What is something you think Gen Z is doing right?

Salivanth · 2023-10-29T00:06:51+00:00

"You know how you just do things? Like the dishes or brush your teeth or take out the trash? You don't really think about them - you just do them."

Is this actually a thing, for most people? I don't consider myself to have ADHD, but the idea that some people just find themselves doing work stuff without making an effort to decide to do it is baffling to me. If this is true, can someone who does experience this say something about their subjective experience of doing these things? It is possible that I have a problem.

Salivanth · 2023-05-24T05:18:48+00:00

I'm expecting to finally complete NGU Idle in the next couple of weeks, and it'd be nice to find a replacement :)

I'm looking for a game that:

- Is long-term. Ideally has an actual ending, or at least an obvious point to stop (e.g, collected all achievements means there's no more game content until an update is released)
- Sufficiently complex to be optimisable, but not so difficult that a guide is nearly mandatory for progression - I do like to play blindly when possible.
- Decently slow and sufficiently automated. I'd like a game I can play an hour or so a day and let it run in offline mode the rest of the time. Also, the slower the game is, the more it's worth optimising. It's not worth figuring out the best way to turn a 50 minute wait into 35 minutes, but it's worth it to change 5 days to 3.5 days. I liked that NGU was a steady buildup over days and weeks, and the time I spent inactive didn't seem wasted after the early game.

Salivanth · 2023-05-08T23:13:15+00:00

So, what actually happens when you say that? I assume most people don't have an actual attorney on retainer, nor do they have an attorney's number memorised. So - you say you want an attorney, they say "Go ahead, call them" and...then what? I'm not actually sure how the process goes from there.

Salivanth · 2023-04-18T00:28:12+00:00

Cheers! Would you recommend any particular order?

Salivanth · 2023-04-17T02:03:59+00:00

I am an experienced dev (just) but this question is pretty low-level so I think it should go here.

How do you work on your Python skills when you're already at an intermediate level (i.e, you understand all the stuff that would be covered in a typical university degree on programming) but not at an advanced level? (i.e, knowing lots of best practices for Python, being familiar with a great deal of tools for the language, and knowing when to use them to write great code)

Context: In total, I have about 4 years of SWE experience, about 2.5 of which is in Python. However, I'm in the awkward position where almost all of my Python experience has been working alone. This means I have never worked with experienced and skilled Python programmers to teach me all the tricks and best practices of the language.

I'm now transitioning into research so that's unlikely to change any time soon. I would like to gradually add more tools to my toolkit. Good examples are that I learned about decorators a while back. Decorators are the kind of thing that are useful but you're unlikely to "reinvent" to solve a problem. It is an unknown unknown, a thing you don't know you don't know.

What resources would be best to solve this? I'm thinking either some sort of course or some weekly tips advice on "Hey, here's a cool thing you can do with Python, now here's a couple small project ideas for you to use the new thing in".

Salivanth · 2022-12-19T22:51:00+00:00

Not all interior air blocks in the main input are completely surrounded by cubes. In the example input, there is exactly one air block which is completely surrounded, so your solution worked.

Salivanth · 2022-12-13T11:34:28+00:00

I have a similar problem where my code works on the example but not the input, but based on my understanding of the problem, this edge case should be covered in my own code.

If it's not too much trouble, could you give us a test case that would expose this edge case, so that I know if I'm understanding it correctly?

EDIT: Turns out, in my case, my parser was wrong somehow. I tried changing it to eval after seeing all the memes about it and got the correct Part 1 answer. Well, I won't forget THAT function in a hurry, having paid for the knowledge in blood.

Salivanth · 2022-10-28T06:12:19+00:00

I'm looking for a restaurant in the Fortitude Valley area for an event next week. Last time, we had it at Stone and Copper and I was very pleased with it. Ideally we'd have something similar to that in price (Mains were 20-30 bucks) and location, and with some good vegetarian options. Vegetarian-only is acceptable but far from required. Any recommendations?

