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Posts
121
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782
Joined
3 yr. ago

Formerly /u/Zagorath on the alien site.

  • Soccer: don't use penalty shootouts to break ties. Penalities are a weird little minigame that don't really represent the most important skills of soccer, which are things like field position and control of the ball.

    I'm open to suggestions on what should be done to break ties, but I like the idea of golden point where, if a goal is not scores after a certain amount of time, the number of players on the field starts gradually decreasing. So after 5 minutes of golden point, you drop to 10 vs 10, after 10 minutes it's 9 vs 9, down to a minimum of like 5 vs 5. Fewer players will tend to benefit the attacking team, making scoring more likely as it goes on.

    Also soccer, as well as rugby union: just use the fucking clock. When the clock we see on the TV screen reaches 90 (or 80), that's it. Game over. Adjustments due to stoppage time etc. should be made at that time and transparent for everyone to see, by pausing the clock then and there, and resuming it when play resumes. Not added on at the end.

    Edit: actually, it seems like rugby union might have already adopted this? I'm not too sure, because I'm a rugby league fan myself, which has always done it the right way (or at least always in my lifetime).

    1. Wait, how does the back foot no ball cause players stress? I thought that rule mostly impacts spin bowling, but it's fast bowlers who are at greatest risk of knee injury.
    2. Come on. You can't leave us hanging like that! At least name a few of the changes you'd suggest.
    3. See above
    4. Strongly agree. Batsmen are able to get an advantage by proceeding up the pitch early. Mankadding is required to even the playing field. Imagine in baseball if sneaking a base was allowed, but not pitchers getting you out for it!
    5. Strong disagree. There's enough evolution of the ball over the course of a test as it is. We don't need artificial substances any more than triathletes need to start allowing steroids.
    6. Strong disagree, with the exception that maybe they could make allowances for genuine injuries, if there's a safeguard preventing abuse of that. Creating a good team composition with a balance of the right kinds of players for the match is a core part of cricket. Allowing substitutions to cricket would be like if rugby started doing the gridiron thing of swapping out defensive and offensive teams.

    As far as format rules go: I'd ban anything shorter than ODI. T20 and the IPL in particular are ruining cricket, with too many young players learning that style and becoming worse cricketers unable to adapt to the truest form of the game. The way the media went on and on about Sam Konstas because of his showboaty shitty T20 play style. Never mind that Webster, who debuted in the same series as an all-rounder to Konstas' specialist batsman averaged significantly more.

    The only other rule that immediately comes to mind is one I've been told is being addressed. The ridiculous boundary catch rule. You shouldn't be allowed to jump from outside the boundary to keep the ball alive. Spectacular jumps from inside the boundary, throwing it back over the rope from outside before landing, either to another player or to yourself if you're able to get back in the field of play, are awesome. Hopping while continuously outside the field of play is not. Thankfully, I've heard they're fixing this soon, if they haven't already.

  • That sounds interesting. Do you recall the name?

  • It's not quite the same thing (particularly because of the motivation), but, uhh…I suggest you read about Abu Simbel, if you haven't already.

  • The front of it presumably is. But the back, that we're looking at, seems to be in shade.

  • What room? It looks like we're looking at the back of an object that's facing out into bright sunlight.

  • I actually really like the black black. And they didn't use red red (assuming that term is supposed to mean FF0000); it's quite a dull red, which I find works quite well. I prefer the high contrast mode though, with white white on black black, rather than slightly lower-contrast light grey text. I'm told it's apparently evidence-based to use the lower-contrast version, but it doesn't appeal to me.

    Though I will say I intensely dislike the use of underline styling on "WRONG". Underline, on the web, has universally come to be a signal of a hyperlink, and should almost never be used otherwise. It also uses some much nicer colours for both unclicked and visited hyperlinks.

  • The most important difference between 1 and 2 is, IMO, the width limiter. You can actually read the source yourself, it's extremely simple hand-written HTML & (inline) CSS. max-width:650px; stops you needing to crane your head. It also has slightly lower contrast, which I'm told is supposedly better for the eyes according to some studies, but personally I don't really like as much, which is why "Best" is my favourite, since it has a little button to toggle between light mode and dark mode, or between lower and maximum contrast.

  • The original is terrible. It works ok on a phone, but on a wide computer screen it takes up the full width, which is terrible for readability.

    If you don't like the colours, the "Best" lets you toggle between light mode and dark mode, and toggle between lower and higher contrast. (i.e., between black on white, dark grey on light grey, light grey on dark grey, or white on black)

  • I'm usually pretty good at shifting between the two ways to perceive optical illusions. But for this one I cannot see anything but white and gold. Even knowing that it's actually blue and black, I still see it as that.

  • am I part of the joke here??? It's clearly blue and black...

    The objective fact is…it is a blue and black dress. Other photos of the same dress show that.

    But I cannot, for the life of me, see how anyone can possibly get that from this photo. Sample the RGB values all you want and it clearly is not black in this photo. The exposure and white balance have messed around with it so much it is incomprehensible to me how anyone can see it as blue and black.

  • Yeah I think this one became particularly tricky and wormed its way into a lot of people's minds even who would otherwise be wary of it, because even Labor and the Greens stood in favour of it (with some minor tweaks), due to poor tech literacy.

  • Happy cake day!

    I'd be happy for the Australian government to take them to task over this one. But I'm afraid you've fallen for Murdoch propaganda with the journalism thing.

    They weren't "using our journalism". They provide a direct benefit to the news organisations. It's a mostly symbiotic relationship, with people going to Google and Facebook because it's a good way to find news that interests them, and news organisations being funnelled traffic directly to them for free. But honestly, if money should be flowing in any direction, it's to Google and Meta. The financial benefit for news organisations of the existing relationship is far greater for news organisations than it is for Google and Meta. People would still be Googling things and sharing on Facebook even if news didn't make up part of that.

    Jeff Jarvis is a great thinker and communicator in this space, and he moderates a great discussion on the topic here. About 34 minutes into the video they hear from a QUT professor who is pretty scathing towards the NMBC.

  • I remember spending hours tinkering with Linux in my bedroom as a kid

    I feel like the environment of subject-specific forums and IRC chat that Millennial geeks grew up with is very different from the centralised, generic, algorithm-driven social media that Gen Z grew up with, and non-geeky Millennials, Gen X, and Boomers adopted in the late aughts & '10s. That was really the best of what social media could do, with far fewer of the unhealthy downsides.

  • Late last year Australia passed a ban for the use of social media of under-16s. In principle I think this is a really good idea.

    Unfortunately they rushed it through without any thought as to how it would actually work in terms of age verification. It's now been 6 months, which means we're 6 months away from when it's supposed to come into effect, and we still don't have any idea how it's actually supposed to work. But the principle behind it: the idea that social media is actually really not healthy for our brains, especially at a young and vulnerable age, is a sound one. And there's only more and more research coming out to support that.

  • Might be interesting, but I'm not taking conspiracy theories (to be clear: this is a conspiracy theory. Even if it's true, it's a theory about a conspiracy.) from the Nazi blogging website seriously.

  • Omg thanks for linking that thread. The amount of removed and deleted content on Lemmy is so frustrating. I hate the fact that removed or deleted posts also completely nuke all the comments on it.

    Reddit's approach is so much better in this respect. A removed post removed the OP's text, but if it's a link post the link remains, and all the comments remain.

  • That's definitely at least a 2nd rank spell.