I'm middle aged and I'm lucky if I get to 5 on puzzle storm. It takes me several times longer than it probably should to solve puzzles, and even then I get about half wrong. Dunno what it is.

Folks say you should spend time studying past games to learn weaknesses but I feel like that's as bad advice as is asking children to grade their own homework -- it will simply reinforce bad ideas.

Still, I enjoy it. Mostly the self-paced puzzles. I'm hovering around 1200-1300 there (on lichess).

> Folks say you should spend time studying past games to learn weaknesses but I feel like that's as bad advice as is asking children to grade their own homework

Are you using an engine to analyze your past games? It is much more efficient than using your own brain power to find your mistakes. If you think the games that engines show you aren't realistic (they aren't), then play out the opposite side of the engine yourself. That way you can see how to refute players of your skill level.

Doing these things quickly is mostly an exercise in pattern recognition. As you memorize patterns the moves become automatic. If you need to think through the position it will take too much time. It just takes thousands of hours of play to memorize the patterns as the puzzles get more complex. I don't play a lot so it is a good day for me if I get to past 5 in puzzle rush on chess.com.

I don't know what percentage of high level play is memorization and pattern recognition vs calculation. I suppose pattern recognition instantly culls thousands or millions of branches from the decision tree, and the rest is calculation on what's left.

Just try to find how to put the opponent in check first. Make the move before even seeing the solution. That approach works pretty well until you get to the 1300 rated puzzles (around 16-19 puzzles in).

Of course it's good to have some practice on different types of tactics. You want to be on the lookout for knight forks in the beginning too.

Another thing that might help with your tactical vision is the chessable checkmate in 1. You can just drill that all day and its really great. You can feel your chess muscles flex (chess swol).

It's never too late to learn something complex. If you tell yourself you will be mediocre/average then those will be your results. I'm 30 so not old by any means but - the secret is to obsess over the thing you want to learn intimately. Obsession beats practice any day.

If you have trouble finding that obsession - you weren't that interested anyway. Let your mind decide what you truly enjoy and want to grasp. Listen to yourself

How does Apple manage to have human reviewers and engineers you can talk with on the phone about App Store issues? It seems like it scales just fine for them.

> How does Apple manage to have human reviewers and engineers you can talk with on the phone about App Store issues?

You can't talk to reviewers on the phone.

They certainly offer the option.

> They certainly offer the option.

No, they do not.

Do you contend that they are lying when they include this in their rejection emails:

> If you have a question about your app's review, send us a message in Resolution Center. If you would prefer to speak over the phone, just let us know in your message, and we'll schedule a call.

There could be two angles to this:

- you're not talking to a reviewer or engineer unless you are a high tier dev. Bulks of devs could get standard customer support just hearing their grievances out, the same way emails get canned responses.

- devs don't all get access to the same resources or attention from Apple, and your support tier will largely depend on your revenue. I wouldn't expect a long tail app to get much attention.

I've never received an email like that. They always just say "To view or reply to the message, go to Resolution Center in App Store Connect."

Interesting. This was with a minor app that has no users and no name brand. Thus I assumed it was standard. Sorry about that, maybe it's more arbitrary than I thought.

How long ago? I haven't been rejected in 6 months or so. It's possible they've improved recently.

It was some time within the last month.

I can't say I ever look forward to rejection, but it would be interesting to see if this is a general policy shift.

> called to account for why I didn't personally meet the goals that I was pressured into setting "for myself"

This is one of the most hostile things an employer can do to a person. I don't want them involved in my personal growth -- fuck allllll of that. I will grow when and how I want to, if I even want to.

IME this never-ending push for continual improvement discourages me when I inevitably fail to meet goals they want me to want.

I want to say "just leave me alone I'm speedrunning to early retirement" but that'll just get me in more trouble.

I'm pretty sure that's not true. If it's the case I'm thinking of the result was exactly the opposite. Do you have more details on what case you're referring to?

> In videos like this, he's not being conservative but simply making an observation or asking a question that liberals don't like.

Isn't that his whole thing? Asking weasely questions instead of making statements?

My favorite part of the flight sim is how ships take damage. You can lose various RCS thrusters and still fly, but obviously it's more difficult. Landing can be a fun ordeal without thrusters in every direction.

I wish the game was in a better state but I can't say the $5/mo or so I spend on it has been wasted. I play with a friend and I upgrade my ship every couple months (hence the $5).

If they got rid of the forced slow play where you have to trek from apartment (or hospital) to the ship request terminal I'd be a lot happier. Or at least they could let you request a new ship using your mobiglas wherever you are.

I dont do the subscription, but i do install once or twice a year. Usually after a rebuild or reinstall to use as a benchmark. It's my current "Can it run Doom?" s/Doom/Star Citizen/

I see a lot of people only showing the albeit awesome footage of space battles. The game also comes with a FPS, and even some missions in the main game where you need to inspect some derelict ship or space station are missing.

NMS has done a good job addressing their shortcomings in the last years, but it still is no where compared to the detail and fidelity of SC.

And then I wanna mention the other weird fun tech they have. They have face point tracking for your avatar. That have done crazy stuff with spatial audio. Im not trying to stan them, but theres way more under the surface of than the game.

The thing that most frustrates me about YAML is probably not the language itself but the poor IDE and GitHub tooling I have been using. Trying to figure out the hierarchy of a key in a YAML file (local or GH) is incredibly frustrating. With formats like JSON at least (if nothing else) I can just open the file in vi, find the next close-curly and hit % to find the parent -- easy.

Significant whitespace is also a problem but I think that war has been lost.

"y" is similarly afflicted.

The only fact asserted here is that conversation involves more than one party.