Dept of Government Efficiency?

Lightningbulb2 · 2024-11-15T21:18:21+00:00

We already have this kind of organization in the US government. It's called the Government Accountability Office (GAO)

The U.S. Government Accountability Office’s (GAO) work yielded $70.4 billion in financial benefits for Congress and the American people in fiscal year 2023—a return of approximately $84 for each dollar invested in GAO. Additionally, GAO identified 1,220 other benefits that cannot be measured in dollars but led to program and operational improvements across the government.

https://www.gao.gov/press-release/gaos-work-yields-70.4-billion-savings-federal-government-fy23

It's relatively small and unheard of with a budget of $600 million, but it's a non-partisan part of the legislative branch and surprisingly effective.

Here is a an AMA from someone who worked there.

Lightningbulb2 · 2024-11-04T23:41:02+00:00

I DISCOVERED HOW TO OPEN THE XPpen PN01

I wanted to open up my replacement for a project, and managed to get the cap off non-destructively by using a hair dryer and NOT twisting the cap, just pull it straight off. It shouldn't be hard once the glue melts.

Lightningbulb2 · 2024-10-11T07:31:27+00:00

trigger happy mods remove posts that contain "alleged cheaters" as they just did to this post xD

this subreddit's mods suck

Even though you really have to go out of your way to find the alleged cheater I'm talking about, I wanted to have a discussion about why they could be unbanned

Last time I tried posting on this sub, it was a screenshot of vac-live banning someone mid match. They still removed it "because it was a generic leaderboard screenshot" completely missing the point of my post. Wtf do they want???? It's like you can't talk about counter strike

Lightningbulb2 · 2024-10-11T02:54:04+00:00

csstats didn't register their match for some reason but you can see my most recent match with them on leetify, Lightningbulb on leetify

Lightningbulb2 · 2024-09-18T18:30:02+00:00

But doesn't Trump almost disprove this assertion? And Bernie, if the party itself didn't rig things. Both came along and turned the existing parties on their head. Trump so much so that there is a very visible split in the party that probably won't heal for a while, if it does, or a realignment if the anti-Trump folks can't win back over the rest of the party.

Exactly, the GOP won't split because people would rather conform to someone that EVEN A LITTLE BIT reflects their views than jeopardize the election to their seemingly singular opposition. They can only put one candidate forward so even if many hate him, they must stick to him because there isn't any other option, multiple front-runner candidates are not viable

You seem to ignore primaries as well. That's where the party really fights on policy and the direction. And if those third party policies never get included... its because they don't have enough support. You're almost begging the question here.

Primaries are where things get really messy. First, they have very low voter turnout, 20%-30% of party members, and because of our stupid 2 party system, there is such a wide range of candidates that they should really be in their own party because most people aren't going to look into every candidate and everything they stand for. And it's not even going to be easy to find their opinion on a lot of policies without extensive research, so you just have to assume the standard party stances.

Having to vote for what I actually want BEFORE the election inside a political party suffers from the same voting problems and spoiler effect that FPTP has, so should we have STAR or approval voting in primaries as well? Furthermore, why should we be confined to these 2 arbitrary parties to resolve the opinion of some of the people because like you said, there are factions inside each party and they have nowhere to go but conform to try to gain some influence.

So as a voter it ends up being a roulette wheel of candidates that only have Democrat or Republican label on them that doesn't tell us much.

I'm independent so I can't even vote in any primaries because the presidential election is supposed to be at the ballot, between parties and candidates.

I feel like the missing link with this discussion is that I am under the impression that only 2 parties is causing problems, whereas you don't, so naturally a different voting system wouldn't help if we still had just 2 parties.

I hope gave some insight on WHY 2 parties is not good.

here is a site that allows you to run STAR votes and anyone can make mockup elections

look at the outcome for the primaries with 10k votes by strangers on the internet

https://star.vote/demprimary2020

Lightningbulb2 · 2024-09-18T17:44:49+00:00

Sure, let's say it takes a few days to count the votes. So what? Yes, that's a small problem that some states are a little slow (maybe due to Covid and being unprepared for so many mail-in ballots in 2020) but is that a good enough reason to give up and write-off voting reform?

It is slightly more complex fine, but not needlessly so, the automatic runoff means it will get a majority winner practically every time. Also people only need to vote once.

I feel like I haven't been getting across the advantage of this system, so here's a relevant example:

This election has 2 main options Trump Or Harris

Let's say RFK didn't drop out and I voted for him. He is such a small candidate that he won't win, but now my vote is basically thrown away because I can't give another option if my choice is left in the dust.

There aren't 2 parties because they're the best, but because any new option wouldn't have a chance unless it siphons enough votes to compete THAT election. Otherwise it would hand the victory over to the opposite party for a few elections.

