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    1. What are some bugs/glitches/exploits that have actually made games better?

      Usually bugs, glitches, and exploits degrade the experience of a game, but occasionally they can actually work to a game's benefit. In some cases, they can become significant enough to become part...

      Usually bugs, glitches, and exploits degrade the experience of a game, but occasionally they can actually work to a game's benefit. In some cases, they can become significant enough to become part of a game's identity. In others, they make a broken game worth playing in the first place. Even without such legendary status, a given wrinkle in a game might simply make it more enjoyable or entertaining, or perhaps open up unexpected modes or paths of play.

      What are some examples of these, and how did they improve their associated games?

      29 votes
    2. Which US presidential candidate do you think has the best foreign policy?

      The nice thing about electability being uncertain is that you can choose the candidate you think is best. Unfortunately I have lost faith in my ability to decide that. Studying candidates'...

      The nice thing about electability being uncertain is that you can choose the candidate you think is best.

      Unfortunately I have lost faith in my ability to decide that. Studying candidates' policies seems useless since, after all, Congress makes the laws. We are likely to see either stalemate or centrist legislation regardless.

      Maybe I should decide based on foreign policy instead? Most people don't do that but I don't see why not. Any recommendations for interesting articles to read?

      12 votes
    3. Healthcare rant thread

      So I don't know about all of you, but I'm pretty sick of terrible healthcare in the USA. So I'm starting this thread for all of us to rant about our personal issues with healthcare. I'll be...

      So I don't know about all of you, but I'm pretty sick of terrible healthcare in the USA.

      So I'm starting this thread for all of us to rant about our personal issues with healthcare. I'll be writing my rant into it's own reply later (it's a bit of a long one), but I wanted to start the thread now to give others a chance to start venting.

      Rules of Rant Thread:

      1. Don't argue a rant
      2. Thread is likely going to be incredibly USA-centric. USA healthcare is assumed unless stated otherwise.
      3. Rants should involve people no more than 2 degrees of separation from yourself. This thread is to vent about your personal experiences, not hearsay from total strangers.

      In order to foster further discussion, and include those without a rant: Here are some things I personally would appreciate and expect for replies, but others might not.

      • Explanation of how things would work out for you if you were in a similar situation
      • Advice for dealing with any ongoing or future problems
      33 votes
    4. Real Numbers - Why? Why not computable numbers?

      Do we have any mathematicians in the house? I've been wondering for a while why math is usually focused around real numbers instead of computable numbers - that is the set of numbers that you can...

      Do we have any mathematicians in the house? I've been wondering for a while why math is usually focused around real numbers instead of computable numbers - that is the set of numbers that you can actually be computed to arbitrary, finite precision in finite time. Note that they necessarily include pi, e, sqrt(2) and every number you could ever compute. If you've seen it, it's computable.

      What do we lose, beyond cantor's argument, by restricting math to computable numbers? By corollary of binary files and therefore algorithms being countable, the computable numbers are countable too, different from reals.

      Bonus points if you can name a real, non-computable number. (My partner replied with "a number gained by randomly sampling decimal places ad infinitum" - a reply as cheeky as the question.) Also bonus points for naming further niceness properties we would get by restricting to computables.

      I've read the wikipedia article on computable numbers and a bit beyond.

      10 votes