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  1. Ukerric

    The Astronomy Thread

    That's because you tend to think of the filter as something ahead. Each filter ends more stuff than a civilization; the first ends entire worlds. It's just hard to think about it because we obviously have passed it. My personal two "old" filter candidates: - Complex life. Life arose fast...
  2. Ukerric

    The Astronomy Thread

    It's more like reproduction than exodus. Unless there's scientific/technological advances far beyond what we expect, you will never emigrate any meaningful % of a civilization to another planet, in this system or another. The only thing you can do is create a daughter civilization somewhere...
  3. Ukerric

    The Astronomy Thread

    No, but you can put a reasonable cap. A mathematical paper came out a couple years (a decade?) ago. They ran monte-carlo models, and put a cap on the numbers of technological civilizations expected on our Galaxy. 8. If there were more than 8 active civilizations in our light cone across the...
  4. Ukerric

    The Astronomy Thread

    That's a matter of semantics. When we talk about civilizations in this galaxy, every factor counts. Every factor that is near-zero is equally useful to explain why there's no civilization around. Just because we've crossed it does not mean it's not a filter - it's merely a filter that we...
  5. Ukerric

    The Astronomy Thread

    In Drake equation scholar circles, you usually call them Berserkers (thanks Fred Saberhagen).
  6. Ukerric

    The Astronomy Thread

    Remember: "it only takes one".
  7. Ukerric

    The Astronomy Thread

    Not entirely, because we appear to be latecomers. The Universe is nearly 14 billion years old, our sun and Earth appear to be 5. So, if you want us to be the first but without a great filter, you have to figure out a mechanism by which absolutely no life could develop for the first 9 billion...
  8. Ukerric

    The Astronomy Thread

    "All it takes is one" is the most powerful force in the Fermi paradox.
  9. Ukerric

    The Astronomy Thread

    Even with sublight travel at 1% light speed, a single technological species with about a hundred years more than us can colonize the entire galaxy by hopping around, filling a new planet in 5000 year, and then going again, in about a dozen million years. That's the essence of Fermi's "paradox"...
  10. Ukerric

    Science!! Fucking magnets, how do they work?

    If you remember high school physics, they probably told you about refractive indices. Water is 1.3333, which means that light travels 1/1.33333 as fast as vacuum while in water. That's how light is distorted when it changes medium, and sticks appear bent when they plunge into water. Light...
  11. Ukerric

    VR Gaming - Oculus Rift, Playstation VR, HTC Vive

    Probably not a true game, but you can sell your soul again to Facebook https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/25/facebook-horizon/
  12. Ukerric

    World of Warcraft: Current Year

    No verified mark, fake!
  13. Ukerric

    World of Warcraft: Current Year

    "Because we thought it was an awesome idea. I mean before trying to figure out what she'd do as a Warchief."
  14. Ukerric

    World of Warcraft: Classic

    It's an industry report from a specialist firm that has usually good data. And the data is 223% growth in western subs between july and august. Not "about 200%", 223%. (with the interesting tidbit that even with 223%, it's still below launch numbers for BFA)
  15. Ukerric

    World of Warcraft: Classic

    They should. Classic Triples WoW Subscription Revenue in August
  16. Ukerric

    Everquest Mysteries

    It's actually very simple. Every content tier slide down one rung per release. Your high-end raid ends up low-end raid next expansion, which ends up good group next expansion, which is random PUG group the next one, which becomes nearly soloable the one after. WoW ended up making the first half...
  17. Ukerric

    World of Warcraft: Classic

    At last, Furor speaks:
  18. Ukerric

    World of Warcraft: Current Year

    Hey, it's Furor!
  19. Ukerric

    Pan'Theon: Rise' of th'e Fal'Len - #1 Thread in MMO

    It's probably shitty beer, but, god... what a waste.
  20. Ukerric

    World of Warcraft: Current Year

    None. They probably designed their expansion's new mechanics earlier this year, way before Classic exploded. And it's going to be too late to turn the ship. Besides, they probably attribute the popularity entirely to nostalgia.
  21. Ukerric

    World of Warcraft: Current Year

    Expecting maybe a tiny 8.3 raid at best, and an expansion announce for early summer 2020 with beta starting in January/Feb. They need a new expansion ASAP to get their numbers back up, because the people dropping out of Classic won't go back to BFA. The Shadowlands leak is probably very likely.
  22. Ukerric

    MTG: Arena

    I tried again when they brought in the (slightly modified) mastery path, but the daily grinding required to do the track killed any hope of playing again. If I could confine my grinding to a day or two during the weekend, that'd be okay-ish. But that's impossible.
  23. Ukerric

    Science!! Fucking magnets, how do they work?

