Having worked in the f2p games industry for a decade, nothing is as you perceive. Your entire reward stream is scheduled down to the coin, in spreadsheets written by people like me. I know how much you have today and how much you will have tomorrow.
Any reward presentation, assume there is a loot table behind it. You see 4 cards on the screen, but there may as well be 1 big slot lever; cuz no matter where you tap you're doing a single prng rand and getting what the loot table says.
The loot tables aren't at all what you expect, they skew heavily towards 'booby' prizes cuz that makes it easy to predict your progression. The screen might show you 4 cool things you can get alongside 1 lame prize, implying 20% odds; but the sum odds of those 4 cool things will be <5% and most of the time you're getting a predictable lame drip.
The one thing working in your favor is a 'pity' counter. Every time you get a booby prize the pity counter goes up and leads to another rand call. If you succeed at beating the pity counter, it'll give you a good prize and reset the pity counter. The net effect is that I can program the reward stream such that you're guaranteed a good item every 50 pulls or whatever. Some games are just straight with you about this, others aren't.
During the onboarding flow, which could be designed to last months depending on the game's age, your entire reward schedule will be painstakingly controlled down to the coin. Not a single rand call in sight.
My advice is to play these games if you understand all this and have friends to play it with. They've got good hobby value, on a per dollar basis. I mean, have you seen the cost of golf? If you don't get how the monetization works, and you're alone, there's healthier hobbies to spend your money on.
I was thinking about something similar, but less cringy. More like: hey you haven't messaged your friend in 6 months, maybe you should ask them how they are doing. A priority queue but to help keep friendships alive.
> What’s great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca Cola, and you know that the President drinks Coca Cola, Liz Taylor drinks Coca Cola, and just think, you can drink Coca Cola, too. A coke is a coke and no amount of money can get you a better coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the cokes are the same and all the cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows it, the bum knows it, and you know it.
Learning foreign languages to high levels of communication proficiency was the first adult learning challenge I took on. I majored in Chinese at university and worked for quite a few years as a Chinese-English interpreter and translator. I'll back up what pg said with a data point from academic research. The online article "How to Become a Good Theoretical Physicist,"
by a Nobel laureate in physics who is a native speaker of Dutch, makes clear what the key learning task is to be a good physicist: "English is a prerequisite. If you haven't mastered it yet, learn it. You must be able to read, write, speak and understand English." On his list of things to learn for physics, that even comes before mathematics.
I like to share advice on language learning, because this topic comes up on Hacker News frequently. I hope the FAQ information below helps hackers achieve their dreams. As I learned Mandarin Chinese up to the level that I was able to support my family for several years as a Chinese-English translator and interpreter, I had to tackle several problems for which there is not yet a one-stop-shopping software solution. For ANY pair of languages, even closely cognate pairs of West Germanic languages like English and Dutch, or Wu Chinese dialects like those of Shanghai and Suzhou, the two languages differ in sound system, so that what is a phoneme in one language is not a phoneme in the other language.
But a speaker of one language who is past the age of puberty will simply not perceive many of the phonemic distinctions in sounds in the target language (the language to be learned) without very careful training, as disregard of those distinctions below the level of conscious attention is part of having the sound system of the speaker's native language fully in mind. Attention to target language phonemes has to be developed through pains-taking practice.
It is brutally hard for most people (after the age of puberty, and perhaps especially for males) to learn to attend to sound distinctions that don't exist in the learner's native language. That is especially hard when the sound distinction signifies a grammatical distinction that also doesn't exist in the learner's native language. For example, the distinction between "I speak" and "he speaks" in English involves a consonant cluster at the end of a syllable, and no such consonant clusters exist in the Mandarin sound system at all. Worse than that, no such grammatical distinction as "first person singular" and "third person singular" for inflecting verbs exists in Mandarin, so it is remarkably difficult for Mandarin-speaking learners of English to learn to distinguish "speaks" from "speak" and to say "he speaks Chinese" rather than * "he speak Chinese" (not a grammatical phrase in spoken English).
Most software materials for learning foreign languages could be much improved simply by including a complete chart of the sound system of the target language (in the dialect form being taught in the software materials) with explicit description of sounds in the terminology of articulatory phonetics
Good language-learning materials always include a lot of focused drills on sound distinctions (contrasting minimal pairs in the language) in the target language, and no software program for language learning should be without those. It is still an art of software writing to try to automate listening to a learner's pronunciation for appropriate feedback on accuracy of pronunciation. That is not an easy problem.
After phonology, another huge task for any language learner is acquiring vocabulary, and this is the task on which most language-learning materials are most focused. But often the focus on vocabulary is not very thoughtful.
