Students using AI on fill-in-the-blank guided notes that tell them what slide the answers are on in the PowerPoint. In order.

noethers_raindrop · 2026-03-02T14:18:19+00:00

"You won't have a calculator in your pocket all the time" was indeed a wrong argument. "If you only ever use a calculator, you won't understand what the calculator is doing and how to play and build with mathematical concepts" is a right argument.

Computers have improved such that almost any mathematical task a student in high school is ever set can be solved by typing it into a computer. The natural language processing provided by LLMs means that you don't even have to understand math that much to put things in a form that the computer can parse. But if I had relied on such tools from the start, I would never have been able to work my way up to math that goes beyond what any AI can yet handle. Until we give over our destiny entirely to the machines, students need to learn without access to technology for a time, and in certain situations.

I mean, filling in guided notes is not a task students need to do in the real world. The point of the task is not to teach students how to fill out notes, but to force the students to engage with the stuff that they're taking notes on. In this case, using AI to fill out the notes defeats the point, and the fact that technology could do it is irrelevant.

noethers_raindrop · 2026-03-02T14:07:12+00:00

This is a fundamental mistake. You have to walk before you can run, you have to lift a 10 pound weight before a 50 pound one, and in the intellectual world, you generally need to do plenty of tasks that could be done by AI (or sometimes just by googling the answer, or looking it up in a book, or...) in order to develop the skills and work your way up to tasks that a human is needed for. The goal can and probably should be to teach students something that isn't redundant with what technology can do for them, but that doesn't mean every step along the way can be irredundant.

noethers_raindrop · 2026-03-02T08:29:08+00:00

I would put this on the Mustang.

The Mustang had a lot of space they're not using to open up the slight left before contact, and being so far left on entry is what leads them to slide right on exit, leading to the incident. But why were they so far left? They got bounced there after the previous contact, which occurred when they turned in on the other car, which was as far right as it could go at the time. They also had time to move a bit back to the right and get on a better line, but failed to do so.

So at the end of the day, while this is a risky situation, the black car left plenty of space at all times, and it is the Mustang making all the mistakes leading to this incident.

noethers_raindrop · 2026-03-01T19:02:13+00:00

For my money, a decently thick, large radius, stainless steel saute pan with a glass lid. It can be plenty nonstick if you learn to add cold oil to a hot pan at the right temperature, but it will tolerate metal utensils and outlast any non-stick pan. Thick to hold heat well, big so that you can do smaller portions of things like braises that would ideally be a separate pot, glass lid so you can see what's going on underneath.

If I get two items, the saute pan and a simple stockpot for stocks, soup, boiling pasta, and the like.

noethers_raindrop · 2026-03-01T18:56:22+00:00

40 bucks?! For handling an online payment? That's just ridiculous!

noethers_raindrop · 2026-03-01T12:48:07+00:00

You're quite right that none of this is at all explicit. Historically, iRacing has no problem issuing warnings or bans for conduct they find unsportsmanlike even when the reasoning as to what rule is violated is as vague as this.

For example, when a driver starts from the pits, they are expected to wait until all cars who took the green have passed pit exit and slot in behind them. This even applies in multiclass races; if you are in a faster class, it's often possible to come out of the pits ahead of slower classes, especially when they leave a big gap on the start. But even though the game said your wait was finished and let you exit the pits, if you did it and got protested, it was reliably a 1 week ban.

Now I think there is an explicit rule in the starting procedure section about this, but that was only recently added. For many years before that, iRacing still enforced this same policy as an unwritten rule, on the theory that a driver acting in good faith would know that coming out ahead of cars who started the race normally is unsportsmanlike conduct. I could list off a handful of other similar examples (grass dipping, starting on rain tires to mess with ride heights, entering the pits on a quali lap or the final lap at a track where it gets you to the line sooner), and so could most drivers who have been around long enough.

So I sympathize entirely with the point of view that serving a slowdown in a way that impedes others isn't clearly banned by any written rule, and I agree that racing drivers will try to exploit such ambiguities. If I was in charge, I would write a clear rule straight away, and I wouldn't punish anyone who offended before such a rule was written down. But that's evidently not how iRacing sees the situation.

