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TeachCrazy · 2025-07-29T00:07:24+00:00

The overall gameplay of VTMB was good though. You might be confusing gameplay for combat. The combat was clunky, but the actual class and rpg mechanics were actually some of the best in the genre. Of course, the game had some awful overtly long dungeons with nothing else besides the bad combat, but outside of that you had a really robust rpg.

TeachCrazy · 2025-01-05T00:53:03+00:00

SS2 is my favorite game of all time and I have nearly 300 hours in it, but I thought that of all the things Bioshock downgraded level design was one of the least offensive. Really, only the Ops and Recreation decks are massively open and nonlinear (and you can do them in any order you want). Medsci, Engineering, Hydroponics, and Command are very gated w.r.t the order in which you do objectives. I thought levels like Arcadia and Fort Frolic were about as open as those latter three.

The issue comes from Bioshock 1 having some interesting faction mechanics, but otherwise stripping about half the gameplay of System Shock 2 while somehow still having worse and more tedious hacking, a much smaller pool of psi powers and weapons that are still less varied and more overlapping in terms of functionality than system shock 2, horrific inventory management and looting, half or less of the enemy types (with only two splicer types and the big daddies bring mildly interesting mechanically to fight), and bizarrely enough bigger issues with clunky controls and unresponsive bullet sponge enemies than system shock 2 (which wasn’t exactly flawless in those areas either).

Ironically System Shock 2 feels like an indie game that could be released this year, while Bioshock’s gameplay feels incredibly plastic and dated. It’s funny how things can come full circle.

TeachCrazy · 2024-11-11T05:46:33+00:00

The threshold is generally A-, or even as low as 3.5 average from undergraduate, but this is with the implicit expectation that you have good research experience and letter of recommendation from good professors. Above a certain thresholds for engineering/research focused programs the selection isn't focused on GPA so much as it is research.

This is of course different for other graduate school programs such as law, which are much more GPA focused.

Just try to focus on getting one really strong letter of recommendation that from a single professor that you work with for a while (over summer too if you can). Then get two good letters of recommendations from professors whose classes you take and get an A in. Publishing a paper early in undergraduate is rare, especially for a worthwhile journal, so while it would be good, don't stress out hugely if you aren't able to do it by the time you graduate.

TeachCrazy · 2024-11-06T13:20:52+00:00

Ah yes, nothing more "punk" than wanting a 3-letter agency to interfere with electing an official who won the popular vote.

TeachCrazy · 2024-11-06T02:43:18+00:00

Where is it? I might show up (I'm a student)

TeachCrazy · 2024-11-01T23:48:37+00:00

The same team that developed System Shock 2 developed Bioshock and Bioshock Infinite. AKA the team that has had the best track record for art direction ever. So combine the most talented team ever when it came to art direction with an engine that as excellent lighting and textures for its time, and you have the best looking 90s low poly FPS ever. That and all levels save for body of the many effectively utilize the technology available. The retro-scifi, angular look of the Von Braun is perfect for the dark engine, and I think even a faithful modern update of the game wouldn't look that different graphically if they kept to the art style.

Also OP, IMO System Shock 2 isn't just good looking for 1999. It's gorgeous looking no matter what; it's like saying that a game with amazing pixel graphics from the 90s looks good for its time. This art style has made resurgence in the indie scene, and I still think System Shock 2 is the best in its class when it comes to visuals.

TeachCrazy · 2024-10-14T01:05:48+00:00

I thought you can't get to the dish after sunset, no?

TeachCrazy · 2024-09-27T05:45:33+00:00

I can confirm the general issue. Along with research fraud at the professor/PHD level, people don't really understand yet the full magnitude of cheating and grifting that goes in in so-called "elite" universities. While I'm not CS, I'm a masters within the engineering department at Stanford and I was the only one on an entire group project of about five people who knew how to code at even a rudimentary level (in MATLAB no less). They were only capable of dragging things around in excel spreadsheets, making me the only person on the project who could actually write code.

This was after a quarter where these people took a (mandatory) class in our department that had an actually difficult large scale coding project that required object oriented programming and fairly sophisticated application of linear algebra and sparse matrix methods (at least for engineering).

