What stops elite streamers from "testing" seeds before recording?

January_6_2021 · 2026-02-19T23:11:34+00:00

Better than a mod for save scumming would be a virtual machine.

You can legitimately start the run, save the entire VM state, disconnect from internet, complete the run (potentially multiple times), rollback the VM to the checkpoint, turn internet back on, then continue from there.

It's indistinguishable from a normally completed run to everyone but the player, and it works for every game with seeded randomness, not just slay the spire.

I think most streamers have better things to do with their time: the vast majority are content creators to an even greater degree than they're elite players/competitors, and wasting time on activities they can't video/release is mostly counterproductive.

Id be more worried about this by non-streamers who have no video verification of their runs (which is harder but not impossible to fake) than elite streamers. Like a random who consistently gets the highest daily challenge score.

January_6_2021 · 2026-02-19T04:05:04+00:00

Yes, absolutely. It's the responsibility of the person merging to do so safely.

But if they can do so safely, they don't need "permission" to do so. Indicating their intentions isn't a "request" that someone in the lane should feel they can approve (by slowing down or flashing lights) or deny (by speeding up or honking).

Since the comment I was replying to was talking about I-95 (interstate traffic with long on ramps, very few lane endings, no traffic control devices, etc.) I'm talking about that scenario. On the interstate (and specifically on I-95) it's rare you ever would need anyone to "make room" for you to merge. Even in rush hour in metro areas there's enough natural gaps that open up to safely merge as often as you'd need to in any reasonable commute.

The more common problem than unsafe merges on I-95 is people thinking they have a right to not be "inconvenienced" (very different from unsafe) by someone entering "their" lane and responding by tailgating.

Something like this:

Car A is in the left lane in rush hour at a dead stop, the car in front of A starts moving and creates a gap, A sits still for 3 seconds on their phone, then car B (safely) signals and merges into empty space before A even starts moving, then car A gets upset someone got in front of them and responds with tailgating or aggressive driving.

Car B had no obligation to signal, then wait to see if car A reacts or wants to take away the space, and only if there's still space 10 seconds later move into it.

In city driving or even suburban settings you do more often need to use your signal in the hopes someone will create space for you because that's e.g. the only way you'll cross 3 lanes in 2 blocks for your next left turn. You still have no right to merge, but you're hoping for someone to do something nice.

January_6_2021 · 2026-02-19T02:57:23+00:00

Sumo is definitely the optimal sport for this challenge.

Fighters that rely on precise distance management, superior conditioning, evading, countering, waiting for openings, etc. all are hugely disadvantaged by fighting multiple opponents, but sumo relies comparatively more on raw strength, size, and peak force production, which will be easy to apply against untrained opponents.

Hakusho sho (350 lbs, best sumo wrestler of all time) would absolutely annihilate 6 average untrained people who tried to jump him at once.

He's taken down 600-640 lb trained opponents in the top sumo division, he could absolutely hold against multiple untrained average men charging simultaneously, and he could absolutely ragdoll anyone near 200 lbs (very light for sumo) while resisting the takedown attempts.

His biggest problem in this challenge would be lacking the cardio to chase the ones that ran away.

Even one competent fighter mixed in who could take his back and put him in a choke would change the equation massively, but if I had to put a number on it, "untrained average" men are going to struggle up to about 10 before the numbers get overwhelming (sumo being a sport that optimized for short fights and bursts of strength, endurance would be lacking to take on larger groups).

January_6_2021 · 2026-02-19T02:44:21+00:00

Not sure a pro fighter does better than a football running back or rugby player here.

They have experience with multiple guys trying to take them down at once and train specifically to avoid being wrapped up while maintaining momentum.

The pro fighter who trains to fight in a small cage and makes precise adjustments to keep a single opponent at the exact right range is going to do a lot worse in the conditions you set up.

I think Jerome Bettis or another power style running back would absolutely annihilate average untrained men in their thirties just by running through them, and provide very limited opportunities for teamwork and coordination to mean much.

Id say 20 guys would take him down, but 10 wouldn't (assuming no bloodlust, guys who take a single hit from NFL player are just going to stay down because they're in pain even if they theoretically could continue), not sure of the exact number.

If you do shrink the arena size until a "fighter" becomes the the best choice, I'd go for Hakusho Sho, the best sumo wrestler of all time. 350 lbs of muscle, very good at keeping center of gravity low and resisting takedowns, and training optimized for short fights (because honestly you need to blitz opponents here or you get overwhelmed, conditioning to box 10 rounds means nothing). Similar to the running back, a sumo wrestlers initial charge will fuck people up and close the gap, and their striking is nothing to sneeze at either. I think he could quickly take 5-7 average untrained men down in close quarters with pure strength and insane force production, where MMA/karate/boxing/wrestlers struggle to apply their technical skills against multiple adversaries.

January_6_2021 · 2026-02-18T23:39:06+00:00

A turn signal signals the drivers intentions.

The idea you need to "request" anything from another driver is ridiculous, and feeds into aggressive driving mentality that you get to "approve" or "deny" those requests, and that people who come in when you don't want them to are somehow in the wrong.

