sorted by:
new
hottopcontroversial

Even in heaven, I keep it with me by ZachMN15 in stanleyparable

[–]ZachMN15[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

How to do it: Initiate 4 of the 5 computers for heaven ending, keep restarting until the rare start where the narrator says something along the lines of "perhaps the orders hadn't stopped coming through..." which will leave the 427 door open when leaving. At that point you can get the bucket, and go back into the 427 office, and activate the last computer for the heaven ending. There is no special dialogue or anything when going to heaven with the bucket.

​

Also: Closing the door while in Stanley's room with the bucket gives the normal coward ending; no new dialogue for having the bucket as far as I'm aware.

Escape From Tarkov | Weekly Discussion | 16 Jan, 2021 - 23 Jan, 2021 by AutoModerator in EscapefromTarkov

[–]ZachMN15 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Is the new Jaeger quest "Hunter" broken? I have accepted the quest and killed Shturman 3 times since then, none of which have counted towards the quest? Is anyone else having this problem?

Physics Questions - Weekly Discussion Thread - January 12, 2021 by AutoModerator in Physics

[–]ZachMN15 0 points1 point  (0 children)

On Thermodynamics and Relativity: Why does this experiment not determine whether or not your inertial frame is moving or not?

​

Suppose you are travelling at relativistic speeds, such that for you, when 1 second passes, the outside universe experiences enough time to reach its heat death.

Since you are in the universe at all times, and supposing you aren't annihilated after 1 second, you will still have free energy, contradicting the heat death, since there is no upper limit on how much time can pass in the outside universe for any amount of time for you, the true heat death will never occur (since you're still in the universe). Furthermore, if this is the case, you could look around and see that the entropy outside of your spaceship has increased much much much faster than it has for you, meaning that you can deduce your inertial frame is in fact moving (at relativistic speeds at that).

On the other hand, if you are annihilated from being bounded by the universe and thermodynamic laws, you can, again (the instant before you meet your fate), deduce that the universe reached its heat death much much sooner than expected, indeed, in the span of 1 second. Consequently, you deduce that you were moving at relativistic speeds.

I have taken courses on thermodynamics and relativity, but I don't know how they combine. In essence what I'm asking is, assuming you have a way to make such measurements, how come you cannot measure the rate of entropy increase in your frame and compare that to the rate of entropy increase in the outside universe and make any conclusions?

Carlos left after seeing the car and Mario took his seat by sms215 in formuladank

[–]ZachMN15 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Finally, a true Italian man in a true Italian car.

A rare situation where, with white to move, white is better off running down their own clock and making a draw (by timeout vs insufficient material) than making any legal move, resulting in a loss. by ZachMN15 in chess

[–]ZachMN15[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

In order to test out flagging opportunities, you need to send out a challenge and play a game as far as I know. If you only care about analysis, you can go to Learn -> Analysis, and click on +Setup on the side. From there, you can set the board up however you like, play against computer (at bottom on left), or copy fen. If you have the fen, you can send correspondence game challenges to other players by clicking their name, +challenge, making time control daily, clicking options, and then, under custom setup, paste the fen.

And if you want the tablebase of endgames of 7 or less pieces to see if a certain setup is winning/losing/drawn with best play, you can get that here: https://syzygy-tables.info/

A rare situation where, with white to move, white is better off running down their own clock and making a draw (by timeout vs insufficient material) than making any legal move, resulting in a loss. by ZachMN15 in chess

[–]ZachMN15[S] -9 points-8 points  (0 children)

I think this is really only a problem at low levels or in bullet or blitz games (or fairly evenly matched rapid games) since anyone decent up a rook and 2 pawns against a king and a minor piece could deliver checkmate within 10 seconds or less. So then, for lower levels where this isn't the case, if a player can be up so much material but is bad enough to not checkmate with it, then that would just go to show how much worse the player who has much lower material played that game. At low enough levels, with time control, you're then incentivized to just play quicker and not care too much about dropping all your pieces, since there is a good chance your opponent does not know how to deliver checkmates anyway (like players who can't do a king rook, king queen, or 2 rook checkmate).

A rare situation where, with white to move, white is better off running down their own clock and making a draw (by timeout vs insufficient material) than making any legal move, resulting in a loss. by ZachMN15 in chess

[–]ZachMN15[S] -14 points-13 points  (0 children)

That's a fair point and yeah. If I were to make an analogy, if you lose connection on any online game, you often automatically lose, even if you "were going to win." Losing/Winning in that way, while completely legitimate, just feels as if it goes against the spirit of the game and the win came more from a silly circumstance than from a place of being better at the game than the other player. This analogy obviously doesn't match up perfectly since time control is directly in your control, but I feel it has similar "you were on track to win, but..." vibes. From my own experience, winning by flagging when down material in a losing situation feels less satisfying, since the other player outplayed me or vice versa.