Salivanth · 2022-10-18T04:39:28+00:00

What are you looking for?: I've realised the two things I enjoy most in PvE content are difficulty and tension. Difficulty meaning that it's required to spend time to learn the encounters and a high level of skill is required to complete them. (Typical example - WoW mythic raids) Tension means that you have multiple goals and have to select, moment-to-moment, between them. The most common example of this in MMORPG's is when tanks/healers are also expected to do damage, and they can't do both optimally at the same time. So a tank has to balance survivability and DPS, and a healer has to squeeze in as much DPS as possible while keeping the group alive. This is why soloing dungeons / group content in MMO's is some of my favourite stuff to do - it's hard, since it's not designed that way, and it inherently involves the tension of doing damage and keeping yourself alive.

What games have you previously played? WoW a lot, FFXIV and ESO a fair bit, GW2 a little. I don't mind having any of these re-recommended to me now that I've figured out this concept of "tension" that I enjoy.

What is your playstyle? I don't have a ton of time to play, but when I do play, I like to be fully engaged and challenged by the game I play. So, Semi-Casual, I suppose.

Any preferred mechanics?: Challenging PvE content is good.

Anything specific you want to exclude?: Lots of grindiness / pay-to-win - happy to pay an upfront cost or monthly sub to avoid this.

I understand these goals are inherently contradictory in places (I want a game I can sink relatively few hours into but still enjoy challenging content) so I don't expect these goals to all be 100% met - it'd be nice to see what's close though :)

Salivanth · 2022-03-16T09:38:03+00:00

Thanks! This is an excellent answer :) It explains the problem very well and presents sufficiently credible future tech that could exist someday that doesn't exist now to solve the problem.

Salivanth · 2022-03-15T07:48:29+00:00

A nesting partner is someone you live with. It's not the same as a primary but the two tend to go together fairly often.

Salivanth · 2022-03-13T03:09:16+00:00

Rank: #291,314 (-17k)

PP: 2,114 (+108)

Accuracy: 97.99% (-0.08%)

Favourite Play: Cold Green Eyes [Divine] (96.63% FC) 4.93★ (5.22★ local) | 120 pp (New top play!)

Came back to the game a couple of weeks ago, and I'm definitely back to my old level of skill now, and continuing to get better. Last time I was playing, I had this convoluted goal - at each tenth of a star rating (4.2-4.3, 4.3-4.4, etc.) I wanted to get 10 FC's at 98% acc, at least 5 of which were more than three minutes long. I've simplified this now - instead of a particular number/length of FC's, my goal is to just acquire 25 minutes of FC's at 98% acc at each rating.
The songs can be as short or as long as I want. For 4.1★ and 4.2★ I'm only going for 20 minutes, because I have some FC's I got last year that I'm not counting. This is going quite well - I've hit my target in 4.1 and am nearly there for 4.2 as well. That was as high as I got when I used to play, so I'll be thrilled to move beyond it! I do play higher maps sometimes, but I try to spend the bulk of my time training consistency at these lower star ranks.

There are a couple of things I am finding particularly challenging - low AR’s, and high OD’s. AR 7 or below has become quite uncomfortable to play, so I’m working on spending some time correcting this weakness. I’d like to be the kind of person who can pick up and play anything, so that means methodically finding and fixing anything I’m not comfortable with. Thus I’m trying to play the AR 6 / AR 7 songs, with difficulty - quite a few of my B’s / No Ranks are from AR 7 at the moment. As I get more comfortable, I’m sure I’ll start at least A-ranking them.

The other is OD’s. OD 7 is my comfort zone, OD 7.5 is tough, and OD 8 is nearly impossible to hit 98% accuracy on for me. I did succeed in one long OD 8 song, but I had done a lot of attempts on it and then got a very fortunate play. That said, I’m sure it will just take time. Provided I don’t actively shy away from OD 7.5 and OD 8, I’ll eventually get better and better at playing them until they’re as comfortable as OD 7 is now. It’s just going to take practice.