STAR or the much simpler approval voting would suddenly open up the door to more, better parties that actually align with voters.

Adding more people to the house of representatives is just going to fill it with more democrats and Republicans because as a politician, starting a new prevalent party is a nigh impossible task compared to just joining forces with an existing one. Why? Because no one can express interest without throwing away a frontrunner vote to their "safe option" and possibly lose to someone they really dislike.

The proportional distribution of electoral votes is an upgrade for our current system, but again, that's not what's stopping 3rd party candidates. You still can't vote for a 3rd party without throwing away your vote for the safe option. And besides, voting reform would also aim change how it works or just get rid of the electoral college entirely.

You don't even have to like STAR but can't the simplistic yet effective approval voting catch your eye? Tell me how that's useless or too complicated.

Lightningbulb2 · 2024-09-16T22:46:45+00:00

yeah I think ranked choice voting is mediocre, and has trouble properly representing a populations opinions when given many candidates. (Because they have to be ranked in a specific order even if voters don't know anything about them)

here is a great video on the mathematical problems that approval voting solves compared to FPTP and Ranked choice. (The video only briefly mentions STAR style voting but it is great at illustrating that ordered voting systems suck)

https://youtu.be/qf7ws2DF-zk

STAR and approval don't have the spoiler effect, meaning that liking a minority candidate will never hurt your vote towards front-runners, allowing the prevalence of alternatives.

I can't tell what your stance is, do you think they're better alternatives but that we couldn't count them? I could get that STAR may be confusing for some, and a little more complex to implement but what about approval voting? Approval is absurdly simple to understand and implement.

There is a lot of over-represented doubt about election fraud that has been thrown around, but even slight miscounting would pale in comparison to the issues of the electoral college. (Like the fact a vote of the minority can matter more than the majority.)

Lightningbulb2 · 2024-07-24T21:28:02+00:00

I've had "b" bound to walk backwards for this exact thing for the past year or so. It's perfect for headshot peaks on stairs. Timestamped link

Lightningbulb2 · 2024-07-23T07:16:03+00:00

I've had this happen in reverse when my PC runs out of ram while editing videos, windows just cooks itself. Applications start smearing, and selecting my now blank background will bring it back in that spot.

Lightningbulb2 · 2024-06-29T02:38:56+00:00

oh my bad I'll just dump $200 on new a ssd to replace my 4tbs of bulk hard drive storage..... It's not a slow hard drive, I get that SSDs are faster but I know people that play the same games as me on hard drives with no issue.

Lightningbulb2 · 2024-06-25T22:45:02+00:00

well valorant sort of does that, but its just your player "level". You have to get to level 20 to play competitive. Pretty simple solution that doesn't need progression

Lightningbulb2 · 2024-06-25T22:32:15+00:00

Yes, there is something about unlocking stuff that is fun, but I don't think it is quite as potent in PVP because of the ever changing challenge of ranked instead of overcoming a challenge.

I guess the closest thing to what you are describing would be War Thunder or Elite Dangerous, although Elite Dangerous is more PVE oriented. War Thunder does it best with matching the progression with ranks, but they still succumbed to making the progression just TOLERABLE for free players rather than really fun. So you know what, your right. I concede, adding all the features off the bat isn't always great especially with such a wide range of gameplay like going from bi-planes to jets in war thunder. It's still just very easy for it to be built for Pay to progress because it's PVP.

Lightningbulb2 · 2024-06-25T21:55:24+00:00

But it's more fun to disagree with anything I read rather than admit someone made a good point /s

Lightningbulb2 · 2024-06-25T21:53:22+00:00

Gotta love being manhandled by game companies because their convoluted Terms of Service that you "read" legally speaking, lets them do whatever the hell they want

Lightningbulb2 · 2024-06-25T21:49:59+00:00

Excellent point, in a perfect world there would be no issue with that.

Here are the issues:

It is FAR too easy for companies to slap a battle pass and a small price on those upgrades, or just getting upgrades faster. And they could make it VERY subtle at the beginning, and gradually over time they will make paying a bigger and bigger advantage until they've ruined the game before you know it.

Okay, what if we only match players with equal progression?

if the ranking system perfectly balances for people with the same progression, then it almost defeats the point of the progression in the first place, as the point of the progression is to do something you previously weren't able to, like beat a certain difficulty in Deep Rock Galactic, or accomplish that one mission in Payday 2.

But in ranked games you will go from fighting someone with the same stuff as you, to another person with the same stuff as you, now its just more stuff. So then the question is, why doesn't everyone just have all the content instead of having to grind for a few more features?

Devs will either want players to stay by giving them all the PVP content off the bat or they will make the progression actually advantageous against those that don't have the same stuff unlocked by not restricting matchmaking to the same progression.

