ultimafan

Wow, the lack of a hood is baffling, was that actually a conscious design decision or an urban legend?

Because in the case of the former I find it unbelievable that no one on the team, or even at Volvo that dropped by to see how the project is coming along (I assume they weren't shipped off to some isolated island to complete their work in complete secrecy) didn't say something. The first question at least 80% of people I know would have when looking over a car to buy for the first time is, "Can you pop the hood?" Not to mention getting at the engine to adjust or replace consumables like belts, fluids, plugs or even minor repairs.

I'm far more willing to believe this is just a small detail that simplified the production process for a one off prototype than that anyone thought this was actually a good idea.

I remember a few decades ago an argument broke out at the table between player and DM about how the price in gold for food, weapons, armor etc. was unreasonably unrealistic and something along the lines of how looking at the average income for different NPC trades in the DMG vs the prices paid would mean no one in any town would actually be able to afford to live even on the barest of essentials. The DM eventually laid it to rest by saying something along the lines of, those by the book prices are a sucker tax used by locals to rip off rich looking out of town strangers.

Not him but as someone in a similar position- I didn't like how the steam release axed the UI that had stayed more or less the same for the decade I had been playing DF for on and off in favor of a new one. I still love the game and highly recommend it, it (and the devs) are gems. But it put me off playing the steam release because while the new UI is cleaner it also (from the limited time I spent with it) felt less deep and less powerful. The old text UI was a kludged together mess that used just about every key and sometimes combinations of keys on your keyboard and had little to no consistency in layout or navigation between screens but once you got the muscle memory down you could navigate the menus and input commands blazingly fast compared to the new mouse and graphical oriented UI. I completely understand why they had to change however because it wasn't user friendly.

From an enthusiast point of view, I'd wager that it's more because a lot of the most iconic engine noises are distinctive and recognizable based on model and just general throttle feedback and it's a quirk that gives different cars a lot of personality. Versus electric cars not having that personality quirk to really tell them apart- they're all going to be quite similar in "feel" and responsiveness to the throttle. I think in general for more hands on enthusiasts electric will never really quite take over ICE obsession. From a tinkering standpoint, intricate mechanical systems like engines are far more satisfying to pour your hands over when you're rebuilding or modifying an engine than black box electrical systems that you can't really reasonably work on. The act of replacing a physical, actual part instead of plugging in a laptop to twiddle some abstract values is also more gratifying. It's the same reason I imagine that mechanical watches are pretty much universally preferred by watch collectors and enthusiasts over digital ones.

edit: When I think about it more I guess celebrating inefficiencies/nostalgia/the physical aspect of a hobby is not that different anywhere. Like people still collecting vinyl records, or using real CRTs with refurbished consoles instead of emulating, people into collecting physical books / doing their own book bindings instead of switching to digital etc.

Sorry, I don't buy that argument. You could just ignore such people instead of take advantage of their foolishness for monetary gain. Nothing says you have to engage with each and every person showing up with preposterous claims on the internet. If he was the actual FAQ maintainer, using his position to advertise an impossible prop bet that really would only sucker in "cranks" isn't moral behavior. Failing to pay out by weaseling your way out of it with pedantic arguments about intent is even less so.

As far as I'm aware of the James Randi challenge doesn't require a participant to pay anything- it's genuinely a challenge and not a bet. It's not taking advantage of idiots to part them from their money and gloat about it over them after.

This is really the way to go. Most "cheap" tools will offer the same or similar performance to the name brand ones or like you mentioned you'll splurge on a nice one and realize you only need it for one or three jobs and the generic brand would have sufficed. I've been buying harbor freight tools for years I can think on one hand the amount of tools that have broken and it's usually not because they weren't up to par for the right job but because I did a hackjob and macgyvered them for something they were never meant for.

The "unpaid" volunteer in question was raking in $100 per attempt for an arguably impossible task. That unquestionably moves the situation from a bounty/prize to a gambling house taking rigged bets and it's pretty clear by his language in the emails that he took pleasure in his position. How many fools did he part from their money before getting one upped by Patrick? And how did he act when he finally realized he wasn't as clever as he thought?

