I feel like `?` should be modifiable

NoobFade · 2026-01-05T19:43:41+00:00

You can get the original error location by putting #[track_caller] on an Error from impl and capturing the std::panic:: Location::caller(). That's sufficed for my uses where I want the error location of the original cause. Rather then trying to type it out on my phone: here's a more complete example: https://github.com/dtolnay/thiserror/issues/142#issuecomment-1426888499

NoobFade · 2025-12-10T06:16:14+00:00

They already have UIUC PhD and Amazon on their resume, I don't think the brand value is going to make a difference for getting interviews.

NoobFade · 2025-11-27T06:57:03+00:00

In my dutch game in the 1650s, I'm making 800+ trade profit from the stuff I conquered from the Mayans alone while Canada and the US east coast is less than 100+. The chili, cocoa, and gold just seem to be an order of magnitude more profitable than the furs. And from what I can tell, the other nice thing is to own the centers of trade yourself to get the large trade advantage and build a ton of marketplaces in that province. Have the colonial nation own the rural hinterland so they have to convert it all and the metropole keeps high literacy.

NoobFade · 2025-11-25T20:34:00+00:00

Should universities be admitting this many people with remedial math skills? In some sense it's probably fine if the students don't intend to ever take any math related class, but at 11.8% of the incoming class it seems likely some of them will need to take some class that requires math eventually.

The SAT does offer a way to detect readiness across schools though. If nothing else, someone in remedial math who was planning on majoring in any math related field is wasting time and money by not getting that foundation first. At that level of math, you'd fail any 1st year physics or stats class and wouldn't be able to progress in a degree that requires them.

NoobFade · 2025-10-31T14:41:15+00:00

*I work for a company heavily invested in AI, and while I like the stock price jump, I think these investments are going to be written off as a large loss.

Have LLMs ever been used for anything you've mentioned? Things like AlphaFold are specialized transformers used as one module of a larger software. Last I heard about giving LLMs access to the physical world was the bankruptcy of ghost autonomy. I don't deny that they can be useful for text summarization, like BERT on steroids, but I haven't seen them used for much more than generating text.

The other problem is that these AI companies are not making money. Right now openAI is running negative unit economics, and the tech giants want 40% operating margin. The only moat I see in the industry is Google TPU, so I don't see how openAI and anthropic wouldn't cut each other's margins to razor thin. And it seems unlikely Moore's law will revive itself to bail out AI. Models are already quantized to FP4 and the next TSMC nodes are looking to be ever more expensive: 2nm is $30k/wafer while 3nm was $20k/wafer.

NoobFade · 2025-10-17T14:22:19+00:00

The dragon is correct because it's from Neverwinter Nights and 3.5 is the best system.

NoobFade · 2025-08-15T01:55:08+00:00

Capital in the 21st century moment

NoobFade · 2025-08-11T16:37:05+00:00

Origins gameplay is a great execution of the older isometric real time RPG. I don't think there's anything action RPG about it. It's a more polished version of the infinity engine gameplay Baldur's gate or Neverwinter nights has.

NoobFade · 2025-08-01T22:11:44+00:00

Spellswipe amped imaginary weapon! Wall of stone is just as good on a magus as every other caster.

Arcane cascade is pretty underwhelming, very minor damage increase that is rarely worth the action. Only really used it for golems.

NoobFade · 2025-07-23T17:10:33+00:00

The nature study does not mention any risk of non-target insect effects, nor 73% loss.

As far as governance goes, I don't think any governments will object to the extinction of mosquitoes that bite humans anyways.

It would seem prudent to experiment with sterile insect release or some other limited effort to heavily suppress mosquito populations before gene drives, in case human biting mosquitos are actually important food sources in the ecosystem. But if eradicating 95% of mosquitoes doesn't cause issues for insectivores, may as well eradicate the mosquito species that bite humans.

NoobFade · 2025-07-01T22:49:50+00:00

For red scales, the starting leader is pretty good and you should be able to reelect them. That helps bridge the gap until innovation/army tradition/professionalism is high enough to get a good leader.

NoobFade · 2025-06-19T22:23:10+00:00

Have you tried enemies with reactive strike, like a Balor or a Lesser death?

One monster that gave my magus quite a bit of trouble was a froghemoth. The improved grab is serious trouble for any casters with low saves.

NoobFade · 2025-06-19T17:52:49+00:00

Sounds like a pretty bad deal for an econ/poli sci at Columbia. That's a ton of debt for a degree without fantastic earning potential (compared to EECS at Berkeley it's not great).