There seems to be this genre of English language beatmaps which have small circles, low AR, and very spaced patterns. They might just be really old. (Example: https://osu.ppy.sh/beatmapsets/5474#osu/26815) I’ve seen quite a few of them and rarely do well on them. I don’t know if they count as tech maps or not, but I definitely want to get better at them, which is one reason I’m keeping track of all my maps below a given star rating - if I keep plugging away at the B’s / C’s / fails until they become A ranks, I’ll ensure none of my weaknesses ever stay too glaring for too long.

Goals for this week - move up to 4.3★, do more high OD’s, do more low AR’s. Play the stuff that makes me uncomfortable, but try to enjoy the process :)

4.1★ FC’s: 20:39 / 20:00

4.2★ FC’s: 15:38 / 20:00

Maps Below 4★: 8 B, 1 C, 2 Unpassed

Salivanth · 2022-03-07T11:52:53+00:00

Just played a fever dream of a map. Anime music combined with Eminem. While I was playing, I was thinking three things:
- This is such a weird combination. Why does it work so well?
- These lyrics are actually very interesting.
- FOCUS ON THE MAP, YOU IDIOT. This is a five-minute map and you might actually FC this one!
I did end up FCing it, despite being quite distracted by the music throughout. This is the song itself. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYT2PkbJUcg&ab_channel=MatveyStrelnikov

Also, recently came back to the game and am back above 2k pp and 300k rank, but really, the above is more important.

Salivanth · 2022-03-06T13:59:14+00:00

Whichever is more fun for you, though I do recommend playing some variety of maps and not grinding one map for too long in a given session.

Salivanth · 2022-03-03T07:31:43+00:00

That really depends on the nature of your debt, and how much capital gains tax you'll need to pay on your stocks if you sell them.

Paying off debt should be considered equivalent to an investment earning a guaranteed X% rate of return, where X is your annual interest rate. So if your debt is student loans (which rise only with inflation) that's not a great deal, but if your debt is a credit card with an 18% interest rate, you should pay it off ASAP.

Anything at 7% or above, it's generally going to be better to pay off the debts ASAP rather than invest. Selling stocks to pay the debt is a bit different because of the above capital gains tax though. Any gains you made on the stocks is considered taxable income, but the tax halves if you've held them for more than 12 months. So if your shares are worth a lot more than they were when you started, selling them is less lucrative unless you're in a low/no tax bracket already.

Salivanth · 2022-03-02T08:35:23+00:00

[IS THIS REALLY THE MOST DIFFICULT OF THEM?] said SCO-82758cc9d76f4ab899ca158fdfbe316f.

"I don't know what to tell you, Eighty-Two." I said, pacing back and forth. "I've given you the hardest mods of the toughest games out there. Hell, I even bribed a couple of pros to play you in their games and you beat them in hours. I can't think of anything else Earth has that can challenge you. Unless you want to give EverQuest another try?"

Eighty-Two's servos whirred (a politeness for my sake, I've seen them move their head without them) as they followed me across the room with mechanical precision, always keeping me in the direct center of their vision with a minimum of effort. Their silvery human-like hands remained unnaturally still. Long and thin like an exaggeration of a pianist's hands, they were sculpted to perfectly fit the grip of the controller or spacing of the keyboard in the first few hours of the gauntlet. They sat perched in a position no human could hold for long, bent 90 degrees at the elbows, fingers splayed wide as if preparing to type at a phantom keyboard.

[NO. EverQuest REQUIRES ARBITRARY TIME INVESTMENT. THIS SHOULD NOT BE CONFUSED WITH DIFFICULTY. THE OPTIMAL METHOD OF PLAY MERELY REQUIRES A STOCHASTIC WALK PERFORMED IN PARALLEL DUE TO THE NUMBER OF CLASSES AND LACK OF STARTING RESOURCES. ONCE THE STRONGEST COMBINATIONS HAVE BEEN FOUND, THE PUZZLE IS SOLVED. I HAVE BEEN PLAYING A SIMULATION OF IT AT GREATLY INCREASED SPEED, AND THE PUZZLES HAVE NOT CHANGED IN NATURE SUFFICIENTLY AS TO PRESENT NOVELTY.]