I'd agree that if this was a free entry situation he'd be fully within his rights turning down trolls, rules lawyers, etc. for the same reasons you mentioned. Trying to scam a well intentioned but naive bounty post would be sad behavior. But this guy was clearly taking money on a position he never intended to pay out on and not losing any sleep over it.

This is really how I see it too. If this spirit was really so important to the bet (and not just vaguely implied) it should have been stated clearly. Friendly ribbing over "you won by rules but not in spirit" is one thing when it's a free wager between buddies but not with real money on the line. Falling back on a position of spirit and intent trumping hard written rules in text in real money wagers basically guarantees that the banker has no real incentive to rule fairly on a win that can cost him money if he can get away with the loss of reputation- he can always weasel out of it one way or another by acting in bad faith and engaging in pedantry during the judging. No one would ever take up someone on a bet if they could turn around last second and say, well you didn't mind-read the additional rules and stipulations I'm adding on now after the fact to our original written agreement so in actuality you lost.

Additionally Mike's behavior during the exchange makes him feel all the more untrustworthy. His condescension, playing the fool and intentionally misinterpreting the test to "win", remarks made that seem specifically placed to needle and aggravate Pat knowing there's no way to force him to pay up, and threats of accusations of fraud were a show of really poor character. At the least it would've been more of a class act (even if he never paid out) to admit that Pat outplayed him due to naivety and a self inflated sense of cleverness on Mike's part, to admit that he is not familiar with betting culture and got in over his head.

I agree with just about everything you've said except for the first point about 360/rear view cameras. Not going to argue that they're not useful or don't improve safety because they genuinely are and do. But to me those changes feel more like a requirement for the necessary evil of newer cars having absolutely horrid visibility with your own two eyes in the name of safety. I have two old daily drivers (one from the 80s, one from the early 2000s) and I'm always blown away how claustrophobic I feel borrowing a newer car from a coworker or family member concerning the window belt lines / pillars. I've never felt the need for cameras in older cars because you have near perfect visibility at any angle and even behind me just by turning my head. The combination of higher ride height, pillars all around that feel like tree trunks, higher ratio of panel to window height on the doors/windshields, and worse rear visibility from the driver's seat gives me the impression that I'm driving around in a tank or troop carrier not a modern car.

I don't think it's malicious in most cases. As a counterpoint, most family members I know with absurdly large cars, either dimensionally or in terms of seat height aren't very confident drivers and the large vehicle makes them feel "safer" especially if they have kids in the car. I recognize it's not always the case but they didn't buy a large car to lord over other people on the road they did it for emotional piece of mind. I'm willing to bet a lot of people however wouldn't be willing to admit that that's why they prefer a large car out of some perceived weakness or the like.

Maybe it's a Sentinel Island sort of situation. The technology gap is vast, we've had ships wreck there or unauthorized visitors approach the island but though they attacked them both we've left them alone and haven't attempted to recover any of the "modern technology" that's abandoned there.

Boebert came off clownish but if you heard that somewhere taken out of context she wasn't seriously claiming the earth was flat. It was a joke she was trying to make a point with albeit a poor one that it was neither the time or place for.

Sorry, didn't see your response until today. But I'd argue that those two truths aren't incompatible with one another. Something can be an innate human right and also perceived poorly within a given culture at that moment in time. Someone not respecting a human right doesn't mean that the right doesn't exist. It's just being infringed. "Individual human rights don't exist" seems like a defeatist statement to me and also (looking at religion) doesn't seem to be one believed in by the majority of humans throughout history (though the nature of what is and isn't a right is probably what is usually argued about). There are some things that seem to be universally frowned upon in just about every culture (like unjustified, by their definition of unjustified, murder, rape, etc.) The idea of human rights should be sacred and inarguable because the alternative leaves room for pushback against them.

>The Eastern Front is where most of the fighting in WWII happened. It's where the European theater of war was truly won or lost.