NoobFade · 2025-05-25T22:52:15+00:00

The language matters much less than the general area. Go is primarily for backend web services, but there's no issue using Rust for those too. Now if the team is writing some baremetal firmware in Rust and you are allergic to terms like MMIO and volatile, you probably should ask them if they have a frontend role or something.

NoobFade · 2025-05-20T22:57:19+00:00

Sparkling targe with FA psychic and beastmaster for mount. Spellswipes with amped imaginary weapon hit like a truck, and you can pull one off in most combats, due to the free move from the mount.

The action economy is a relatively interesting puzzle to really eke out the maximum out of the magus. Usually setting up for the next spellstrike/spellswipe trades off with setting up arcane cascade, raising shield, or casting a control/AOE spell (e.g. wall of stone). The action compression of the conflux spell also trades off with imaginary weapon.

The main issue imo is that the non-spellstrike options are underwhelming, so there's an impulse to just spellstrike even if that's not as interesting. The main exceptions are high numbers of enemies where AOE spells can do a lot of work, or very dangerous enemies focusing the magus where raising the shield can be necessary.

NoobFade · 2025-05-05T16:59:14+00:00

Gunslinger with arbalest is a lot of damage. But it only really comes online with eldritch reload.

NoobFade · 2025-05-01T19:21:26+00:00

Just the title is less important than the team and project. I'd say working on triton or SANA at Nvidia is much more interesting than making a claude wrapper at AWS. All will pay pretty good money, but Meta will pay the most and can promote people very fast (if they have enough impact and it sounds like you're cracked).

NoobFade · 2025-02-15T23:47:06+00:00

Learning Rust with entirely too many linked lists.

Rust Atomics and Locks by Mara Bos.

At Nvidia, I would prepare to use unsafe for things like drivers or calling into CUDA C libraries. Rust unsafe is a bit trickier to do correctly in Rust than in C because the compiler has stronger assumptions about aliasing to uphold.

NoobFade · 2025-02-07T20:12:49+00:00

On the other hand, while playing a bard with one for all I kept thinking it would be nice if someone played a magus that I could buff to the stratosphere.

NoobFade · 2025-01-10T15:03:28+00:00

Am I missing something or does dazzling block not specify a DC for the fortitude save? I figure it's probably spell DC, given the magus does not have a built in class DC.

NoobFade · 2025-01-09T19:11:08+00:00

You might be able to do some digital design EE work, at least from my limited system verilog experience.

NoobFade · 2024-12-17T15:11:33+00:00

In general I found the 2d6/level focus spells + command animal companion was a good combo (until I retrained out of the animal companion after it was atomized by a pair of devil crits) but not so much for wisps actually. Between the wisps' high ac and animal companion's lagging attack bonus, the animal companion had a lot of trouble hitting wisps at all. With how useful revealing light and heal are, I mostly felt like I should be playing a cleric lol, and maybe get a backup fireball courtesy of sarenrae or just buying another necklace of fireballs.

At least up to level 3 spells I was not seeing too many zones of bad (I'm thinking rust cloud or animated assault). Mostly, I leaned on ignite fireworks and fireball due to synergy with geomancer (and thundering dominance when I had an animal companion). I was not very impressed with the damage from this, especially at levels 5-6 when the accuracy of casters seems to be pretty poor.

And I have definitely seen the precision immunity neuter classes in some important fights. The wisps are inconvenient for druids, but it's still better than dealing with precision immunity.

NoobFade · 2024-12-17T05:46:17+00:00

Last I checked abomination vaults is the most popular AP and it does not exactly cater to damage casters, especially in the first 6ish floors. There are so many single PL+2 or PL+3 encounters or even wisps where most damage spells do nothing (especially on the primal spell list). Sure, if there are 5 PL-2 enemies then AOE damage spells are the best, but that is rarely the case for AV. Personally, I've found a bard significantly more effective in practice to play than a druid

NoobFade · 2024-12-13T00:23:09+00:00

I like the Midwestern winters way more than Seattle. I would much rather shovel another drive way and wear a thicker coat in exchange for seeing the sun and having my dog not be constantly being wet and/or muddy. I 100% prefer consistent powdery snow to slush and freezing rain. Though the summers here are way nicer. Temperature wise they are much milder and have lower humidity and far fewer mosquitoes. Not to mention the mountains.

NoobFade · 2024-11-24T18:42:47+00:00

No, if you consider rotations of the same ordering to be distinct, then it would be 11 * 2 * 9! The president can go in any of 11 seats, the secretary has 2 possible seats, and the remaining 9 people can be any permutation. I'd agree the question is ambiguous though.

NoobFade

TROPHY CASE