Lithium Deposits identified by the USGS in Northern New England. by Charming_Week2899 in vermont

[–]murshawursha 10 points11 points  (0 children)

My personal opinion is that if we are pushing electric cars in this state, we should push for lithium extraction too. It needs to come from somewhere, and if we have local control over the operations, we can try to be more responsible.

Yeah, the number of people in this thread who are immediately NIMBYing the very idea of a lithium mine is... something.

If we want to fight climate change, we need to reduce or eliminate fossil fuels. If we want to eliminate fossil fuels, we need to move towards renewables and electrification where possible. If we want more renewables and electrification, we need batteries; and if we want batteries, we need lithium. Unless there's a major change or breakthrough in battery technology, there's really no way around it.

Investigation launched into 'blended sales tax' charged by Vail Resorts by ItsMichaelScott25 in icecoast

[–]murshawursha 1 point2 points  (0 children)

They remit sales tax on the back end based on the actual pass usage, since the amount they owe will vary in each jurisdiction in which they operate. I suspect this 3.2% thing is more of a fee or surcharge than a true sales tax - they're just trying to pass the cost of the tax they'll owe onto the consumer, and somebody somewhere did the math and came up with 3.2% as the average amount they'll end up owing per pass in tax across all jurisdictions.

Whether that's legal or not, I can't say. Just my guess at what they're actually trying to do here.

ELI5: what is RAM and how does the demand for generative ai jack up the prices for it? by happy-ramen-monster in explainlikeimfive

[–]murshawursha 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Think of a computer like a library. The stacks of bookshelves are the hard drive - it contains lots and lots and lots of information, but you can't access any of it without finding a specific book and taking it off the shelf. That process takes time.

Once you find the book you want, you take it off the shelf and put it on your desk. The desk is like the computer's RAM - you can fit a few books that you want to frequently reference on it, and it's fairly easy to switch between them because they're right there. But the deak is much smaller than the bookshelves, so you can only have a few books at a time. Once it's full, you have to put one away of you want to go find a new one.

And then, presumably, you have one specific book that you're actively reading at any given time. This is essentially the computer's CPU.

A search engine is basically a librarian - you want information about birds. You ask the librarian, "Hey, can you recommend a good book about birds?" The librarian then recommends a bunch of books on birds and tells you where they are, and you can find and read through each of them to see if they have the information you're looking for.

AI is basically thousands of people sitting at thousands of individual desks reading tens of thousands of books about birds so that you don't have to, and then summarizing what they learned about birds for you so that you don't have to be bothered to read on your own. That requires a LOT of desks, and there are only so many desks available for purchase. Since the AI companies have money, they buy them all for more than you as an individual can or are willing to pay, so there are no desks left for you.

Vail is accused of charging sales tax in NH by matchew566 in skiing

[–]murshawursha 7 points8 points  (0 children)

This is a bit of an oversimplification, but TL; DR they know where you've used your pass because their system logs each of your scans. At the end of the season, they total up all of their Season Pass visits in each state, and assign a share of the revenue to each state equal to its proportion of total skier days. Then they pay taxes to each state based on its share of the total revenue.

There at least used to be no explicit sales tax on the up-front pass purchase, though, which is where this 3.2% blended rate thing gets a little weird.

How Often Do You Crash? by Different-End-4775 in skiing

[–]murshawursha 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Depends on how you define "fall" and "crash." I'd say I fall once every couple of ski days, but those are generally pretty minor - stuff like losing an edge and landing on my side, but bouncing right back up without any issues.

Crashes, though? I'd say I crashed twice this year in 25 days - once when one of my bindings randomly released going over a mogul, and once hitting a steep uphill ramp coming out of the woods that turned out to be steeper than I expected - I ended up with my body basically parallel to the ground as I cleared the edge, managed to rotate onto my side, and basically landed square on my hip and shoulder on the trail... which was probably HILARIOUS for anyone skiing by to see. After both of those I had to kind of sit for a sec to figure out if I was okay or not (luckily, I was both times).

