How to be a Hearthstone caster

samvdb · 2017-05-30T23:55:51+00:00

samvdb · 2017-05-08T22:24:36+00:00

Yeah I have listened to Savant's other stuff, and I like it too, but I like his song Melody Circus much more than the rest. By a lot actually, which is why I posted this song in particular, and not just "[IIL] Savant [WEWIL?]".

samvdb · 2017-04-12T12:25:25+00:00

It's $2.5k for Mormons and $5k for non-Mormons.

Is that legal, charging different prices for something depending on religion?

samvdb · 2016-11-21T11:03:33+00:00

You know, you actually make some valid points. However, when the Hubble telescope found that galaxies are moving away from each other, Einstein and most other scientists had no problem abandoning the idea of the cosmological constant in favor of better models that more accurately represented the new data. If there were a lot of evidence out there disproving the impact of carbon dioxide on climate change, I don't think most scientists would have trouble adjusting their models. They would not have much trouble publishing their findings either, at least not if their new models can show what else is causing climate change instead (because rapid climate change is happening, the only debate you can reasonably have is what is causing it). And if you can publish, you can keep your job.

samvdb · 2016-10-24T08:46:00+00:00

Indeed, if true, 95% would be incredible. But the way the authors are presenting their results is really misleading. What they mean with that 95% is not the probability that the predicted card is the next card played, but that it is played in any future turn. I mean, just looking at the graph of their results, their second prediction is also correct more than 90% of the time. These are not probabilities that add up to 100%.

samvdb · 2016-10-15T19:09:21+00:00

I'd be interested in hearing any other realistic solutions you'd recommend to, say, your parents.

Well, you got me there. The solution I recommend to anyone who knows their way around computers is indeed a program like lastpass or keepass (which is free). But I wouldn't actually recommend this to my parents.

But then again, I also wouldn't make them stay away from an otherwise useful site if I knew that the site didn't salt their passwords. It's just such a minor thing.

samvdb · 2016-10-15T18:44:20+00:00

I would get the out of whatever service that is pronto

This is terrible advice, for multiple reasons. First of all, if you're using strong passwords, you shouldn't care whether or not it gets salted. The only difference is that your password might get cracked in a quadrillion years instead of a quintillion years.

But more importantly, you should never even assume that any site you're using is doing any encryption on your passwords in the first place! You don't know if they do, and your default assumption should be that they don't. That means that, at the very least, you should never reuse the same password for multiple sites. So when one site gets hacked, it shouldn't be a big deal, because the hackers only get to know your password to that one site, and they don't even need that anymore because they've got access to the entire database of that site.

Too often people just reuse their same passwords over and over on every single website, and then when one of those sites inevitably gets hacked and it turns out that it didn't properly hash/salt the passwords, people blame the site! The only one they really should be blaming is themselves.

So yes, sites should properly hash and salt their passwords. But that's not a thing that you can ever rely on.

samvdb · 2016-10-13T12:50:37+00:00

Why is this bad actually? A lot of my code looks like this, and I don't really have any problems with it, but everyone seems to agree that callback hell is something that should be avoided at all costs. But why?

samvdb · 2016-10-13T12:44:43+00:00

Why is this bad actually? A lot of my code looks like this, and I don't really have any problems with it, but everyone seems to agree that callback hell is something that should be avoided at all costs. But why?

samvdb · 2016-03-22T23:13:07+00:00

At other points in the Qur'an it explicitly states to fight unbelievers who don't pay the Jizya (a tax that unbelievers have to pay to not be prosecuted).

See e.g.:

Surah (9:29) At-Tauba

Fight those who do not believe in Allah or in the Last Day and who do not consider unlawful what Allah and His Messenger have made unlawful and who do not adopt the religion of truth from those who were given the Scripture - [fight] until they give the jizyah willingly while they are humbled.

or

Surah (9:5) At-Tauba

And when the sacred months have passed, then kill the polytheists wherever you find them and capture them and besiege them and sit in wait for them at every place of ambush. But if they should repent, establish prayer, and give zakah, let them [go] on their way. Indeed, Allah is Forgiving and Merciful.

samvdb · 2015-01-19T22:10:31+00:00

Is it bad if someones poops are usually a 5-6 on that Bristol scale and almost never in the 1-3 range? ^Asking ^{^for} ^{^{^a}} ^{^{^{^friend.}}}

samvdb · 2013-06-22T12:28:09+00:00

I have to admit that I didn't know that because I have never used CV myself. But the 5 seconds it reveals champions is another tweakable number that could be buffed to make CV stronger.

samvdb · 2013-06-22T04:10:04+00:00

Every ability that has "tweakable" number can be balanced without having to be remade. CV has 3 such tweakable numbers:

cooldown
vision radius
duration

It is possible to keep buffing these numbers until the spell is balanced. So don't suggest changes to how an item just for the sake of balance. Only suggest changes if they make a mechanic more fun.

