I love the idea of someone trying this stupid question irl only to realize it wasn’t even plugged in. That’s … well fuck, that’s most IT work. The convoluted approach is definitely the wrong one. Lol

Santa already extrapolates data for children without lists but with generative AI, we’re going to see new and exciting ways to disappoint children this Christmas!

It’s a lot of individual tables because Santa’s excel struggles with anything past a few hundred thousand rows. It’s not just names, but addresses, lists of desires, and so on.

There are around 2 billion children. If you wonder why he skips so many children, it’s not religion or poverty, it’s because Santa’s files got corrupted.

Ah, my teenage hero. Good chance I direct downloaded something; the Internet was so much better back then, lol.

This actually happened to me. I still had to look busy so I mostly just studied more or worked on a second job I had grading papers. I also spent a bit of time writing stories and designing things. Adding in something creative can help your brain balance things out.

Your mention reminded me of a false pretense game from Adult Swim called Glittermitten Grove. I would consider that itself a fake game in the way a storefront might be a fake cover for a drug operation, except the drug in question is Frog Fractions 2.

Aight, if there are no wrong answers I wanna mention a real old one I’ve had a soft spot for since childhood: The Dreamcast-like music video Californication by Red Hot Chili Peppers.

There aren’t a ton of examples from pre-social media, I wonder if there are any others that people can think of that’re even older?

Edit: Actually reading a few there are some from the 90s, like Simpsons. I forgot all about them, lol.

I don’t think the question is what level math to end on, but rather how math is taught. I teach psych statistics at University and the average student does the math parts mostly fine (it’s just algebra) but their critical thinking and application of the math is usually what is sorely lacking regardless of their ending math course. And in the real world where we do everything with computers, the application is 99% what matters.

I’ve had people in middle age who dropped out in 6th grade in Mexico do better than fresh-from-US-high school calculus experienced students, and that’s not even taking into account this more recent COVID-survivors generation that feels like they skipped a year of education. It’s very… grim.

One of the worst US congress members shares a last name with me, but it’s also so common that it’s pretty diluted. It needs to be both infamous and uncommon, sharing a last name with millions of people ain’t that.

Then again, Epstein is kinda common and I can’t help giggle when I bring up a certain researcher with that last name and call her model the Epstein model.

You basically described the economic concept of consumer surplus. When a product is entirely dependent on the price a consumer is willing to pay because the supply is infinite, the natural result is… this.

Except they shouldn’t be price discriminating; it’s easier and more effective to just offer tiered pricing structures (e.g. collectors editions) and eventual sales (e.g. 50% off after a year) to hit people at different places on the supposed consumer surplus curve. As you note, the undermines your confidence in the prices but you’re likely a little lower on the curve compared to the “must have on day one” crowd.

That said, the whole theory also explains why freemium is so attractive. When there’s no price minimum, the optimal price is 0 and you work your way up with features and perks (while also raising the price people are willing to pay by getting them hooked). It’s all nasty business, lol

Mumble was… fine. My friends actually moved to Discord from Mumble for our MMO stuff but that was primarily because it was easier to invite randos to the chat. That quality makes it almost impossible to break away from atm.

I recall the latency being only a little worse than Discord, but I think that’s because a friend set up the server at his work as a side thing (he also hosted Minecraft and Terraria). It’s not too complex to setup, but your quality will depend a lot on the computer and network you’re running. At least, it did for us, back in the day.

We’ve thought about alternatives to Discord. Old names were Ventrilo and TeamSpeak but they’re just not very modern. Plus, now almost every chat app has voice, too. Just, for features, it’s hard to beat Discord at this… though I’m willing to read the other comments to get for ideas, too. Lol

Maybe not the worst, but I’ve been playing old RPGs and I really hate mandatory loss fights in late game or NG+. Radiata Stories was a fantastic game but I was bonkers powerful on my second playthrough yet somehow lost a fight to a humongous chud asshole for plot reasons. Rare misstep in that games story, honestly.

Best example of subversion of that trope, though,b was in Dragon Quest 11. If you know, you know, but I won’t spoil that, lol.

Wow that’s on my backlog list but seriously, it forces a reload either way, at least make it a splashy permadeath.

And they move very, very slowly…

Hey hey, me too. I mostly just don’t want too many “redo this whole game again” stuff, unless there’s a reason (split path, etc). A stress filled second run is not a good reason.

Seeing CA propositions get rigged with misinformation and tricky language suggests to me that direct democracy might also not work without proper safeguards.

I found success just saying Alexa wasn’t working and a bunch of stuff uses it. Not even that far from correct, at least?

So funny I read this post right after my 3yo dishes l ate all her broccoli, her brothers broccoli, and seconds on… broccoli. Didn’t finish her rice, though.

I think she might actually like fruits and veggies?

That said, I think a good trick is to style the performative foods as Japanese bento style because kids are kinda easily swayed by look and feel of food, so if it’s cute or cool they are more likely to eat it. We’re planning on doing that anyway, mostly cause my wife was raised in Japan where that was common.

Another thing to keep in mind is parents are often the role models, so liking or disliking things will matter. If you hate fruits and veggies, they’ll notice.

I thought that too until today, it’s never clear until a quarter of the Internet is down randomly.

Same, Canvas is perhaps the most used Learning Management System in the US and they apparently are entirely hosted on AWS East. The real kicker is I had my students midterm due date literally today for two classes. I’ve been swamped with panic emails (and I made clear my due dates aren’t even that important when there isn’t a national outage lol).

My head canon is someone wished for a miracle due date extension somewhere in the country and they monkey’s pawed AWS into non existence.