Pentium100

Yeah, my problem with that episode was the fact that Twilight did not know it would work. Taking a more realistic example - giving your gun to the enemy (who already has a gun) may work to trick him into thinking you are no longer a threat. He turns his back to you, you pull out a backup gun from your shoe or wherever and shoot him. However, Twilight did not really know she had a backup gun, she only hoped that whatever the box was would activate and would be powerful enough to defeat Tirek. Consider another example - Twilight gives up her magic to get her friends free (still relying on Tirek to not kill her, but whatever), then she and he friends go get the elements (a weapon proven to work well against multiple enemies) and use them on Tirek. This would have been a better plan, but at the time the elements were not available to use anymore so she had to use something that was not even proven to be a weapon.

Goku was never shown as being very smart. He's embodies the saying "Сила есть, ума не надо" (translated from Russian - there is strength, no need for intelligence). Assuming nobody has premonition abilities, trying to fight Tirek was the less risky option. Allowing Tirek to absorb her magic was the equivalent of giving the enemy your gun and then not only hoping he does not shoot you, but also hoping you can find a better gun. Tirek could have just killed her on the spot after gaining her magic. After all, he does not need to play fair. Fighting, on the other hand would have resulted in a lot of damage, but a higher chance of winning. If a plan relies on your enemy choosing to not kill you or to keep his word (even if he has no real reason for either), then it's a very risky plan, basically relying on your enemy being stupid and overconfident. Yes, he had hostages, however, there was no reason for him to keep the hostages alive after he got what he wanted. Twilight could probably have used Celestia's power and dropped the sun on him, or created a small, short-lived sun (a thermonuclear explosion). However, her plan in the episode was to give all magic to TIrek, hoping to somehow miraculously get a superweapon capable of defeating him. What if the keys did not work or were not powerful enough? Tirek could have killed them anyway. The new superweapon could turn out to be not powerful enough. Twilight had no way of knowing that, that's why her plan was bad. It does not make Goku look smart, but t does not make Twilight look smart either. Relying on multiple unknowns is not a good plan.

Both have their idiot moments, because it may make it more interesting to watch. In real life, you would want to be the most OP possible and in a real fight (as opposed to a sports match like boxing), you would want to cheat as much as possible to win. However, for Goku and Vegeta, characters who like fighting and getting stronger, it may feel unfair to do that, especially if they think they are powerful enough. Of course that comes back to bite them once in a while when they let the opponent become too powerful. Still, they are likely more interested in having a great fight than the result. Besides, any collateral damage can be fixed by asking the dragon. In MLP, characters, both the good guys and the bad guys, have their own idiot moments. Your example with Twilight and Tirek was one of them. Twilight took the more risky option, basically she relied on being able to use the new magic with her friends and she also relied on Tirek not killing her immediately. Normally you would want to take the least risky option. Of course, MLP being a show for children, the bad guys never just kill the heroes. Also, this is because if the main 6 died, there wouldn't be much of a show left, even in shows for adults, it is very rare for the main character to die and it usually happens only because the actor did not want to participate anymore. Since this is not in the debate section, I won't discuss real life politics here.

Fiction is meant to be interesting for the reader/viewer. However, if your real life is interesting to watch then it likely sucks for you. If someone made a movie or a TV show about me, the audience would fall asleep. When watching fiction, we want the characters to suffer. We want there to be some kind of problem for them, some kind of enemy to fight, a reason for the main character to hate the enemy etc. In the wedding episodes of FIM, we see Twilight going to the wedding, getting suspicious of Chrysalis (disguised as Cadance), confronting her, getting almost killed by her, then having to escape the dungeon in a dangerous cart ride. After that, Twilight and Cadance confront Chrysalis, they have to fight multiple changelings etc, before finally winning. Imagine an alternative version of that episode. Twilight goes to the wedding, there is no disguised Chrysalis, no danger, the wedding proceeds as planned and they all have fun. Which version would be more interesting to watch? The one where the main character has to overcome danger and save the day or one where nothing really happens? Which version would you prefer if you were Twilight and it was your life, not some TV show? Would you really want to have to fight some powerful enemies instead of celebrating the wedding peacefully? The only piece of fiction that is not awful for the characters (that I know of) is Lucky Star. It is slice-of-life anime where the characters pretty much just talk all the time and nothing happens. This is why I would not really want to live in some fictional world - they all have problems and a lot of those problems are worse than in real life for most people. I guess, in some fictional worlds, if you stay away from the main characters it may be OK, but in others, not so much.

I don't really remember, but it would probably be Chessmaster 2000, I kind-of remember playing it when visiting my dad at his work when I was a little kid. At some point a bit later I played Grand Prix Circuit or as I knew it at the time, "GPEGA", then Wolfenstein 3D and Doom.

The "spraying a bucket on a canvas" paintings sell for lots of money though. AI can create good looking pictures and it requires some skill to use it. It won't replace any art by the good artists, but it can replace the cheap artists. Yeah, like any other tool. Imagine if AI could be used to generate realistic looking video and sound - some creative writer could make his first movie by himself without needing to spend piles of money to hire actors etc. Even if it would not be as good as a movie with real actors, it would be the difference between having a movie and not having it. However, people tend to abuse tools or use them as shortcuts. Why do lots of recordings of the same song to get the performance correctly if you can record it twice, take the better parts and then fix them with software? Why optimize a game so it runs great on a PC if the video card can just generate fake frames using AI?

Well, nobody is forcing you to use AI and some sites (at least for pictures) have separate tags for AI generated pictures or ban them completely. AI can generate good looking pictures though. AI is a tool like any other. It can be abused, just like any other tool. For example, if a singer performed correctly during recording, but made one mistake, you can use software to fix it. However, people get temped to make everything "perfect" and turn a great performer into a robot that always has perfect pitch and never makes mistakes.

For speaker cables it does not matter because the voltage is higher and speakers are low impedance. I have a tape deck that has balanced inputs and outputs, it was kind-of annoying to connect to the rest of my system (which is unbalanced). Normally, yeah, balanced is better, though most of my stuff is unbalanced, so that's what I use. Ground loops are annoying and I sometimes have to use isolation transformers for the signals or disconnect some equipment from the ground to avoid them. Then again, my main PC has an internal sound card and I have a few other devices connected to the system. I sometimes think about getting an external DAC and ADC (the sound card has optical input ant output), it would help with the ground loops, but TOSLINK has max cable length of 10 meters IIRC. I would need a ~7m cable so it should be doable, but near the limit. Another way to do it would be to use sound over IP (something like Dante), but that equipment is expensive. Maybe I should buy a 10 meter TOSLINK cable and try connecting my PC to my DAT deck (which has optical inputs and outputs) to test if it is doable, then look for a DAC and ADC.

A DAC has to have some kind of amplifier to make the output have normal level (0.775V or whatever) and have reasonably low output impedance so that you can connect it to the amplieifer or whatever. