2) Space is actually physically (at least) 4-dimensional. We just can't see it with our eyes directly because of our limited perception and brain capacity. Our puny eyes and brains, or any device we can concoct, can only see a 3D slice of the 4D space, because of whatever physical reason.
Or, perhaps, we only see a 3D slice of the 4D spacetime because it's physically impossible to "see" into the time axis. We cannot look at the past or the future and "see" what's there. We can only perceive and measure what's in the current time slice, period, and thus we only see a 3D slice of the entire thing. Being able to detect things outside of the current time slice might break some fundamental ontological physical property, or something.
(Of course GR predicts all kinds of wacky things, even without having to go to QM. Such as a particle going around a black hole inside its ergosphere, and colliding with its past self, creating a paradox.)
If you have a friend who is generally fun to be around but also exhibits some of those traits, pay more attention to them and maybe try to get to know them better. Much like Rick, they might actually be in great pain and longing for human connection.
On the flipside, a friend who almost never laughs, even when everybody else is laughing (eg. because someone said something funny, or something funny happened) may also be an indication of some kind of long-term issue, such as chronic loneliness. Of course it might just be a personality trait, and there's nothing wrong, but it may also be that they don't laugh much because they don't feel like it because they have chronic depression, chronic loneliness, or some other kind of life situation that decreases happiness and sociability in the long run.
How to help such a person is an extraordinarily difficult question, though.
So, essentially, there are two possibilities:
1) Space is not really 4-dimensional (with us merely seeing a 3-dimensional slice of it). It's simply that it just so happens that doing calculations in 4 dimensions simplifies lots of these calculations by a great deal (perhaps somewhat similarly to how complex numbers simplify certain calculations by a lot even though imaginary numbers "don't really exist" (by some definition of "exist").)
2) Space is actually physically (at least) 4-dimensional. We just can't see it with our eyes directly because of our limited perception and brain capacity. Our puny eyes and brains, or any device we can concoct, can only see a 3D slice of the 4D space, because of whatever physical reason.
But this makes me think: If space is truly physically only 3-dimensional, and there is no actual physical tangible fourth "time dimension", would that make what we know, from GR, about the geometry of space a bit weird? How would that work?
When it comes to things like "ADHD" and "high-functioning autism", one should be careful about over-diagnosis and misdiagnosis.
After all, there is no lab test for those things. It's not like they could take a blood sample and test it, or put you in an MRI machine and show that yes, you have it. Diagnosis is based on subjective interpretation of a person's behavior and personality. It oftentimes ends up being the opinion, perhaps even guess by the physician that based on a list of matching characteristics a child has one of those (or a myriad of other things).
That's not to say that those things aren't real psychological phenomena. It's just that they oftentimes tend to be so nebulous and diagnosis based on so much interpretation that misdiagnosis is an ever-present danger. (I think it's rather telling that in some countries "autism" and "ADHD" are diagnosed orders of magnitude more often than in others. I have never heard any explanation about why such a huge difference between countries.)
I have seen people with alleged "high-functioning autism" whose only "problem" to me seems to be a bit of social awkwardness. They may be quite smart and knowledgeable, be able to hold a completely normal intelligent conversation, be able to keep their attention in the current situation and conversation, understanding everything that's being said and being able to respond to everything, and they may be quite skillful and knowledgeable about certain things like hobbies... but they might be a bit socially awkward, sometimes make a fool of themselves, make gaffes and so on.
If a bit of social awkwardness and making a fool of oneself from time to time in social interactions were a sign of "high-functioning autism", then there would be hundreds of millions of them in this world.
Again, I'm not saying it's not a real thing. I just have my doubts in some cases. I don't really know what the difference really is between "high-functioning autism" and introversion and lack of social skills (which are really common traits).
Fastidiousness, laziness, being a workaholic, being a pathological procrastinator, often becoming enthusiastic about a new project but becoming quickly bored of it and never finishing it... All these are quite common traits among human beings. I'm not sure anything can be "diagnosed" from them.
Of course regardless of what the underlying cause is, depression is always a problem, and it can be crippling. Even completely normal healthy people can get seriously depressed sometimes, for whatever reason, or no reason at all. I would guess introverts might get depressed a bit more easily than socially-experienced extroverts, but the latter are not immune either. (Heck, some of the most extrovert people out there may have the worst possible depression episodes imaginable, up to the absolutely worst possible outcome.)
I think games that simulate drifting add an additional level of complexity, as you need to find out if drifting will allow turning the corner faster, and how much of it to apply.
(In real life it appears that whether drifting really helps in turning faster seems to be disputed, and probably depends on the type of car and terrain. From what I have seen, generally, race track cars don't drift, while dirt road rally cars usually do. From this I assume it's highly dependent on the type of road and thus amount of traction.)
