The Bridge

GnomeSlice

3:03 AM

2

Q: In Aqueduct, how do I solve the 12th puzzle in room 5?

Please give the solution.

^ Should this get a spoiler tag? ^

GnomeSlice

5:07 AM

15

Q: What's the most efficient usage of the golden mushroom in Mario Kart 64?

When you get an golden mushroom (the orange one) in Mario Kart 64, should you repeatedly press the Z button as quickly as possible, or should you delay it a bit in order to maximize the boost you get from the mushroom?

nintendo-64 mario-kart-64

^ I want a real answer. I'm not sure if mine is right or not.

GnomeSlice

6:00 AM

Bah.

Mechko

?

badp

7:56 AM

:15303 if you get a golden mushroom put it in a vase and let it grow. Peel the surface from time to time. Get rich and finally buy Nintendo.

Then claim yourself supreme victor of Mario Kart 64

additionally release Mario Wario Luigi Yoshi Zelda and pals to the general public while you're at it so they're forced to come up with something new :P

Oak

8:52 AM

@badp, if you retag a question and the user reverts it back, please don't carry on editing his question in a similar way, it really opens the door to edit wars.

Oak

At least try to reach a conclusion in comments before further editing.

badp

9:08 AM

:15312 um when was that?

:15312 dl.dropbox.com/u/1164414/SO/…

also I edited the question title because it clearly wasn't attracting enough people to read it

I'm sorry in believing there only was only one kind of blackjack-like-but-still-not-blackjack minigame (Caravan) in Fallout, chat discussion in previous days led me to believe so.

Oak

Thing is, you edited "caravan" in, then the OP edited it out

Oak

... and then you edited it in again

Oak

(not in tags but in title)

badp

:15319 I didn't know it was edited out tbh

I don't obsessive compulsively check on everything I edit for rollbacks

Oak

Sure, but you understand why it may open the door to an edit war

Oak

9:18 AM

brb, someone walked into my office

badp

later

Oak

9:47 AM

@badp sorry 'bout that, pesky students

Oak

:)

badp

10:00 AM

no problem, I'm doing my own grinding :)

Oak

Anyway @badp I see what you mean, if you didn't notice the tag being edited out then editing the title was a natural way to continue improving that question; it's just that the way to was carried seems to me like you insist of injecting "caravan" into the question even though the OP explicitly removed it.

Oak

I guess I was wrong :)

badp

no worries, I was wrong too

Oak

Now that it's all sorted out, time for lunch! Bye!

GnomeSlice

12:15 PM

:15315 +1 for freehand circles.

badp

:15333 obliged

Arda Xi

@badp Why'd you remove the gambling tag btw?

badp

because, um, you're not actually gambling real money.

Arda Xi

It's still gambling

GnomeSlice

Fallout isn't really what I would classify as a 'gambling' game.

Arda Xi

12:20 PM

It's Vegas even, in a casino

GnomeSlice

I think that applies more to, say, a Poker game, or something.

Like virtual Yahtzee.

badp

anyway, the blackjack tag should be enough :P

Arda Xi

I guess

GnomeSlice

I find it amusing that my most recent question has more than a hundred more views than any others of mine.

Arda Xi

Gambling is messed up in New Vegas anyway

I normal casinos you leave with less money than you arrived, right?

badp

12:27 PM

in normal casinos you don't have luck manipulation either.

bbl

Arda Xi

Luck manipulation never played a large role in me putting 50 caps in and leaving with over 1000 every time

GnomeSlice

New Vegas.

Arda Xi

All the NCR soldiers complain about losing caps

GnomeSlice

You should show 'em how it's done.

Arda Xi

Winning at Caravan is also easy

I think the devs didn't really pay much attention to the AI

GnomeSlice

12:31 PM

No one does anymore.

kongregate.com/games/Rogerup/momiga

Arda Xi

I love games with depth

GnomeSlice

Once I won, I just had a black screen.... :(

That game has excellent story.

badp

the AI should be dumb, or you won't stand a chance :P

GnomeSlice

12:48 PM

I'm tempted to ask another question about a flash game, but I think I've done enough already...

Although, I guess I've only asked one so far...

