The Lounge's "Random Questions That Don't Need Their Own Thread" Thread

[AlamoVampire]

@JoeSchmuckatelli because wifi is baked into the oven and the router isnt!

for real no idea rhetorical or no lol

061212052023

oo new page!

Edited December 5, 2023 by AlamoVampire

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

Okay - hunters:

In the old days, before refrigeration - if you shot a deer... did folks skin it and strip it on site to pack out the meat in the skin (reducing weight) or did they just gut it and pack out the rest of the animal to later skin and parcel out the meat?

What's the best practice for keeping the meat fresh / edible?

 

[magnemoe]

1 hour ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Okay - hunters:

In the old days, before refrigeration - if you shot a deer... did folks skin it and strip it on site to pack out the meat in the skin (reducing weight) or did they just gut it and pack out the rest of the animal to later skin and parcel out the meat?

What's the best practice for keeping the meat fresh / edible?

 

You want meat to hang for some time after skinning it anyway, at least here in Norway then it usually start to become 10-0 centigrade temperatures once the hunting season start and mostly frost closer to Christmas then it ends.
Probably very different in warmer climate. 

[TheSaint]

3 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Okay - hunters:

In the old days, before refrigeration - if you shot a deer... did folks skin it and strip it on site to pack out the meat in the skin (reducing weight) or did they just gut it and pack out the rest of the animal to later skin and parcel out the meat?

What's the best practice for keeping the meat fresh / edible?

 

You want the meat to cool down as fast as possible, because heat encourages spoilage. And fur traps heat, because that's what it's for. So the best practice is to gut and skin the animal as close to the time it was killed as possible. This is true regardless of refrigeration, because even today it may still be many hours or even a day before you can get your carcass to a refrigerator, depending on where you are hunting.

[DDE]

Why do we have a death day thread but not a birthday thread?

Thinking how we haven't marked Buzz's 94th.

[SunlitZelkova]

18 hours ago, DDE said:

Why do we have a death day thread but not a birthday thread?

Thinking how we haven't marked Buzz's 94th.

You could share it here. The rules don’t expressly limit it to your own birthday.

[AstroWolfie]

I know Cooper was using morse code to communicate to Murph while he was in the Tesseract, but what way did Cooper use the morse code? did he hit the books off the shelf, using the gaps as morse code, or did he do something else?

[AlamoVampire]

What is it about a simple baked potato with cheese, butter and sour cream that is just so satisfying?

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[SunlitZelkova]

11 minutes ago, AlamoVampire said:

What is it about a simple baked potato with cheese, butter and sour cream that is just so satisfying?

030901282024

"There is beauty in simplicity."- Anonymous

[LHACK4142]

On 1/28/2024 at 1:22 AM, SunlitZelkova said:

"There is beauty in simplicity."- Anonymous

"Keep It Simple, Stupid!" -Anonymous

[AlamoVampire]

So guys, im playing path of titans. Still toxic, but its dinos. But i got hit by a question as i ran past a guy leveling (im leveling too) and he left me alone and i him. So my question: it takes 0 effort or energy to be nice to each other and not grief/harass each other. I used 0 energy to ignore him as i went by and he used none ignoring me. It takes effort and energy to chase and kill another player. You must choose to burn energy and effort to grief and harass. Why do people choose that? Why??

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[LHACK4142]

On 2/1/2024 at 12:21 PM, AlamoVampire said:

Why do people choose that? Why??

schaudenfreude, I guess, or just the feeling of winning...

[Superluminal Gremlin]

Excel Question here;

I have a number, 46. I also have a table, with 1-9 and a-f at the top and sides. The top row is for the first character, and the first column is for the second character. I want to look up the value that corresponds to that system, in Excel. For people familiar with S-Boxes, you may recognise what I am asking

EDIT: I have now got the reference working. However, I can not directly reference the HEX values as Excel throws a Value Not Avaliable Error. It seems Match can not reference a cell with a formula in it.

EDIT 2: Aha!. I needed a VALUE() around the cell I wanted to reference, but it doesn't work for Letters. Darn.

Edited February 5 by Superluminal Gremlin
Updated information

[AlamoVampire]

Id like everyones thoughts. I had to report a player for griefing and harassment on a different game a few days ago. The response i got back from game officials floored me. I need to know if my thoughts are correct and that THEY are factually wrong or something else.

firstly lets establish a definition, one that in my experience seems (until now) universally applied. 
 

