I made another course in the style of my previous Colossus course:

3F1B-0000-00ED-7105 (To the top of the Colossus II)

Basically, I learned my lesson about the block limit and to not have giant areas of filled-in ground, so I didn't have to pinch the level off so suddenly. You still go up a lot and then go down briefly at the end, but I think the summit this time is a lot better. Also, this course is meant to be a little harder than the previous one. There's 149 coins (goal card makes 150) if you want to try to get them all.

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It actually started out as the staff forum, and there were only a handful of people who had access. The local moderator status actually became the member+ status once the group got large enough. You can be the moderator of individual forums without having the local moderator status, all the status does is give you a different name color and access to another forum. The different name color was dropped to remove the idea of "supie" members being somehow "better" than others; and in this case, it's exactly as Xk said, it was just a small group of people who get along and therefore, stuff that's more personal could be shared.

The reason this group exists at all is a holdover from the old Acmlmboard days; a completely public community with several bad apples, some of which were staffers who weren't shy about showing that off. So plenty of conflict and eggshell-stepping was present. The smaller, private community came from the desire to have a community with people who weren't interested in being assholes to each other, plus the ability to open up about personal issues without the whole internet knowing about it. It was never meant to be an elitist club at all, and nobody with access to those forums feels like they're "better" than anyone else here.

However, most of us have stayed in the private portion of the community for so long that we only actually know the people who are there, and haven't met any of the newer people who've joined more recently, which becomes a feedback loop of being uncomfortable stepping out. For a while, we "promoted" newer users once we saw how they posted and knew they weren't prone to the immature behaviors of the old days, but all that did was balloon the group to the point where there's enough people for it to be its own community, which doesn't help.



tl;dr: Small group of people who wanted to get away from a larger group of people full of conflict and wanted to be able to be more open about personal stuff without the threat of being attacked. It grew over time and is basically its own community now which is why some members stay there instead of venture out here. No elitism or anything like that.

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Hey, a small community is still a community.

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Wait, wouldn't Orlandu be turning 76? ...in November?

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This was shared between three people who watch streams and/or play online video games. If it were just for me, a quarter of this would more than enough.

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Speedof.me depends on your browser's javascript speed too. Try using this version of it.

It also looks like testmy.net gave you a server in Dallas, where speedtest.net gave you Las Vegas, so that'll give you a difference too.

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You're approaching your 100th day of not eating any taquitos?

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I'm not a Trump supporter, and I'm not a Clinton supporter, but I AM a supporter of science and education.

First of all, be critical when watching the news or reading an article. Everyone's afraid of Trump and are fearing the worst, so it's possible that you'll be hearing and reading a lot of things that are being taken out of context or are being blown out of proportion, or otherwise things that are just not the full story. If something seems too perfect or too shocking, chances are, it's not the whole story. Things shared on social media are not reliable to trust.

Anyone who's afraid of laws being overturned and supreme court rulings being reversed, go ask someone who actually studies law, is a real lawyer, or is in law school. Don't turn to reddit or any blogs or whatnot, go find someone who's the real deal, and they'll be able to answer your questions and put things into a more realistic perspective. That's what I did, and everything boiled down to this: the likelihood of laws being overturned is a lot less than you're afraid of, and even in case it happens, the consequences aren't as bad as you're afraid of. For example, it takes a lot to get the SCOTUS to review one of their past rulings, and even when they do, they don't pull full 180s and rule the exact opposite.

Finally, consider this viewpoint for a moment: Everyone who runs for president or gets elected into office is either funded by a PAC, was in office before in some other form, had family who was in office before, etc. This would seem like a machine, and people born into this machine to keep feeding it. Trump was someone who was completely external to this machine, had his own funding, and therefore was free to say anything he wanted, something no other candidate could do. This would've been a refreshing change to lots, and the specific kind of change that some voters were looking for. Trump played a game and he won.

To be clear, that's not my personal viewpoint, but that's what I arrived at when thinking about why he'd get so much support.