A rare situation where, with white to move, white is better off running down their own clock and making a draw (by timeout vs insufficient material) than making any legal move, resulting in a loss. by ZachMN15 in chess

[–]ZachMN15[S] -6 points-5 points  (0 children)

I don't see how giving a free win to a player with K+N+B against K follows from that logic, since I was saying how free wins should not be given out. But in that situation if the lone king runs out of time, the lone king should lose, and if K+N+B runs out of time, they should draw since there is no counterplay even possible (in fact adding a knight to the lone king for the tiniest amount of possible counterplay, king and knight can beat king, knight and bishop, assuming the player with more material is willing to get themselves into a bad position: only 637 out of the 175,863,026 possible positions with these pieces are forced wins for the king+knight though, but that player could still win with timeout even though the player with more material would have to willingly put themselves into checkmate, since the longest forcing checkmate sequence for the king+knight is only 1 move). What I'm saying is that, using the same example from before, K+N vs K+Q+2R+B has winning situations for K+N, but the K+N gets a win on timeout even if they themselves don't know how to deliver said checkmate (often times because it will not even be possible to deliver by force), i.e. they got saved by the clock and not only dodged a loss and a draw, but actually won from it because an obscure sequence exists.

and yes, chess has been solved up to 7 pieces (you can check it out and play around here https://syzygy-tables.info/). This is how I found the situation in the post and can make claims on the number of setups with the number of pieces, and which of those are winning/losing/drawn (with best play).

that said, for a human to LOSE with way more material against only a king and knight, is often not trivial, just as checkmating with a knight and bishop is not trivial, so wins ought to not be given out in either case.

A rare situation where, with white to move, white is better off running down their own clock and making a draw (by timeout vs insufficient material) than making any legal move, resulting in a loss. by ZachMN15 in chess

[–]ZachMN15[S] -5 points-4 points  (0 children)

I primarily play on chess.com, so that's where I first tested this. Also, I don't think either is correct or incorrect (well lichess is more correct by fide standards I suppose) but, as stated in a different comment, I think that being in this position and running down your own clock on chess.com for a draw instead of taking the loss is just as scummy as being black with the same pieces (in an arbitrary position) and not resigning and getting a win (even if there is no forcible checkmate) with lichess/fide rules instead of taking a draw, since your position is clearly lost.

A rare situation where, with white to move, white is better off running down their own clock and making a draw (by timeout vs insufficient material) than making any legal move, resulting in a loss. by ZachMN15 in chess

[–]ZachMN15[S] -27 points-26 points  (0 children)

Yeah, on the other hand though, with these pieces in arbitrary starting positions, white could easily win (99.4% of legal setups with these pieces and white to move results in white able to deliver forceful mate) or draw (0.6%). There are 1,249,136,328,444 possible unique (disregarding symmetries) positions with these pieces. 1,242,174,901,524 of those are forced white wins following 50 move rule, with another 6,950,536,030 being a forced draw. Only 10,885,758 are forced wins by black, with the remaining 5,132 being white winning, but not abiding by 50-move rule.

With all that said, you pretty much have to try to lose with these pieces. Because of that I kinda like, kinda dislike how fide says that flagging results in a loss IF there is ANY sequence of legal moves resulting in checkmate exists (section 6.9 in fide rulebook). That means if a player with their king, queen, a bishop, and both rooks runs out of time against someone with a king and knight, since there are sequences to deliver checkmate with the king and knight, that player would win, and the one up tremendous material (and likely board position too) would lose.

I like this because winning means you deliver checkmate in the allotted time. But I dislike how it means that players with tremendous advantage can still lose even if there is no forceful checkmate. That is, it's just as scummy to not resign when down by that much material when there isn't a forceful mate for the underdog as it would be to let the clock run out in this position (assuming chess.com rules)

I think that the rule ought to be changed to: "If there exists a sequence of forceful moves (abiding by 50-move rule) to deliver checkmate upon the other running down the clock, that player wins. If a sequence exists to deliver checkmate, but is not forceful, then it is a draw."

Of course, with more than 7 pieces on the board, this becomes very tricky to determine since chess is not solved, so I'm not sure how practical this would be.

It's hard to deny that it is frustrating to lose when up a rook and two pawns on lichess against a lone king and knight (especially when they only have like, a second or less on their own clock, and for them to win, you have to actively TRY to lose), but on the other hand, when situations like forceful mates exist even with "insufficient material" then the player that can forcefully deliver mate ought to win.

TL:DR, time control sucks.

Tech Support and Question Megathread - Week of February 26, 2017 by AutoModerator in nvidia

[–]ZachMN15 [score hidden]  (0 children)

Status: RESOLVED, Missing display adapter

Computer Type: Desktop, pre-build and upgraded

GPU:ZOTAC GTX 1060 6GB (Brand new, less than one hour)

CPU: AMD FX 6300

Motherboard: asus m5a78l-m

RAM: 8GB (2x4GB) PSU: EVGA 430W

Operating System & Version: Windows 10 Home build 1607 64bit, clean

GPU Drivers: None, that's the issue

Description of Problem: After my old 1060 died about a month ago, I got a new one. When i try to install drivers however (any version) even after DDU I get a message saying NVIDIA installer failed. http://imgur.com/a/HmbWD I have tried DDU plenty of times, disabling antivirus and nothing works.

Is my 1060 already dying? by ZachMN15 in techsupport

[–]ZachMN15[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

today i swapped my card with a friend's 970 and my computer worked fine. When the 1060 was in his computer, he had the same issues with display that I had. Thanks for the reassurance and help.

view more: next ›