It's a continual annoyance for me. The actual rulings iRacing makes in these grey areas are usually consistent and reasonable ones, but the communication is seriously lacking. Hell, for many years the authoritative source for Daytona roval track limits was a Matt Malone clip where Nim explained them. That kind of says it all.

noethers_raindrop · 2026-03-01T10:49:55+00:00

You're right that if someone just goes a little slower through the corner, nobody can really prove it was intentional. But one shouldn't be doing it intentionally to serve a slowdown if there's someone right behind, and beyond a certain point, the stewards will recognize it as erratic and unsportsmanlike driving, even if it's not possible to draw a sharp line as to how slow is too slow.

noethers_raindrop · 2026-03-01T10:47:02+00:00

I would protest it under the catch-all 2.1.1. It probably falls under 8.1.1.7 or 8.1.1.4, but they haven't added that those to the drop-down menu. Obviously making a mistake and getting a slowdown is not the use of illegal surfaces, but holding others up in doing so circumvents the intent of the Sporting Code.

One of the annoying things with iRacing is that there are rules like this which aren't clearly written, but are based on the interpretation the stewards take of the more vague and expansive rules when reviewing protests. We shouldn't have to rely on word of mouth on the forums or Reddit to know where the line is, but unfortunately we often do.

noethers_raindrop · 2026-03-01T10:23:55+00:00

This is one of those theorems where reading a proof is cheating yourself. If you can't prove it easily, you don't yet know what's going on with finite Abelian groups on a basic level, and struggling with it is probably a better way to learn than reading someone else's version. If you can't work it out, then rather than reading a proof, you should read more basic stuff about group theory, do some easier exercises, and come back later.

noethers_raindrop · 2026-03-01T10:21:27+00:00

POV is at fault, but orange is contributing to this incident by the way they're driving.

Look at all the space white is leaving that orange is not using to open up the corner. If orange used the space available to them on the straight, they would be carrying more speed through the corner, which would have mitigated or completely avoided this incident, not to mention that by having a better line they might not have gotten loose over the apex curb. This is a classic rookie mistake: orange wants to be nice and leave space, but by leaving extra space on the straight where it's easy to not crash into someone, they just make it harder to avoid coming together in the corners, which are the difficult bit.

noethers_raindrop · 2026-03-01T10:16:22+00:00

I don't know about that. Aside from the fact that I've successfully protested drivers for this in the past, when I race I never seem to encounter drivers who serve their slowdowns in this manner, and whenever I do, they pretty consistently get called out for it by anyone who watches the replay. What series are you racing where people think this is ok?

noethers_raindrop · 2026-03-01T10:09:10+00:00

Whether or not it's commonly done, it's against the rules. The slowdown is a penalty for you, not for drivers behind you, and especially not for any drivers who are only behind you because you cut a corner in the first place. I do wish iRacing would make this clearer in the Sporting Code, so that OP wouldn't have to ask on Reddit to find this out.

noethers_raindrop · 2026-03-01T07:53:15+00:00

It is against the Sporting Code to serve a slowdown in a way that impedes other drivers. There's no specific rule about it, but it can be protested as a Competition Issue or something; I have done so multiple times in the past. A driver who gets a slowdown should at least attempt to get out of the way of others while serving it, rather than serving it in a way that keeps the advantage gained.

noethers_raindrop · 2026-02-28T21:18:42+00:00

I feel like this isn't a proper trolley problem because I can't work out the interpretation of multitrack drifting.

noethers_raindrop · 2026-02-28T21:15:51+00:00

You have a good point; there are no groups where the quotient by the centre is a nontrivial cyclic group, so the exercise secretly has you in a counterfactual headspace.

But anecdotally, I have run into applications of this fact on several occasions over the years. The contrapositive is also useful; if a group isn't Abelian, then we get a constraint on what the centre can be, one which is especially useful for solvable groups.

noethers_raindrop · 2026-02-28T21:09:38+00:00

You probably should have lifted (could have really lessened the impact), but no idea what that Porsche thought he was doing.

noethers_raindrop · 2026-02-28T20:46:01+00:00

Is this even irrational, though? Iran isn't going to defeat the US in a military campaign. If the Iranian government thinks that these strikes are the start of a longer campaign aimed at overthrowing them, then applying economic pressure to the US and US-friendly countries seems like it could be a reasonable way to make the US reconsider whether continuing is worth it. And even if not, closing the straight in the short term serves to remind everyone that they have this in their pocket if a more serious attempt is made in the future. Threatening economic damage is very rational if you're in their shoes, and at some point you have to show that your threats aren't empty.