Makes me wonder how many viruses particles are needed to infect an average person.
Specially because, according to WHO,
airborne spread has not been reported for COVID-19 and it is not believed to be a major driver of transmission based on available evidence
While it may not be airborne, it spreads through saliva, and microscopic droplets of it can hover in the air and be infectious for quite some time. Also, when they land on surfaces, they can then be caught on people's hands who touch those surfaces, and from there often to the face. This is why they strongly advice to cough and sneeze into your elbow, never into your hand or just open air. (Even if you sneeze facing away from any people, those droplets are going to be airborne for quite some time, and they may land on surfaces.)
How about some interesting (and perhaps scary) facts about viruses an general and SARS-CoV-2 in particular?
The total number of viruses in an infected person at worst is just staggering. One single saliva droplet of a diameter of about ten micrometers contains several hundreds of millions of viruses. I can't even begin to imagine how many of them are there in the entire body.
Why does SARS-CoV-2 attack the lungs in particular? The reason for this is that it can only infect certain types of human cells. Those that are found in the lungs (and a few other places). I think this has something to do with their surface proteins. (Of course they have been naturally selected to infect these particular types of cell because that way the spread much more efficiently.)
Most viruses multiply by invading a cell and inserting their own RNA or DNA into the DNA of the cell (although there are a few viruses that multiply by themselves without this kind of insertion). While not usually, sometimes viruses infect germline cells (cells that produce eggs and sperm), and sometimes these cells end up developing into a viable offspring organism. The viral DNA becomes an integral part of the individual's DNA, which may then be inherited by its offspring. It's estimated that about 5-8% of the human DNA has come from viruses.
If I can make a humble request:
Could we all please keep politics out of this thread (and this entire website)? There's enough political bickering in this world, can we please keep at least this one corner of it free from all that? At least one safe haven of peace and amicable socialization between people.
This thread in particular should be about useful information about the pandemic, and people sharing their own experiences and knowledge of it. It should not be about political bickering and flamewars.
Please.
So on that note, I'm just going to go ahead and list what I consider is the best episode of each season.
Maybe I'll do that too. The problem is, it has been quite many years since I watched the first seasons, so it's hard to remember favorite episodes. I'll just have to go by the episode synopses and try to remember how they were.
Season 1: Hard to choose, given that the first seasons were overall above average. Could be "Call of the Cutie" (because of its fantastic puberty metaphor), or your choice, "Party of One". But just to not choose the same, I'll say "Sonic Rainboom".
Season 2: Really hard to choose, due to several great episodes. "Baby Cakes" was surprisingly enjoyable given how much I usually hate babysitting episodes in cartoons. "It's About Time" is one of the better Twilight-centric episodes. But I'll go with "A Friend in Deed", as an even better Pinkie-centric character establishing episode.
Season 3: I suppose "Magic Duel" isn't a bad choice, but if I had to choose something different, I suppose the pilot double episode wasn't bad. Or "Too Many Pinkie Pies".
Season 4: "Maud Pie" hands down.
Season 5: "Amending Fences" hands down. Easily one of the top 3 episodes of the entire series.
Season 6: Such a forgettable season, so hard to choose a good episode. Let's say "No Second Prances".
Season 7: I suppose "The Perfect Pear" was nice.
Season 8: I hated "The Maud Couple" significantly less than I was expecting at the beginning of the episode. It was actually quite ok.
Season 9: I suppose "She Talks to Angel" was ok.
There's a fan hypothesis that Applejack's and Rainbow Dash's elements have somehow been inadvertently switched around by the authors of the show. It should be Applejack who espouses loyalty and Dash who espouses honesty.
Season 9 once again demonstrates how even the writers seem to think so. In episode 4 Applejack seems to have no problems in making up a completely fictitious background story for herself (which is another example among several of a clash with her supposed honesty), and in episode 15 Dash shows a great deal of disloyalty towards the cheerleading team (while being brutally honest the entire time, even to the point of being a jerkass).
If Applejack were the loyal one and Dash the honest one, these would make complete sense. The way it officially is, doesn't.
Please don't do categories that you shouldn't be doing when you can't even complete a single game that actually shows your TASing ability.
This response sounds a bit harsh and inappropriate to me. Why are you discouraging people from following their passion? If he wants to make a TAS that's his prerogative. Who are you to ask him not to do it?
It seems that it has become the most successful video game based movie in its opening weekend (surpassing the previous record holder, Detective Pikachu), and I think even its first week.
It's nice that their listening to the fans actually paid off. It gives a good message to Hollywood.
I get what the first, second, third and fourth dimensions are, but can someone explain to me what those fifth, sixth, seventh dimensions etc are?
