gluelogic

This is an old thread, but I have to thank you for recommending this book. I ordered it and have been hooked! Incredible writing and storytelling. Thanks from this Texan.

Anecdotal, but I literally went from reading this message to looking down at my phone where one of my friends was re-posting (in support of) someone complaining on twitter: "Stop stealing from $ETHNIC_MERCHANTS! It's not just a cute top, it's a culture!"

Straight from your message to that one.

This comment is not germane to the point you were making, just wanted to share:

I am a web dev who knows nothing of the Collatz conjecture, so I had to check out the Wikipedia article for it. Thanks for teaching me something today.

I wrote this JavaScript function based on what I read in the article. It's a simple algorithm but it was fun to see it work. For anyone who is in my shoes (weak mathematical background), running this function might be a useful supplement for illustrating the gist concept of the Collatz conjecture:

    function collatz(i) {
      console.log(i); // for visual feedback
      if (i <= 0) throw new Error('Input must be a positive integer');
      if (i === 1) return i;
      if (i % 2 === 0) return collatz(i/2);
      return collatz((3*i)+1);
    }

    collatz(42); // or any positive integer

Yeah! The purple llama.

The skill was probably Animal Lore.

Best MMO ever! Thanks for giving insight into it.

I remember the vorpal bunnies. I seem to remember a bug where they would sometimes appear as an energy vortex sprite...

Can you elaborate on why the creature learning was bad UX? Did people get irritated when the wolves were killing their rabbits?

I love any UO-related post!

Speaking of killing everything in UO, in what would be considered the "T2A" era of this game (I'm estimating something like 1998-1999), I remember manipulating the line-of-sight bug that let you attack NPCs inside town in such a way that the town guards wouldn't come (There were many "criminal acts" you could commit, like attacking or stealing from a player, and if you did them in town the guards would instantly kill you).

I would town kill NPCs to get colors of cloth that were not achievable using the dye tubs available to you. They would spawn with colors that were less garish than the ones you would end up with if you dyed them. I would chop their clothes up, sort them by colors, and use the raw cloth to create clothes on my tailor. It was a great money maker, because killing NPCs was quick and easy, and in the end it's just clothing items, but the product was not available anywhere else. If someone killed you in the process, you were naked except for a weapon anyway, and people generally did not understand what I wanted with the cloth in the first place so it didn't get looted.

From the housing system to the criminal system, UO was just the best MMO. You could do anything, but you had to suffer the consequences. I love the totally free-market economy it gives rise to. I feel like MMORPGs got a lot softer and less "libertarian" (if I can use that word without all the political baggage), for better or worse. Probably for better, because WoW was popular in a way that UO never would be.

I always heard Anarchy Online was great, but I never got around to playing it.

Memories. What did we call this? "Server wars" if I remember correctly.

Working at Amazon is literally no one's "only choice" in the US. In fact, I would bet on it being a better option than most of what is available to low or unskilled workers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qws713t3HBY [The Decline of Sears...What Happened?] An interesting video I came across yesterday.

When people report driving cars, having sex, cooking entire meals and then eating them, and various other strange behavior while under the influence of Ambien, saying "racism isn't a side effect of Ambien" is a snarky and asinine tweet. It's the kind of cheap shot a writer for a late night talk show would write.

> What is it with this obsession that every requires the best doctor?

Being only willing to settle for the absolute best doctor in the world is ridiculous, but it is perfectly rational to want to choose the best one out of a small group of candidates. I can't imagine approaching it any other way when my personal health is on the line.

> Would you really base your project on reverse engineering and hacking a third party service? It will end up being an arms race. Everytime they change something you'll race to hack it again. In the meantime your service will be inoperable. If your user base is in the tens of thousands that will kill you.

Depends on what the service is. youtube-dl faces this issue but is some of the best software I have ever used.

Couldn't that be chalked up to how insanely busy people in such positions must be in their day-to-day life?

> primary school isn't pointless even though most people master it.

That's because the knowledge taught in primary school is way more essential to day-to-day life. If people don't know those skills then our society fails.

Awesome. I've been intending to look for writings and talks by Raph Koster lately.

For unaware readers: he was the lead designer for Ultima Online.

I didn't present it as my attitude, which any careful reader would note. The person I was responding to seemed confused based on the question they asked.

I don't post on Reddit and you should keep your asinine suggestions to yourself. Either you got to this website an hour ago or are you are too much of a coward to stand by your convictions and accusations.

Maybe, maybe not. A key difference is your friends are posting for themselves, but the suggestions are posts tailored for _you_.

What he is saying is that, generally, given the choice, women will prefer social work to asocial work.

Facebook ads are not responsible for the Brexit vote.

LoL takes a lot of skills and knowledge and experience to master, too. And I don't think it's accurate to imply that League of Legends owes its popularity as an e-sport to financing. Sure, it was a factor in its success, but remember how e-sports was regarded as utterly ridiculous when it first started being televised?

My thoughts exactly. The overall attitude of the article seems to be, "Wikipedia is supposed to be an encyclopedia where the content is determined by the community, but since I perceive this not to be the case it is time to play dirty."

She then goes on to advise that you conceal your activities and have your biased associates shill for your position (which is presented in contrast to 'sockpuppeting,' but is effectively very similar in my view).

I actually remember seeing recent images of this very thing. If you image search for "2017 May Day protests stalin" you will see many different photographs, but to be fair it does look like the same single poster in all of the different photos.

https://redyouthuk.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/may-day-2012-...

Your previous article made me remember about and subsequently purchase PICO-8. I've been hooked since then.

If anyone out there is considering buying PICO-8, go do it! It's so much fun.

Haven't you ever seen people who are artistically-inclined and those who aren't?

That was my first thought too. Sonic the hedgehog and his sidekick Tails was a fox.

Hey, this is cool! Nice work. I am going to play around with this later.

Howard Stern went through a very expensive and drawn out war with the FCC, of which most of the lawsuits were fought around content that is commonplace in mainstream media today. I think the battles he fought in the 90s went a long way to reducing government censorship in the US.

In addition to that, I think he's an incredible interviewer. Maybe one of the best ever.

So Twitter's verification is more about access to this socially elitist feed? That may be a feature, but I think the primary function is to avoid people impersonating well-known public figures on the platform.

Removing Milo's check out of politically-driven spite definitely undermines the validity of the entire verification system.

Removing his blue check was especially ridiculous to me. "Because you are who you are, you can no longer be verified."

I just happened to have listened to that bikeshed episode last night. It's damn good and Sandy Metz is a captivating speaker. Check it out!