Agree or disagree, but he is the next president, and nothing can change it. Presidents are elected every 4 years, and the transfer of power is always peaceful. The fact that you cannot protest Trump getting sworn in is a hidden blessing because it means nobody can protest him getting sworn out in 4 or 8 years.



tl;dr: Stop reading random stuff you find on reddit and social media because it's not the full story. If you're afraid, ask someone in the field who can provide definite and realistic, media-hype-free answers. Although not a great situation, it's not the doomsday scenario everyone's making it out to be. Trump won because he was different from everyone else, and there are voters who saw that as a refreshing change. Nobody can stop him from being sworn in, but be thankful because that means nobody can stop him from being sworn out next election.

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Originally posted by Xkeeper

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That only works when the court is staffed in a balanced way. Currently, it is 4 conservative, 4 liberal justices. Scalia was the tie-breaker, who usually leaned conservative but rarely would lean across the aisle (see: same-sex marriage).

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This is true, and there doesn't seem to be evidence that something will upset this. That could change, but remember that everyone has to like the new judge before they're in for good.

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While it may be "difficult" to have things overturned, the GOP/Republicans control every section of government, including most state governments. This is is in stark contrast to the last years — rather than the constant obstructionism (and very slow progress that came of it), the GOP is now free to rush anything they want through with little resistance.

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This is only if all republicans want the same thing. [This] is a map of states which, prior to the 2015 SCOTUS ruling, allowed or prehibited gay marriage. [This page] contains a breakdown of party control for each state after the 2014 midterm election. There were 31 republican-controlled states, and only 13 states prohibiting gay marriage. Assuming all 13 states were republican, that's still less than half.

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Trump didn't win because he energized anyone. He didn't win because he self-funded. He won because the media let him run loose. They gave him immense free air time, didn't call him out on most of his worst, and treated Clinton as if she had already won. All of his campaign was bullshit, just like his own financing. It was racist, it was sexist, it was pie-in-the-sky promises about how manufacturing jobs were comin' home when none of that is going to happen.

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His whole campaign centered around how government is broken, and so far, the way events have played out, he's proven it. The electoral college didn't match the popular vote, everyone assumed Trump would lose, nobody took him seriously, and despite all of the extreme hateful things he said, he still got elected.

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This is before you consider the absolute travesty that was voter suppression this year, with the Voting Rights Act ashed. Tons of people were turned away from being able to vote, skewing the lines even further.

Case in point:
[turnout in voting]

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[Here's the same data of interest], and [here's the page it came from], which has more detail and breakdowns.
There is an overall upward trend, and don't forget, ballots aren't done being counted, and won't be until mid-December. Finally, don't trust things you see on Imgur, because Imgur isn't any more reliable a source than Facebook or Twitter.

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(There is also a lot of argument to be made about Clinton being an absolutely abysmal corporatist candidate, but that doesn't really compare to someone who was literally a sexual abuser.)

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I agree with this, Trump basically got a free pass in terms of scrutiny, probably because he was almost certainly going to lose.

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Actually, uh, there have been a lot of protests. Turn on the news.

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Sorry, let me reword what I said; You can protest but you can't prevent Trump's transfer into office, which is good because that means you can't prevent Trump's transfer out of office later.

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There have been a lot of really bad things happening, too; Trump's open racism and sexism has effectively opened the door for tons of awful people to finally come out of their hiding and start treating people like garbage, justified and emboldened by his being elected.

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That's a legitimate problem that he needs to address. He did kinda make this mess after all...

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That's before we get into the faithless elector issue that has been making the rounds. The chances of it happening are basically nil, but with the sheer injustice people are facing w/r/t Trump getting elected, all bets are off.

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I don't know anything about this, so I can't comment, this is just here so you know I didn't just skip over it.

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This also doesn't cover the people that Trump is considering staffing his cabinet with. While Trump himself may be "relatively harmless", the people he's considering absolutely are not, just like his VP. The whole executive branch is going to be incredibly toxic to anybody not a rich straight white male, and the further you deviate from that the more toxic it will be.

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Again, I haven't done any research on this, so I can't comment. The only thing I can think of is to just wait until we see some candidates before stepping into the bunker.

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Euuugh, 8x8 kanji is just not a good time.

