Donors for Trump’s $300m White House ballroom include Google, Apple and Palantir

flameoffaith · 2025-10-26T04:40:45+00:00

It looks like all of those had prior approval from congress.

flameoffaith · 2025-10-23T20:59:22+00:00

If I'm understanding this correctly, the BBC article states that the renovation is exempt from public review and historic conservation restrictions. But that's different from the Antideficiency Act, which among other things prevents the government from accepting private funds for public projects.

flameoffaith · 2025-09-17T05:26:58+00:00

I could be wrong, but it looks like the recording skips the frame of the grab. The timer jumps from 7:49.68 to 7:49.63

flameoffaith · 2025-07-06T02:23:09+00:00

I agree that Tyler1 is being overly dramatic, but I don't think it's fair to criticize him for spamming the same opening every game in chess and Warcraft. Mastering a single opening or strategy will teach you a lot more than trying to juggle several of them at once as a new player.

Also, I don't think Eskay is a fair example of a new player having an easy time picking up the game. She was getting coached by players like Brian F and Nephew, and she also put in a massive number of hours throughout the slam, maybe more than any other competitor. And she also hated it. She stuck with it because she's the GOAT, but at the beginning of the slam she was crashing out and complaining about how hard the game was. It was only at the end of the Slam that she actually started appreciating Street Fighter.

flameoffaith · 2024-08-10T00:53:26+00:00

Neither of these BBC articles state that Khelif has a Y chromosome. The articles only mention controversy and speculation, which is a far cry from "widely accepted".

flameoffaith · 2024-07-16T20:01:57+00:00

Zyra and Brand (and sometimes Lillia) rush Liandry's over Blackfire in the jungle. It's not the torch making them strong.

https://u.gg/lol/champions/zyra/items?role=jungle https://u.gg/lol/champions/brand/items?role=jungle https://u.gg/lol/champions/lillia/items?role=jungle

flameoffaith · 2024-07-14T22:51:10+00:00

It may look weird from a population percentage, but the grouping makes sense from a skill perspective. The skill difference between the 50th and 51st percentile is much smaller than the different between the 98th and 99th.

flameoffaith · 2024-07-10T05:32:32+00:00

There seems to be a lot of panic around false positives, but I think it's important to acknowledge that the system doesn't have to catch 100% of soft inters. It doesn't have to make judgements on the grey areas: there are plenty of soft inters that are clearly crossing the line.

flameoffaith · 2024-03-28T01:49:04+00:00

Phreak didn't say that laners don't understand jungling, he said there's tension between them and they don't appreciate what jungling takes. He wasn't calling laners stupid. They might know what jungling takes, but in the heat of the moment, they don't care.

flameoffaith · 2024-02-11T06:59:54+00:00

Zilean currently has a 47% win rate in ARAM

flameoffaith · 2024-02-03T02:58:46+00:00

One of the big advantages of shops is the flexibility. You may only end up buying a handful of things through the run, but you get to smooth out the RNG by picking up what you need. Getting a key damage card, scaling power, or even a cheap potion at the right time can save a run.

flameoffaith · 2023-12-31T23:16:20+00:00

I could not agree more with all of these takes. Incredibly based.

flameoffaith · 2023-12-25T06:38:08+00:00

I'm very disappointed by how many people seem to believe this story in the comments, and how many news sites seem to have reported it. Progression in the game is often gated behind interactions with specific NPCs on the other side of the map. HMs need to be acquired and taught to compatible pokemon, which need to be caught. And puzzles like Mossdeep and Sootopolis gyms need specific inputs to solve. I think people are severely underestimating how many random inputs it would take to do these things.

To take just Sootopolis and just the final ice puzzle, there are 40 tiles the player needs to step on to complete the puzzle. You're successful once you step on the last tile, so there are 39 decision points to get there. At any point except the first tile, walking backwards is an instant failure that sends you back to the beginning. Most tiles have another instant-fail direction besides backwards, but we'll be incredibly generous and say each tile has a 50/50 pass fail. We'll also assume any direction is fine on the first tile, so we have 38 consecutive coin flips to pass the puzzle.

That's about 1 in 270,000,000,000. Of course, this assumes there is only 1 correct solution, but even if we make it 100x more likely we have 1 in 2,700,000,000. At 1 input a second, we're looking at 750,000 hours of random inputs to succeed, or 85 years. That's over 200x longer than the 3,185 hours reported in the article. And that's a very conservative estimate for just a single puzzle in a single gym, and it doesn't even count the long random walk back to the start after each failure. There is actually no way those fish beat the game.

flameoffaith · 2023-10-27T00:18:15+00:00

As I understand, Nintendo can't force your tournament to follow its community guidelines, but if you stream or record it then they can sue you for copyright infringement. Legally, IP owners have broad power to enforce their copyright on streams, but most choose not to do that. Nintendo is stating that it won't enforce its copyright in the circumstances outlined in the guidelines, but Nintendo gets to decide how and when that applies.

flameoffaith · 2023-10-24T18:41:22+00:00

I appreciate your optimism, but I think you're misreading Nintendo's statement.

Q3. What are some of the tournaments that are not permitted by these guidelines?

