves the game. It's done. The winners win, the losers lose.

Now imagine that you're playing and you're winning, but you're an asshole because you're smurfing. One of your teammates tosses out his token, you lose. Now also imagine this keeps happening because you're an asshole. It incentivizes you to stop being an asshole.

Imagine you're playing and 10 minutes in one of your teammates disconnects. Lets assume they're in a storm and the electricity went out. at minute 12, you use your token and move on. You weren't forced to play out a 30-40 minute game. You just moved on.

Imagine that game where your team is literally dying once/minute at minute ten. You just use your token and move on.

---

The only real counter-argument to this is that it might affect people's ranks. People will have losses they may have otherwise won. Or wins that they might otherwise have lost.

This is true.

Do you know what else is true?

The game is riddled with smurfs. People will win or lose games by just being matched with a smurf. The game has autofill. For those not aware, autofill means the game forces you to play a position you don't normally play. People will win or lose games due to nothing more than an algorithm making a decision. The game has streamers who specialize in "bronze to challenger" streams. The people in those games will win or lose due to nothing more than matchmaking.

These are all basically random chance, and what they do is make the error in the ELO system larger. Riot enforces autofill in the interests of short queues. It explicitly allows smurfs and streamers in the interests of marketing.

So Riot has already accepted the random wins and losses.

The question is, can we do it in a way that decreases player tension. The answer is yes.

This isn't about creating a perfect system. This is about the fact that the game currently has a ton of variability from imperfections due to Riot making compromises. The question is how can do it while giving the players more agency over themselves?

And I haven't even spoken about how BAD riot's matchmaking is. It's seriously bad.

I remember a game I had where I was forced bot lane by myself because my support never connected. For those not familiar with the game, this means I was playing in a 1v2.

And I got huge. I took over the game. And not because the opponents went diving under my turret (note: turrets will damage the opponent), but because I just straight up punished them for positioning mistakes and killed them. I legitimately pulled a double kill with first blood in a 1v2 with no jungler help.

In postgame chat, someone on the other team asked me if I was a smurf. Technically no, but I sure as hell was smurfing in that game. Riot's matchmaking should NEVER have placed me in that game.

The fact that it does adds even MORE variability. It gives more random wins and losses to players. It increases the error rate of ELO in the game.

The community has a common sentiment: 80% of the games you play you have no agency in whether you win or lose. You just have to accept it and move on. But 20% of the games you do have an effect and to climb you need to be more consistent so that you're winning in that 20%.

The point is this: The issues of uncontrolled wins and losses already exist in the current system. It's just you're also forced to stay in a game for another 20-30 minutes, and that just increases everyones frustration.

A few years ago I was forced to put my cat down due to a neighbors dog attacking her.

I took her to an emergency vet and spent over $3k trying to save her, but at some point it became obvious that we couldn't and so the decision was made to put her to sleep.

Throughout all of this I was upset and worried, but not overly so. In my mind, I cared about her, but it was still just a cat.

Until they put her in my arms. I remember she looked up at me and started purring and I just completely lost it. I'm not one who can cry in front of other people, but at that moment I couldn't help it.

It took months before I stopped turning around expecting her to be there. When it first happened my girlfriend made a comment about killing the dog. I know she didn't mean it, she was just angry and lashing out. She still can't look at a picture of her without crying.

Reading the description of Augustus brought it all back.

I basically don't have a relationship with that neighbor. I haven't gone into detail, but that neighbor was either malicious or dumb. I chose to believe dumb because that sort of anger does no one any good but I can't bring myself to build any sort of relationship with the man.

I miss my programming buddy.

people didn't want to play with him, I don't see the problem.

> I think my argument there would be that despite common assumptions, rating is actually a very poor proxy for skill

you can't know that without knowing the specifics of how that rating is generated.

I promise you ELO for chess is a hell of a lot more accurate than ELO for league.

leagues toxicity has its roots in them not allowing players control over themselves. You can get stuck in a game with an asshole and they force you to play it out. That would put anyone in a shitty mood, and is why I stopped playing the game.

> I personally think one can blame the rampant toxicity of players on this removal of the community aspect.

I think this happens way more than people realize. A great example is League of Legends, which is known for its toxic community.

They throw you in a game with 4 other people. If 1 of them decides to be an asshole you're stuck for a minimum of 20 minutes + the 10 it took for queue + lobby. So you're FORCED to stay in this game for 30 minutes because you got an asshole teammate.

Imagine playing a game of pickup basketball where one of your teammates started scoring for the other team and you were forced to continue playing the game out rather than simply leaving. Of course your community is frustrated.

And the response anytime people ask for changes to help with the situation is that they can't because someone might abuse it to save their rank.

If it were me, I'd create a system where you get free games and treat it like a currency. If someone is being an asshole, just turn in your token, you leave the game unpunished and you get to flag the player(s) that caused you to do it.

I stopped playing the game because of the completely lack of control over your own destiny.

terrible examples, in all instances we have laws in place and people who's jobs it is to ensure the safety.

Your point has some legitimacy, but your examples are severely flawed.

that's my take on it too. I didn't fully read through all the details, but I have to believe that courts did their due diligence and the women were legitimately coerced by the website.

And I've just realized that 'legitimately coerced' out of context sounds like an oxymoron.

Property rights don't extend down to the core of the earth unless they're explicit. You have to be careful about this when purchasing land, often times what you're purchasing is the rights down to a certain depth.

A great example of this is oil. When an oil company installs a pump, one of the things they have to do is get agreement from everyone who has mineral rights down to the depths where the oil is. This can get extremely messy, and can often involve people who are not technically the land owners.