    Energy states at least are highly quantized. If they weren't, atoms wouldn't even be stable.
  24. Ukerric

    Science!! Fucking magnets, how do they work?

    The origins of Quantum Mechanics is that values of a number of physical properties are discrete rather than continuous. However, a number of quantum fields (probabilities of X) seem to be continuous rather than discrete; the discrete values seem to appear in the interaction with those fields...
  25. Ukerric

    WTF? Everquest... 3?

    I think I talked about it in a previous incarnation of the forum. The point of a level system is that it gives you an indicator of suitable content. Level under you = "content that is easy or trivial". Level above you = "content that is hard or that you shouldn't be doing" Once you scale...
  26. Ukerric

    WTF? Everquest... 3?

    Not just that, but you also have the ugly Balance™ that raises its head. For scaling to work, you need to balance the scaled content to your weakest class. Which means you cannot afford to have too much of a difference in power between the classes on every form of content, or you end up with...
  27. Ukerric

    Everquest Mysteries

    FTFY.
  28. Ukerric

    WTF? Everquest... 3?

    For which I thank god. Even if it doesn't exists, I thank him for this. It's also a piece of shit in the case of a RPG. It requires you to make your game easy mode, or you're fucked. I remember the first Elder Scroll game (Oblivion? I think) that introduced this "content scaling". The end...
  29. Ukerric

    World of Warcraft: Classic

    Yea. Considering some were intimating that the BFA population was slowly approaching the million US and maybe barely more EU...
  30. Ukerric

    World of Warcraft: Classic

    Yeah. The two playable furries in the WoW universe are Taurens (and variant) and Worgens.
  31. Ukerric

    The Astronomy Thread

    And it requires a shit-ton of delta-V if you want a rendez-vous rather than a simple pass.
  32. Ukerric

    The Astronomy Thread

    EDIT: It's only 7 degrees vs the rest of the planets. But this is exxagerated by its highly elliptical orbit: 47M km perihelion for a 70M km aphelion.
  33. Ukerric

    The Astronomy Thread

    More on the object. Oumuamua, aka I1/2017 U1 (Interstellar number 1) had an excentricity of 1.2, hyperbolic but good. This one I2/2019 Q4 has a whopping eccentricity of 3. Oumuamua was a cylinder of about 100m. This one is a full comet with outgassing and all, probably close to 1km. And it's...
  34. Ukerric

    Will Wight

    There was a free volume 1-3 bundle a while ago.
  35. Ukerric

    World of Warcraft: Classic

    In Vanilla, they were opening servers as fast as they could. Here, they are deliberately refraining from doing that, because they are expecting Classic to turn into a semi-ghost town in a month.
  36. Ukerric

    World of Warcraft: Classic

    Better start to stockpile those copper bars and bandages.
  37. Ukerric

    A Tale In the Desert

    It's a massively social game. You do need other people to advance; playing entirely solo is ok but limited. The big difference is the sheer amount of different mechanics involved. And it was mostly developed by one person.
  38. Ukerric

    A Tale In the Desert

    Played in Tale 2 & 3 (then got too busy). It's a game that needs to be played relatively hardcore - or at least it used to back then. The biggest stuff I ever did was the test of the bedouin. For those of you who never did, here's how it goes: - There's over 100 Altars spread all over the map...
  39. Ukerric

    World of Warcraft: Current Year

    Odyn's mentioned in the video. Apparently, he does have access to the Shadowlands as well.
  40. Ukerric

    World of Warcraft: Current Year

    Leak or LARP?