mninm · HackerTrans

mninm

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Alleged Shoplifter Charged with Felony Computer Crime

youtube.com

1 pointsby mninm4 yıl önce0 comments

Exploratory Data Analysis of the Giantbomb.com Userbase

giantbomb.com

1 pointsby mninm4 yıl önce0 comments

John Romero Talks Doom Level Design

youtu.be

1 pointsby mninm11 yıl önce0 comments

comments

4 yıl öncediscuss

I have no real idea what the ins-and-outs of 1099-K and so I could be completely wrong.

However, it seems like there may be some sort of threshold listed in the reporting requirements.

Would it be legally possible to allow your users to use the enhanced functionality of your platform up to the edge of that threshold?

Cutting off access to the premium services that the sellers of erotic coo-coo clocks (or whatever) have come to value might incentivize them enough to overcome the 1099-K hurdle. You could make the process gentler by constantly displaying the amount of revenue left that they can transact before being cut off.

Be careful though. Cutting off access will equally incentivize users to bypass the restrictions you've put in place by creating multiple accounts, etc.

Lacking the above you could also try to focus on the part of your platform the sellers do want to use and sell a premium tier to sellers that has features that would make them stand out to buyers. For example premium users could have flair (think something akin to a verified checkmark) next to their listings in searches and the ability to post an extra video of their clocks.

4 yıl öncediscuss

A mercenary satellite is a wild concept. It raises an number of ethical questions.

It also feels like another step down the path toward a cyberpunk dystopia. I'll add it to the list with robotic policing and subscription based airbags.

4 yıl öncediscuss

Colleges often make deals with local businesses. If you look around you may find that the student council, or student affairs, or somebody can hook you up with cheap movie tickets, coupons for pizza, etc.

At the college I attended I found that administrative guidelines were not as inflexible as they seemed on their face. I can't remember the number of times I was wait-listed for a class but was able to get in anyway because I showed up the first day and asked the professor if they could help me out. Generally my strategy to any bureaucratic problem I encountered was to work my way up the food chain until I found someone that was empowered to help me.

4 yıl öncediscuss

Back in the 90's I remember my family got a new Compaq (I think) PC. On it it came preloaded with this great dos tutorial that was essentially a fake terminal that would walk the user through DOS commands letting them try various things in a safe environment and let them see the effects.

It was definitely effective in teaching my young self the basics of DOS and was a big step on my path to becoming proficient with a computer.

4 yıl öncediscuss

A video game wiki I use sometimes:

gopher://GiantGopher.com:70/

Games you can play on Gopher:

gopher://worldofsolitaire.com/

gopher://GiantGopher.com:70/--/Winnifred_Huck

There was another HN Gopher thread recently:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31392145#31410764

4 yıl öncediscuss

gopher://worldofsolitaire.com/

This gopher hole is a good example of how Gopher doesn't have an notion of cookies. You can see what is either gamestate or some sort of session id encoded in the URL.

Another way to do this kind of thing is to generate "parallel universes". It involves generating enough gopher "directories" AKA "pages" to encode every possible game state and then link them together like you would a "Choose Your Own Adventure". Essentially trading dynamic page generation for hard drive space.

You can see an example of the "parallel universes" approach used in the easter egg text adventure game located at:

gopher://GiantGopher.com:70/--/Winnifred_Huck

4 yıl öncediscuss

Thank you for making free software!

4 yıl öncediscuss

There is a video game wiki gopher hole that I use occasionally. gopher://giantgopher.com/ is a gopher front end for GiantBomb.com but with what I find to be a better search interface.

There aren't a whole lot of good Gopher browsers out there for Windows. I use http://jaruzel.com/gopher/gopher-client-browser-for-windows with the text color set to green and the background set to black. From what I hear there is also a Gopher chrome plugin that isn't too bad.