I imagine it's a similar situation here, although it could also be that the city simply has an easement on the land itself.

I feel this way about a lot of television shows.

Heroes is a great example. The first seasons was amazing, the 2nd season was hot garbage. They had no idea what made the first season so great.

clear difference between your local OS and a website you're visiting.

I can tell you as a moderate I didn't care which one of them got elected, they were both bad in their own way.

Personally, I think what people missed is that tech is doing really really well, and people in tech tend to be on the left. This means a lot of people on the left are doing well financially. To the point that they can afford to be offended by Trumps "punch em in the pussy" comment.

Do you know who can't afford to be offended by it? Those who are losing their jobs and have no way to support their family. And the left, in general, STILL doesn't understand this. Because I'm a moderate who didn't care which one got elected, I've had the opportunity to speak with many Trump supports (they were willing to open up about it). And do you know what every single one of them starts with? Every fucking single one of them?

"I don't agree with everything Trump says, but ...".

Trump straight up told some of these companies that if they move their manufacturing out of the US there will be consequences.

Think about it from their point of view. He said what they desperately wanted to hear. Of course they voted for him, the lefties would have too if the situation was reversed. It's not hard to understand why taking care of your family Trumps some jackass making sexist comments.

As far as I'm concerned, Trump getting elected was our system working as intended. You had huge swathes of the country that were being left behind and ignored. When Trump got elected, one of the first things Bernie Sanders did was start proposing laws to help that segment of the population. I bet you they're not ignored in the upcoming election.

And besides which, all signs point to the economy doing well, so all the FUD from the left about the sky falling with some of Trump's policies just help strengthen Trump's chances in the next election.

> The meme that "reality has a liberal bias" is one of the things the left should be laughed at for pushing. The left is just as anti-science and anti-intellectual when it comes to pushing their agenda as the right

This is a large part of why I pointed out what I did. That the right are just as bad when they're in power. It's just about agenda's.

you could use that argument to defend hitler, after all, he did lift Germany's economics in a way that no one else could.

There's certainly a grey area, but there are also non-grey areas, and we need to make sure we're clear on those non-grey areas.

> The difference is the right has never gain power in the media

I think the koch brothers might disagree with that...

What's different is that tech has allowed a level of control never seen before, and the mob reigns supreme as a result.

It's a lot more difficult for a single entity like the koch brothers to affect the message because people now get their information from channels they can't possibly control.

But you know who can?

the tech giants. And those tech giants were founded by liberals because that's the nature of what liberals do (explore, vs conservatives who simply run things).

so what you have is tech now allows for unprecedented control and that tech was created by liberals, so you're seeing these astounding levels.

But when it sways back to the side of the conservatives, and it will, you'll watch them have the same level of control.

when in doubt, strawman the fuck out of your opponent. That'll teach em to engage you.

> If the majority of people are against that more authoritarian form of government, why would they support it?

misinformation is the obvious answer, I'm unsure why you couldn't find that counterexample yourself.

We literally have misnamed bills put forth by our leaders in the US to misinform the populace. And it's acceptable to do so.

it goes in cycles, each side gains power, abuses it, then loses it.

When the left gain power, it becomes all about political correctness. When the right gain power, it becomes all about religious morality.

both try to suffocate each other, and both make being in the middle incredibly difficult because the middle gets attacked from both sides.

I think what frustrates me the most about all the anti-Trump rhetoric is that what Bush did is vastly more heinous than anything Trump is accused of, yet I've seen so many people call out Trump as being vastly worse than Bush.

I also find it interesting that the people who hate Trump now continue bashing Trump, but very often they do it in a roundabout way in an attempt to appear more balanced than they actually are. Trump has quite literally become he-who-shall-not-be-named on HN, and I find it hilarious. If there were ever an indication that the people on this site are as silly and melodramatic as the rest of the population, that's it right there.

yeah...

I dislike the term 'bleeding heart liberal', but I think it applies here. There's a difference between 'love thy fellow man' and 'worry about the health of an intruder in your home at 3am'.

Sorry, but I'm going to fall on the side of the law abiding citizen here.

If you can't know the intent (and you can't), then you must assume the worst intent and act accordingly. Anything else is naive.

Because I promise you one thing, I look up and see a stranger in my house, I'm attacking them immediately with no thought towards anything except protecting myself and everyone in the house. There will be no questions until it's over with.

If they were just looking to steal something for drugs, that can be sorted out once I've subdued them.

an univited intruder in your home shouldn't be considered dangerous?

We have a word for this, it's called naive.

I don't necessarily think you're right here, but I do know the number of horror stories that have come out of Heroku over the years certainly validates the opinion.

I remember reading about their routing debacle and realizing just how much work went into trying to get ruby to scale.

or maybe you should consider using C++, C#, Java, et al instead?

I don't know the specifics of Python's C interfaces, but I know Ruby by default will cover all 3rd party extensions in the GIL for safety and you can release it upon entry into the extension using the C api. But doing so can be very dangerous if you're calling back into the Ruby core as you could inadvertently cause problems that the GIL was meant to protect you from.

I imagine Python works roughly the same.

The worst part is that a malicious signed binary could just download the malicious parts afterwards. Signing isn't really an answer for google.

Are you able to buy a reasonably modern version of these that comes with GPS?

Literally the only things I use my phone for is calls, SMS, GPS, and eeeeeeevery great once in a while I'll google something at the store.

I'd love something like this, but it would really have to have GPS on it.