rimunroe

This was also my experience when joining the site. Nowadays I appreciate not having the notifications, but when I joined I didn’t realize there weren’t any and I missed some comments I would have preferred to respond to.

Please note I said “This is one of the few times I wish HN notified you of replies”. I’m normally glad it doesn’t notify me for that very reason.

My point is that a brand new user might not know they need to manually check for replies. They’re much less likely to know about some third party utility for monitoring them

The person who used to run the server network I was describing replied to me, but alas I think they didn’t see my reply[1]. This is one of the few times I wish HN notified you of replies. Maybe I’ll run into them again in another decade or two.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44953109 (of course, rACEmic might just not be interested in reconnecting, which is obviously okay)

It seems like that would be difficult given its size. It's hard to secure something you can just pick up and walk away with if you can't lock it to something

I don't know of a solution for the types of half-size carts common in small grocery stores, but I've seen people stash their scooters in the space below the main basket of full size carts

> This is like the cronut of bikes, all the downsides of a scooter, and none of the upsides of a motorbike.

Is it possible you didn't look at the article and are thinking of something like a Vespa rather than the type of thing you stand upright on while holding onto a handle?

These things have plenty of advantages. They're incredibly portable and easy to charge. When the weather is nice my friend rides his the ~20 miles from his place to my place (which is mostly covered by rail trail bike paths). You can bring one into the office and charge it at your desk. Many public transit systems allow you to bring them on the subway or bus, which at rush hour might not be possible with a normal bicycle. If bike lockups aren't available at the nearest station/stop, this lets people who live within a mile or two still get the advantage of public transit.

> Re-invent the Penny Farthing perhaps. An electric version of that, with some funky way of lifting the rider up, would be amazing.

The penny farthing bike is certainly ridiculous, but I can't imagine a way you could possibly make one look cool. Is it even legal to ride one if you don't have some sort of ironic facial hair, a bowler hat, or a vest?

Do you remember the name you went by on there?

hi!!! If you're on Steam still feel free to add me: https://steamcommunity.com/id/stealthpengu1n/

The rope mod was always one of my favorites. I think I asked rACEmic to add it. I have distinct memories of putting up votes in the server to see if people wanted me to enable it, especially in de_rats or de_jeepathon2k

Do you remember what name you went by?

Can you provide an example of how an age verification system wouldn’t require providing some identifying information to the government or a company when accessing content?

Your name seems familiar, and I distinctly remember one regular who would frequently rubber band around due to their ping.

The reason I made my mod was that I ran into the limit of how many keybinds I could remember or quickly access, plus I wanted to be able to make dynamic lists of players and whatnot

> Does not ranked matchmaking make for more competitive matches, a bit like if you play ranked in lichess it matches with someone of your own level, and you have a real chance of improving your own level over a period of time.

I don't like playing a game where I need to worry about ranking systems. It adds a layer which I'm just not interested in. It's fine if I die more often than other people. Some of my fondest memories are of watching someone much more skilled than me absolutely steamroll my team. If you're playing with people you know, a vastly more skilled player becomes a fun challenge for you to try and overcome together.

If anyone else played on the T3Houston servers, there's a (mostly dead) Steam group which would be a solid place to reconnect in https://steamcommunity.com/groups/t3houston

It does but most games don't

I remember you! I was Stealth Penguin. I made annoying squawking noises over my mic

They were so good. The owner really put a lot of work into them. There were a lot of WC3 mod servers, but these ones were much more fully featured than most. I've always wanted to ask rACEmic how much of the features I remember were custom. The forums were extremely active. I don't know how accurate my memory was, but I think there were around 3000 registered users. I was active in the community in my mid-late teen years, so it was a formative time I remember pretty clearly.

Wow! Of course I remember you! I've actually tried to hunt you down in the past to say hi and thank you for all the good times. I thought I found you on Steam recently. If you see a friend request from a Stealth Penguin (https://steamcommunity.com/id/stealthpengu1n), that's me.

I'm doing great these days and hope you are too! That was such a fun time. If you want to get in touch, my gmail address is rimunroe. I'd love to catch up!

By any chance do you remember your handle?

> i distinctly remember trying to kill enemies with some sort of lighting bolt move.

I believe you were playing as an orc then

Wait really?! Do you remember your handle?