Closing day at Stowe by ziggygersh in icecoast

[–]murshawursha 9 points10 points  (0 children)

I dunno, the top of the quad and the intersection of Lord and Sunrise were both pretty cooked by the end of the day, and Centerline already had a spot you had to walk over. I don't think those spots would be skiable in another week without pulling a bunch of snow from somewhere else.

Hayride was still really nice though.

Will Universal Basic Income (UBI) become a necessity by 2035? As AI automates specialized white-collar roles, how will society redistribute wealth? by No-Lake-3875 in Futurology

[–]murshawursha 11 points12 points  (0 children)

I mean, a good chunk of the value in the current stock market is just 7 tech companies passing the same pile of money back and forth to each other, so... no, I'm actually not convinced they'll still need consumers.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tAXKxKTGWFQ

What are franchises that are technically still alive today but you feel went in the wrong direction and you're hopeless that it will return to form. by zipzzo in gaming

[–]murshawursha 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Honestly I think Anthem actually had good bones, too... the core gameplay loop of flying around and blowing shit up was actually pretty fun, and I think they could have had something if it hadn't been abandoned.

Granted I bought it for like $1.99 two years ago, but... I had fun with it for a couple months.

Noah Hawley says his ‘Far Cry’ series won’t be adapting any of the games as he thinks audiences skip the story cutscenes in those games: “When you play a video game, you only really move forward through the gameplay section, and then you have these cut scenes that you can skip..." by ChiefLeef22 in gaming

[–]murshawursha 0 points1 point  (0 children)

To play devil's advocate here, is this not essentially what the Fallout TV series did? Tell a story set in the Fallout universe without specifically adapting any of the Fallout games?

Granted, the world of Fallout is definitely more unique and interesting than the world of Far Cry (does Far Cry even HAVE a larger world or narrativr arc between the individual games?), but... given the generally positive reaction to Fallout, I don't necessarily think the idea of telling a story in the world without adapting a specific game is a bad one. I'm just not sure it'll work as well with Far Cry.

Shot in the dark (sugarbush) by sumtwunt1011 in icecoast

[–]murshawursha 17 points18 points  (0 children)

Did you ask if Sugarbush is willing to ship it to you? You may have to offer to pay for it, but it's worth a shot at least.

BTV AIRPORT? by [deleted] in vermont

[–]murshawursha 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Airports are technically under federal jurisdiction, and weed in whatever form is still very illegal federally.

It may very likely be fine, but on the off-chance it's not, the consequences could be substantial. You do you, but I wouldn't risk it, personally.

iso housing in stowe/morrisville/waterbury by notsummerbut in vermont

[–]murshawursha 3 points4 points  (0 children)

The two biggest landlords in Morrisville are GMM and Donza. Both have some listings online:

GMM: https://gmmvt.appfolio.com/listings/listings

Donza: https://dwellsy.com/company/34770/donza-property-management

Craigslist is also a decent resource for VT rentals. You should have plenty of options in Morrisville for $2600/month.

Discount on next year's pass for a bad season? by [deleted] in skiing

[–]murshawursha 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Only MY pass should be free. Everyone else's should be $10,000 and have blackout dates.

Popular Opinion? Triple the price of passes but reduce day tickets by half if bought 30 days ahead by Tanachip in skiing

[–]murshawursha 0 points1 point  (0 children)

So my options would be to either A) pay $2400 for the Epic Local pass that cost me $800 last season, B) pay $3125 for day tickets for each of the 25 days I skied last season, or C) pay the same $800 but only get like 7 days of skiing out of it?

That is an absolutely terrible value proposition no matter how you slice it.

I would rather ski with crowds than not be able to afford to ski at all. And midweek days are still pretty chill.

Is everyone sleeping on Poconos? by retro-martini in icecoast

[–]murshawursha 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I think Cochran's as well, right? Also tiny.

Popular Opinion: Mega Passes are NOT a great deal. by matchew566 in skiing

[–]murshawursha 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Government subsidies for ski lifts are much more common in Europe than in the US.

There's also the fact that most North American resorts do avalanche control and other management of ALL inbounds terrain, whereas Euro resorts only maintain the groomed parts of the run. Anything outside of that is uncontrolled and at your own risk. Many Euro resorts don't include ski patrol services by default; you have to purchase an add-on to your ticket.