Griefing: Griefing within the context of online gaming refers to the manifestation of antisocial conduct exhibited by gamers towards their counterparts on the same gaming platform, with the primary objective of deriving personal gratification. 
 

Ok, this is just a broad definition but it works. So, in the game (i mentioned it here a few posts back) there are a few mechanics that kick in at the death of your character/dinosaur.
1. A portion of your growth (experience points) are deducted (typically 1/4 to 1/2 bar) which at adult will rescind your adult status back to sub-adult.

2. 1/4 of your marks (skill points required to purchase abilities or cosmetic changes) at time of death are deducted.

3. Any rested growth bonus is rescinded. (Bonus of 2x growth rewarded)

4. With the exception of your first two quests (locate a home cave and find a waystone ((used to teleport fellow players to you at a waystone)) and if carnivore your hunt x critter/herbivore) all quests are forcibly failed.

5. You are randomly forced to a new location on the map. This can be fatal to your dinosaur all on its own. Some dinosaurs run out of stamina fast and regenerate it slowly. Some metabolisms will starve faster than others. Those 2 combined if rng places you in a bad spot you WILL starve before you locate food. Also spawning in a pvp hotspot can be lethal as well, especially to juvenile and adolescents. 
6. a kill of a fellow player rewards a trophy only if the dinosaur that died was an ADULT. Juvenile, Adolescent and sub-adult dinosaurs reward their opponent 0 growth, 0 marks and 0 trophies. Adults reward 0 growth, 0 marks and again only a SINGULAR trophy that any player may grab (fastest player to react to the kill gets the trophy if they grab for it, its rewarded in full upon entry to homecave and claiming it from a menu).

All players know points 1-6 very well. Griefers use this knowledge to harass and grief juvenile/adolescent dinosaurs for personal enjoyment and to try to provoke an explosive response in chat. When such a player is confronted they deny this aspect and say you know you will get killed so shut up. 

The only reasons a player would target a juvenile/adolescent is for griefing and harassing purposes. Lack of skill or fear of attacking fully functional sub adults/adults as well, but that plays into harassing and disruptive griefing.

Now given this rather long explanation lets get to my report. I was growing(leveling) a sauropod dinosaur called Amargasaurus. I was in the juvenile stage when I went and failed to see a ledge. I fell and died. Given I have 0 agency to choose my respawn location I was at the mercy of rng. I spawn in and to my horror a  full adult Pycnonemosaurus was near me. A juvenile (or any age tbh) Amargasaurus is slow. The Pycnonemosaurus decided to target me. Why? Because an ADULT Amargasaurus is a major heavyweight and will do extreme damage, but a juvenile is helpless. So, taking points 1&2 into account the player chose to impede and disrupt my ability to play. I was able to identify the player and reported them.

Now to what the OFFICIAL response was: 

Official servers have no gameplay rules, but must follow our Terms of Service you can find here (link redacted by me).

So, here we are at what Id like opinions on:

1. Official servers (typically, generally, normally) are where the game studio hosting the online multiplayer experience would have rules players are expected to follow. Yes?

2. Terms of Service or the End User License Agreement are a legal set of rules players/users must adhere to to use a given games online service correct?

3. This is taken from THEIR OWN Terms of Service, its bullet point 7 under License Limitations: attempt to, or harass, abuse, or harm, or advocate or incite harassment, abuse, or harm of another person, group, including (redacted by me) employees or (redacted by me)  customer service representatives;

(note i am only redacting the company name)

It clearly indicates in this bullet point abuse/harass or incite or attempt to incite the same. Griefing a player IS harassment.

Have I suffered a stroke or brain damage? How do they say we players must obey the TOS but yet there are no rules?? Their own TOS forbids harassment and griefing yet taking actions designed to impede and disrupt a players play knowing the cost their deliberate disruption will have is somehow not griefing and harassing when other games would and DO treat that kind of action as griefing/harassing? Make it make sense please.

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[SunlitZelkova]

38 minutes ago, AlamoVampire said:

Make it make sense please.

“Gameplay rules” would mean it is okay to kill a low level player/character.