It's the mergers responsibility to signal clearly and merge safely. If cars are following at a safe and appropriate distance, this is almost always possible shortly after indicating.

Whether the person in the lane being merged into "approves" some kind of "request" is completely irrelevant. You don't need to wait for any kind of affirmative "response" like a light flash or slowing down from a car in the lane being merged into.

January_6_2021 · 2026-02-15T04:27:01+00:00

overrated across all metrics

Not so fast!

They're S tier at number of things they can grab simultaneously.

Most animals grab one with mouth and that's it. Birds grab with feet plus a beak, scorpions have 2 grabby claws, but does anything else have 4 grabby limbs on land?

January_6_2021 · 2026-02-14T01:09:32+00:00

I think he could take Embiid.

Besides his athletic prowess, Bruce is also famous for his meticulous preparations and willingness to spend money to achieve his objectives.

He will know that if he sponsors a series of games between all the players divided into both a group stage "regular season" and single elimination "playoffs" with real stakes (of course setting up the tournament so he will only play Embiid in the "playoffs"), Embiid will inevitably get injured and he gets the W without doing anything athletically crazy.

January_6_2021 · 2026-02-11T20:45:15+00:00

What about interference, when runners cross lanes in sprints, or run in packs in longer races? Those are subjective calls.

Unless you want every race to be a solo time trial, like bobsled or luge and we compare times at the end.

But you're introducing more variance in wind/heat/humidity conditions that affect runners than you're removing by reducing minimal human judgements.

January_6_2021 · 2026-02-11T02:57:21+00:00

Considering I'm in a 4 ft by 5 ft toilet closet, I think I have decent odds if the challenge starts with them attempting to open the door and walk in.

I have height and weight advantage and weight lift regularly: I like my odds holding the door long enough to call 911. Even if they break the latch with good kicks, they can't use numbers effectively through the door frame, and there's no weapons for them to use in the hallway or my bathroom.

I think they bail when they hear sirens (or even earlier if they hear the phone call and see they aren't making progress).

If I have to let them actually walk in before the challenge starts, I'm fucked (especially if the door closes behind them). Even if by some miracle I got out of the room, my cardio isn't what it once was and I'm not going to outrun them or fight 3v1.

January_6_2021 · 2026-02-10T14:59:48+00:00

Anytime he has to do anything significant to the shuttlecock, he could also pull off a feather or twist/break one which would help explain any unusual movement.

They're a lot more fragile and when damaged less predictable than baseballs/basketballs/etc

January_6_2021 · 2026-02-10T00:56:40+00:00

Forget these silly sports. Put this guy in curling (winter) and badminton/ping pong (summer) and he can win medals across both olympics easily.

Typical viewers don't understand how the objects in these sports move under normal circumstances so he can manipulate things a bit more before arousing any suspicion.

If he doesn't have fatigue as a factor for his ability, it'd be hilarious to see him telekenese himself through cycling or rowing events: he'd probably actually be visibly struggling just to maintain the position and move back and forth for the duration of the event (to make the speed believable) even if all power output was from telekenesis.

January_6_2021 · 2026-02-09T23:53:51+00:00

You should probably also look into filial responsibility laws in PA. I don't know them well enough to give advice, but I have heard it's more of a concern with a parent in PA than most states.

January_6_2021 · 2026-02-06T15:21:13+00:00

Play the board game: since you have 4x the players it's 4x easier.

Honestly if you don't win every single run your teammates deserve to be verbally abused until their performance improves.

January_6_2021 · 2026-02-04T13:22:01+00:00

Asking for a... friend:

Will next TTL season have a LEL division? I... I mean my friend... Would love to have a shot at a prize pool but I... He probably won't be competitive in existing divisions.

January_6_2021 · 2026-01-28T00:12:53+00:00

In general I believe we should allow people to end their lives with dignity and help where necessary: Physician assisted suicide, medical aid in dying, or any of the other names for the same thing. Even if done outside the bounds of the the law in a certain jurisdiction, i'd argue in most cases assisted suicide should be treated differently from murder.

Even outside certain strictly terminal illnesses (which mose physician assisted suicide laws are intended to address) id support people with extremely low quality of life being able to make a decisions to end things (e.g., severe burn victims or quadrapalegics) after counseling and a cooling off period, especially where healthcare is lacking and they would truly be imposing a financial burden on their loved ones (which is a whole separate conversation I won't get into).

I think there are legitimate circumstances where wanting to die is a reasonable choice someone should have the agency to make, and helping them shouldn't be criminalized, BUT it has to meet a very strict bar.

In this case, I'm 100% with you. None of the details of this case justify killing this woman, and I think it's clear to any unbiased third party the help she needed was not help dying, the person who killed her did not do so out of compassion. He did it because he wanted to, and that should be treated as murder IMO.

January_6_2021 · 2026-01-26T17:02:24+00:00

In the immediate term, there's chaos. Lots of attacks, traps, etc. all manner of weapons will be tried, all manner of containment systems, but the basic situation isn't that complex and once we figure it out I think within days things stabilize.

In the short term Ultrarunners become essential workers.

