Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.
PaperclipPerfector
4hr ago
(text post)
154 thread views
Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I just learned of the existence of the Codex Alimentarius.
Absolute banger of a name, the world needs more organizations and artifacts that could be thrown as-is into the world of 40k. I wish I worked in an Apothecarium of the Corpus Sanitas Imperatoria instead of a hospital in the NHS. I wish I corresponded with the Sisters of the Eternal Vigil instead of sleepy nurses with too much lip-filler. A man can dream.
More options
Context Copy link
Video-Game Thread
, since people apparently like organizing things that wayStill playing island defense the Warcraft 3 custom game. It’s a blast.
More options
Context Copy link
In a fit of pique following an embarrassing back injury earlier this week, I downloaded WoW Classic.
I've realized that my taste in video games is the way extremely monogamous people describe their romantic feelings, I've only ever liked maybe three video games in my life. Pokemon, God of War I and II, and World of Warcraft. I don't know if it's that I have extremely specific taste, or if it's the time they came into my life (similar to sports teams), but even at times when I've thought "gee playing a video game would be nice right now" and I get a new video game, I don't play it for very long.
So now I've got a night elf hunter and Mrs. FiveHour is mocking me, correctly, for being a fucking dork. I recall hunter being the best and most adaptable class to solo PvE, which is all I'm interested in doing right now. I picked female, because I've always though the male alliance bodies looked kinda stupid for anything other than a warrior. I'm digging it, for the most part. A decade after losing my virginity and giving up on the game the first time I've forgotten enough that the game is reasonably interesting. I'll probably end up with a pile of alts, to do a couple different playstyles.
I’ve been thinking of getting back into classic, played somewhat recently on a private server. It’s an amazing game.
Only to level twelve, and I'm just loving it. I'm sure there are better single player games using the same mechanics, but I just like this one. Also, it runs on my macbook air, which a lot of games don't work properly without fucking with them.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Nothing, I haven't played a videogame I weeks :(
Maybe when Menace gets a new content update, or when something like Mars Tactics comes down. Otherwise I just can't be arsed.
More options
Context Copy link
For the last two weeks I've been playing some Slay The Spire 2 every day. It's addictive! I even played a few runs in STS1 because that's the more complete game as yet, but I prefer the graphics and smooth animations in 2. I'm spending too much time agonizing over decisions and yet still losing more runs than I win. There is so much to learn for someone who never played card/deck games before.
I'm holding off on a few games, more graphically intensive ones, until I get a massive new OLED monitor whenever the next gen ultrawides launch. :D
I was somewhat skeptical towards the hyped up, graphically promising Crimson Desert after taking a peek at its videos, and it appears I was not wrong. The reviews aren't that good.
Yeah I've been having fun with StS2 as well. I think it's a bit easier than the first, or I've been luckier with my runs. Necrobinder is pretty fun, though stalling to get a massive hand seems like a pretty reliable strategy up until halfway through Act 2 or so. Still haven't really figured out what the Regent wants to do.
The funny thing about these games is that people have completely different experiences. You've got 'pros' and streamers who disagree diametrically on half of what they talk about, and yet both may have 95% win rates in their runs. Some people say a character is OP/"broken!!!", others say it's underpowered. Likewise, I thought STS1 seemed much easier than 2, but there may have been RNG involved.
I'm on the beta branch of STS2, and they've released a pretty major patch today. One of the best cards for Regent is nerfed and the act 3 boss Doormaker has been buffed to be super annoying, and of course that's the boss I draw in my otherwise promising Regent run today.
I find Regent to be a fun character. He's just some space traveling dude who decides to be king of all things. :D One of the keys (valid archetypes) is to build lots of stars. That's what I'm trying in this run. I like Necrobinder's aesthetic too though, and may play her next week.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Played a little more Slay the Spire 2 to make progress on the timeline, and a little Helldivers 2 to buy out the last of my unfinished warbonds. Not much to say, and not much time spent on it either. Comfy games that work well for relaxtion, but no so well that I have any qualms about shutting them down after a round.
More options
Context Copy link
Eight years after its initial release, popular puzzle game Opus Magnum has just been updated with a surprise DLC—De Re Metallica (referencing a famous early-modern book), a fan-made campaign half as long as the base game's campaign.
