Cookies required for the website to work (like that one) are totally fine and, in fact, they don't even have to ask you about them - if they're not used for tracking. So no, asking each time is definitely avoidable.

Not only is that headline's grammar exceptional(ly bad), for a moment I thought the developer of Control was named Alan Wake. Like, how did they manage to butcher that so badly?

There are pros to this:

If the person you blocked can't see your posts, they can intuit that you've blocked them. Then, they might try and find you on other social media to harass you even further, or shift targets to someone else.

If they can see your posts, they have no idea they've been blocked, similar to Reddit's shadow bans. This might make them think you're just annoyed or rarely look at your DMs, making them invest even more time to uselessly try to contact you.

Of course, I can see the other side too, that you don't want them to know about any (new) posts you've made; but it isn't as one-sided as you seem to think it is.

Because you don't need to have significant experience or rent a VPS in order to do that, and I can respect that. We don't need to force FOSS developers to become proficient in everything.

What needs to happen is some kind of tool (ideally FOSS) that lets you spin up an actual forum with the same difficulty to set it up as Discord.

But is the letter facing the direction, or are you looking in the direction if you're looking at the letter? So, is East behind the camera or in front of it?

Danke für den Tipp, muss ich mir mal gerade einen Bericht mit Namen "niemand" erstellen und Maimais pfostieren, damit er in Betracht gezogen wird...

Huh, TIL.

Regarding your edit, that amount wasn't the cumulated cost of whatever Limewire were distributing, that would be idiotic indeed; rather the RIAA tried to call for a ruling that somehow those guys were causing $150,000 in damages - per instance. Now the article unfortunately doesn't state how they possibly tried to justify that number, and I can't be bothered to research that myself. Another thing that would interest me is how the plaintiff expected them to pay with almost every dollar on Earth.

So while I don't think this had anything to do with "lost sales", I do agree with the possible fines and damage calculations not being fit for any sort of realistic purpose at all.

Ich kenne die Platzverteilung dort natürlich nicht, aber dem Artikel nach hört sich das nach einem einzelnen Querdenker an, nicht nach etwas, das die SPD gemeinsam beschlossen hätte.

Because I didn't know absurdism, I read the second one differently at first:

[The] nothing matters.

And I immediately had to think of this gem:

"But it doesn't do anything!" - "No, it does nothing."

We actually have something like that in Germany:

In the region of Westphalia, there's a part officially called East Westphalia (or Ostwestfalen in German). So you're always wondering, is it in the east or in the west?

Depending on the stuffing, I might actually rather take the seat, just because it's got armrests.

I don't think I understand what you mean, might be because we're both ESL.

Are you saying you want a histogram or something about how points can be spent, instead of how players do spend them?

That could work too, but for many people, being able to dodge/avoid hits is exclusively the DEX bonus to AC, and they believe it doesn't have to do anything with hit points.

I'm on two minds about that: On the one hand, it's true that you're far better at dodging in lighter (or no) armor. OTOH, I agree with you that experience teaches you to decide where you're going to get hit if at all. So it might be something like "raise your arm so the strike doesn't hit your belly".

I rationalize it as "You took some blows so now you have a better pain tolerance".

Hmm, you'd probably have to have access to something like DndBeyond's data to compile such a chart (or use one they compiled). Problem is, there doesn't seem to be anything like that. The only published data visualisations are about races, classes and names.

So I don't think you can just search for it, the only other option I see is gathering that data (if from a smaller sample) yourself, by creating a poll asking for their ability spreads if they used point buy. You could try and advertise it in appropriate communities, and once you feel like your sample size is big enough, you can calculate the percentages.

I wish there was an easier way (and maybe there is and I just didn't look far enough), but from my chair, that's the only option.

Point buy is completely deterministic, so I'm not sure what you mean by probabilities... Are you referring to statistics, like which stat is a certain value most of the time?

Well, one way to easily replicate point buy's range per stat (if not its distribution limit over all stats) would be 7 + 1d8. You could also do: Start every stat from 12, and if you want to increase one, you can do so by rolling a d4 as a bonus (rerolling on a 4). However, to do that you'll have to decrease a different one by another / the same d4. So you'll still have the same range, but like with point buy there's an element of control and choice to it.

Regarding bigger ranges, one way could be using that same method, only with bigger dice (and possibly other starting points). E.g. you could start from 11 and roll a d8, rerolling an 8 if you're adding it as a bonus. That example would give you values anywhere from 3 to 18, and it's much more swingy than 4d6dl. Of course, if the high variance is an issue, you can experiment with dropping highest or lowest on 2d8.

For example, if you're dropping lowest on bonus rolls and penalty rolls, you'll get characters with high highs and low lows, or if you're doing it the other way around, you'll get characters where each stat is fairly equal, without much variance to speak of.

There isn't much more I can say without knowing how much variance and player choice you want to include.

Possible formula: Tax for n-th house = n-th Fibonacci number + 5 * max(0, n - 2). So low numbers like three get penalized by that linear part, and high numbers grow exponentially due to the Fibonacci number.

Huh, interesting... You know, I've never really wondered about Humble Bundle specifically, but you're right, they seem to be selling your run-of-the-mill Steam keys, or at least you can activate them effortlessly in Steam. Maybe it's a case of Steam themselves handing out keys (instead of the publishers) to increase user retention? I honestly don't know, this is all just speculation.

I actually didn't click on your link at first, because I assumed it would just show other stores where you could purchase the whole game instead of a key, so I'm sorry that you had to clarify that.

As far as I know, they do - for Steam keys. If you're selling your game through other stores, not just a Steam key, there aren't any demands placed upon you. The OC might've been talking about that.