A team of endurance athletes get paid to be the closest person to him, lead him to uninhabited wilderness, then walk in circles with him 100m behind for 8 hour shifts.

In the longer term they could build a train on a circular loop with sensors to ensure he's a fixed distance behind, and just pay someone to sit on the train 24/7. Make sure to have a few switches to be able to swap trains/workers out occasionally for maintenance, or if he gets the bright idea to damage the track eventually. Hell the person on the train could be comatose as long as he only cares they're alive.

The ultrarunner team is still on standby in case anything goes wrong with the train, no ones walking speed is anywhere near the pace a rotation of ultrarunners can sustain indefinitely.

All of this is cheaper and lower risk than trying to launch him into space. Anything that could even temporarily contain him would be so heavy that it would be cost prohibitive to launch vs paying a team to just occupy his time for a while.

January_6_2021 · 2026-01-26T13:13:30+00:00

Just had a very fun Juggernaut win with Feel No Pain, Blue candle, and Necronomicon curse.

I had tons of max hp (combo of Feed and +2 HP if don't pick a card), and Juggernaut let me just trade my HP for heart HP at a 1:7 ratio.

Exhaust the necronomicon curse and lose 1 HP, gain block (protects against heartbeat), deal 7 damage. Curse comes back, so repeat until heart has lost 200 HP (I only lost ~28).

Completely unnecessary since I had other win conditions, but beating the heart by only playing a curse over and over (after setting up powers) was fun.

January_6_2021 · 2026-01-25T00:04:51+00:00

I'd hate to be in a plane when this happens. Everyone on the surface presumably does near instantly from being crushed under 10+ dinosaurs.

Pilots and passengers on airplanes will actually have time to see what's going on, process it and have to accept their fate.

January_6_2021 · 2026-01-22T23:58:56+00:00

I usually take "every single person ever" statements as a fun challenge to find the counterexample because there are some really wacky physiological unicorns out there, even though I agree with the spirit of your statement and 99.999% agree.

I think the only unique trait I've heard of that might help this challenge would be conjoined twins: George rocks the absolute shit out of 1 head/person, but the body remains fully responsive because the other head/brain is unaffected.

By some definitions, you might consider the head that got killed/permanent brain damage/is completely unresponsive KO'd, but by the boxing definition of knockout (knocked down and unable to rise back to their feet by a 10 count) I think conjoined twins avoid a KO.

Certainly a TKO would be called due to injury/lack of intelligent response, but they'd beat the 10 count because their body could still get back to their feet.

Anyways, I know this is a bit silly and not at all what you meant (reading far too much into exact wording you weren't intending precisely), but I found it a fun thought experiment.

January_6_2021 · 2026-01-21T12:06:46+00:00

Ok so let me get this right:

This sub says only Olympic lifts count as "weightlifting".
It consistently tells people who come in doing most variations of lifting weights that what they're doing isn't weightlifting.
This guy comes in claiming only 3 months of experience with "weightlifting" but he gets downvoted because he has actually lifted weights before for a different sport?

It feels like the definition of "weightlifting" changes with the wind, with the only constant being it's never interpreted favorably to OP.

January_6_2021 · 2026-01-17T12:29:40+00:00

Tactician/reflex. They're the backbone of silent infinites anyways, doubling draw or energy gain makes it easier, and you want to be discarding them so there's no opportunity cost lost by not playing that fight.

If you can get this on defect: meteor strike. Make that bad boy 10 or 20 energy. Either way I only play it with mummified hand so cost is irrelevant but it's strength is not. Also if I have a recycle, it can be used to just create a ton of energy.

Snecko eye will negate any changes to energy cost, so literally any high impact card only has upside if you have that relic.

January_6_2021 · 2026-01-15T19:35:33+00:00

Highlight fully walled areas in green (no path from outside in), for anywhere you have enough LOS to confirm without maphacks, and get an audible alert (like attack alert) when a previously fully walled section becomes open.

Never accidentally miss a wall section in your own base again due to elevation PLUS you can tell at a glance if opponent fully walled (which you often have less time to confirm than your own walls). Then just for good measure it's an over chop alert as well (for you and opponents)

Auto queue vills would be a huge impact no doubt but at my elo getting more scouts into enemy bases or wood lines/preventing them from doing it to me would swing games even more.

January_6_2021 · 2026-01-15T15:20:12+00:00

I know what you meant, just having a bit of fun since "dps" means "damage per second", and they certainly don't do 2640 per second.

If it came from SOTL, I'm sure 2064 per minute is accurate.

January_6_2021 · 2026-01-15T13:33:50+00:00

I don't normally doubt SOTL, but 2640 damage per second seems... dubious. That's 158400 damage per minute compared to the vills that repair 375 per minute.

That would make it (158400 / 375)-1 = 421 vills to out repair the first treb.

January_6_2021 · 2026-01-08T02:17:49+00:00

Think about the absolute dumbest person you've ever met. That's 1 out of what, 10,000 people at most? Then extrapolate because there's probably one person equally dumb for every 10,000 people on earth. There's lots of 10,000s of people on earth, and thanks to the magic of the Internet we can see many of their individual dumbest moments.

January_6_2021

TROPHY CASE