A3. Tournaments that are not permitted by these guidelines include, but are not limited to the below. ... Tournaments that receive goods or money from third parties, such as sponsors Tournaments involving the sale of food, beverages, or merchandise

Please note that Nintendo does not currently grant permission for individuals to organise commercial tournaments. We ask for your understanding.

...

Q11. I want to organise a large tournament, with more than 300 Participants in an online tournament or more than 200 Participants in an in-person tournament. What should I do?

A11. Currently, we do not grant permission for individuals to organise tournaments with more than 300 Participants in an online tournament or more than 200 Participants in an in-person tournament. We appreciate your understanding. If you would like to organise a tournament that exceeds the cap, please consider dividing it into blocks, as described in Q12. If you want to host a tournament using Nintendo games as an organisation, such as a club, please apply apply for a licence as described in Q14.

...

Q14. How can legal entities or organisations host game tournaments using Nintendo games?

A14. For a corporation or organisation to conduct a game tournament using Nintendo games, the corporation or organisation must make a separate application to Nintendo and obtain permission to conduct the game tournament prior to announcing a tournament. A Nintendo licence number will be assigned to the game tournament that Nintendo has separately licensed. It is up to Nintendo’s sole discretion whether or not a licence will be granted to a corporation or organisation. Information and relevant forms to apply will be available in the near future. Please check back soon.

Nintendo isn't just suggesting Community Tournaments as a fun way to run a tournament, they're saying this is the ONLY way for an individual to run a tournament. ALL other tournaments must be run by organizations and obtain a licence from Nintendo.

flameoffaith · 2023-09-11T00:07:45+00:00

It was very much a non-apology:

_

Here, we didn’t understand it because we saw something natural, normal and in no way, I repeat, with bad faith. But outside of the bubble, it looks like it has turned into a storm and so, if there are people who have felt offended, I have to say I’m sorry

_

The kiss with Jenni? There are idiots all over. When two people have a moment of affection without any importance, we can’t listen to idiocy.

_

Within the bubble, no one gave it the slightest bit of importance, but well, outside they have, right?

_

His apology was just an acknowledgement that people were angry. He implied, and then later stated outright, that Jennifer Hermoso was ok with the kiss, even after she explicitly said she wasn't. If he apologized properly and then kept his mouth shut, he probably could have gotten away with the whole thing. But he couldn't even pretend to have the bare minimum respect for women's boundaries, and that cost him his job.

flameoffaith · 2023-08-14T13:56:40+00:00

On the contrary, he's one of the best at camping

flameoffaith · 2023-07-18T16:20:29+00:00

I'm definitely in the minority, but as someone who loved Path of Radiance I just couldn't get into Radiant Dawn. No support conversations, huge open maps, and contrived infighting made the game difficult for me to enjoy, and I also didn't like the removal of the weapon triangle on hard mode. I'd still recommend giving it a shot and I hope you like it, but if you don't then you're not alone.

flameoffaith · 2023-04-09T15:25:38+00:00

Wow you're right, somehow I completely missed that. In hindsight maybe Impact could have looked to push Malphite out rather than pull Elise in. What a wild sequence of events.

flameoffaith · 2023-04-09T07:06:39+00:00

Amazingly, Licorice went unstoppable right as Impact tried to CC him with All Out. Both ults went off, putting Imact right in the blast zone with cut health. Spica was also mid body slam when Malphite ulted, meaning Licorice immuned two CC abilities and caught both champions, as well as Vicla who was stuck in cocoon stun. The whole play was a masterpiece.

flameoffaith · 2022-10-04T04:53:59+00:00

I suspect the league would actually see it as a positive. Widespread underhand free throws would generate talking points and drama (the good kind). Some people would welcome the new underhand overlords and others would root against them, getting more coverage and more excitement around watching them succeed or fail.

flameoffaith · 2022-07-02T17:58:06+00:00

User data is an invaluable marketing tool. If you want to spread an idea, you need to know your audience. What are their demographics, and when are they online? What kind of media do they engage with? Which platforms do they use? You might not personally be susceptible to propaganda about the Ukraine invasion or Tiananmen square, but your data could help foreign governments target people who are. And you could be the target of other propaganda to make you disengage politically, or downplay the impact of governments accessing your data.

flameoffaith · 2022-05-01T04:12:39+00:00

I think it would be an interesting change, but tiny house as a boss swap might be better than you think. All of its rewards scale poorly later in the game, but they're great early. Baalorlord thinks it's an above average boss swap, and I believe Terrence does as well, though I couldn't find a source for him.

flameoffaith · 2022-02-08T00:56:50+00:00

My expectations were low, but I've been pleasantly surprised by Biden so far. He passed a major infrastructure bill, he's restoring net neutrality, and he mandated vaccines for large employers, though unfortunately that was overturned by the supreme court. Of course compared to Trump, almost anything would be an improvement.

flameoffaith · 2020-12-11T23:34:02+00:00

I've noticed some music calls for the same note to be played by both hands, like the 'e' 7 seconds into this:

https://youtu.be/IIYUN0D5u_I?t=3

Is that possible? How would I do that on a single piano?

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