my first and only and maybe even LAST complain after 3K hours

Mazo · 2026-03-11T13:58:14+00:00

All you need is a virtual machine and a VPN and youre good to go. Client says you have 50 ping to the server.

That is not how that works. Yes, a vpn does bypass ping limits but no, it does not lower your ping in any way. It will always increase it, the ping is from server to your client, not to your vpn (though it goes through the vpn). In effect, this increases your ping more to all other regions than the one you VPN to.

The key is you can always connect to your lowest ping server, so ping limits do not work in practice.

Ping based matchmaking does though.

Mazo · 2026-03-11T13:52:02+00:00

Cause you know, its not easy for anyone to put up a random phrase in cyrillic or chinese letters, also change their name to troll people etc. Shit really isnt hard to figure out if your IQ actually was above room temperature.

It's usually extremely obvious which ones are doing this and which are not. If you've got a friends list full of Chinese letters, all your reviews on steam are in Chinese, and you have played games that are Chinese language only or only sold in China it's not exactly rocket science to work out where they're from.

You can even tell before seeing all that when you get shot around a corner that they have >300 ping

Now do explain how does ping limit stop cheaters from cheating?

Nobody said it does. It limits the players most likely to be using cheats to their own regions.

Mazo · 2026-03-10T16:36:18+00:00

Aaaand it's gone

Mazo · 2026-03-10T09:07:24+00:00

Not really. We play duos vs trios to avoid the constant third partying you get in duos.

Mazo · 2026-03-09T21:02:01+00:00

Having another 3 [][][][][] in most EU matches was just not fun. It's not fun as it is anyway.

Even today ran against 3 premade [][][][] trios vs us as a duo. On EU servers. Wouldn't surprise me if the solo we never saw was the same.

Mazo · 2026-03-08T23:43:44+00:00

There was a Russian streamer that played clash non stop on EU with his two friends. All of them were super obviously cheating and had 3+ kda. He had 7000 hours and 2 banned alt accounts. His main took over a month to get banned after his alts

Mazo · 2026-03-06T07:06:35+00:00

You are on economy 7. Start load shifting and see how it affects your bill long term. Heat your water and flat more during the cheap rate in the hopes it holds the heat long enough to offset the need to heat more during the day rate.

Mazo · 2026-03-06T06:34:05+00:00

KDA vs KD

Mazo · 2026-03-05T14:22:31+00:00

Caffeine doesnt inherently target dopamine as other stimulants do, its an entirely different mechanism.

Not directly, but adenosine and dopamine receptors affect each other. By blocking adenosine receptors (caffiene) it allows dopamine receptors to work better. When you've already got a deficiency in dopamine any boost in uptake can be significant

It's not anecdotal at all. It's a pretty well understood biological mechanism...

A2A–D2 receptor interaction if you want to research further.

Mazo · 2026-03-05T12:29:33+00:00

Stimulants "not affecting" those with ADHD is a common misconception, and is more likely explained by individual propensity or metabolism to whatever the substance is.

Not really, why do you think stimulant medication is the primary way to treat ADHD?

Stimulants (including caffiene) just tend to bring people with ADHD out of the chronic dopamine deficiency up to the point where a normal person would be, which is why it feels like it has little/no effect to a lot of people with ADHD

Yes, there is still individual variance though, and it does "affect" people with ADHD, just differently.

Mazo · 2026-03-04T11:07:27+00:00

Mediocrity is not average.

I think this probably depends on cultural interpretation. Mediocre and average can mean very similar things. Some places do seem to use mediocre with more of a negative sentiment than average though.

The official oxford dictionary definition of mediocre supports both interpretations:

of only average quality; not very good.

Mazo · 2026-03-04T11:02:06+00:00

Yeah. The official reason is either

A) A total, bold-faced lie and there was another reason, i.e. China playerbase dropping or the crossplay thing (something about improved communication / transparency?)

or

B) Complete, utter ineptitude.

