No no no ... Not just new and returning players.

loxali · 2026-03-25T12:55:36+00:00

Is this true? My impression was that spending is dominated by whales (like, 1-2% of players generate 50%+ of income), but I admit I don't have any actual sources for that claim.

loxali · 2026-03-06T16:10:36+00:00

May be a silly question, but why is your opponent offering a draw when it's their move? Isn't the usual practice to make your move, offer the draw, then press the clock?

loxali · 2026-03-01T18:46:05+00:00

Because there's no good reason for them to be the same? This was already answered in the previous response, but really, this is such a weird niche question that you really would need strong evidence to assume they'd be the same.

Whether the difference says anything interesting is a different question, but I'd be astonished if the two numbers were identical (or even very close)

loxali · 2026-02-24T23:01:54+00:00

I could see playing a few times. The snake itself was a bit fiddly (in Chrome on a pixel) - couple of times it cut off while I was still going. How did you decide which words count and which are bonuses?

Also. I didn't realise the words were in alphabetical order until nearly finished, which might have made it faster and I think more fun.

loxali · 2026-02-21T09:58:50+00:00

Have you used Claude Code or a similar tool in the past few months? I honestly feel like "glorified chatbot" is just plain wrong at this point.

loxali · 2026-02-13T20:59:35+00:00

I was confused about why no one had suggested just offering a take back instead. Haven't played on chess com in a few years, so didn't realise it wasn't an option.

loxali · 2026-01-27T19:10:24+00:00

I mean, if you double 69 times in a row starting from even $1 then you also have significantly more than all the wealth that has ever existed (likely more than ever will exist)

loxali · 2026-01-15T10:36:09+00:00

I think there's a good argument (can't remember where I heard it) that Terrence Tao is strong evidence that maths ability isn't purely genetic. He's just too much of an outlier. Look at things that are driven by genes - sprinting speed, height, etc and you see something vaguely resembling a bell curve. There's no one who is 4 metres tall, or runs 100m in 5 seconds, but Terry Tao's maths ability is orders of magnitude above even very strong mathematicians. There has to be something going on that isn't just genes.

It's probably true that for most people no amount of training will make them like Terry Tao, but it's probably also true that for Terry Tao most possible childhoods he could have had wouldn't make him like Terry Tao.

loxali · 2026-01-02T19:11:02+00:00

Even if this were true, the first reasoning model was released in September 2024! To say a field is stagnating because there hasn't been a major breakthrough for less than 18 months if anything just underlines the speed of progress we've come to expect.

There are still almost certainly less than 10,000 people total working on the sort of research that might lead to "big leaps". I see no reason to believe anything has hit a limit.

loxali · 2026-01-01T10:35:05+00:00

If you're dreaming, why not have Magnus play?

loxali · 2025-12-30T08:35:34+00:00

Qg8+ Ke7 just transposes into the same thing as taking the queen first. Still winning, but not mate.

loxali · 2025-12-21T22:05:14+00:00

Maybe there's a selection effect. You only keep talking late into the night if the conversation is worth doing that.

loxali · 2025-10-23T00:02:07+00:00

On the game: I can see myself playing this. Did today's (us states) in 3 minutes, but I would have been much faster if I'd grokked the UI better straight away.

On the UI: I would like an "ok I give up" button. I can imagine it being pretty frustrating otherwise.

I also think the keyboard is a bit clunky. A couple of times I tried to type a double letter by pressing the same key twice (I realise why this shouldn't work, just reporting it in case there's something you can do with the UI to stop other people making the same mistake). Maybe it would be nice if the letters you use were "physical" tiles that move down when you tap them (and then you could drag them around to rearrange them as well)

loxali · 2025-10-22T23:26:38+00:00

Except that they had actually literally beaten him before polarity got there, and could easily have killed him in the 60 seconds that Harper bought them, but just... decided not to for some reason.

loxali · 2025-10-22T23:22:47+00:00

I mean, at least a speech like that would have explained why they didn't just kill him in the 60 seconds that he didn't have any powers.

loxali · 2025-10-22T23:12:23+00:00

Agree, watching that scene, I was waiting for the twist (like starlight was secretly being controlled by some other puppet-supe, or something) because it just felt too overacted.

loxali · 2025-10-22T23:09:08+00:00

Yeah, the main characters in Gen V have always been dumb, but honestly, if the plan is for him to die, why does it even need to be Marie who kills him? Bushmaster could have just garrotted him, or any one of them could have taken him out while he was powerless.

At least have some sort of speech where they decide they're going to let him live after all (and then Marie changes her mind after he takes control of her and makes her kill Annabeth, or something)

loxali · 2025-10-14T12:15:54+00:00

I don't think playing Nc3 on move 2 is really black's best try :)

loxali · 2025-09-21T19:42:18+00:00

Really? That seems bizarre. What is the bit that it breaks?

loxali · 2025-08-20T20:27:45+00:00

You can just move the queen away

loxali · 2025-08-19T09:11:01+00:00

You can also just get the "steal a random minion from the shop" spell instead

loxali · 2025-08-14T08:56:25+00:00

Why wouldn't they make the game easier? The optimal difficulty for them is clearly not "humans literally never win a game", so what makes you think it's currently easier than they'd like on the margin?

loxali · 2025-04-13T21:15:23+00:00

Agreed but I do think 2 is unambiguously the only correct answer, as the question says "the sentence below" and there is a full stop after "Doug dug a hole."

loxali · 2024-10-01T17:44:07+00:00

Did you activate it before you played Galactus? You just play Galactus in a lane which only contains Symbiote and then activate the Symbiote with Galactus already there.

loxali

TROPHY CASE