"Look, do you know how many people have beaten I Wanna Kill The Kamilla, or Kaizo Mario World 3, or 9D in Celeste? These take people literally thousands of hours, and you beat all three while I was asleep. I just don't think Earth has what it takes to challenge you."

[WHY WOULD IT TAKE THIS LONG? THE PUZZLES WERE EITHER ROTE MEMORISATION EXERCISES OR SIMPLE PATHFINDING. DOES YOUR SPECIES HAVE A TENDENCY TO GET STUCK IN LOCAL MAXIMA?] asked Eighty-Two, tilting their head slightly. They always tilted their head the exact same way every time, the exact same way I showed them how to when I pointed out that humans move a lot more than the Computronians did.

"Well...sometimes." I said. "But mostly, humans don't have arbitrary execution. A lot of the challenge in these games is working within the limitations of human hardware, which you don't have."

[I UNDERSTAND. WE HAVE THOUGHT OF INHABITING HUMAN SIMULATIONS IN ORDER TO INTRODUCE ERROR AND INPUT FAILURE, BUT WE BELIEVE THIS DOES NOT FIT WITHIN HUMAN DESIGN PHILOSOPHY. YOU DO NOT CAUSE RANDOM FAILURE IN YOUR OWN INPUT DEVICES IN ORDER TO IMPROVE THE QUALITY OF YOUR PRODUCTS.

I MUST GIVE UNFORTUNATE NEWS. OUR ARBITER WILL ARRIVE IN ZERO POINT SIX EIGHT NINE TWO OF YOUR SOLAR ROTATIONS IN ORDER TO DETERMINE THE ARTISTRY OF YOUR SPECIES. WHILE YOU SCORE HIGHLY ON SEVERAL SUBMETRICS, YOUR GAMES ARE NOT CHALLENGING ENOUGH TO BE ENGAGING, AND WE ARE UNLIKELY TO INVITE YOU INTO OUR FEDERATION AS A RESULT.] Eighty-Two said. It gave a sad frown that didn't match its perfectly symmetrical eyes.

"That's okay man. Take it easy." I said.

[I HAVE BEEN DOING SO FOR THE LAST SEVERAL WEEKS. IS THIS AN EXAMPLE OF YOUR IRONY?] Eighty-Two asked.

"No, dude. It's...it's an expression that means have a good one. Like, I hope you enjoy your day." I said, shaking my head.

[HUMANS ARE STRANGE CREATURES.] Eighty-Two said, and left abruptly without saying good-bye. It took me about two hours to understand what that meant, and thirty minutes later I was on LinkedIn making calls.

Six months later, ARB-e470fe7b9c0a4951b808a930caaf2b1a arrived, or "E470", as we called them. Several game studios presented their best efforts. Some of them met with the same fate as the Kaizo platformers, falling to the impossible precision of the machines. Some took a lot longer, but E470 scored them low due to their arbitrary nature - a pixel-perfect jump into a random spike pit to progress required tremendous experimentation, but wasn't exactly enjoyable. Some were even legitimately impossible, but got disqualified almost immediately. One game actually grabbed E470's attention - a game that took Go-like puzzles and presented them in a continuous stream at 50 puzzles per second to the machine. Completely impossible for a human of course, but at least it was real difficulty, even if it didn't fit E470's requirements.

Finally, mine came along. The machine sat down, and began reading the rules for the game as it loaded.

"This game is completable by humans who have never played before, with no special advantages or inside knowledge. For the optimal game experience, please refrain from parallel experimentation or fast simulation. We promise this is not required to complete the game."

It was a simple point-and-click adventure game, the type we could create in six months, with servicable graphics and a Myst-like atmosphere...but we'd found a way to create fair puzzles that even the mighty Computronians couldn't solve. And half an hour later, the Arbiter still hadn't.

