So I'm trying to calculate how many wither skeletons I have to kill to have a 50% chance of getting a wither skull. The drop rate is 5.5% (aka 0.055)

but (1-p)^n = 0.997, so 1-(1-p^n) is .003 and I'm clearly misunderstanding something...

(stupid low drop rates - I've already killed like 20 wither skeletons, and I technically need 3 skulls)

Port knocking that uses OTPs as ports is pretty secure right?

like both the server & client use a new set of (6) ports every 5 minutes or so

@ConorMancone It's 1-(1-p)^n = 0.5

So for a 5.5% chance of drop, you need to kill 12 for a 50% chance of a drop

If you have killed 20 already, you had a 67% accumulated chance of getting at least one

@ConorMancone I think It is just the overreaction of the incident recently happened in US, I mean seriously?

How can anyone got offend by terms like blacklist or whitelist?

It has nothing to do with race we all know

So renaming these terms make no sense

But If it became standard (which I don't think will ever be) then we can consider it to rename it

@MechMK1 Aaaaahhhhhhh... totally misread what you said. I ended up getting all three of my skulls a bit after I posted. I was starting to worry it was going to take hours and I was going to just give up and cheat :)

@JohnZhau Port knocking is largely unnecessary in the first place. "Good" authentication on the port in question is much more effective and, typically, easier to manage than port knocking.

Port knocking can be useful for hiding services or entire servers. I certainly wouldn't use it for security, but I like hiding stuff.

@ConorMancone I mean, wither skeletons aren't that awful to farm. 5% is still a high drop rate by comparison

@MechMK1 Yeah, I had never actually gotten a wither skull before so I assumed it would take forever. However I'd never tried to farm them before, and I don't spend a ton of time wandering around nether fortresses, so apparently I just got unlucky. I don't think it too me more than 15 minutes to finally get all 3 (although I also had a sword with loot 3, which was new for me)

@ConorMancone I assume you play unmodded?

Man I can't wait for the 19th, when my ex finally leaves Austria

She managed to ruin The Life of Brian for me

@MechMK1 what game is this? I am always willing to add more games to my growing collection of never played games... for lack of time, and hardware...

@ThoriumBR Minecraft

I recommend the FTB Infinity Evolved Modpack

nice!

i never really got interested on it, but everyone seems really addicted to it

It has a bit of everything. Magic, Tech, Exploration...

I've seem people doing crazy things on minecraft, like entire cities, libraries, and so... I've got no time for that

Those are mostly done in creative mode

A modpack like FTB:IE is focussed mostly on progress

Like, build this machine, now you can do X, which allows you to do Y, etc...

the same idea as factorio...

or mindustry

Basically, yes

but a vastly different gameplay

FTB:IE has a bit more exploration and adventure in it

@MechMK1 Yes. I play on the phone - I haven't played "computer" games in a while

@MechMK1 I have to ask: how'd she do that?

@ConorMancone me too... and with an old thinkpad t430 as the gaming device, you guys imagine the games I use to play...

@ConorMancone There is this scene in which Brian sleeps with Judith (or rather, wakes up next to her) and in the morning, opens the window and You can see him naked

ah, and the cake is a lie...

She was like "Ewww oh my god they show him naked!? What the fuck!?"

And when they showed Judith naked, she got really pissed

"Eww why are you watching this!? It's disgusting!"

@ThoriumBR That will always be in my top 10

@MechMK1 At risk of TMI, my wife and I are both quasi-nudists, so naked people (especially in a non-sexual context) are just :meh:

Look it is a person who is missing their outer-outer layer of dermis!

Although the opening in 28 days later still sticks in my mind. I think that was the first time I saw a man's penis in a movie. That isn't something that is really very common, even today

@ThoriumBR I recently upgraded to a Pixel 3a, so that part is not a problem for me - although it doesn't matter. I don't play action games at all. Minecraft is the closest I get. Most of the games I play are puzzle games or old DOS games. I basically have a list I rotate through. So... yeah... I have this phone with pretty decent specs but I use it to run 8bit games in an emulator for a ~40 year old operating system...

my phone is an oneplus 3t, so no hardcore mobile games either

I am usually only playing a game called Resources

I had to look up how old DOS was and realized it's not actually much older than me... somehow that is depressing, lol! At first I was going to put down "20 year old OS" but then I realized that there is no way that could be right. I still haven't gotten used to the fact that the year 2000 was literally 20 years ago.

it is gps-based, so much of the game is lacking now

almost 20 year old is windows xp...

I was recently trying to figure out if I could play that on a switch. I have no way to play it now... so sad.

there's a part of "I, Robot" from Asimov that 20(?) years is a lot when you look to the future, but when you look back you get surprised by how fast it went.

@ThoriumBR As long as we're talking about the book and not the movie. It was an okay movie but as an ardent Issac Assimov reader, that movie literally missed the entire point of every single book the man ever made.

yes, the book... the movie is about someone who got a dozen pages, out of order, was sleep talking about the book, someone heard, and talked very drunk about that to a script writer

I saw the movie before reading the book, and some years later I got the book. man, Asimov would feel so enraged if he saw the movie too...

@ThoriumBR lol, yes, that is about how accurately they expressed his views

it's like the movie Final Fantasy - Spirits Within and the whole Final Fantasy series...

looks like someone made a movie, was lacking a title, and someone had the book on the set... robot, robot, robot.. wait, we have robots on this movie, good! let's call it "I Robot"

They must have had to secure the rights to use that name, so in my book that makes it a shameless money grab. Why work in a particular author's "universe" if you're literally going to change the very core of the stories? Because you're hoping that attaching their name to it will increase sales...

@ConorMancone but generally it only works once

if Asimov fans heard about "I, Robot 2", I doubt they would fill the theaters