I can't answer that question, but I find it interesting how difficult it is for the human brain (well, at least for my brain, as I can only speak for myself) to comprehend the concept of more than 3 dimensions.
Even though technically speaking we can only see a two-dimensional projection of the world (albeit a stereoscopic one), it's very easy for the human brain to comprehend and visualize three-dimensionality. Even in two-dimensional pictures, which are nothing but perspective projections of a three-dimensional object, our pattern recognition logic can make deductions of what kind of three-dimensional shape it is. We can also easily imagine, form a mental picture, of a three-dimensional object (eg. based on a description).
In mathematics, geometry, there's no reason to limit oneself to three dimensions, however. The three is just a completely arbitrary number, for what math is concerned. It could be four, ten, or a million dimensions. But immediately when we go above three dimensions, it becomes extraordinarily hard for the human brain to comprehend what it means, or to visualize it. We essentially cannot visualize, form a mental picture, of what a four-dimensional object is like. We just lack that capacity. A mathematician can describe mathematical properties of such an object, but that doesn't really help visualize it.
Of course four-dimensional objects can be physically visualized, but this is only possible by dropping one of the dimensions, usually by "projecting" the four-dimensional object onto a "three-dimensional canvas" of sorts (very similarly to how a photograph is a projection of a three-dimensional scene onto a two-dimensional canvas). Some information will be inevitably lost in this projection, so we don't get the full picture of what's going on. And when this object is animated, for example rotated, this three-dimensional projection seemingly acts in all kinds of weird ways (not dissimilar to how a projection of a three-dimensional object onto a two-dimensional canvas behaves when the object is rotated). It may also cause lots of unintuitive things, like two four-dimensional objects seemingly going through each other even though in four-dimensional space they never touch (which, again, is similar to what happens to the projection of two three-dimensional moving objects on a two-dimensional canvas).
When it comes to physics, it becomes even more confusing when they talk about three spatial dimensions and a fourth "time" dimension. What does that even mean? Is the fourth dimension an actual spatial dimension or not? Is it just an abstract concept, a mathematical tool for calculations, or is it a real-world tangible thing? What's the meaning of this? Can two objects be at different locations in this "time dimension"? If yes, what does that mean? What is the "fourth dimension" of an object? If an object rotates in these four dimensions, what happens? Is it even possible?
And then, when we start talking about even higher mathematical dimensions, we can throw all understanding out the window. If our brains have difficult time comprehending what a mathematical four-dimensional object or space is like, how much harder it is to understand even higher-dimensional objects...
(especially the ones that are not used in the unassisted speedrun because they are not feasible for humans to do consistently).
The only tricks in this game that humans can't do are z- and a- slides.
I said "for humans to do consistently". In other words, the tricks that could theoretically be used in the (old) any% but aren't used because they are too difficult to do consistently enough, such as the Mido skip. Or jumping directly from the top level inside Deku Tree onto the skulltula that glitches you out of bounds (for the GIM glitch).
There's also a couple of FPSs along those lines, although I forget what they're called.
I wonder if you are thinking of Superhot (which is based on the idea that time advances only when you move, and as fast as you move, so you can control the speed of passage of time by moving faster or slower, or remaining completely immobile).
It's very slightly like a "TAS game" (and quite fun), but not really to the extent I'm thinking.
This discussion reminded me of an idea that I think has been thrown in the past. Why hasn't anybody created a game that's quite directly based on TASing?
In other words, it could be something like a platformer that you could play in real-time if you really wanted, but is so astonishingly hard that it's essentially impossible for a human to play (eg. because it requires dozens of consecutive frame-perfect inputs, which is essentially impossible for a human to do), and the core idea is that the game, as a core game mechanic, offers TAS tools to advance in the game (frame advance, rewinding, savestates, etc) and the idea is to pass each level like that, and once you have done it, it will replay in real-time the TAS you just created.
When you have finished the entire game like this, you could watch a replay of all of it. And of course there could be an online leaderboard of who makes a fastest completion.
There might be some games that are somewhat like that, but in a rather limited way (eg. being able to slow down and rewind, but no other tools and with no replay after you pass a level), but I'm not aware of a game that's full-on like this.
What it comes down to is that nobody was motivated to do such a TAS and that Dolphin's TAS tools are kinda shitty certainly didn't help.
That's the impression I got as well. In other words, the fact that the (previous) any% route only worked on the Wii, not on the N64 (where the game just crashes), discouraged people from even bothering, perhaps because the Wii emulators are much less polished and convenient for TASing than the N64 emulators.
I would still love to see the non-ACE any% route TASed on the Wii emulator, but especially after this discovery I doubt that's ever going to happen (unless, perhaps, significant major improvements are done to the available TAS tools).
