“Unused road” is ridiculous except in extremes. Unless people merge well over a mile back, 1 lane of traffic will make no difference. The only way “unused road” matters is for the people that haven’t entered the traffic jam yet who are getting off before they reach it.

Very few people (from what I’ve seen) merge more than 30 car lengths out. 30 cars is not going to make a difference.

What does make a difference is the fact that we can’t do a merge at speed because some people want to “zipper late.” It’s the zipper behavior that matters, the “at the very end” part never should’ve been added to that recommendation.

Looking at an actual research paper about this, the zipper merge demonstrated is not at the last possible point. A merge point forms ahead of that point and that’s what should be used. The pictures from their study show the zipper occurring over a wide area with many of the zipped cars driving in the middle.

https://rosap.ntl.bts.gov/view/dot/35694

I don’t know how studies like this have become the recommendations we have. They seem to me to miss critical bits.

Edit: based on my quick read, it’s worth noting the study finds only minimal support for the zipper merge and only in contexts not involving trucks largely based on visual analysis from their video feed as the quantitative data was not statistically significant. We need better transparency on recommendations like this frankly and the research supporting them. We should be able to have an honest debate on the merits of the papers.

I really like the idea of peertube, but until it finds a way to pay creators I’m not sure it will ever be able to replace YouTube.

YouTube is as good as it is because people get paid.

The old school YouTubers just did it for fun, but YouTube was a lot different back then … and as much as I hate how aggressively Google is monetizing YouTube these days, it’s honestly a lot higher quality than it was years ago.

The problem with zipper merges as this person describes them is a zipper merge is SUPPOSED TO get traffic back up to speed. However, when your take on the zipper merge is “up there where the wreck is at the last possible spot I can merge” there’s no time for a human to safely merge at speed. So everything has to continue at a crawl.

So the people jumping out of their lane and “zipper merging” at the last second instead of 50 feet out or so end up making things worse for everyone.

The zipper does not and should not be at the point of the physical problem on the road. Just like you should not just drive to the end of the on ramp and at the last possible second merge into the lane on your left without paying attention.

I really can’t more strongly disagree with this take.

Zipper merging is to interleave two lanes of traffic when there’s one lane of traffic available ahead.

It DOES NOT matter if it’s done with 3 feet to merge or 300 feet to merge. There’s no efficiency gain.

What does matter is some assholes trying to merge at speed at the last possible second.

The zipper point should not be the point where there’s NO ROOM to merge SAFELY without EVERYONE going 3 miles per hour.

The handful of times I’ve seen a zipper merge actually start to work, someone rushes down to the end of the line where the problem is, nearly causes a second accident trying to get over, and then everything starts moving at a crawl again.

You don’t need to zipper merge at the “physical barrier” causing the zipper merge to be necessary.

Why would a car alarm be a problem…?

Every place I’ve ever been, they take the keys and drive it into the garage to do any work they’re doing.

Car alarm should only be relevant if the mechanic locks the car, no?

I think it’s fine to have an opinion, just qualify it with “I’ve not been in that situation before, but … I think bla … because bla.”

It’s just about being honest.

I had a friend who’s latest and greatest dating advice was to go back and hangout at the college I graduated from (at the time already) several years ago.

I thought it was an incredibly disingenuous and creepy suggestion.

Him and his partner were like “it’s totally fine…”

Not a single female friend disagreed with me that, that would be very creepy and I absolutely should not do that.

He got mad that I would never listen to his (terrible) dating advice.

You nailed it.

I use containers for work stuff so I don’t have to deal with edge cases of mixing accounts.

I also put Proton in a container to hopefully reduce the odds of any kind of cross site scripting exploits from succeeding… But that base should already be well covered by proton servers and the normal protection mechanisms.

Because that would be confusing

That is how inflation works… when costs go up prices go up.

Yeah, your computer probably should cost a lot more in “today dollars” but because performance of components gets more efficient over time, you can likely get a better computer for less money.