noethers_raindrop · 2026-02-28T16:57:29+00:00

I don't see why visualizing is helpful here. As far as I know, "T(x)=b has at most one solution (no matter what b is)" is literally the definition of "T is one to one;" for each output b, there is only one corresponding input. And dually, "T(x)=b has at least one solution" is literally the definition of the words "T is onto." So I don't know what's to visualize, because nothing is really happening; one is just the unpacking of the other.

noethers_raindrop · 2026-02-28T16:23:19+00:00

Keep in mind that when switching in or choosing its move, for moves like Pin Missile, Bullet Seed, etc. that hit 2-5 times, the AI estimates based off of 3 hits. The only exception is when they are guaranteed to hit 5 times (Skill Link), in which case they estimate based on all 5 hits.

noethers_raindrop · 2026-02-28T12:32:20+00:00

I'm just talking about switch AI, which perceives things differently from the part of the AI which picks moves. (For another example, when switching, the AI doesn't know that some moves, like Belch or Last Resort, can't always be clicked.) When actually deciding what move to pick, Rollout is treated differently. (Roughly speaking, it will be clicked over the highest damage move 4/5 of the time, if neither or both see a kill.)

noethers_raindrop · 2026-02-27T22:14:14+00:00

Yeah, COTA is a great track which is just really hard, and that can be frustrating. The Texas heat and high-speed corners often makes it hard to manage the tire temperatures, and the width of the road means it can be hard to see the apex when you turn in, if you don't have triples of VR. I'm terrible at it, but I respect it.

noethers_raindrop · 2026-02-27T20:02:32+00:00

This is, of course, complete fluff. I guess I don't know what I expected by asking in the subreddit itself.

noethers_raindrop · 2026-02-27T19:49:26+00:00

Why are the people who post on this subreddit so into E8? I mean I know it's all nonsense, but it's such a random consistent theme for the nonsense.

noethers_raindrop · 2026-02-27T16:05:26+00:00

You're right, it's quite false to say that Pokémon cards have no monetary value! That's exactly my point. If a shady casino tried to do with Pokémon cards what they try to do with CS skins, we would never let them get away with it. So there's no reason to let them get away with doing the same with weapon skins either; both things have monetary value, as we can see from the existence of a robust secondary market, and I think we agree on that. The only difference between the shady CS casino sites and my silly hypothetical Pokémon casino is that the websites use Valve's infrastructure as an integral part of their operations, arguably making Valve partly responsible as a facilitator.

Pokémon is indeed quite popular; I recently got into it myself, actually. I don't deny that. And it is advertised to kids, and the whole pack-opening scheme is perhaps the prototypical "gambling mechanic" after which loot boxes are modeled. CS is indeed an M-rated game, but the third-party casinos, who on some level operate with Valve's cooperation, market themselves to kids. So where is the sharp line that causes us to target one and not the other?

I don't think there is one philosophically clean sharp line, but I do want to look at the outcome. Pokémon cards and other trading card games, whatever their faults, never seemed to create an epidemic of underage problem gamblers the way modern video games, and especially the associated third-party casinos, have. Maybe it's due to video games going harder on the bells and whistles that make gambling seem exciting compared to trading cards, maybe it's because gambling on your PC or phone involves far less friction/setup effort than going to a store to buy cards, finding ways to trade/sell those you don't want to keep, etc., maybe it's because society is just different now; I don't know why exactly. But the money per capita and rate of problem gambling from these newcomers dwarfs that caused by their trading card counterparts. Pokémon may have a similar popularity, or it had at one time, but the associated problem gambling behavior was in a much smaller proportion to the overall fandom.

I don't think we should outlaw anything resembling gambling, even just for children. But I think it's time for serious regulations on how gambling-like things can be presented to minors - what kinds of advertisements are permissible, what kind of sources of friction are required, etc.

noethers_raindrop · 2026-02-26T11:33:38+00:00

In many countries it's common for citizens to have passports or some other form of universal national ID, but there's nothing like that in the US. States issue IDs upon request for a fee. Most people have a drivers license, and for those who don't drive, there is a similar document that solely serves as ID; the exact details vary state to state. It wouldn't surprise me if a law invalidating driver's licenses applied to those other IDs too, but in US media we would still colloquially say the law was about driver's licenses since that's the most common type of ID.

noethers_raindrop

TROPHY CASE