For those interested in playing around with gopher development in addition to the tools that are mentioned in the the article there is an old abandoned yet serviceable gopher version of flask kicking around out there that is quick and easy to get going.

4 yıl öncediscuss

Cool gameplay loop! Lots of short jumps makes it easier. Maybe change it so that every time a paddle is hit the player gets 10 points but looses a point every time they jump.

5 yıl öncediscuss

I was trying to figure out what font they are using and when I was inspecting the page I found the comment below. I have nothing in particular to say about it. I just thought it was interesting.

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                sSs  'sSs,      ...      .sSs'  sSs
                 sS,    'sSs,         .sSs'    .Ss
                 'Ss       'sSs,   .sSs'       sS'
        ...       sSs         ' .sSs'         sSs       ...
       .           sSs       .sSs' ..,       sSs       .
       . ..         sS,   .sSs'  .  'sSs,   .Ss        . ..
       ..  .        'Ss .Ss'     .     'sSs. ''        ..  .
       .   .         sSs '       .        'sSs,        .   .
        ...      .sS.'sSs        .        .. 'sSs,      ...
              .sSs'    sS,     .....     .Ss    'sSs,
           .sSs'       'Ss       .       sS'       'sSs,
        .sSs'           sSs      .      sSs           'sSs,
     .sSs'____________________________ sSs ______________'sSs,
  .sSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS'.Ss SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSs,
                          ...         sS'
                           sSs       sSs
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                             'Ss   sS'
                              sSs sSs
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                       YOU ARE YOUR OWN GOD.
               YOU HAVE THE POWER TO CHANGE THE WORLD.
                       MAKE THE MOST OF IT.
    -->

5 yıl öncediscuss

What I realized years ago is that the upvote on Stack Overflow don't mean "I tried this and it works for me" or "I'm an expert and this is the answer". No, the upvotes on Stack Overflow are along the line of the upvotes/likes one would find on Reddit or HN. More like "you sound confident" or "I was looking for this but I haven't tried it yet"

5 yıl öncediscuss

Plus the report is referring to incidents of contact with contaminated surfaces not some random individual surface.

6 yıl öncediscuss

I also am not a lawyer but from what I understand the situation is actually more severe than that.

I couldn't find the reference offhand but I've read that YouTube has no ability to adjudicate the validity of a DMCA takedown request at all. They must responed as proscribed by the DMCA.

Which makes sense because once the DMCA is involved it's ultimately a legal dispute between the person that uploaded the video and the person that claims to own the copyright. And that kind of dispute is something only the courts can decide.

6 yıl öncediscuss

I too was unable to convince my family but based on your comment I just thought of a new (to me) example I might have tried. It leverages the grasp of fractions that you mentioned people already have.

Everyone knows that 1/3 = .333... and it can be pretty easily shown that 1/3 + 1/3 = 2/3 = .666...

So I would ask them that since .333... + .333... = .666... does it make sense that .333... + .333... + .333... = .999...? And since .333... = 1/3 isn't .333... + .333... + .333... = .999... the same as saying 1/3 + 1/3 + 1/3 = 3/3? And since 3/3 = 1 and 3/3 = .999... it makes sense that 1 = 3/3 = .999...

This might work on your kids but in my experience recalcitrant people will either act bored as if they don't care or will try to claim that somehow they understood it all along.

7 yıl öncediscuss

What's your take on using AWS Flexmatch & GameLift for matchmaking and autoscaling? Do you see any trouble spots in their approach?

9 yıl öncediscuss

I debated whether to respond to your comment at all. Let me first say that I wish you all the best and hope for your continued success. However, some of what you said feels like you're asserting that "up" is in fact "down". So let me first establish my bona fides with this screenshot that was taken on the 25 of last month:

http://imgur.com/a/uv1C6

so you can believe me when I say that I was a pretty good player that spent a lot of time playing your game.