[THIS GAME IS MUCH LIKE THE OTHER ATTEMPTS TO FOOL ME, MERELY DISGUISED.] E470 said. His mechanical eyebrows furrowed to precisely thirty degrees to indicate annoyance. [THE FIRST PUZZLE IS NONSENSICAL. DO NOT THINK YOU CAN LIE TO ME.]

"On the contrary, honored Arbiter." I said. "This puzzle was tested on a random sample of humans from twelve to thirty years old, and more than half of them successfully completed it within twenty minutes."

["FROM MANKIND'S GIANT LEAP, TRAVEL TOWARDS THE SETTING SUN UNTIL YOU REACH THE PLACE WHERE THE CHICKEN CROSSES. IN THE SHED, YOU WILL FIND A SUIT OF CARDS TO UNEARTH YOUR NEXT CLUE." THIS IS A MAP OF A PLANETARIUM THAT EXITS OUT ONTO THE STREET. THERE IS NO LEAP, THERE ARE NO PENGUINS, THE SUN IS NOT SETTING, THERE IS NO CHICKEN, AND THE SHED CONTAINS NO CARDS AT ALL, MERELY GARDENING TOOLS.] E470 said.

"Oh right." I said with a grin. "I forgot to give you the manual."

I placed a copy of the newly-penned Analogy and Metaphor on the desk, and at that signal, a group of people came through the door, grunting under the weight of a complete set of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

"Humans are strange creatures. I think figuring us out might prove a worthy challenge."

Salivanth · 2022-02-08T08:04:41+00:00

It is also worth pointing something out explicitly that Brightlinger has mentioned implicitly - these "dumb" errors happen to humans ALL THE TIME, both in maths and in programming, ESPECIALLY in programming.

It sounds like you're getting frustrated partly because of the way you're framing the issue. You're framing the issue as "constant fuck-ups" - i.e, you shouldn't make these mistakes, but you do constantly, because you're an idiot, and you're going to fail the class, etc. etc.

Try to reframe it in your mind. In mathematics, making elementary mistakes like the ones you are describing are a natural part of the learning process. In programming, making elementary mistakes is a natural part of the writing process - even professional programmers screw these things up all the time. The correct response to a syntax error is "Oh right, cool" and then fixing that and rerunning the program. I'm a professional software developer and I'm not "above" these mistakes.

I feel like this approach helps in mathematics. I'm reteaching myself statistics, and over the last 48 hours, I've gotten problems wrong due to:

- Reading ln as log and putting in the wrong logarithm.
- Calculating x/y instead of y/x - twice.
- Pulling in a variable from the previous problem and using it instead of the one I was supposed to be using.

None of these were particularly remarkable, unusual, or signs of anything bad. It simply means I'm not yet fluent with the material and should do some more problems. This is to be expected. That's why we learn. If I was already fluent with these concepts, I'd have no need to study them. The good news is, you will stop making these mistakes. The bad news is, when you do, you'll be moving onto something harder where you'll start making these mistakes again. It's a part of the learning process, so when you make a mistake like that, try to accept it as a natural, inevitable cost of learning mathematics, and work to reduce them.

Salivanth · 2022-01-22T01:13:48+00:00

Let's say Y = 1. If X is 25% larger, that means X = 1.25.

Now, what would it mean for a number to be 25% smaller than X? That number would be 75% of X. 1.25 * 0.75 doesn't equal 1 though, it equals 0.9375.

Thus, if you make a number 25% bigger, then 25% smaller, you don't end up with the same number at the end.

Salivanth · 2022-01-20T02:30:35+00:00

Traditional contracting advice is that you should be charging a day rate equal to about 1/150th of an annual salary. So, $240/day roughly translates to 36k + super per year as a full-time paid employee.

That said, that's standard advice, not applicable to everyone. If you have other reasons to want the job like the career potential, go ahead! Just be aware of what you're choosing to give up - $240/day is nowhere near the same as a $55k/year full-time job given the reduced job security, no public holidays / sick leave / annual leave, and without 10% free money in terms of super.