Even if you are a filthy casul, Opus Magnum is quite fun, since, unlike some other puzzle games, it is reasonably easy at its base difficulty (with unlimited budget and board) but has built-in optimization goals with which you can challenge yourself if you choose to. Solutions to puzzles are evaluated on three statistics:
Cost (of all the mechanisms that you put on the board)
Cycles (time to deposit six copies of the required output, including startup time but excluding time to return to the starting position after completion)
Area (of all the mechanisms that you put on the board, including the area through which swing your manipulator arms and the atoms that they bear)
For each puzzle, an official in-game leaderboard compares your solution's statistics to those of all solutions found by players. Additionally, the official subreddit's leaderboard uses "sum of cost, cycles, and area" as a total metric—but, IMO, the product makes much more sense than the sum. And, of course, it's easy to think of even more statistics:
Cycles of the solution's actual period (excluding startup time but including time to return to the starting position after completion)
Convex area (with concave portions filled in)
Hexagonal area (with concave portions filled in and acute angles padded)
Footprint area (excluding arm swings)
Also, you can impose on yourself constraints, such as refraining from using the fancier tools to which you have access (multi-armed manipulators, extending manipulators, and tracks that carry manipulators around the board), or using only a single input in puzzles that let you use multiple copies of the same input.
As an example, here are three different solutions for a mid-game puzzle. (The game has a built-in function for exporting a solution as a looping GIF file. These particular examples are rather large, so I have converted them to WEBM files, though it looks like the conversion process cut off a few frames at the end of each file. In a desktop browser, you can right-click on a webm to enable looping in the context menu. It appears that mobile browsers do not have this option.)
In comparison to the four-input solution, the one-input solution cuts both cost and area by a factor of three, but also bloats cycles by a factor of four and is an absolute pain to set up in-game. (It's theoretically possible to curve the one-input solution all the way around to form an elegant circle. But, again, setting it up in-game would be quite a hassle, since the cycle count would be even more ridiculously high.) The two-input solution sneaks its way into winning in the sum category.
Even a simple puzzle has many possible solutions. Here are some (GIF, not WEBM) for the very first puzzle in the game.
Just as in the previous table, each of these solutions is better than the others in at least one of the listed statistics.
Bonus: Unicode alchemical symbols used in Opus Magnum (code charts: 1 2)
[1]Opus Magnum uses a masking empty triangle superimposed on another empty triangle, which looks a lot like a star of David (a non-masking empty triangle superimposed on another empty triangle). Unicode lists a different symbol for quintessence, 🜀.
[2]Opus Magnum uses a rotated life symbol, which Unicode does not have, but which CSS can imitate (though not through the filter of this website's Markdown). Unicode does have the similar symbol 🜞—listed as "crocus of iron", which apparently is calcined/anhydrous rust or ferrous sulfate.
[3]Unicode lists this symbol as signifying sulfur, not life.
[4]For some reason, Opus Magnum uses the plural, "vitae".
I genuinely wonder if you've ever been mistaken for an LLM. If you weren't a longstanding account that we were confident is human, say you'd just shown up as a new user, I'd have my doubts.
I don't mean this is a bad way! Quite the opposite, you display a level of diligence and effort that LLMs are trained to perform (not quite as successfully), but which is sadly rare in humans. Look at the Markdown tables, look at the tasteful insertion of a rare unicode character. My god, I'm looking even closer, and that is a lot of fucking work you put in on a random thread about video games. I only put in half as much effort when I'm AAQC-farming.
(Of course you play Opus Magnum, I'd kill to see your Factorio builds)
I don't make enough comments anywhere to be targeted with such accusations.
Note that, unlike Reddit's, this website's Markdown implementation requires the user to type tables in raw HTML, not in Markdown.
Very annoyingly, I remain too depressed to invest hours of consecutive effort into a campaign of Factorio. In contrast, Opus Magnum can be played in bite-sized chunks.
I am sorry to hear that you're depressed. I'm in the same boat, last time I felt entirely fine was after I enrolled in a study on psilocybin for treatment resistant depression. It was like the sun had come out again, and it lasted for months. I miss it desperately. And yes, being depressed is probably the main reason I don't play video games as much as I used to.
