Define "average" and "very good" - it's quite easy to become good enough to beat all your friends and family (as long as you haven't made friends at the chess club or chess competitions). But if you want to do your best at the local chess competition held in a school hall at the weekend against all kinds of people, from little kids to pensioners, then yeah, you're going to need to spend lots of time studying openings, learning end game theory, and solving chess puzzles.
strongly disagree that studying openings is necessary to "do your best" at competitions. In my experience almost all games between players under 2000 (class players) are decided tactically. I'm expertish (2200+ bullet, 2200+ blitz, 1900+ USCF, win most local tournaments in my area etc) and I don't bother studying openings. Chess is 99.9% tactics at the class level. You won't reach GM without opening theory memorization but you wont reach GM anyway.
Also a reminder for anyone reading these comments that chess should be fun! Don't let psychological hangups like thinking u need a good memory, thinking you need to study openings, have a certain level of skill, or need to play a certain format (like avoiding blitz because it is "bad" for your game or thinking OTB is more important) stop you from playing chess! The only rules for how to play chess are the rules of the game; all the other stuff e.g advice about how to get good are just things people make up. Learn and play however you want and in whatever way brings you the most joy! Chess is a game and it is meant to be fun and not be taken seriously
It doesn't take extreme memory on your part to remember to avoid that opening after the first 9 losses, or indeed the first one. There are 5-10 other reasonable options for you on the first move alone.
It doesn't take extreme memory on your friend's part either if you keep falling for the same trick. It would take extreme memory for him to have something prepared against every plausible option you could choose.
There is definitely value in that, but that value is outweighed - dominated, even - by the incentive produced to fix outcomes, incentivized by that money put on the line.
The thing is, in advocating for removing 999 out of 1000 people (how? I don't hear a suggestion for a gradual decline, so assuming a bloody genocide seems like a reasonable interpretation), opens a body up to pretty harsh criticism. It's reasonable to read that line of reasoning as a direct threat!
I just don't believe these geekbench numbers represent real world performance numbers. Like... Firefox compile times or late game civ 6 turn times or such things
It's not clear the android geekbench scores are comparable to the desktop ones. They seem to run different tests and the score is very likely not comparable between the different tests.
The key line "I’m getting a similar sense for the recent US foreign interventions and wars. They all seem to work slightly better than they should."
There is no measurement of efficacy here. It feels like these things are working better because the US military is now doing big public things, but that is not necessarily a good change over not-doing-big-public-things.
Yeah, that was exactly where he lost me. The US military doesn't need a remarkable amount of luck for these operations to be tactical successes, tactical risk wasn't the reason previous administrations didn't do them. The element that was missing was a complete disregard for second order consequences, and Claude has nothing to do with that whatsoever.
The "article" (I don't know what else to call it; "fantastical screed"?) has also gotten ahead of events a little bit. The operation in Iran doesn't seem like it was planned by a superintelligent AI. It seems as though it was an impulse decision, and poorly thought out at that, with the end result likely to be far worse than its planners anticipated. As for Venezuela, that was literally an inside job, lol.
That steering wheel looks absolutely awful. Like a budget car. And the UX is rubbish. The easiest to reach buttons are ones that are nearly never needed: drive mode (usually used 0-2 times per trip), wiper mode (but no single wipe?). The only frequently used ones are the indicators - which I don't love but I guess stalks are a bit meh aesthetically - and the speed cruise. But sensors? Suspension? Why are they there?
The clock looks like a dollar store alarm clock. The center console otherwise looks okay, environment management can be done easily, that's a good trend to continue.
The instrument cluster has no aura - completely anonymous, doesn't make me think "Ferrari" or "high performance, high technology".
Rounded square design language isn't fit for purpose in a ferrari, which is about aerodynamic shapes that reinforce that you're in a high-performance sports car.
Jony Ive is a garbage-tier car designer. He'd fit in better at Kia. Or Volvo.
Heh, my thought on opening the article and seeing the image was "huh, without the badge in the photo, if forced to guess the make, I'd have gone with Kia."
It's very clear that at some point they decided stalks are bad, and so instead of having an indicator stalk - a universally understood control they decided to stick them all on the steering wheel so you can drive around looking at whether you want to be in Range, Tour or "Perfo" mode.
I think it's fine to lose the stalks - in a Ferrari. You're making tradeoffs in usability for aesthetics anyway so a few more makes sense. But the locations of these particular ones - at prime thumb access location, plus the high visibility of them... Not good!
Good car interior design fulfills the functions of: usability; sensibility and brand identity. What's good for a LaFerrari (which has many of the same feature on the wheel as this, but imo, better) is not going to be good on a Hyundai i20 and vice versa.
But BMW is, in general, very good at finding a design language that fits all the right buttons in the right places while feeling like a mid-to-up market car. It's a blend of usability and aesthetics and brand (+model) identity that finds a really good balance across all three categories.
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