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The way I usually IRC is by just having it open in the background constantly and by flipping to it occasionally to see if anyone's said anything since I last looked. Chances are, I'll come home from work and there's a wall of text waiting, and even if the conversation happened an hour ago, the log is still there and fresh so chances are, you'll be able to throw your comments in and a couple of people might respond, etc.

It's just another thing you can do that doesn't really have a modern equivalent. Twitter is the closest thing to it, but even then, that's public and not good for actual discussion, let alone realtime discussion with multiple people.

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Sounds like exhausting lookup tables and arrays for most of this stuff. Moving ten spaces or more makes sense since stuff happens to you as you pass by spaces, and the game would need to know how to "undo" that stuff if you decide not to move a particular way and start backtracking.

I wonder if the intersection thing is due to some kind of lookahead feature the game tries to do when you roll. For example, if you roll a 5, and have 3 ways you can go, there are three outcomes. If there are 12 ways you can go, the game might be running out of memory. Beats me why it would have a lookahead feature.

The rest of the problems sound like out of bounds indices into lookup tables. If you look at games like Monopoly, the cost of things doesn't follow a clear mathematical formula, as much as just arbitrarily decided prices based on what made the game playable.

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It might also have to do with AI. For example, when you land on a spot, the AI might need to calculate the probability of you landing on certain other spots so that it can make a more informed decision on what to do on its next turn. A 4 human player game ought to debunk that pretty quickly if it isn't the case though, unless the game is still making AI calculations even with none present.

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Returning to facebook and twitter for a moment, I've pretty much stopped using facebook because it got tiring. It's your friends and family basically shouting into the void, getting some likes and comments, but nothing really worthwhile otherwise. Most of the time, it's just someone else's meme being shared, and it's usually some kind of political image or some kind of empowerment image that really is unnecessary and it's all you see in your feed. Then you get people talking about working out, or visiting Germany, or posting a bottomless barrel of a newborn baby photos (one time, it was a pic of a baby who had literally just been extracted). As much as I like keeping in touch, it didn't feel meaningful; I'd post updates and people would see them, but I wouldn't get anything out of the attention, and it'd be pointless to post about programming or game design or any other expert topics because only 2 of the possibly 100 friends I had would understand any of it. I'd see updates from friends and family (a handful close, the vast majority distant), and I just wouldn't care about most of it. That's not to say I don't care about those people, but everything was mundane and wasn't making me think, and with that realization comes the realization that the same thing happens when you post something.

Twitter is too short term and attention-deficit to hold any meaningful conversation on, plus it's 100% public and the same thing happens as on facebook. I have 50 followers, I follow people who have thousands of followers, nothing I say will reach anyone, versus things these more popular people say. Twitter is ok if all you want to do is dump your thoughts into the void, but for getting much else out of it, you're boned unless you're a cat doing something funny or are megapopular. Plus, bots follow you and that's not helping. That and there's a higher stranger-danger; if someone makes you uncomfortable, they can do it to no limit, there's nobody you can go to for help, all you can do is block, which is fine and dandy up until they start making sock puppet accounts. Also, most public spaces are full of ads and just want to maximize the ability to make money off you.

Maybe I'm oldschool, but a community feels more productive than any social media sites do. Only a fraction of the people here know me, but I know you all likely have similar interests to mine, and I know that a lot more people will see anything I post here versus knowing only your 50 followers will ever see you said anything before it's lost. All social media is like that to me, the only time I ever get anything meaningful is when I post here or on nesdev, which thank goodness it exists, or else I'd have nobody to talk to about supernerd stuff. I don't care about being popular at all, and therefore, will never have a strong presence on social media, so someone like me benefits from a fixed community versus a vastly random and public space to shout in.

That last paragraph is the reason message boards will never fully die and why this place will still be around (in some form) 10 years from now. It won't be as active as 10 years ago, and it won't have the same rate of new users, but it'll never die because it provides stuff that the public spaces don't.

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I'm really interested in what you uncover, because I'd like to know how to make a game based on cost, value, and resources too at some point, and this gives a little insight on how to balance a game like that.

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