I remember being very surprised when I heard for the first time that something like 80% of all casualties taken by the Germans happened on the Eastern front. Or the total sizes of the armies (collectively on both sides) fighting one another and the large margin by which the Western front was dwarfed by. It stood completely at ends with everything I learned about WW2 growing up in the US, through school, pop culture, friends, family of friends. I suppose it's not too surprising though that any country emphasizes their own involvement over that of others- for example I doubt that the Soviets touched much on the extent of lend lease in their education or war movies.

That's a very cynical viewpoint and one that's not very easy to convince people of. I don't think it's a very moral stance to take either because it can be used to justify immoral stances. There have always been actions in human society that are held as reprehensible regardless of time or culture that would seem to imply the opposite (or at least that the majority of people who live or have lived at the very least believe in the opposite being true)

>And of course it's a ratchet. Nobody turns it off even as the pandemic normalizes.

I guess as long as even some small portion of the population always tips when the option is presented- they don't really have an incentive to turn it off. Like rejecting free money when your competitors aren't. I think for any reasonable attempt to stop these kinds of practices it really has to be stigmatized on the cultural level for people to feel some revulsion when asked for a tip in an inappropriate situation. If there was no option on the processor they'd probably just leave out a tip jar or continue to ask for it in an awkward and roundabout way ie hanging around waiting for you to get some cash out after the transaction is complete.

It's absurd too how it starts to creep it's way into businesses where you don't usually expect to give a tip. I got new tires and an alignment today at one of those chain tire shops and they asked for a tip at the end when I went to pay, starting at 15% minimum going up to 25%. Which is just nuts to me, isn't that what the (pretty hefty) labor charge is for? It just baffled me. I declined but by the peeved look on the guys face and the way he turned the screen to me and waited it was pretty obvious he expected something. I don't understand who the people are paying 50-150$ extra on top of the crazy rates mechanics already charge that are normalizing this.

I do feel a bit bad for them. Putting so much work into a project only to have it cloned a week or two after they released it to much bigger fanfare (I'd never even heard of Threes up until this point but everyone I knew was goofing around on 2048 when it came out) has got to be soul crushing.

But at the same time, this should really be a learning lesson to everyone- if your game or idea is simple enough to clone that someone can "rip it off" with a week of effort, you'd better damn well make sure your original excels in something that can't be cloned quite so quickly. Or not spend so much time working on it. Having only played 2048 and seeing how relatively polished and pleasing the presentation of it was for a so-called week of effort, I find it a bit baffling that it took the Threes team a year of work.

Wow, this flippant hand waving by the documentary creator that the accused shouldn't be upset because the fears of being unmasked as a potential Satoshi being "overblown" as far as it being life threatening and disruptive is quite honestly disgusting. The documentary creator isn't the one to have to live his life fearing some unknown crazies harassing him for a potentially owned unfathomable amount of money. Nobody should have to live through that in the name of "public interest", how people can do that and live with thinking of themselves as some altruistic force of truth I'll never understand. How will he feel if his documentary ends up causing Todd real physical harm?

I bought a truck for similar reasons (was tired of constantly having to rent/borrow cars to tow or haul/pick up something that doesn't fit in a "normal" car). I got a lot of utility use out of it over the years and I do honestly agree, even though I now almost never have to use it for anything truck-related I'm still very happy with it, it's very comfortable and reliable. I'd buy another one in a heartbeat. The convenience of knowing I can spontaneously throw anything I want in the back without ever thinking or planning about it in the rare cases I do still occasionally have to is just the cherry on top at this point.

I had a blast with Rimworld. Still play it occasionally for the "Dwarf Fortress but sci-fi" urge it fulfills. But in the long run when trying to do a huge generational colony I can't stand how "gamey" it feels. Maybe there's some mod or something to fix it, I'm not sure. But the raids/diseases/bad events feel like they're more targeted for lack of a better way to put it, like the game is intentionally tailoring them to your situation vs just simulating a world where those things tend to happen. DF's "events" feel more natural over the long run.

California law prevents hunting with lead bullets for this same reason. There's alternatives on the market for bullets made out of other non toxic or non polluting metals. I imagine they could do something similar there.