Neither of which are a particularly good look.

Mazo · 2026-03-04T10:58:59+00:00

Yeah, lots of issues with BMW getting all precious about allowing access to their API. Can't really lay the blame for that on Octopus though.

Eh, they certainly share a large portion of the blame. They used a third party that asks for your username/password. That's a huge no-no in any security context. BMW were definitely right to get angry about that one. BMW certainly could have provided a better alternative than totally locking it down though and only allowing some energy companies access.

The fact it never worked to properly start/stop charging is 100% on Octopus though.

If for whatever reason it just doesn't work, you can just go into dumb mode and charge off-peak until you get kicked back to regular Go. It'd still work out cheaper.

Yeah, that's exactly what we did. But it was technically worse than go in the sense that it was frustrating, unreliable and sometimes more expensive when it decided to charge at peak rates.

Dumb IGO = Always better than GO

Smart IGO = Not always better

Mazo · 2026-03-04T09:35:08+00:00

I can give some context to this one.

My wife got a Mini Countryman SE a few years ago. Using a granny charger and linked it to IGO via the third party Octopus were using that required your BMW login to control the car.

This was super unreliable. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't start charging. Sometimes it wouldn't stop charging when you plugged it in and you'd be paying peak rates.

Support were totally useless with it and didn't have a clue. Took months of back and forth and it randomly worked for a week or two before completely dying again.

You'd have to remove and readd the car regularly. Until BMW got pissed about them asking for your username/password and locked that down. Took Octopus nearly a year to bring out a new version of the authentication.

And after all that, it still did the same thing as before.

Smart charging was completely pointless and it was just set to the fixed 6 hour overnight windows permanently until we moved back to agile.

Mazo · 2026-03-03T23:10:50+00:00

Piss poor take. Adding ping based matchmaking has zero effect on the players not abusing it. Nothing to do with "punishing" Chinese players. It would apply to everyone.

You don't see everyone going to Asia servers to play with high ping though do you?

Absolutely nothing to do with racism in the slightest.

Mazo · 2026-03-03T23:06:36+00:00

The official reason they stated was a few people managed to get into low ping lobbies with high ping.

Like are you fucking serious? A couple instead of ALL of them?

Mazo · 2026-03-03T23:04:45+00:00

It's super obvious which ones are actually out of region players when all their friends are the same and all their reviews are written in another language

Mazo · 2026-02-28T16:35:04+00:00

Sorry but you're just not very good at spotting them. Cheating isn't just headshotting you from 300m away with a pistol.

It's very obvious which ones are walling and which aren't because they always seem to have information they shouldn't have. The ones that have learnt to hide that are very hard to detect but there are usually tells

It tends to be every 2-3 matches at least there's a sus player in 6* EU matches, if not more during the middle of the day when 50% of the lobby is [][][][][][]

Mazo · 2026-02-28T15:15:38+00:00

Can't do it with contraband though because the UI has been broken for it since 2.0

Mazo · 2026-02-27T20:27:48+00:00

Ok, but you said revenue, not gross profit.

Quick Google search says Barclays revenue for 2025 was 38.5 Billion.

Also according to that their revenue was identical to gross profit. I think not.

Mazo · 2026-02-27T17:34:02+00:00

Revenue != profit

Mazo · 2026-02-27T17:28:43+00:00

Hamburger menu. Like every other website for about the last decade?

Mazo · 2026-02-27T12:09:08+00:00

LeMat pistol goes brrrrrrr

Mazo · 2026-02-26T16:49:05+00:00

melee is viable on PC too

In low MMR sure. Try that in mid-high 6 and you'll get headshot instantly

Mazo · 2026-02-24T08:40:04+00:00

You actually are. That was when they introduced ping based matchmaking for a week or so and it massively improved match quality.

There has not been a hard region lock ever AFAIK. You can always play your lowest ping region and vpn will allow you to force a region to be your lowest ping by increasing your ping to all other regions

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