Counter-Strike was my introduction to actual programming! I learned to write AMX mods to help make administering our servers (banning cheaters and whatnot) mid-match possible without having to interrupt playing to open the console.

> I found out there are third party server browsers for CS2 with modded servers. It is so tiny compared to the old days, but they exist. I played around on a couple around a year ago and had a good time. If you are feeling nostalgic, you should check it out.

Thanks for the tip!

> In general I see this as an issue of gaming becoming more professionally run and maturing over time.

I don't think anyone is confused about why this happened. It's obvious why a game company which is trying to make money in an extremely competitive field would prefer it. Having a good reason doesn't mean that there isn't reason to mourn the loss of what came before. Some things have improved! We should celebrate that gaming is more accessible now. It's been a long time since I've been kicked from a competitive shooter mid-match because a server crashed.

> Overall, its a tradeoff, the community building aspects of player run servers can truly build colorful and vibrant communities, but this can be at the expense of overall player retention, trading a large and accessible playerbase for a small dedicated community.

I don't run a business. I'd rather have a game with small communities of players which peters out over a few years than a game with millions of players for a decade+. Toward the end of a game's life player run servers allow the game to last potentially forever. The problem of games alienating newcomers is still a problem with matchmaking systems. Your community's average skill goes up over time once the rate of new players joining slows down.

> Additionally, the competitive mechanics, which often draw a large amount of players, can suffer as player-run infrastructure can vary wildly in its connection, uptime, speed, etc. and bring a risk of unsanctioned modifications, cheats, and hacks, all negatively affecting the player experience.

Games have handled this before with "official" servers or ones run by tournament hosts. I actually had fewer trouble with hacks on heavily moderated small servers because so many people knew each other and would catch onto cheaters quickly. Services like VAC help block repeat cheaters from joining in the future. I like having access to mods and to sometimes join a server and find something completely unexpected. I don't care much about competitive play, though I do like a fair number of e-sports-y games. I never had trouble finding vanilla CS servers back in the day.

I will forever mourn the general demise of server browsers. Too many games require you to use matchmaking systems, which means it's very hard to build up a small community in-game anymore. You either have to rely on forming small parties with people you've stumbled upon one by one, or you have to seek out people from some much larger area like Reddit or Discord. It takes a lot of the serendipity out of the experience. Without a small community it becomes much harder to ensure you're not playing with people who make the game less fun by whatever metric you care about.

I used to be an admin on a group of about 18 or so connected Counter-Strike 1.6 servers called T3Houston*. We ran modified versions of various Warcraft 3 mods which added persistent XP/leveling, as well as integration with an external item store and player database the owner maintained. Most of those servers were filled to the brim during peak US gaming times, and our forum was quite active.

There aren't many games these days where you could do something like that. I discovered the community because one day I was just looking for a server with open slots for me to join. I was fairly skeptical of whatever a Warcraft mod would be like, but ended up enjoying it so I added it to my favorites. Eventually I got to know the regulars and joined the forum. Notably, the place felt far less toxic than the average server I'd join back then. I can completely believe this is just me looking at the past through rose tinted glasses, but it feels like the general toxicity has gotten worse at the same time as we've lost a lot of tools to manage it.

* If anyone else here remembers the name T3Houston: hi! I'm Stealth Penguin

> Is that 300 kid abductions by strangers?

Correct. The number of abductions of children by their parents is three orders of magnitude higher.

I've been diagnosed and medicated since elementary school. In the time since, I've been involved in two car accidents. Both times I had forgotten to take my meds, which is a rarity for me.

Yes, I think we all understand this. The thing which is confusing is why bother specifying a minimum length of one year if you're allowed to have lesser sentences?

> I don't trust computer makers

Nor should you!

> There are people who still use cars made in the 1960s as their daily driver (probably only a handful in the US).

I do like resisting the disposable economy, though I hope keeping ICE cars that old wouldn't be normal enough to be a factor in designing a product if for no other reason than emissions and safety features.

> (metal lathes are rare but not unheard of in a home shop).

Indeed. I grew up with a >1 ton metal lathe in ours, as well as a milling machine. My siblings and I would use the lathe as a climbing gym.

I don't think their confusion was on how numerical comparisons work, it was on how a "maximum term of imprisonment" could also come with a minimum duration. In other words, what does a "maximum term" mean if it's not the actual longest time someone could be imprisoned for? Are there lesser terms?