But I've been asking pretty obscure stuff, as it is...

badp

1:09 PM

in The Tavern (General) on Meta Stack Overflow Chat, 19 hours ago, by radp

AutoExec - WM-01 - Wheelmate Steering Wheel Desk Tray - Gray -

AutoExec

Introducing the AutoExec WM-01 Wheelmate Steering Wheel Desk Tray - Gray - , featured in our Other Vehicle Parts department. This product generally ships within 2 business day(s) from Pinellas Park, Florida, and weighs 2 pound(s). Attaches to your steering wheel for easy access to a writing and drink storage surface. The Go Office Wheel Mate Steering Wheel Desk is flat for writing and perfect for lunch or a snack. This Go Office Wheel Mate Steering Wheel Desk stores neatly in your car when used with the larger Auto Exec Laptop Car Desk. For safety reasons, never use this product while driving. Easily convert your car into your personal automobile office with the Wheel Mate car desk by MobileOffice.

in The Tavern (General) on Meta Stack Overflow Chat, 19 hours ago, by radp

look at the customer pictures.

GnomeSlice

0_0

I like the one with the car inside the roof of a house...

'Wi-Fi is as easy to access as if you were in your house or place of business.'

Heh.

Arda Xi

Yay, with Fallout I finally have more questions I can answer!

GnomeSlice

+1 for [edutainment] tag.

Arda Xi

"Will games like (Super) Scribblenauts work on 'em?"

I'm not sure we can answer this

GnomeSlice

Game-rec, for sure.

Arda Xi

1:18 PM

reverse game-rec too

GnomeSlice

1:34 PM

:15368 As if I just went and looked at all 11 pages of those...

badp

as if I didn't.

GnomeSlice

Is this a real product?

Brant

2:27 PM

Yay, my first Gaming.SE captcha

Clearly this means I haven't been trying hard enough.

badp

:)

:15387 yup!

sjohnston

I get that pretty much constantly due to my compulsive re-editing immediately following a post...

Brant

Yeah, no matter how much I look at the preview, I never notice any errors or potential improvements until after I submit something.

I like the way SE merges edits if they take place in rapid succession, it makes me look less incompetent.

badp

in Chat feedback, 17 hours ago, by Marc Gravell

We'd like to move gaming. Probably tomorrow. We want to consolidate chat down a bit.

sjohnston

:15396 yes!

Brant

2:44 PM

they're merging us? noooo!

badp

:/

Brant

I like our little cabal^H^H^H^H^Hcommunity

Arda Xi

We deserve our own site for chat, to host the one chatroom we're active in!

Brant

Heh. Yeah, actually, it does make perfect sense

sjohnston

:15402 I use several chats

Arda Xi

2:45 PM

:15404 We're not exactly active in any others

Brant

It might be nice to get some actual talk in Minecraft Talk

sjohnston

What advantage does merging chats offer? The whole point of SE 2.0 is building communities, and having your own space is a big part of that.

While the functionality may be essentially the same, it still feels different

Brant

I think that the size of the chat.gaming group is small enough that it would actually benefit from some spillover from the wider chat.se crowd.

badp

To be fair we should retain our look and feel. For the one main room.

Side rooms will have the generic SE branding unless a mod is poked.

Brant

Well, it's changeable at least, so that's alright with me.

badp

2:54 PM

However, chat.AskUbuntu does not get merged.

sjohnston

interesting

Brant

I wonder how it'll handle the easter egg

badp

YOU WILL NEED AN HTML 5 ENABLED BROWSER TO CHAT HERE FROM "TOMORROW". INTERNET EXPLORER 7 AND OPERA MOBILE DO NOT COUNT.

6

sjohnston

You know, I think the thing that annoys me about changes like this is that none of it comes down in any official way. I just find out randomly when badp mentions it in chat.

Brant

:15416 Screw IE.

sjohnston

3:02 PM

(Or if it does, it seems to be after the fact).

badp

:15418 I use Opera Mobile however.

Brant

Oh. Well, that's no good.

I can make allowances in my cynical web developer's brain for mobile browsers, but if you're using an old version of IE, I'm still required to hate you.

It comes with the job. Nothing personal.

badp

There's an upsite to this however. We should get to have our 39.5k messages' backlog from chat.MSO

That'll look good on our user profiles, as the Gaming domination of everything procrastination is bestowed upon the world for everyone to see!

Brant

If anything they should be merging with us.

4

LessPop_MoreFizz

3:20 PM

@badp Stop mucking with questions you don't understand! :P

badp

:15427 Tsk, I don't screw up. Usually :P

LessPop_MoreFizz

You've confused Blackjack with caravan twice now! In the same question!

badp

:15429 and I blame you!

and your overly clear explanation of chat of how Caravan really is blackjack.