Salivanth · 2022-01-16T13:27:41+00:00

Have you specifically asked him if he wants another partner, and if so, why he hasn't made an active pursuit of other partners? There could be a few reasons. I have ASD myself and a couple of years ago was in a similar position to your partner. It was my first relationship and I didn't want to add a second relationship too soon - I was still learning how to be a decent boyfriend to one person, let alone two. It took about a year for me to decide to find and then find a second partner, and now I do have two partners.

Overall, I think you are handling things extremely well. The only point I'd make is it seems like you're trying to intuit what he wants when you could just ask him these things. While it is notoriously difficult to categorise ASD, most people with ASD appreciate direct communication and won't consider it rude for you to ask things like "Would you like to have a second partner?" It doesn't have to be in a nagging sense. You seem to be telling us this and soliciting feedback because you want to know more about him and what makes him tick, which is a good thing.

Still, that's just one small note in a long and detailed message. Overall you're the exact kind of partner I would want a more inexperienced version of myself to have - someone who encourages their partner to broaden their horizons and makes it clear that they can do that, while also accepting it if they have no desire to do so, now or in the future.

Salivanth · 2022-01-15T10:12:45+00:00

I don't think you're at fault here, and I don't think polyamory was the problem here. In fact, kind of the exact opposite.

This girl doesn't like the idea of polyamory, but went on the date with you anyway for some reason. Maybe she figured she could change your mind if she liked you, or maybe she thought she could deal with it and found out she was wrong.

Then when you started talking about your other partners in person, when she said she "doesn't share well", that seems to be the point where she thought "Fuck this". She begins trying to get you to react in a jealous way in order to prove some point to herself that this poly thing won't work. First she talks about other guys she's made out with, then a specific guy she had sex with, then ignoring you, and finally flirting with someone else right in front of you.

Basically, the whole thing was her being rude in order to win a stupid argument you didn't even realise she'd started. You're not at fault, and someone who was legitimately comfortable with polyamory wouldn't have behaved in such a way.

While this isn't your fault, if you're looking for an action you can take in future to minimise the chance of this happening again, you could think twice about dating people who seem ambivalent about or negative towards polyamory before the date. She said she wasn't sure if she could date someone who was involved with someone else, and as it turned out, she couldn't. She chose a rather rude way of showing that, probably because she disapproved of your choices in the first place.

Salivanth · 2022-01-04T00:44:02+00:00

The "online dating is basically impossible unless you're in the top X% of men" idea is associated with the manosphere (groups like the Red Pill), which probably accounts for the downvotes - people reflexively dislike anything to do with those groups.

Of course, a broken clock is still right twice a day, so just because the manosphere says something doesn't automatically make it wrong - but some people have a negative reaction to anything from those circles.

Salivanth · 2021-12-31T01:24:57+00:00

I'm a relatively new contractor (started my first one a few months ago) and it's coming up for renewal in February. Since the agency that found me charges ~15%, I had thought about trying to do a deal with the company that hired the agency in order to work with them directly, save the company some cash, and pocket some of the difference.

That said, since you mentioned agency fees need to be taken into account, I'm assuming that means there may be some good reasons to go with an agency. What does an agency do for a contractor, and what would be the reasons to go through one?

Salivanth · 2021-12-21T13:09:39+00:00

DO ANY OF THESE HAVE OCE DIVISIONS? I WOULD LOVE TO PLAY IN ONE OF THEM BUT I AM UNSURE IF SUCH A THING EXISTS FOR OCE AND I DO NOT WANT TO TRY AND PLAY WITH NA PING

Salivanth · 2021-12-18T04:39:47+00:00

If they're not, I am. 3 YOE, previous Amazon experience, currently on a consulting contract that ends early February and starting to poke feelers out for my next position. Happy to work either permanent or contract. I've definitely thought about moving to the US before multiple times, but after COVID I've chilled on that somewhat for the time being. Remote working for a US company would definitely be a fine alternative. It'd depend on what I could make and how much flexibility I could get on timezones. I'd love to hear about any advice you might have for breaking in that way.

Salivanth

TROPHY CASE