As for Factorio? It's one of those games that appeals to me greatly, in theory, but I would need to use my prescription stimulants to be able to play it. If I need medication to enjoy a game, that is annoyingly close to work. Shame, I love the idea.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I liked Opus Magnum quite a bit!
But then I read a review that said, to paraphrase: "If you want to do programming, just damn well code properly instead of playing games that have you program through an impractical interface."
I wanted to disagree with it, but failed to. Since then I couldn't bring myself to pick Opus Magnum back up.
Approximately my experience with Exa-Punks. The coding interface is more practical, and you can just damn well code properly, but half way through I had the overwhelming sensation of "Wait, am I not normally getting paid for this? I won't even have a hobby project to show for it at the end of it all..."
Yeah, same here. And I barely even started before I quit. It made me remember writing assembler code and I had no desire to repeat that exercise.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
ICC (the International Code Council), in collaboration with THIA (the Tiny Home Industry Association), is in the process of developing a new standard for "small residential units and tiny houses", ICC/THIA 1215.
The IRC (International Residential Code) already defines "tiny house" as 400 ft2 (37 m2) or smaller.
The latest draft of this new standard (available through the "documents" link on this page) additionally defines "small residential unit" as 1200 ft2 (111 m2) or smaller.
The name of the committee is "Standard for Off-Site Construction Tiny Houses", and this collaboration with THIA is building on a previous collaboration with MBI (the Modular Building Institute). However, this new standard will apply, not just to newfangled off-site (wheeled, modular, and panelized) construction, but also to traditional on-site (stick-built) construction.
For ease of visualization, here are examples of "tiny" and "small" floor plans. (I still am waiting for you to post the plan of your dream house (1 2)—or your dream neighborhood.)
(Can we extend this progression? "Normal" ≤ 3600 ft2 (334 m2), "large" ≤ 10800 ft2 (1003 m2), and "mansion" > 10,800 ft2 (1003 m2)? ;-) Generally, for apartment buildings (occupancy R-2) made of wood with no special fire rating (construction type V), the IBC prescribes limits of 7000 ft2 without sprinklers (no longer allowed in new buildings), 21,000 ft2 with spinklers and multiple stories, and 28,000 ft2 with sprinklers and one story. But no such restrictions apply to houses (occupancy R-3).)
This interesting article covers how ICC was caught flat-footed by data centers' sudden rise in popularity. In what occupancy do they belong?
Business, like electronic data entry?
Moderate-hazard factory/industrial, like lithium-ion-battery assembly and usage?
Moderate-hazard storage, like lithium-ion-battery storage?
This has important ramifications for code requirements.
In the end (technically not finalized at the time of this article's publication), the responsible committee decided to put it in moderate-hazard factory/industrial. (See the committee's response to proposal G38-25, contained in the "report of committee action to CAH 1" document on this page.)
ICC is in the very early stages of developing a guideline on data centers. Nothing but a tentative outline has been published so far (in the "documents" on the linked page).
I don't think the tiny house thing is ever going to take off. I don't want to say it's dead, but several years ago, when they were becoming a fad, some group tried to build one in Pittsburgh as a proof of concept that they could be used as inexpensive housing for the homeless. The house they built cost double what they expected. The conclusion they came to in the postmortem was that the fixed costs of doing anything at all aren't increased that much by expanding the square footage, so making things smaller didn't save much money. One of the big unexpected expenses they talked about that caused the price to balloon was excavation costs. Essentially, building on a city lot in a distressed area is a bit of a crapshoot in that you don't know what you're going to find. Foundations of prior structures, rubbish, old utility tie-ins, etc. They also spent a lot of money on legal fees, despite the fact that city government was pushing the project; the zoning board didn't really know how to treat it.
A bigger part of the problem, though, was economic. It only makes sense to build that kind of house if you can get the land for cheap. But in areas where land is cheap, there isn't demand for anything that modest, and the cost of construction swamps what the house can be sold for. Shortly before the tiny house debacle, the local community development corporation built a regular house on a vacant lot in the same neighborhood for $237,000 but were only able to sell it for $143,000. I'm sympathetic to arguments for subsidizing construction to alleviate a housing shortage, but it makes more sense to do renovations or build normal houses.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link