There is nothing particularly antisocial about killing a new player. Picking on low level… whatever… happens all the time. I play a game called War Thunder and 1980s Su-25s often fight against 1960s jets with no flares to defeat IR guided missiles.

Now, if the guy who killed you had called you out in chat (if there is that) and picked on you verbally (in chat), that might be considered griefing, but simply being killed isn’t an instance of you being targeted.

Now is it bad etiquette to kill someone just spawning in? Yes, but let me introduce to something called spawn camping. It’s when people sit behind cover and then kill people just as they spawn in, taking them by surprise. It happens in video games all the time, and sometimes measures are taken to try and prevent it, but it can still often happen anyways.

I’m sorry that happened to you. It sounds like a fun game otherwise.

[AlamoVampire]

@SunlitZelkova im well familiar with spawncamping. In most games i enjoy camping the campers (battlefield for example). My issue is Terms of Service is a legal contract, a contract is a set of rules. That alone forces a legal issue of safeguarding players from actions it describes. Ive never played war thunder but have played DCS a combat flight sim and it has a similar clause in its TOS/EULA 

1 hour ago, AlamoVampire said:

3. This is taken from THEIR OWN Terms of Service, its bullet point 7 under License Limitations: attempt to, or harass, abuse, or harm, or advocate or incite harassment, abuse, or harm of another person, group, including (redacted by me) employees or (redacted by me)  customer service representatives;

Given the behavior of killing a Juvenile under the current mechanics is done by some to directly harass said victim by abuse of the mechanics i listed in my post you replied to. Part of griefing is abusing mechanics to hurt a player. And again my post describes a harm to not just myself but others who get killed in similar manners. Now you want to make it a non griefer/harassment move? Easy! Remove points 1-5 from the mechanics and may the strongest survive. 
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[SunlitZelkova]

On 2/10/2024 at 10:24 PM, AlamoVampire said:

@SunlitZelkova im well familiar with spawncamping. In most games i enjoy camping the campers (battlefield for example). My issue is Terms of Service is a legal contract, a contract is a set of rules. That alone forces a legal issue of safeguarding players from actions it describes. Ive never played war thunder but have played DCS a combat flight sim and it has a similar clause in its TOS/EULA 

Given the behavior of killing a Juvenile under the current mechanics is done by some to directly harass said victim by abuse of the mechanics i listed in my post you replied to. Part of griefing is abusing mechanics to hurt a player. And again my post describes a harm to not just myself but others who get killed in similar manners. Now you want to make it a non griefer/harassment move? Easy! Remove points 1-5 from the mechanics and may the strongest survive. 
002302112024

I’m going over your post again and I can’t help but disagree that the only reason a player would kill a juvenile is to grief/provoke a response. If no one has ever admitted to doing this (you say when asked if this is the case these players deny it), it’s hard to believe that is the case. It could simply be that they enjoy killing juveniles.

Again, that doesn’t mean it should be okay, I’m just saying that unfortunately such behavior seems completely legal under the game’s TOS. You would need to prove they are doing so to provoke an emotional response from players but you said they don’t admit to doing this.

Do a lot of players believe that is the case whenever a juvenile is killed? Even if that may be so, the circumstances make it hard to prove.

On the other hand, I suppose the nature of the situation may work as circumstantial evidence. For example, in War Thunder combined arms battles, it is common that when you destroy someone’s tank, they respawn in an aircraft and bomb you. There is no direct evidence this was done for revenge- the most opportune target might have been coincidentally the same person they got killed by- but at the same time, it’s generally agreed that when that happens it is for revenge by the community.

Did you go at it from an angle like that when you reported them? If you simply said “killing juveniles is griefing”, if the reporting system is very limited (maybe all you can do is select a type of offense and send it, IDK), perhaps this is why they rejected it.

But on the other other hand, I can see how such an argument would be hard to sell. If part of the fun aspect of the game isn’t just leveling up your dinosaur, but playing as it (which in the case of a carnivore or omnivore would involve hunting), killing is just a part of the game people are supposed to enjoy, and that would include targeting juveniles.

That game kind of sounds “grindy”. Players can be vicious in such games. Bullying inferiors even if there is no greater gain can be common, unfortunately.

[AlamoVampire]

@SunlitZelkova right now there are 3 options: grind incessant gather quests (gather 50 acorn, 50 pinecone, 50 lychee, 25 clam, 35 button mushroom etc etc etc) deliver quests. Kill everyone. Or chill and shoot the breeze. Thats it. Thats all there is. They allege quest updates/improvements this year but who knows for certain.
 