It’s the same reason you have a computer more powerful than multiple thousands of dollar super computers. The technology has improved enough you don’t have to pay as much.

Do you think prices should just be locked in place for eternity at $60?

Sure, but that doesn’t mean the game developers don’t need to be paid. It’s still a bargain for the work that’s being done.

If you look at inflation adjusted pricing, it really is a deal. IIRC we should be at like 90 or 100+ dollar games at this point.

I’d argue you’re the one that’s committed the nirvana fallacy if anyone.

You want them to take a useful stance but you quit supporting them because it wasn’t enough of a useful stance.

I’m just saying, don’t moralize companies … they’ll let you down every time. It’s not about doing what’s right, it’s about fitting in. Companies are like the virtue signalers in high school, they’ll only do it if it’s cool.

Maybe that’s useful to your cause, maybe it isn’t, maybe you support them maybe you don’t, but I wouldn’t expect a company to do things from a place of morals.

How is it late?

I mean any and all corporate support of a cause (like LGBTQ) is going to be performative. Don’t expect corporations to take a stand unless their existence is predicated on that cause.

Yeah, those do look extremely similar to such I’ve pulled out of mid journey.

Yeah for me, it’s the variety of tales that you author. Every game feels a bit like a new adventure, after a while similar to ones you’ve been on before, but still new.

ARC has those elements, but something feels off so far for me…

Also typically the progression is in terms of variety (Roguelike) instead of straight power (Roguelite). That keeps things fair because even a new player, if they trade the aim, can pose a real threat to a seasoned player of similar FPS skill. ARC seems like it’s decided to go for a sort of Roguelite experience and that seems risky.

I haven’t played Marathon, but I did get into the ARC test. This will mostly be some ramblings…

I’m still waiting to play ARC with some friends. I only did some solo stuff.

I’m coming from this as a big Hunt Showdown player (1,200+ hours) and someone that’s played a bit of Forever Winter (~20). I still like Hunt better; I think it’s the only extraction shooter that didn’t take a ton of influence from Tarkov.

I wasn’t crazy about the marathon art style, but I’m not ready to pass judgement on it until I’ve been in the world.

ARC’s art style I found beautiful but also perhaps too sparse. There were so many wide open spaces … I just don’t see that being a good thing for an extraction shooter. The world felt vast and empty … I prefer Hunt’s more cluttered and dense design.

ARC does seem to have a lot of potential in like how it’s designed its AI, Hunt’s is very primitive in a lot of ways and kind of secondary. I think the AI is going to be a bigger deal in ARC.

Third person also feels worse to me than first person. I hope they add a first person mode to ARC, but I kind of doubt they will.

I definitely agree that ARC felt like it was being set up to tell a story and felt very cinematic at times.

The UI also felt like the best extraction shooter UI I’ve ever encountered.

I’m concerned about the long term health of ARC. The progression system seems like it will certainly lead to established players dominating newer players. The lack of a primary objective that’s shared by all the teams on the map … I’m not sure how I feel about that. On the one hand, it may lead to a more relaxed experience, on the other hand, it doesn’t curate players towards each other like Hunt does; it seems looting and crafting are the primary motivators instead.

The fights that I did get into, they lacked the complex environment and buildings in Hunt so I didn’t find them nearly as engaging, they were much more straight forward gunfights than leveraging the map to use it to my advantage. I think that aspect will ultimately hurt the game as it makes it feel like a bit of a generic shooter.

Overall ARC felt very middle of the road from what I’ve played of it so far. I had a similar feeling about The Finals. Embark seems like a talented studio and I wish them the best as they go up against Bungie and Crytek.

Have they had any recent developments?

TeamSpeak has been working on a new TeamSpeak 6 client and server that allows users to set up effectively their own personal federation of gaming servers with text, voice, and video chat rooms in a modern cross platform client that supports Windows, Mac, Linux and mobile operating systems.

They’ve also built up their own infrastructure so less technical folks can directly rent servers from them rather than needing to buy through a third party.