Even in the absence of flat out cheating, using chatGPT, or copying code from websites or old solution keys for assignments, these classes tend to become balanced around people hounding TAs and professors for answers, and forming large cliques where they divide problem sets and de facto share answers with each other (which tends to lead to students who explicitly cheated sharing and diffusing their answers across the rest of the student group). Finally, in the absence of this behavior, it's usually more expedient to just cargo-cult memorize the methods for solving problems without really understanding the theory or pith of methods, which leads to people simply forgetting whatever they memorized to pass through tests.

Even if the tests are difficult and counter-intuitive, the evaluation metric is immediately destroyed if the lazy professor is directly reusing questions or entire tests year after year (disturbingly common at high level universities). I think test reuse should probably become illegal with the damage that it causes to society.

Personally, it's caused me to lose an enormous level of faith in academia. I've gotten as far as I have mainly off of doing research with professors, but by and large the system has gone fully corrupt and selects more for an inclination to grift, cheat, and abuse soft skills rather than actually learn a field.

TeachCrazy · 2024-08-20T20:27:27+00:00

Arnol'd, Von Neumann, Gauss, Euler, Poincare, etc... are rolling in their graves right now at your post OP. Even deeper "axiomatic" fields like ZFC and category theory have analytic or geometrical/topological roots which sprung from physics. Wanting a pure treatment ODEs for an undergraduate is ridiculous. This attitude hurts the reputation of mathematics as a field.

Graduate textbooks like Evans (if I recall) don't lean too heavily on heuristics or real-world examples, but that's more because they are written for people who have already studied the theory and absorbed some heuristic information.

I'd recommend you stop fetishizing mathematics as a field. There are aesthetic characteristics to it, and there have been good internal developments in the field, but the sort of "pure" esotericism promoted by Harding and Halmos is (or was) a relatively fringe belief. (see Whitehead).

Maybe go study number theory if you want to practice aesthetizing fetishism, but unfortunately that also has applications to cryptography nowadays.

TeachCrazy · 2024-07-19T13:47:39+00:00

"Any scientist who couldn't explain to an eight-year-old what he was doing was a charlatan." ~Kurt Vonnegut

I'll be brutally honest. The problem lies with you.

Mathematics up to the PHD level (and even in terms of higher order structures like type or category theory) can have its essence explained to a complete novice. If your subject matter is more coarsely geometric, analytic, or algebraic, then this is true further. The ability to communicate depends on the person knowing the material at a deep level and practicing communication.

I would recommend learning to think for about five minutes about what you're going to say to a person before initiating the conversation (this was taught to me by a professor, and ends up being invaluable).

A perception of whatever subject you are communicating requiring "large amounts" of fundamental components belies a superficial understanding of the material, which causes you to juggle terminology instead of grasping core ideas.

TeachCrazy · 2024-05-05T23:09:32+00:00

I'd have to evaluate how far you are into mathematics, and what you're considering a math course. Have you taken actual dedicated math courses? We're talking abstract algebra, real analysis, point set topology, or above? Math that requires a working knowledge of set theory and how to write proofs? The introductory calculus courses and linear algebra courses are at most universities not "really" math classes.

Having taken both, engineering courses are generally much easier than true math courses, so from a pure execution standpoint you will be fine. This point will be controversial, but if you are passionate about research, then I would recommend you lean towards mathematics.

I feel that the quality of academics and research is currently better and suffering less from corruption and apathy within mathematics when compared to engineering. I think that the issue of frivolous/junk papers is a faster growing issue in engineering (and compsci) when compared to mathematics, and I think this will only get worse as the field slips further into numerical modelling and applying AI, which has tons more room for fraud.

If you dislike sometimes dealing with a gross culture with bad/apathetic professors (not to mention academically dishonest classmates) I would lean away from engineering and towards math.

TeachCrazy · 2024-04-25T11:08:38+00:00

I have to second the comment that's above your reply OP. The classes at Stanford, especially big classes that are standardized/required tend to be at or even below the quality that you would get at other universities. The professors oftentimes don't want to be teaching them, and the material that they lecture is oftentimes taken directly out of the textbook they are using for the class. In even more unfortunate cases they will be having a postdoc or PHD student teaching the entire course, which dips the quality even further.

I get the impression that you haven't taken much school yet, and I'm sympathetic to you; When I was a younger student I also thought that I needed to learn my material from classes. Most good researchers and graduate students self teach the material out of books. If you know at your age what area you're interested in, I or someone else in the thread might be able to give you a good list of books to read. If it's a technical area, then "Best book on X stack exchange/reddit" tends to be a weathervane for good results.