The classic software approach to helping vocabulary acquisition is essentially to automate flipping flash cards. But flash cards have ALWAYS been overrated for vocabulary acquisition. Words don't match one-to-one between languages, not even between closely cognate languages. The map is not the territory, and every language on earth divides the world of lived experience into a different set of words, with different boundaries between words of similar meaning.
The royal road to learning vocabulary in a target language is massive exposure to actual texts (dialogs, stories, songs, personal letters, articles, etc.) written or spoken by native speakers of the language. I'll quote a master language teacher here, the late John DeFrancis. A few years ago, I reread the section "Suggestions for Study" in the front matter of John DeFrancis's book Beginning Chinese Reader, Part I, which I first used to learn Chinese back in 1975. In that section of that book, I found this passage, "Fluency in reading can only be achieved by extensive practice on all the interrelated aspects of the reading process. To accomplish this we must READ, READ, READ" (capitalization as in original). In other words, vocabulary can only be well acquired in context (an argument he develops in detail with regard to Chinese in the writing I have just cited) and the context must be a genuine context produced by native speakers of the language.
I have been giving free advice on language learning since the 1990s on my personal website,
and the one advice I can give every language learner reading this thread is to take advantage of radio broadcasting in your target language. Spoken-word broadcasting (here I'm especially focusing on radio rather than on TV) gives you an opportunity to listen and to hear words used in context. In the 1970s, I used to have to use an expensive short-wave radio to pick up Chinese-language radio programs in North America. Now we who have Internet access can gain endless listening opportunities from Internet radio stations in dozens of unlikely languages. Listen early and listen often while learning a language. That will help with phonology (as above) and it will help crucially with vocabulary.
The third big task of a language learner is learning grammar and syntax, which is often woefully neglected in software language-learning materials. Every language has hundreds of tacit grammar rules, many of which are not known explicitly even to native speakers, but which reveal a language-learner as a foreigner when the rules are broken. The foreign language-learner needs to understand grammar not just to produce speech or writing that is less jarring and foreign to native speakers, but also to better understand what native speakers are speaking or writing. Any widely spoken modern language has thick books reporting the grammatical rules of the language,
To use a physics analogy, gargantuan megaprojects like ITER develop their own selfgravitation that sucks in money and innovation, crushing engineers pitilessly under the weight of the bureaucracy.
To further abuse analogies, megaprojects suffer from something akin to the tyranny of the rocket equation: Because they're huge and expensive, they have to be broken up and doled out to disparate teams (countries even!), subcontractors, etc... Because there are many organisations involved, the friction of the interactions between force managers to plan ahead. Because planning ahead is required, only existing, established technologies can be used.
QED: It is not possible to do "innovation" with megaprojects, their mega size inherently prevents any possibility of true innovation occurring! The bigger they are, the less innovative they are.
I cannot emphasise this enough: Elements of the ITER project have been planned 30 years ahead! That's insanity. That's using 1990s technology in the 2020s! There is no possible path through ITER and then DEMO to achieve commercial power generation before 2050. None. There is not even a hope of such a thing.
Most critically, ITER used a legacy superconducting wire in their designs, which has a lower maximum magnetic field strength compared to more modern types. Because of the highly nonlinear scaling (quartic?) with increasing field strength, this is the fundamental limit to achieving break-even fusion, but they were forced to start planning without it.
They should have done what Tesla did: Focus on the batteries as the primary thing, everything else is secondary. ITER should have focused on the superconducting wires above all else for at least the first two decades of the project, before even thinking of actually opening a CAD program to design a Tokamak!
people need to go massive input either in country or online
having actually learnt to the point of watching news tv shows and reading chinese forums i can say that going the classroom or exam route is a waste of time and money
learn the top 50 to 70 chars then start watching dual subtitled programs like cctv4
do it actively meaning pausing rewinding attempting to read subtitles before the speaker etc but never touch a dictionary in flow only much later if you couldnt figure from context repeatedly ie greater than 6 7 context attempts fail
1.5 years and you will be much ahead of anyone else
Five years ago, a friend convinced me to start buying $250+ raw denim jeans instead of $30 regular jeans (which would wear out every 6 months).
I thought it was crazy but he swore by them so I tried it. They were thick, stiff and uncomfortable at first, but after a couple months had transformed themselves into my favorite thing ever as they "wore in".
After a year of everyday wear they start developing holes. But they're far too expensive to throw away, so first I took them to the local "denim surgeon", but then realized I could learn to darn them myself.