Do they need to cheat to get drops though? It's been a good while since I've played CSGO but I thought the drops there were similar to TF2 where you just get them on match end and it's not tied to player performance at all?

Yeah, it feels like a dead giveaway when someone at higher ranks has near perfect but within the realm of believable gameplay from a mechanical standpoint (great aim control/accuracy, hitting lots of flick shots) but then they're running all over like a headless chicken, getting lost on the map, have no regard for positioning and angles when pushing or defending, just purely leveraging "skill" alone.

Playing against subtle cheaters is imo more rage inducing once you realize it's actually happening. New or poor players won't notice and won't call them out on it or participate in a votekick because they genuinely can't tell the player is cheating. Average to good players get tilted because they might have enough game knowledge to know something is off but not notice it every time or be able to call out exactly what's happening. They end up second guessing too much. And you can't improve and get better playing against subtle cheaters because they're going to be doing things you just can't. Great players can probably tell more often than not but they're going to quit in droves when they realize the playing field isn't fair. Subtle cheating is much more destructive to a games longevity because trust in public matches is heavily eroded over time. Rage hackers you can just kick/ban/leave the match yourself because it's obvious.

This was my experience too years ago when I played CSGO. The difficulty at higher ranks (up to a certain point) felt significantly easier than the lower ranks. Getting out of the silver and gold ranks (can't remember the exact names) was a hellish grind with lots of matches that ended in one sided stomps with one or two guys on the other team racking up some insane k/d. Past that was smooth sailing for a long long way.

Yeah I get that, I understand why cheat developers do what they do. It seems like there's a huge market and I find it hard to blame them trying to make a living- morality wise they're probably more worried about rent, bills, family than whether or not someone's game time is ruined. But it's only this way because so many people are willing enough to cheat that dropping money on it is fine for them. It's their psychology I don't really get. Even if they're doing it because they want the satisfaction of a "win", doesn't that victory feel hollow because it's something they paid money for? It's like the difference between a community valuing you enough to give you an award vs going down to the trophy shop and paying someone a make you your own trophy that doesn't really mean anything.

Cheating in online games is a scourge and I really don't understand why people do it. It's one person selfishly getting a "win" at the expense of ~60 other people in that match having their time, pleasure, potentially money absolutely wasted.

I think even more infuriating than blatant hacking is this epidemic of "micro cheating" for lack of a better way to put it that I've seen prevalent in some games that just boost some stats or reactions by amounts large enough to help the cheater but low enough where new or inexperienced players have absolutely no way of telling if someone is cheating or genuinely good especially in games with high skill ceilings. At least when it's blatant you can leave without time wasted but when they're doing it subtly you end up getting tilted and spending the whole match with a bad taste in your mouth second guessing if someone is actually playing fair or not. Chivalry 2 is a really bad offender for this, once you notice it you can't unnotice it anymore, almost every match will have at least one guy with his swing/move speed adjusted by ~10% and in a game where swing manipulation is a legitimate mechanic it can be borderline impossible to catch someone out on it unless you're really paying attention.

>Ukraine was not made a member of NATO - it hadn’t even applied. At no point did Russia even rattle any sabres, offer red lines, or pursue diplomacy.

To be fair, without saying that their position is a defensible one- they've been pretty vocal about Ukraine not becoming aligned with the West for almost 20 years now if not longer, and politicians in the West have been vocal about the exact opposite for at least as long. I see people saying online that what's happening now was completely irrational and unexpected but that's not really true. We know it's a sore point for them and have been goading them with a "will we won't we" over a clear red line they've drawn for a long while now. https://www.rferl.org/a/1079726.html

I wonder if this is where the whole left handedness being associated with the hand of the devil (or any evil) came from historically. Our ancestors probably weren't doing studies like this but like many religious/spiritual restrictions that seem like they are backed by "nothing" at first turn out to have a fair application to life behind them it's probably not too much of a stretch that someone at some point or other noticed something like hey, that village/tribe/whatever near us has a LOT of left handers and they have an awfully suspicious amount of violent incidents happening.