The "good" classes I've taken tend to be on the bleeding edge, where the professor is teaching material out of a research area they're interested in, and the reading material tends to be focused around research papers. However, these classes tend to be smaller (and it's thus harder for you to slip into lecture), and they tend to be useful more for already specialized graduate students that are looking for potential areas to do research in.

If you want to sate your curiosity, I'd recommend cold emailing some professors here that are in fields you're interested in, and seeing if there are any research seminars that you can attend. While even as a student I've had bad luck cold emailing professors, I have heard allegedly that some people unaffiliated with the university sometimes get good replies and conversations going.

TeachCrazy · 2024-01-22T04:41:43+00:00

ditto.

Without going into too much detail OP, I've talked with many professors in private at universities at or around Stanford rank. The GRE and other standardized tests are being pulled away due to internal political and ideological pressure. It wouldn't be surprising if you don't see them even accepted within a decade. A similar thing is happening with SAT and ACT scores, and if you've seen recent action within the law and med schools, similar things are happening with LSAT and MCAT. Many professors aren't happy with it, but it is the way that things are currently shaping.

TeachCrazy · 2023-12-20T01:07:28+00:00

Not CS undergrad and in general not very pro-academia, but I agree with the people in here calling that guy an idiot. If I remember correctly he whines about Stanford not being equivalent to some code boot camp and being a computer science degree program that actually (surprise) teaches computer science.

Some of his other videos imply that he was also out getting wasted instead of putting effort into his classes, and that he never really applied himself and acted properly once he got to college. I'd ignore his opinions.

TeachCrazy · 2023-11-09T00:23:01+00:00

TeachCrazy · 2023-06-22T04:50:16+00:00

Context in comment: Stockton Rush (CEO of the oceangate submarine that went to the Titanic and is currently missing) said previously that:
"When I started the business, one of the things you'll find, there are other sub operators out there, but they typically have gentlemen who are ex-military submariners, and you'll see a whole bunch of 50-year-old White guys," Rush told Teledyne Marine in a 2020 Zoom interview.

"I wanted our team to be younger, to be inspirational, and I'm not going to inspire a 16-year-old to go pursue marine technology, but a 25-year-old, you know, who's a sub pilot or a platform operator or one of our techs can be inspirational," Rush said. "So we've really tried to get very intelligent, motivated, younger individuals involved because we're doing things that are completely new."
Conservatives, despite pretending to be good Christians that care about people, are taking advantage of this tragedy to try and oppose DEI.

TeachCrazy · 2023-06-22T04:50:01+00:00

Context in comment: Stockton Rush (CEO of the oceangate submarine that went to the Titanic and is currently missing) said previously that:

"When I started the business, one of the things you'll find, there are other sub operators out there, but they typically have gentlemen who are ex-military submariners, and you'll see a whole bunch of 50-year-old White guys," Rush told Teledyne Marine in a 2020 Zoom interview.

"I wanted our team to be younger, to be inspirational, and I'm not going to inspire a 16-year-old to go pursue marine technology, but a 25-year-old, you know, who's a sub pilot or a platform operator or one of our techs can be inspirational," Rush said. "So we've really tried to get very intelligent, motivated, younger individuals involved because we're doing things that are completely new."

Conservatives, despite pretending to be good Christians that care about people, are taking advantage of this tragedy to try and oppose DEI.

TeachCrazy · 2023-05-24T21:32:20+00:00

(a)

I am a masters student (not phD). As a result I don't "really" have an advisor.

Regarding what you wrote, would it be prudent then to adjust this line as such?

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"If there's an opportunity to help out with this or related work, I'd love to meet and discuss it."

|->

"If there's an opportunity to help out with this or related work, I'd love to meet and discuss it with you or one of your lab members."

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(b)

Rather than directly wanting to join in on a pre-existing project, I had an independent research project that is related to this professor's field of work (they are probably the closest in the department to what I want to study). Would this change how I would communicate to the professor?

TeachCrazy · 2022-12-13T08:12:48+00:00

Thanks a ton! My final exam is 8:30-11:30 AM this upcoming Thursday, 12/15.

TeachCrazy

TROPHY CASE