slphil

Wrong shooter, wrong targets. Not allowed to talk about that.

I enjoy many chess variants. Atomic chess is quite fun (in 2012 or so a friend and I created an opening book to find forcing lines for White, where Black must know the correct line or lose by force). I have spent hundreds of hours playing bughouse, especially playing both boards against a normal team (which is a very fun way to play for stronger players). The difference is that none of these variants make a claim to be a replacement for normal chess. The seriousness of chess960 is exactly why I don't like it. Bughouse is not intended to be taken seriously.

Unfortunately, a lot of strong chess players do not enjoy playing Chess960 because we've already invested hundreds of hours into learning openings and how those openings transition into a middlegame. While it's certainly fair (position is the same for both sides), it gives positions which are almost impossible to evaluate. This is exciting for spectators, but for me it's excruciatingly nerve-wracking. I can't play it.

To the contrary, many chess players are opposed to the increasing computerization of the game. Computers have already devastated opening theory (by finding solutions to difficult lines and forced draws in others) and made cheating 100x easier, requiring draconian monitoring at tournaments just to keep them fair. Even if a surveillance camera could track every game and create a scoresheet for every game in a tournament (which I strongly doubt is possible), this is the kind of thing I want out of the playing hall.

It's only tedious for brand new players, who should get over it and do it anyway until it is natural.

I am a chess professional, although more as a teacher than a player, so I have a lot of experience in this field. As caro_douglos pointed out, it slows down the initial reaction to opponent's moves, which is one reason why it instantly improves performance for new players. It forces the player to settle into a certain rhythm of play which prevents silly mistakes.

It is also permitted (and encouraged) to write down the time on the clock after each move, and to record all draw offers, both of which are valuable information during and after the game. If one of my goals is to grind down my opponent's clock in a complex position where I have the initiative, seeing how much more time he is using on average gives me an idea of how long I need to maintain the tension to gain a sufficient time advantage. For example, in a game where both players start with two hours, entering the endgame with 1 hour versus my opponent's 15 minutes is an enormous advantage, even in a position which should otherwise be drawn with perfect play.

Also, in some time controls, players gain extra time after a certain move (generally the 40th), so it can be very important to know exactly when you're going to get that extra hour. These time controls are less common than they used to be.

I have students as young as 5 years old learn how to keep notation after only a few weeks of learning chess. It is a very important skill.

This makes no difference. Players are required to keep notation in tournament games, and the use of external software (like what is used at the top boards at some tournaments) does not absolve the players of this responsibility. Writing down the moves of the game as it is being played is a major part of playing chess, and it is one of the most important things for players to learn because it directly improves play (even disregarding reviewing the games afterwards!).

I own Wasteland 2 but I haven't been able to make myself play it. It's my own failing, but it's just so old-school. It's very hard to find a game that keeps old-school charm without the old-school mechanics.

I have bad news for you: Fallout 4 is an incredible game the first time, but the second time through you notice that the game has very little depth. I had a blast the first time, but couldn't force myself to finish a second. I say this as someone who beat New Vegas at least a dozen times.

Fallout 4 has tons of options that are flavorful and make you feel like you live in a dynamic world, right up until you realize there's not much actual dynamic content.

It's important to point out that he was basically emotionally abused by researchers (apparently paid in part by the government) and never really recovered from it. Also that his manifesto (and later works, while in prison) are genuine works of philosophy by a person who really shouldn't ever be let out into society again. Kaczynski is a really interesting guy.

English is the most widely-spoken language in the world (although not the most common first language) and is the lingua franca of the Internet. While language mistakes shouldn't be seen as evidence of technical issues, it should be common practice to ask a skilled native English speaker to review a group's public statements and marketing materials.

This was genuinely painful.

I'm not sure where you got that impression. The lowered attendance rate of in-person chess clubs is more than made up by the enormous amount of chess played online, high-level professional chess is doing better than ever, and it's seen by many parents as one of the most generalizable skills for a child to learn.

(It's possible I just took a joke too seriously, but "chess is dead" is a common and incorrect take.)

The economy is not a zero-sum game, nor are corporate profits. Increases in productive efficiency create objectively more wealth overall, and those benefits diffuse out to every socioeconomic class (the classic conservative snark that even poor people have cars, refrigerators, and air conditioning, living better than medieval kings in many ways, is not inaccurate). We are living in an era where megacorporations and their related efficiency gains will rapidly increase the "standard of living" for a population which is (nonetheless!) going to get more miserable over time.

Stepping past the "zero-sum" claim, though, I agree that corporations should take responsibility for their incredibly powerful role in modern society, but I don't see a mechanism by which this could happen. The entire point of a regulated liberal democracy is to create a legislative landscape which modifies the incentive structures of businesses to "coerce" them into providing more social benefit than cost.

There is also nothing wrong with some level of redistributism, as long as it doesn't blindly ignore economic reality (a la communism). Many of the right-leaning nerds here on HN are in favor of universal basic income for that reason.

I don't quite agree, but I see where you're coming from. Instead I tend to see them as being just different behaviors, with bystanders (clueless rubes and cynical manipulators alike) causing conflict in order to support their own inflated diversity bureaucracy.

The only thing that really has to be noticed in order to see the problem here is that almost all of the women writing blog posts about how women should go into STEM did not themselves go into STEM. Yesterday I saw a video about an organization trying to get women to go into STEM. All of the women involved in the program had degree in _____ studies, communications, etc.

It's OK to be extremely cynical about this.

That said, I don't have a problem with women working whatever job they want. Just don't expect me to play along with the self-esteem parade and grievance bureaucracy that tends to come along for the ride.