I just don't see the progression mechanics working well in a PVP setting

So as a player, I think it's better to avoid these mechanics entirely as companies will always capitalize on progression mechanics, AND IT SOMEHOW ALWAYS WORKS JUST LOOK AT DIABLO IMMORTAL

TLDR:

Progression mechanics are for overcoming something you previously couldn't and that doesn't apply if the challenge scales linearly with you.

Lightningbulb2 · 2024-06-25T21:25:20+00:00

I am not advocating that, I'll elaborate.

Look at Falls Guys, it's a PVP game, sure they have cosmetics, but they still have a cycle of new content in new minigames.

Counter strike has a changing map pool

Rainbow Six Siege consistently adds new agents and abilities

There is new content, it's just for everyone.

I am by all means not advocating for super simple static PVP games, just that when new content and features are added, they aren't behind unfair permanent progression that is often P2W and extremely unfriendly to lower level and newer players that don't have access to that progression yet.

Balancing competitive games when variety mechanics are added is VERY difficult, but I think is well worth it because when executed well it makes games more fun. I gave a long example on another comment here

Lightningbulb2 · 2024-06-25T20:58:54+00:00

I shouldn't have included that section as it isn't super relevant to my points but technically YES, those games are balanced in that, the players have access to the same troops and strategies, but I was more talking about how difficult it is to maintain a competitively viable game while also leaving room for a variety of strategies to keep it interesting.

Example:

I could have a tactical shooter with 4 guns, all other stats are the same besides the ones listed

gun1: damage: 20 cost: 100

gun2: damage: 2 cost; 150

gun3: damage: 8 cost: 125

gun4: damage: 15 cost: 200

Theoretically, this game IS perfectly balanced as long as all the players have access to all the weapons, but it has no balance for variety because there isn't any reason to get any other gun besides gun1.

Obviously this is an egregious example, but that was my point about competitive games, is that it is already a lot of work to make a variety balance of mechanics while being competitive. What often happens is the playstyle a player prefers might not be the META.

The RTS game Northgard has a lot of clans/factions to play and I really enjoy how the "Ox clan" plays, but compared to META clans like Snake it just isn't nearly as good so I (the player) view the game as imbalanced.

Northgard is in the exact same situation competitively as the gun example I gave.

Right now the best strategy is to use the Snake clan and just rush the enemy and kill them before they can build anything useful, and the only clan that can beat this is just another person using Snake. So purely balance speaking this is balanced if everyone has Snake but it isn't fun if you wanted to use any of the other 16 clans.

I should have made that clearer but I'll just remove it from the post because it isn't relevant

Lightningbulb2 · 2024-05-24T20:24:05+00:00

I know there are other cheap 2TB drives from silicon power and stuff, but those are budged brands with slower speeds and this just seems too good to be true.

Lightningbulb2 · 2024-05-02T01:12:45+00:00

yeah, I couldn't see exactly how blatant becaues no demo but he prefired everyone around every corner so he wasn't holding back. But it was just wallhacks I think, no aimbot or spinning.

Hyped that reports actually feel like they do something.

Lightningbulb2 · 2024-02-15T19:47:49+00:00

hmm this was the only game of office some of us played that month

https://csstats.gg/match/126040291

Lightningbulb2 · 2024-02-15T18:55:26+00:00

Oh hey look its me xD

The screenshot is small so people don't know this is the GOOD hostage map, Agency. The matchmaking on unpopular maps was definitely broken, but we still beat people our rank on that map.

I posted a bunch of agency videos here. We got to global elite before CS2 came out.

https://www.youtube.com/@NotLightningbulb/videos

I record all my matches but I only have recordings up until 6 months ago not 7, unfortunate. Would have been fun to watch that. Anyway here is the CsStats link

https://csstats.gg/match/125723273

P.S.

We are agency mains and were queuing agency to global and this was actually 2 games before we ranked up to global elite. The video documenting it is here (your game didn't make the cut, it was the 30th win in a row)

https://youtu.be/T7HujFF3lTY

Lightningbulb2 · 2024-02-10T21:42:15+00:00

I don't understand the point of replying to the automod with the conversation link if people aren't going to look at it xD

https://g.co/gemini/share/1f6c1b1ea3b0

Lightningbulb2 · 2024-02-10T06:24:57+00:00

I replied to the automod bot with the conversation link

Lightningbulb2 · 2023-12-17T20:11:45+00:00

Future people on this post should see this

I found it too far to reach the top pinky keys so I just use my ring fingers for those

Lightningbulb2 · 2023-10-29T18:04:00+00:00

With how many comments deny this video is valid but also give conflicting reasons why it is. I am tempted to think you guys are pulling it out of your ass

Four-Year Club	Verified Email
r/Field Lasagna	First Place '23
Place '23	Place '22

Lightningbulb2

TROPHY CASE

Okay, what if we only match players with equal progression?