I certainly don't think he used a vibrator to accomplish the task but if someone said to me "Hey that guy who cheated before was accused of cheating" I wouldn't be surprised. Oh well *shrug*

BicycleRepairMan wrote on Sep 28, 2023, 08:22:
The buttplug story is so, so ridiculous. Niemann DID cheat, has admitted to some of it, and very strong evidence of much more.

But the whole vibrator thing started as literally a joke twitch comment on GM Eric Hansens stream, where someone jokingly said something like "maybe he used a vibrator buttplug" and Hansen jokingly went "Haha, sure, that would work".

And thats it, thats the basis of the whole story.

It was then picked up by some trash media as "speculation" that he had cheated that way, Elon Musk then got involved an cracked a joke on twitter about it, and now the poor guy has to deny it publicly....

Niemann admitted to cheating online when he was younger. Still not good, but not the same as cheating over the board with Carlsen, which there is ABSOLUTELY no evidence of. The statistical analysis which was done of his over the board games was far from conclusive, one stat expert basically said it was much ado about nothing. Carlsen is a prima donna, he was upset he lost and made an accusation of cheating probably knowing he could get away without it because of Niemann's online cheating. Carlsen essentially said the other day he has no rivals, which isn't entirely unreasonable, but it is conceited as hell. Niemann has gotten far more grief than he deserved and Carlsen far less than he deserved for making an unsubstantiated accusation.

The Flying Penguin wrote on Sep 28, 2023, 11:44:

...Meanwhile I returned to the COD Advanced Warfare (2014) campaign. Damn, Kevin Spacey's performance adds some serious gravitas to that game, but despite his fantastic performance, I find the cut scenes a bit tedious at times, which is why I stopped playing it for a couple of years. Rock solid capped 140fps with max eye candy. I'd forgotten how much fun Exo jumps are in that game. Played a few missions and got back into the groove...

Say what you want about his gross behavior in his past, but the man is an exquisite actor. Given a better script and better dialogue he could have made this game a standout experience.

Well, as a way to enjoy my new RTX 4090, I've restarted my quest to finish playing through every campaign of every Call of Duty game I own. I gave up on COD multiplayer a long time ago.

This adventure has been stymied by Modern Warfare 2023 which, since last update, refuses to finish installing the shaders for the campaign. It just hangs at 7%. According to this Reddit thread I'm not alone: https://www.reddit.com/r/modernwarfare/comments/16phw1m/shaders_never_install_after_recent_update/
I'll try a couple of the tricks they recommend, but may have to wait for a patch. This game looked stunning with RTX on my 3080, put performance was subpar at the visual settings I want, and I'm itching to see how it runs on the 4090.

Meanwhile I returned to the COD Advanced Warfare (2014) campaign. Damn, Kevin Spacey's performance adds some serious gravitas to that game, but despite his fantastic performance, I find the cut scenes a bit tedious at times, which is why I stopped playing it for a couple of years. Rock solid capped 140fps with max eye candy. I'd forgotten how much fun Exo jumps are in that game. Played a few missions and got back into the groove.

I then spun up COD Infinite Warfare (2016), and realized I had never even started this game before. This is the COD in Space game that received poor reviews for it's multiplayer, but hot damn, I have to say the single player campaign is a blast. First off, it has a real good story, and it jumps right into the action. The weapon physics feel good. There is very much a BSG feel to the game. You're based on a Battlestar Galactica type space carrier.

You still have traditional projectile weapons, and some pulse energy weapons, and the energy weapons actually feel like they're firing something, which is hard to pull off in some games. You have to pick the best weapons for the particular mission: energy guns are best when you expect to be up against robots. The grenades are very fun to use. Some are traditional, and some are far out. One is an electric shock grenade that works against both humans and bots, but particularly effective against bots. A seeker grenade that unfolds into a small spider like robot that seeks out enemies, attaches to them and explodes (tons of fun). A black hole projector grenade that sucks enemies into a small black hole. A zero G grenade that negates gravity over an area, rendering the enemies above it helplessly floating out of cover so you can pick them off. The grenades are so much fun.

You fight in a city in the beginning, and then inside ships, facilities on various planets, and yes sometimes in space in zero G. Low grav and zero grav combat is fun, and well done. There are even missions where you pilot a fighter, and the combat for that is also well done.

Curiously it's also the first COD campaign, that I can recall, that is not linear. You choose your mission from a map table that shows current available missions. Some are side missions that just gain you intel and new skills and equipment you capture from the enemy. The intel often makes new missions available. Campaign missions are clearly indicated, and they progress the main story, and the main story is very good. The map table is the one place where the game engine fails to work properly with a wide screen monitor, which is puzzling for a fairly recent game, and they never bothered to patch it. You can't see the whole map table in wide screen. I've googled it, but there's no fix, so I've consigned myself to playing in 2560x1440 instead of 3440x1440.

Graphics are very nice, and I must say that they have really pushed the IW engine to do things it was never meant to (like space combat) and it does it well. Solid capped 140 fps with full eye candy. It's becoming one of my all time fav COD campaigns.

It's worth picking up on sale just for the single player, if the idea of Battlestar Galactica in the COD universe sounds attractive to you. It's ridiculous that they are still charging $60 for that game, when it's almost 7 years old. It's good, and maybe even worth the $60, but with newer COD games out, and the fact that multiplayer was a flop, this should be priced lower.

Edit: Ah, it's $40 for the PC standard edition DVD on Amazon.