Its frowned upon by the good players to target juveniles but the more aggressive ones take pleasure in killing juveniles. Given the obscene penalties a player currently incurs upon death and (please if you doubt me google path of titans toxic players) the abhorrently toxic player base its a safe bet theres an undercurrent of deliberate griefing/harassment and sick sport fomented by a gm team that refuses to acknowledge it AND the fact the TOS forbids it, yet the officials do squat to stop it. All given one must believe evil out of the gate rather than give a beneficial doubt. Its just flat out that toxic.

I hope it improves but i highly doubt it

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[SunlitZelkova]

To what extent do you guys think there is a market for… uh… well…

You know how a large part of the reason organic products exist is because people are afraid of GMOs?

So what if self driving cars and planes became common, but people were afraid of them due to a few accidents? Would driver controlled trains and even ocean liners be viable?

Clearly people are afraid enough of GMOs to warrant investment in a global market for organic products, so could the same thing ever happen for transportation? Just a thought.

[StrandedonEarth]

On 2/12/2024 at 3:32 AM, AlamoVampire said:

ts frowned upon by the good players to target juveniles but the more aggressive ones take pleasure in killing juveniles. Given the obscene penalties a player currently incurs upon death and (please if you doubt me google path of titans toxic players) the abhorrently toxic player base its a safe bet theres an undercurrent of deliberate griefing/harassment and sick sport fomented by a gm team that refuses to acknowledge it AND the fact the TOS forbids it, yet the officials do squat to stop it. All given one must believe evil out of the gate rather than give a beneficial doubt. Its just flat out that toxic.

Well, juvenile griefing could be curtailed if there was a more realistic game response. What happens in real life when the young of an animal is threatened or harmed? You get Momma Bear on your tail. If attacking/killing a juvenile spawned a full-grown bronto or T-Rex bot on top of you, with next-to-nil chance of survival, that should curtail such griefing. But the devs would have to see the need to make that happen. Unfortunately, the best way to make them see the need is if they lost player base due to juvenile griefing.

[AstroWolfie]

how do people dual wield weapons? I see these a lot in video games/movies and tv and the characters but it seems like a challenge to dual wield/reload some large weapons (ie, rifles, smgs, etc) or swords, which could leave you open to attacks if you aren't wearing armor and aren't skilled enough, or reloading if you are dual wielding some guns. Now with things like Star Wars, the blasters have gas storage in them and then used magnetic induction to turn it into a blaster bolt, making reloads (mostly) unnecessary. In the Splatoon games, there are the Dualie class of weapons, which are basically water pistols that shoot ink/paint. Cause squids/octopi. In Splatoon, you have an ink tank which is basically ammo. If a weapon has high/low dakka, and less/more damage is dealt by the shots fired from it, then you use more ink. Anyways, once you run out of ink, you can't use the weapon until you refill your ink tank. It slowly refills in Inkling/Octoling form, but in squid/octopus form, which you use to swim around in your own ink at high speed, you fill/reload your ink tank much faster. These are a few examples from tv/video games, which aren't accurate, but in real life, how would you be able to do this? I mostly want to know so I can dual wield some high dakka Nerf blasters.

[TheSaint]

1 hour ago, AstroWolfie said:

how do people dual wield weapons? I see these a lot in video games/movies and tv and the characters but it seems like a challenge to dual wield/reload some large weapons (ie, rifles, smgs, etc) or swords, which could leave you open to attacks if you aren't wearing armor and aren't skilled enough, or reloading if you are dual wielding some guns. Now with things like Star Wars, the blasters have gas storage in them and then used magnetic induction to turn it into a blaster bolt, making reloads (mostly) unnecessary. In the Splatoon games, there are the Dualie class of weapons, which are basically water pistols that shoot ink/paint. Cause squids/octopi. In Splatoon, you have an ink tank which is basically ammo. If a weapon has high/low dakka, and less/more damage is dealt by the shots fired from it, then you use more ink. Anyways, once you run out of ink, you can't use the weapon until you refill your ink tank. It slowly refills in Inkling/Octoling form, but in squid/octopus form, which you use to swim around in your own ink at high speed, you fill/reload your ink tank much faster. These are a few examples from tv/video games, which aren't accurate, but in real life, how would you be able to do this? I mostly want to know so I can dual wield some high dakka Nerf blasters.