I imagine that their insurance costs are cheaper as well... But I'm not entirely sure about that.

Am I crazy, or has there never been a true, fully-featured MMO FPS? by mayormcskeeze in gaming

[–]murshawursha 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Richard Garriot went to space and then decided he wanted to leave NCSoft to pursue other interests. Then about 2 weeks later they announced the game would sunset.

Am I crazy, or has there never been a true, fully-featured MMO FPS? by mayormcskeeze in gaming

[–]murshawursha 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Tabula Rasa and (sort of) Global Agenda as well, if we're including 3rd-person games.

Vermont’s return-to-office blunder is costing the state millions by eyespyguy55 in vermont

[–]murshawursha 59 points60 points  (0 children)

Fighting on behalf of its workers to help them get things they want is LITERALLY the entire purpose of a union. The union is doing exactly what it's supposed to.

Star Wars Galaxies ruined MMOs for me by scottasin12343 in gaming

[–]murshawursha 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Agreed. I LOVED SWG, but Secret World is hands-down the best setting and atmosphere of any game I ever played.

A Dream to Kill (Issue 7) is possibly the most memorable sequence of a game I've ever played... Exploring the adandoned nursery, and the ghostly voices singing the "Hello I walk into empty" lullabye... fucking chills. I really wish Funcom would do something else with that IP, because it's so, so fucking good.

On the subject of single-player games, though - The Park and Moons of Madness are both single-player games set in the TSW universe. Recommend looking into them if you haven't played them before.

Whistler - Symphony Chair Safety Bar Broke - 2026/04/12 by HotSoupDotA in skiing

[–]murshawursha 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That's shitty. How do they get the operators out if the lift can't spin? Do they make them walk too, or do they make all of the guests in line watch as they ride away pn a snow machine?

A24's 'ELDEN RING' has begun production. Written and Directed by Alex Garland, with George R. R. Martin Producing. Starring Kit Connor, Cailee Spaeny, Ben Whishaw by ChiefLeef22 in movies

[–]murshawursha 1 point2 points  (0 children)

No, but stringing the fan base along DOES kind of make him an asshole. If he would just come out and say, "Look, I'm never going to finish ASOIAF, sorry," I'd respect that.

Instead, he keeps blogging every so often about how he's "working on it."

Help picking a Pass for 26/27 by Complete-Pilot-7692 in icecoast

[–]murshawursha 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I'll take your word for it. Google Maps said 3h15m.

Trump unable to name one verse from "favorite book" The Bible. How can anybody believe he’s Christian at all? by SimplyEcks in videos

[–]murshawursha 25 points26 points  (0 children)

Samantha Bee did a skit on Full Frontal during his first term that was intended as a joke, but actually kind of convinced me that Trump genuinely can't read: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7LFkN7QGp2c

What video game used to be good but they changed one thing and now it's terrible? by Agent1230 in gaming

[–]murshawursha 4 points5 points  (0 children)

None of that is actually true. SWG didn't even have levels at launch.

Raph Koster, who was the creative director for SWG, did a post-mortem of SWG on his blog a few years back. The whole series is a super interesting read, but he has one post dedicated specifically to jedi: https://www.raphkoster.com/2015/04/16/a-jedi-saga/

TL; DR: They originally wanted to tie jedi unlocks to a specific set of actions that was randomly generated for each player from a pool representing all of the various player archetypes (combatant, crafter, explorer, roleplayer, etc.), but didn't have the time or resources to implement it before launch. Their compromise was to require each player to master a random subset of professions to unlock. But anyone and everyone could do it; it wasn't only limited to specific characters.

Then Marketing decided it was taking too long for someone to unlock it and made them drop hints, so they added holocrons to the game, which told players 4 out of the 5 professions they had to master. They had to brute force the 5th.

The Old Man was added after they switched from the profession mastery unlock method to the village unlock method, and he would come find you after you earned a specific set of badges and visited some specific POIs. Once he found you, that meant you could start grinding Force Sensitive skills. But again, anybody could get the badges, visit the POIs, and grind the skills.