I've won a Diplomacy tournament and lost one. I had prepared several weeks for the first one. For the second one I did no prep, it was a last minute walk-on to help replace a booked player who was MIA, and I hadn't played at all for over a decade, so was obviously rusty.

But if you google for my Dip tournament participation only the 2nd one is findable online. It was a lesson on the "dark ages" that was much of life prior to the WWW and modern social media. Prior to 2000 or so large swathes of life were not documented digitally and published on the Internet. By 2026 any random burp or brain fart can get broadcast to millions.

Another fun fact: a few decades after my Dip tournament win I got to work for the US State Department.

2D physics is fun to model in game engines too, and simpler than 3D.

2D physics is an evening project for a week or two. 3D physics is an exercise in smashing your head against a wall, and is basically no fun whatsoever (I’ve written a 2D and 3d physics engine and shipped games as a physics programmer)

I like to think that this is why Havok was such a big thing when it came out and was integrated into (3d) video games, there was a whole slew of games coming out then that incorporated it into gameplay and it was a novel experience. Physics based puzzles and weapons in Half-Life 2 was probably the biggest example of the time.

I'd be inclined to agree. It's very hard to design a physics based video game to be fun IME - puzzles and sandboxes are the only two places I've seen it effective. I'd love to see more examples!

Good reminder that all government is based on force, threat of violence and coercion. Authority comes from the fist, the gun, the daring act. We only paper over it enough to make ourselves feel better.

once I can measure something I can make it faster

if I hand this challenge off to Claude then I will lose the capability to do it myself, and will become dependent on Claude. that is bad

unfortunate name. misleads

The US has no national security at present. Anything is possible.

I concluded long ago that voting rings are active here, along with paid/inauthentic upvote farms.

What led to that conclusion? Genuinely curious.

He runs a voting ring.

I independently came to that conclusion after noticing that my comments on some controversial subjects will slowly acquire upvotes, then nose dive 2 or 4 votes very quickly. At first I thought that some mods might have double-value votes (Hi Cowboy Neal!) but then I realized it's sometimes 4 successive downvotes, not only 2.

I've frequently encountered this same thing. Often the downvotes come a day later, but quickly.

I've seen this, I tend to attribute it to a different part of the world waking up.

Same, but there are other explanations than voting rings

I assume it's just the mods, not voting rings. It's usually comments that run counter to the HN-approved ideology.

EV software. performance book. education service. short fiction

on surface I like the design but due to nature of security risk I'd want to know a lot more about the company and how its made.

Why?