Why didn't you make a TAS if you really wanted to see one? Was somebody holding a gun to your head?
Incidentally, I did start making a TAS of OoT on the Wii some time ago, just to see how easy it would be. I got all the way to the sword and back to the main kokiri forest area, before I got a desync. I got quite frustrated at how inconvenient the TASing was using Dolphin (at least back then; I don't know if it has been improved since). I also noticed at this point that I hadn't turned off the emulation of the other 3 controllers, making the recording file really large, as well as some other minor settings that could have hindered the TAS. Essentially it was a situation where it would have been better to just start over from scratch, so I got discouraged.
It didn't especially help that I'm not exactly an OoT speedrunning expert, and I have very little knowledge of the internal details of most of the tricks, routes and glitches (especially the ones that are not used in the unassisted speedrun because they are not feasible for humans to do consistently). All these tricks and techniques can be seen in the unofficial N64 TAS (ie. the one that uses the (previous) any% route that normally crashes the console, but doesn't crash the emulator for some reason), and require a level of technical knowledge way beyond of what I have, or have time or willingness to research. An expert OoT speedrunner knows all these techniques to the utmost technical detail, but I'm not such a person.
The currently published run is pretty close to perfect with what was possible before ACE was found. As evidenced by the fact that it was even faster than RTA runs that used GIM on VC. So not sure what excuses you are refering to.
For a really, really long time nobody has been willing to make a TAS for the Wii VC version of the game. In some cases I have seen the strangest of reasons stated for that, such as "it would be boring because it would just be the same as the normal speedrun, just a bit faster" (which is ludicrous because as seen from the unofficial invalid N64 TAS, the TAS would be quite different). It's the only game I know of that nobody is interested of making a TAS of, because of such a silly reason.
But now that the new strat is actually doable on a N64, maybe now somebody would be willing to finally bring the TAS to the current decade (if the major hurdle has always been the need to make it a Wii TAS instead of a N64 one).
How can you not intend copyright infringement when you’re literally just reuploading his video? Your intentions do not matter if your actions contradict it.
I don't think it has been tested by any court exactly what the copyright status of a video recording of a tool-assisted speedrun is. I'm not even aware of any copyright lawyer having expressed an opinion on the subject (although some might have at some point).
The thing is, it's complicated.
The button press file itself quite unambiguously falls under copyright, as it's non-trivial original work. However, a video recording of the game being played by it is not the same thing as the button press file.
The problem is, the video recording itself contains 100% copyrighted material... but not owned by the author of the TAS. The material is owned by whichever company owns the IP rights to that particular game.
Fair use does not apply when a video reproduction shows extensive sections of a copyrighted material, like a video game, especially when there is no commentary or other kind of original content. (Even when there is something like commentary, the extent to which the copyrighted material is displayed still may exclude it from falling under fair use, depending on the judge.) But even if fair use did apply, that doesn't mean that the copyright is somehow transferred to the TAS author. The copyright, rather obviously, still remains with the original IP owners.
So yes, technically speaking all video recordings of tool-assisted speedruns are copyright infringement that do not fall under fair use (because they show too much of the game with no original content, such as commentary). We are lucky that the vast majority of IP owners are fine with it and generally don't issue takedown requests or sue anybody over it. (If they did, AFAIK they would be legally fully allowed to do so. Again, fair use does not apply when the original material is used to this extent. And even then, fair use is a defense in court, it's not a protection. They can still sue you, no matter how "fair use" it may be.)
We are in really muddy waters when a TAS author issues a copyright strike to another person for reuploading the video recording of a TAS. Who says that the TAS author actually owns copyright to that video recording? Has this been tested in court? Has a judge or copyright lawyer given their opinion on the matter? (Anybody here who would claim that yes, the TAS author owns copyright to the video, unless you are a copyright attorney, or a judge specialized in copyright law, your personal opinion means nothing, sorry. Sure, that applies to me as well, as I am not a laywer or judge. None of our opinions matter at all on this subject. I'm just expressing what I understand about copyright law.)
Reuploading the video might be technically speaking copyright infringement, but not against the TAS author, but against the IP owners of the game itself. The TAS author has no business talking or taking action on behalf of the company that owns the game. Most certainly he has no business claiming copyright on something that he might not have rights to (unless, as said, it has been clearly determined that it does fall under his copyright ownership.)
In other words, this may well be a spurious non-enforceable takedown.
You should ALWAYS ask for permission from the author before you re-upload their work to be publically viewed.
That may be so, but as far as any of us knows, it's indeed a "should", not a "must". It's polite to ask for permission, but it might not be a legal requirement.
