7 votes

Topic deleted by author

7 comments

  1. [3]
    JesusShuttlesworth
    Link
    Well, I need to get started on getting prepared for the upcoming semester. I'll be taking a pretty full class load and have a few subjects I'm worried about. Anyone know any good resources for...

    Well, I need to get started on getting prepared for the upcoming semester. I'll be taking a pretty full class load and have a few subjects I'm worried about.

    Anyone know any good resources for linear algebra?

    3 votes
    1. asep
      Link Parent
      The three blue one brown essence of linear algebra series is a great resource but I recommend you watch it after you've studied all your material from uni. It's great supplementary material which...

      The three blue one brown essence of linear algebra series is a great resource but I recommend you watch it after you've studied all your material from uni. It's great supplementary material which will help you "get" linear algebra.

      2 votes
    2. FatherGlucose
      Link Parent
      Check if slader has your manual's solutions. Personally, the linear algebra class that I took was not complicated enough that it required much external resources other than solutions for textbook...

      Check if slader has your manual's solutions. Personally, the linear algebra class that I took was not complicated enough that it required much external resources other than solutions for textbook problems. What was hard in it was how dry it was figuring out a way to deal with a complete lack of motivation to study any of it. It's like trying to eat salty dried up cardboard. Just make sure to stay on top of it and it should be fine.

      1 vote
  2. The_Fad
    Link
    I've been struggling to figure out what's going on with my moods. About a month ago I started taking new medication (while simultaneously lowering the dose on another) and ever since I've just...

    I've been struggling to figure out what's going on with my moods. About a month ago I started taking new medication (while simultaneously lowering the dose on another) and ever since I've just felt unmotivated and jittery. I brought this up with my psychiatrist and she said it's likely just an effect from lowering the dosage of the one medication, but it's been lasting awhile and it's making my work day very difficult to get through.

    I'm lucky in that my job doesn't require a lot from me (if anything I'm underemployed, technically) but that leads to a lot of down time. Historically this hasn't been an issue as I've just filled my time with whatever happens to cross my mind, but now I just end up sitting there being fidgety and unable to focus on anything for longer than 15 minutes at a time.

    This is probably my least favorite part about medication: In times like this you sort of just have to deal with it until you see your doctor next. You can see them sooner than planned, sure, but a lot of these anti-depressant/anti-anxiety meds take a few weeks before they really start to kick in, and unfortunately that sort of time scale doesn't make for easily lived day-to-day experiences.

    Anyway, not looking for any advice or anything; my problems are my own and I know what I need to do. Just needed a space to vent where hopefully other people know what I'm going through.

    3 votes
  3. unknown user
    Link
    I'll have an interview with a big name publisher's house for a translation project! This is really exciting, but I also need a job that'll pay me decent money: I got news from two of my three MA...

    I'll have an interview with a big name publisher's house for a translation project! This is really exciting, but I also need a job that'll pay me decent money: I got news from two of my three MA applications, and both are positive. Now I'll have to decide which uni when the last one publishes the results. I'll definitely be moving to Ankara, and I'll need a job even if I land a state's scholarship or loan. The problem is, literaty translation tends to pay little and not often, especially for newbies. So I need this project to pay me properly like I deserve, if they will want to contract on the cheap, I'll probably have to move on because I can't afford it, even tho if I did not need money like this I'd accept this offer whatever the pay b/c it is a non-fiction book that I'd love to put on my resume.

    So, this is a happy week! Tho there will be some nice stuff to be busy about in the coming weeks.

    3 votes
  4. Eylrid
    Link
    I've been learning Morse code. I'm about good with the letters that start with dit; then I'll move on to learning the letters that start with dah. I have all the letter patterns memorized, but...

    I've been learning Morse code. I'm about good with the letters that start with dit; then I'll move on to learning the letters that start with dah. I have all the letter patterns memorized, but that's not the same as being able to hear them at full speed. I wrote a training program. Maybe at some point I'll release it for other people to use. It pairs groups of letters with words that include those letters, so I learn to hear the letters as part of words. It uses Farnsworth timing, where the letters are played at full speed but there's more space between them so there's time to register each letter. As the learner gets better at a word, the spaces shrink until the word is at full speed.

    Eventually I want to convert ebooks into Morse and listen to them that way.

    1 vote
  5. Bullmaestro
    (edited )
    Link
    I've wanted to do a YouTube video for a while on Blizzard's report system, and why it's the real reason that HotS died. For context, from 2015 Blizzard introduced the Silence penalty to the game....

    I've wanted to do a YouTube video for a while on Blizzard's report system, and why it's the real reason that HotS died.

    For context, from 2015 Blizzard introduced the Silence penalty to the game. If you got reported often for abusive chat, your account would be flagged then silenced. The first silence is 24 hours long, then doubles in duration the next time you are silenced with no upper limit. Then Blizzard intensified this further first by banning silenced players from Ranked play, then by replacing silences with bans on a 3-strike basis (7 days, 14 days, then permanent.)

    I accumulated lots of evidence that:

    • Blizzard automatically punish players without investigation.
    • Multiboxers (WoW players who control multiple accounts at the same time) can weaponise the report system to get players unfairly banned within minutes through targeted false reporting.
    • Popular streamers like Grubby, Chu8, Kendrick, Asmongold, etc were being griefed with false reports.
    • Customer Support uphold extreme punishments like several month silences, suspensions and permanent bans for E rated chat like 'sarcastic remarks', shotcalling, etc. Things that certainly don't deserve such unfair punishments. They punish these things on the same level of severity as truly toxic behaviour like wishing cancer upon others or telling them to drink bleach.
    • There is no decay for periods of good behaviour. So let's say you got a 16 day silence two years previously then got punished again, the next silence would still be 32 days. Heck, if they got punished now, they'd likely get perma banned with no chance of appeal.
    • Customer Support refuse to even provide chat logs to players and rudely fob them off. I communicated with a player on the r/heroesofthestorm subreddit who spent months trying to appeal a 512 day silence and requesting evidence of his 'toxic' chat even though he played with chat disabled. Customer support repeatedly sent the same cut and paste reply. It even got to the point of making a GDPR request to Blizzard, only for them to say "sorry, we deleted the chat logs, by the way your silence is final and will not be overturned."
    • Blizzard have been systematically ignoring criticism of said system, to the point of censoring their own forums and even ignoring repeated AMA questions.

    My argument is that it's killed the game because Blizzard have ignored legitimate reports in favour of encouraging players to report one other out of pure malice. It's killed communication in the game too. The silence system and Blizzard's incredibly broad abusive chat guidelines will quickly make accounts unusable for Ranked play because there is no fair appeals process or even any decay for good behaviour.

    This encourages players to make disposable smurf accounts, whether to give themselves a clean slate or so that they can maliciously grief other players and throw matches out of spite towards Blizzard unfairly banning their accounts. In my view HotS's decline was largely due to the developers ignoring the plight of their own customers and acting like they know best.