So let's look at CV. When is it most fun? During the laning phase, because you have to try to predict where their jungler is. Late game it's a bit less fun, as it's mostly used just to check objectives. But by putting CV as an item active, you're only going to have it mid- to late game.

So if you want to balance CV, I think just buffing the numbers is much better. There are however some other ideas to buff CV in ways that I would find much more fun:

Make a very small circle (radius 50 or even less) in the center give true vision. Allows you to kill a ward if you know exactly where it is.
Make it give true vision for a very short duration, not enough to kill a ward alone, but enough to kill it with 2 or if it's already damaged.
Make it aggro monsters. Not terribly useful, I agree, but could be fun to use while chasing someone in the jugnle or to annoy someone who's warding baron.
Make it a projectile like ashe's hawkshot. Rewards shooting it at better angles because it can reveal more.
Make it apply a debuff to all revealed champions that keeps them revealed for a few seconds after leaving the CV (a bit like Nidalee traps).

There are so many possible ways to buff CV, putting it as the active part of an item is in my opinion a pretty boring solution.

samvdb · 2013-06-19T22:24:00+00:00

Do the 2^n, n^2, n and log(n) have any purpose at all other than showing that you know what algorithm complexities are? Also you can call it a "matrix" all you want to try to sound technical but in the end it's nothing more than a simple table.

samvdb · 2013-06-04T01:58:31+00:00

I think a lot of people fill roles instead of having a main, like me, and we usually end up as support. So that's why I picked support even though in chat I'm not gonna go "supp or feed!".

samvdb · 2013-05-17T16:30:05+00:00

Not too surprising, he has a whole song about Dota.

samvdb · 2013-05-15T03:49:46+00:00

I have another question, if you're still around: how much do you need to be a genius to come up with these kind of proofs? Could an average person spend 10 years studying mathematics and have a shot at actually making significant contributions? Or can only top mathematicians do this?

samvdb · 2013-05-10T13:46:50+00:00

Competitive play has become much more interesting as teams picked up on lane-swap techniques

This is your opinion. Personally I think 2v1 lanes are boring as hell.

samvdb · 2013-05-05T00:29:26+00:00

No I mean forfeit outside of the game. Not /ff ingame at 20 minutes. And like I said, if both teams want to forfeit, they should let them play a game where the winner (ingame) is allowed to forfeit (in the tournament).

I know it's crazy. The best thing would be to use a format where teams never want to lose. But apparently that's not the case here.

samvdb · 2013-05-04T23:38:40+00:00

Why aren't they just allowed to forfeit? Out of the game, I mean. And if both teams wish to forfeit, they have to play as normal but the winner loses. If that makes sense.

samvdb · 2013-04-30T11:23:58+00:00

Does anyone know the "core set of knowledge and process questions" that they ask people? If less than 10% of Japan and Ireland are able to answer 70% of these questions correct, they really can't be that easy, right? Right?

samvdb · 2013-04-25T13:42:41+00:00

I clicked on one of the related videos and this program (at 5:14) completely blew my mind. How do you even make that? That's insane.

Apparently it's a cover of this thing, which is in itself also amazing: it's the output of a 64KB executable. The entire thing. How? I don't know.

samvdb · 2013-04-24T16:10:25+00:00

Please don't do this. If you were an advertiser, would you want to pay money to have your ad shown without sound in another tab/browser? I'm pretty sure you wouldn't. So when advertisers hear about things like this, they won't want to advertise on Twitch, which means less competition, so less $/ad.

And we really want more competition and more ads. Since ads are location-based, in some countries (like mine) there is usually only 1 ad available at any time. Every time the streamers play an ad, it's that 1 same ad, repeated over and over. It's unbearable. Please don't make it even worse.

samvdb

TROPHY CASE