This comment was edited on Sep 28, 2023, 12:09.

The buttplug story is so, so ridiculous. Niemann DID cheat, has admitted to some of it, and very strong evidence of much more.

But the whole vibrator thing started as literally a joke twitch comment on GM Eric Hansens stream, where someone jokingly said something like "maybe he used a vibrator buttplug" and Hansen jokingly went "Haha, sure, that would work".

And thats it, thats the basis of the whole story.

It was then picked up by some trash media as "speculation" that he had cheated that way, Elon Musk then got involved an cracked a joke on twitter about it, and now the poor guy has to deny it publicly....

ZandarKoad wrote on Sep 28, 2023, 00:00:
90% Accuracy could be completely abysmal. Accuracy is a terrible metric for evaluating the performance of any AI or ML system. Precision and recall are better, and if two numbers is too much for you, the F1 score is much more meaningful. And quite popular. Personally, I prefer the Matthews Correlation Coefficient (MCC) as it incorporates all four confusion matrix categories (TP, TN, FP, FN). For incredibly important or expensive applications (like space travel), you'll probably want to work out a Area Under the Curve (AUC) for a Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC).

But 90% accuracy sure sounds nice in an article.

Yeah 90% accuracy is misleading. It's like predicting rain with 90% accuracy (though to be fair, meteorologists have gotten a bit better at it). Also, what exactly constitutes "life". I mean, we only know the one type we have encountered so far, I.E. all life on Earth but what if there are other "types" of life out there. No way is an AI advanced enough to detect that shit. I mean we don't even understand the ufo phenomenon, I mean what if that is indicative of another "type" of life, one that is so different from us as to be almost incomprehensible (and unbelievable)?

90% Accuracy could be completely abysmal. Accuracy is a terrible metric for evaluating the performance of any AI or ML system. Precision and recall are better, and if two numbers is too much for you, the F1 score is much more meaningful. And quite popular. Personally, I prefer the Matthews Correlation Coefficient (MCC) as it incorporates all four confusion matrix categories (TP, TN, FP, FN). For incredibly important or expensive applications (like space travel), you'll probably want to work out a Area Under the Curve (AUC) for a Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC).

But 90% accuracy sure sounds nice in an article.

it could also be something as dumb as 'touch this piece - buzz - correct piece'. move here - buzz - correct move. he could totally play it off as evaluating possibilities. you can move pieces around like that as long as you don't let go of them.

Jim wrote on Sep 27, 2023, 16:00:
I find it hard to believe that a vibrating buttplug can be used to provide useful information to a chess grandmaster

I can't beat Blue's comment, but I've read stories about how even a simple single "buzz" indicating an opportunity is available is useful to someone at that level. More complicated codes could convey even more detail. Moving a certain piece to a location is a few chars: Bc4, Nf3, etc.

Burrito of Peace wrote on Sep 27, 2023, 15:40:

Steele Johnson wrote on Sep 27, 2023, 15:17:
Still grinding it out in IT, eh? I'm thinking about retiring way early because I just can't tolerate the "problems I've seen hundred times before but it's always a crisis" nature of it. I'm tired. Now I just want to play music until I'm dead.

For the next 3 months and 3 days, then I am retiring "early" by American standards. Like you, I am completely burned out and done with this field.I know why I was tasked with acquiring the certification and I am glad I will be well away when that shitshow goes down.

I took a nap and ate a ham sandwich

Jim wrote on Sep 27, 2023, 16:00:
I find it hard to believe that a vibrating buttplug can be used to provide useful information to a chess grandmaster

It's been known to help in beating the bishop.

I find it hard to believe that a vibrating buttplug can be used to provide useful information to a chess grandmaster

Steele Johnson wrote on Sep 27, 2023, 15:17:
Still grinding it out in IT, eh? I'm thinking about retiring way early because I just can't tolerate the "problems I've seen hundred times before but it's always a crisis" nature of it. I'm tired. Now I just want to play music until I'm dead.

For the next 3 months and 3 days, then I am retiring "early" by American standards. Like you, I am completely burned out and done with this field.I know why I was tasked with acquiring the certification and I am glad I will be well away when that shitshow goes down.

Burrito of Peace wrote on Sep 27, 2023, 13:09:

The Flying Penguin wrote on Sep 27, 2023, 12:50:
Good morning. I didn't lose my New York business licenses this morning.

How's your day going?

I wrapped up and passed my AWS certification. It wasn't worth the paper it was printed on. However, I didn't pay for it so it's a good day.

Still grinding it out in IT, eh? I'm thinking about retiring way early because I just can't tolerate the "problems I've seen hundred times before but it's always a crisis" nature of it. I'm tired. Now I just want to play music until I'm dead.

STAR WARS 1923.

Well done. Also, creepy.

aka_STEVE wrote on Sep 27, 2023, 15:02:
In a completely Out of the Blue moment... has anyone accidentally typed the wrong address in the browser whilst trying to get here .?

I did this one this morning - https://bluesmews.org/

🤣😹

In a completely Out of the Blue moment... has anyone accidentally typed the wrong address in the browser whilst trying to get here .?

I did this one this morning - https://bluesmews.org/

The Flying Penguin wrote on Sep 27, 2023, 12:50:
Good morning. I didn't lose my New York business licenses this morning.

How's your day going?

I wrapped up and passed my AWS certification. It wasn't worth the paper it was printed on. However, I didn't pay for it so it's a good day.

Good morning. I didn't lose my New York business licenses this morning.

How's your day going?