> This was implemented directly to combat the prevalence of bots on the EU & NA servers (and the annoyance some players were facing when they were just playing AIs all the time), where you're now not allowed to bot on. Players have the option of choosing whether or not they wish to play against bots, but if they wish not to they can still play on the NA and EU servers.

Respectfully, yours is not the first game to have these types of problems. People grief and cheat in every online game where it's possible. Creating bot-only servers will not curtail bot use on non-bot servers. It will instead give people who grief and cheat stronger bots that they can pull down from github or wherever and adapt to play on non-bot servers.

They only thing that will stop people from using bots in bot free zones are technological countermeasures. Captchas being the classic example of such technology.

> If you dislike the new movement settings, you are able to disable them in the options menu.

That fact that you suggest this as a way to address my concerns makes me wonder if you actually play your game outside of testing it to see if a new feature works.

When you changed the way players can move you not only changed how I play the game but how everyone else plays against me. Essentially, with this latest revision you've created a substantially different game. Using the option to limit how I move without it changing how my opponent's move would only serve to put me at a disadvantage. It would not roll back the clock to the make the game be like the old game I liked.

All of the tactical nuance that the game used to have was based on timing and multitasking. High level gameplay steamed from getting inside your opponent's head and trying to force them into mistakes. The key to doing that was to realize that if an opponent is trying one thing they most likely aren't doing something else. If you could get them to focus on the wrong thing you gained the advantage. In my opinion the old game had a great balance between strategy and execution. If you weren't good at both you couldn't win. The new control scheme throws that particular balance out window. It's hard to describe in words because it's a million little differences that add up to a whole but suffice it to say that games now to me feel less like a sword fight and more like people running at each other with pots on their heads.

9 yıl öncediscuss

Do bots watch ads?

For the last several weeks I've been an avid generals player. For awhile I was even ranked #7 on the FFA ladder. And I have to say that this is the second change in about a week that has left me confused about who generals is trying to appeal to. Maybe the bots will be fun for humans to play against but I doubt it. Maybe this will be a benign change and the quality of the bots that play generals on the non-bot servers won't improve much from what they are now. But either way why is an ad-supported game encouraging bots to try and take it over? What happens when the bots become so good and so prevalent that humans can't hope to compete? Why would anyone want to play?

Though I guess in the end I don't really care all that much as the recent changes to the movement scheme have really put me off the game. High level play used to be about feints and visibility, cutting off your opponents tendrils whilst building your own, pulling their forces away from your king while trying to find theirs. It really had a nice balance. Now, not so much.

I don't want to seem too sour. I had a lot of fun with generals [thanks devs] but now I'm in search of a new favorite game.

PWG

10 yıl öncediscuss

I love the minimalist approach. It would be nice if there was a sound effect when a player is defeated. Not as an aesthetic thing but as a way to keep track of the match without having to constantly check the scoreboard.

Also, the screen you show when a match ends seems like a good place to stick another ad.

11 yıl öncediscuss

If this is true then it's a real bummer. Jailbreaking tends to pave the way for a lot of bad things. Rampant piracy and multiplayer cheating will totally bork the playstation ecosystem.

Edit: I dug into this a little bit and it doesn't seem beyond the realm of possibility that this is credible. A little more info (though no smoking gun) can be found at the tweeters GitHub page http://cturt.github.io/articles.html

11 yıl öncediscuss

Way back when before the Broken Age Kickstarter and before Microsoft bought Minecraft Notch half-jokingly tweeted an offer to personally fund a sequel to Psychonaughts. In interviews Tim Schafer (head of Double Fine) mentioned that that wasn't very realistic as a proper sequel would cost around $13 million.

It's interesting that in the news reports about this latest announcement state that crowd funding will be used alongside outside private investment.

It makes me wonder if this fig campaign is mainly about generating buzz (for both fig and Psychonauts 2) and as a way to prove public interest in order to unlock the aforementioned outside investment.

http://kotaku.com/5885525/bankrolling-psychonauts-2-was-just...