I bought myself the cheapest Singer sewing machine, a darning attachment, and specialty denim thread, and in the past 4 years have probably darned 30 holes across 3 pair, also reinforcing button holes and pocket edges. They look great and unique and are completely "me". I have no doubt the jeans will last me for another 10 years at least, and will turn out to have saved me money in the long run (crazy!).
It's very satisfying to have things you care for, that aren't disposable, and are worth the effort of maintaining. But really, the only clothing items for men that seem to be constructed with enough quality in the first place to be worth maintaining are things like raw denim jeans, leather boots (e.g. Red Wings) and quality leather jackets.
My wife has depression, and for the first several years of our marriage it was undiagnosed and untreated. Her use of language is, to this day, the single biggest thing I remember about that time.
She used absolutes a lot. Things were "terrible" or "horrible". The house was "a disaster". It was never partly clean, or messy. It was either clean, or a disaster.
But the biggest issue was that her perception of the world, including her perception of what people were saying to her - what I was saying to her - was utterly skewed. Anything I said to her, she took in the worst possible light. A compliment that could be shaded negatively, was. If I told her I liked her dress, that was taken as my not liking her other clothes. If I told her I appreciated something she did, that was taken as my not liking anything else she did. Every once in a while I managed to figure out how to say something that was so clear that it couldn't be misinterpreted, and when that happened it was as if I were speaking Greek. The statement literally did not make any sense in her mind. It was fascinating to watch; there was actually a discernible lag as she processed, and figured out how to misinterpret, anything I said.
It was as if she had her own private version of English, with her own definitions, which were more black and white (and shaded towards the black) than the vernacular version everyone else spoke. In order to speak with her I had to become conversant in her version of the language.
After a while it really felt like she was gaslighting me. Anything I said or did, she took in the worst possible way, and then blamed me for it. It took an enormous amount of emotional fortitude to keep reminding myself that this was fundamentally not my fault. I feel tremendously lucky that I didn't become depressed myself.
Happily, she eventually did recognize that something was wrong and got help, and is tons better today. Bit what they say about depression is completely true: your mind is lying to you. I watched it happen. And the even more fascinating thing is that, although she now recognizes she was depressed, she still doesn't remember those times the way I do. Her memories are still skewed.
If you are suffering from depression, please seek help. And if you are in a relationship with someone suffering from depression, find emotional support. It isn't your fault.
It's kind of like learning how to program when you don't have any task to complete. Especially for a data store of some kind. If you've ever tried to learn SQL, even if you've got an example database, you'll find it's incredibly difficult not because the syntax is all that difficult or the logic is particularly daunting. No, you'll find it's difficult because you don't have any questions to answer. You'll feel, "Okay, now what?" When you try to make up a question to answer, it's difficult to tell if you're answering the question correctly. You need the focus that a real problem gives you. You need the guidance that understanding what the data means gives you (or someone else) to know if your answer is right or wrong.
It's easy to see what a tool is designed to do. It's very difficult to see what a tool can be used for and why you might want to use it that way, let alone when you might want to deviate from that or find alternatives due to limitations or new requirements. Or when you might need entirely different tools.
We learn best when we're working on a problem. Just like going to the moon required solving a lot of problems which led to major advancements in the 20th century, going to Mars, colonizing Mars, and colonizing the moon have even more challenges.
Goals give research and development a clear purpose beyond, "I dunno, make something people want that we can sell."
Any reward presentation, assume there is a loot table behind it. You see 4 cards on the screen, but there may as well be 1 big slot lever; cuz no matter where you tap you're doing a single prng rand and getting what the loot table says.
The loot tables aren't at all what you expect, they skew heavily towards 'booby' prizes cuz that makes it easy to predict your progression. The screen might show you 4 cool things you can get alongside 1 lame prize, implying 20% odds; but the sum odds of those 4 cool things will be <5% and most of the time you're getting a predictable lame drip.
The one thing working in your favor is a 'pity' counter. Every time you get a booby prize the pity counter goes up and leads to another rand call. If you succeed at beating the pity counter, it'll give you a good prize and reset the pity counter. The net effect is that I can program the reward stream such that you're guaranteed a good item every 50 pulls or whatever. Some games are just straight with you about this, others aren't.
During the onboarding flow, which could be designed to last months depending on the game's age, your entire reward schedule will be painstakingly controlled down to the coin. Not a single rand call in sight.
My advice is to play these games if you understand all this and have friends to play it with. They've got good hobby value, on a per dollar basis. I mean, have you seen the cost of golf? If you don't get how the monetization works, and you're alone, there's healthier hobbies to spend your money on.