How was I to assume New Vegas also had regular blackjack?

LessPop_MoreFizz

Because it's VEGAS.

badp

:15415 I don't think there'll be problem there.

:15433 It's New Vegas. Games evolve over time. It'd be unreasonable to expect otherwise.

tzenes

3:50 PM

Am I the only one who doesn't mind getting moved back?

badp

:15438 I have a rational reason for minding it.

tzenes

can you enlighten me? Perhaps I would share it if I knew of it

badp

I use Opera Mobile on my mobile :/

I don't have any other chance really

No HTML 5 enabled browsers for Symbian.

tzenes

ok, but that'd be the same problem if they rolled out the new HTML 5 on here

badp

:15444 no, the html 5 thing is specific to chat.SE

tzenes

3:52 PM

Yeah, but probably wasn't pushed to here because they were planning on removing this

badp

no, chat.MSO / chat.SU / chat.SF / chat.AU won't be affected.

tzenes

I imagine if we had kept chat.gaming, we'd see html 5 here

badp

See, the HTML 5 part is global login.

tzenes

I'd give it time

I'm sure they'll get it eventually

We'll probably all end up with similar log in mechanisms

badp

uh, no

site-specific chats just get the parent site cookies

SE chat needs the global login to log you in.

tzenes

3:54 PM

cookies also work cross site

Brant

See, if there was an XMPP interface to chat, blah blah blah blah blah

tzenes

they talked about it in one of the SO podcasts

badp

:15456 if that was reliable, global login wouldn't have been written to begin with

tzenes

or maybe it is, just not as reliable

or maybe there is some other reason its better

sjohnston

from what jeff has said, it worked everywhere except safari

tzenes

3:55 PM

in either case moving toward a global login for all sites makes sense for SO as a company

sjohnston

(cookies that is)

badp

global cookies work everywhere? That's quite troubling.

tzenes

did you hear about the program which steals cookies over wifi?

that's way scarier

Brant

Firesheep

tzenes

you want to talk about scary

badp

3:57 PM

:15466 unrelated, that's just traffic sniffing

Brant

It doesn't do anything that hasn't been possible since like 2003, but it's packaged up and automated nicely.

tzenes

I realize its unrelated

but very scary

Brant

It's ALWAYS been scary

tzenes

@Brant and WEP has been broken for 5 years, WPA for 3

Brant

WPA2 is still good though, right?

As long as you're not using AES?

tzenes

3:58 PM

"Officially"

which is to say, people haven't published the idiots guide to PKIP yet

Arda Xi

I love how everyone is suddenly scared about Firesheep while this was possible (and done) for years already.

tzenes

I imagine if you're not running over HTTPS there really isn't anyway you can currently secure your traffic

this is why we need encryption at the TCP level

Arda Xi

If you're running on a public WiFi you could route your connection through a VPN/proxy

tzenes

well, that and packet throttling

badp

no, the attack to WPA2 is very limited. You need to have access to the network to begin with, for example.

Arda Xi

4:01 PM

:15486 You always need access to a WiFi network to attack it.

tzenes

I'm sure the nice folks at defcon will tell you its not that limited

Arda Xi

By the way, I guess I missed something, what does the new chat require from HTML5?

Brant

I was wondering the same thing

tzenes

@badp not to get too far off topic though, I do realize it sucks that you can't use Opera, and that Symbian is so bad noone has put out a better browser for it

We're moving to chat.se. To access our profiles from here the global login uses HTML 5

badp

:15487 the thing is, that attack does not give you access

tzenes

4:05 PM

HTML5 isn't compatible with every browser

badp

You need it to begin with.

tzenes

... or ratified

badp

There are WEP attacks that give you access.

Brant

:15492 chat.se actually

tzenes

oh my bad

badp

4:05 PM

:15488 I took part in the qualifies btw :P

the point remains

:15489 global login

:15500 how was it?

in General, 16 hours ago, by Michael Mrozek

@Brant Exactly; I think it's just SO, SF, SU, MSO, and here

Arda Xi

:15502 That's not a HTML5 feature.

badp

4:06 PM

:15503 some of the challenges were crazy hard.

:15505 It relies on local storage. stackauth.com

Arda Xi

:15493 It kinda does.

tzenes

eg?