IRL? You don't. Dual wielding is a Hollywood myth. Nobody trains to shoot two firearms at the same time. As you pointed out, it makes it completely impossible to reload without simply dropping one of the weapons. And it's impossible to properly aim two firearms at the same time, so the only thing you can do is aim by impact or by muscle memory, both of which are much less accurate than aiming properly with the sights. And your most accurate grip on a firearm is always going to be one using two hands, such as the Weaver grip. So unless you're just trying to look cool while turning money into noise, there's no point in dual wielding. Use one gun at a time, and make every round count.

[AstroWolfie]

yeah, it's impractical, I know.  it's mostly for a harder challenge in nerf battles and to impress people. My side blaster (one in question, it's a small, uzi/mac-10 type) is at a high enough fps and has a fire rate option (semi-auto, 3 round, and full-auto) that i can just point in the general direction, fire, and I score a hit. I play casual games (hoping to go semi-competitive), so most people can't dodge quick enough unless there is some cover. Some blasters, like the Jupiter or Juno use Rival balls, which you can feed through a tube with a backpack. I use these little half-length darts, which can't be fed through a bag, but I could probably create something that would work. Ammo is my main problem, so if I can make some sort of switching system or some expanded magazines, it could work.  

Edited February 28 by AstroWolfie

[DDE]

9 hours ago, AstroWolfie said:

These are a few examples from tv/video games, which aren't accurate, but in real life, how would you be able to do this?

Dual-weilding is essentially a relic of the time before pistols with detachable magazines. Early guns had no magazines at all, no sights, and pretty much no accuracy. Instead of reloads, one would carry a whole brace of pistols, and so unloading two of them into the enemy at once, or mixing a gun and a sword were all perfectly reasonable methods.

Early revolvers or self-loading pistols without stripper clip functionality (let alone a detachable magazine, or a spare detachable magazine - many early pistols weren't shipped with multiple magazines) still made dual-wielding a useful method of increasing short-term firepower. Something like a Nagant, with its fixed cylinder and individual, manual cartridge removal and loading, takes forever to reload. And while chain revolvers were a thing, you were basically stuck at six, maybe seven rounds per gun.

It's also worth pointing out that two-handed pistol grips are a relatively new development, and before WWII the classic "duelling" stance was prevalent.

There's a lasting mythos of "Macedonian shooting" among the, ahem, KGB fanboys. It appears that one post-war novelist basically invented the whole thing as super gun fu, then attributed it to Balkan revolutionaries, who did not, in fact, use two pistols during assassinations.

So, obligatory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fn6LyFxlogE&t=2m50s

[magnemoe]

1 hour ago, DDE said:

Dual-weilding is essentially a relic of the time before pistols with detachable magazines. Early guns had no magazines at all, no sights, and pretty much no accuracy. Instead of reloads, one would carry a whole brace of pistols, and so unloading two of them into the enemy at once, or mixing a gun and a sword were all perfectly reasonable methods.

Early revolvers or self-loading pistols without stripper clip functionality (let alone a detachable magazine, or a spare detachable magazine - many early pistols weren't shipped with multiple magazines) still made dual-wielding a useful method of increasing short-term firepower. Something like a Nagant, with its fixed cylinder and individual, manual cartridge removal and loading, takes forever to reload. And while chain revolvers were a thing, you were basically stuck at six, maybe seven rounds per gun.

It's also worth pointing out that two-handed pistol grips are a relatively new development, and before WWII the classic "duelling" stance was prevalent.

There's a lasting mythos of "Macedonian shooting" among the, ahem, KGB fanboys. It appears that one post-war novelist basically invented the whole thing as super gun fu, then attributed it to Balkan revolutionaries, who did not, in fact, use two pistols during assassinations.

So, obligatory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fn6LyFxlogE&t=2m50s

 

Yes, back then you had muzzle loaded pistols dual wielding made some sense, also the first revolvers was technically muzzle loaded in that you loaded each chamber with gunpowder and bullet with an percussion cap on the rear. Reloading them would take minutes.  Still if you are using two revolvers I imagine dropping one and drawing the other is more practical.