StrixVaria

@badp Aren't cookies local storage?

Arda Xi

:15510 No, the LocalStorage API was introduced in HTML5

tzenes

@Strix yes, but this is a different kind

Arda Xi

4:07 PM

It works much better than cookies as long as you don't need to access them server-side directly.

StrixVaria

So it's like fancy cookies

badp

:15509 One of the 200 points challenges involved reversing an Haiku executable

Arda Xi

Pretty much.

Brant

HTML5 local storage lets you dump a bunch of name/value pairs in a client-side database

Arda Xi

Which is exactly what cookies let you do, for the record.

Brant

4:09 PM

Oh yeah. Well, the difference is, they aren't automatically transferred to the server on each request.

Arda Xi

Exactly.

tzenes

:15515 how big?

Arda Xi

It wouldn't be hard to fall back to cookies for unsupported browsers though

badp

:15521 I don't recall the specifics, I was hoping for some Python challenges really. There was exactly one and it was solved while I was asleep.

tzenes

haha

well its python, its designed to be written while half awake

that's the mark of a good language

badp

4:11 PM

Python byte code, not so much

tzenes

oo

Brant

:15522 I'm guessing the reason for using local storage is that dealing with cross-domain cookies is a massive pain in the butt, but I know nothing about the implementation.

tzenes

I should have seen that coming

Arda Xi

:15529 It wouldn't be really, just set up a script on stackauth.com and access the cookies using XHR.

tzenes

could be worse though

could be some poorly designed lisp-like bytecode

@Brant the issue is that they feel cookies are unreliable

badp

4:13 PM

yeah, dis does a nice job.

tzenes

I don't know how much I agree with that statement, but I'm also not running a large corporation burning VC money

badp

37

A: How does SO's new auto-login feature work?

I'm going to provide more than just the technical details here, as I think there are alot of implicit assumptions about global login that aren't quite correct out there. Accordingly, this is going to be really long. Design Requirements A user having logged into any SE-site will be automatic...

Brant

oh, neat.

tzenes

> A browser as popular as Safari just plain not working with any third-party cookie scheme just kills the entire technology for us.

this is a funny statement

> we cannot trust the user despite acting on their behalf

but it makes perfect sense

also brb

badp

absolutely. Users can't be trusted when malicious javascript can be run on their behalf...

Brant

4:18 PM

I'd just change that to "Users can't be trusted, ever"

Arda Xi

Fun thing is, it's even broken on the latest Chrome

badp

uh? if it was I wouldn't get to chat on chat.SE right now

Arda Xi

I can get on any SE site and not be logged in.

Despite being logged in on SO, SU, Gaming.SE

badp

Global login won't register you, btw

Try logging in on chat.stackexchange.com

Arda Xi

Welcome to stackexchange.com chat! You'll need 20 reputation to talk here. This site is moderated by the community, so please be respectful of your fellow stackexchange.com users. And while you're at it, check out the FAQ!

badp

4:21 PM

That's normal, logged in users get that too...

Brant

I had to go to stackexchange.com and log off, then on again, before chat.SE would recognize me

Arda Xi

:15553 It's the only message I get.

badp

:15554 yeah, I had to do that too.

Arda Xi

I have, on rare occasions, got something like "Welcome <username>!"

badp

:15555 Then join a room and follow login links that may appear

and if that should fail:

chat.meta.stackoverflow.com/rooms/296/login-problems-on-chat-se

Arda Xi

4:23 PM

Weird. After navigating the site a bit it suddenly logged me in

But that still doesn't explain why visiting eg. Server Fault doesn't log me in

LessPop_MoreFizz

2

sjohnston

ha

Arda Xi

It's funny, if you use OpenID the need for SSL yourself becomes negated. As long as you make sure that authcookies can't be stolen, you can let the user worry about security.

tzenes

4:44 PM

@badp I finally read your comment here: meta.gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/562/…

what on earth are you talking about?

I realize I'm about 3 months too late

badp

prevously I maintained there was a difference between mod development that involved writing code and mod development that involved using ingame editors (map editors, etc.)

and called the former changing values in data structures

tzenes

ah

but I think my answer suggests we shouldn't be concerned with either

not that I agree with that statement

that was 3 months ago

badp

yeah. 3 months ago I thought gamedev would refuse map editor questions

They said everything goes so meh.

tzenes

3 months ago I though game-rec was a good thing...

GnomeSlice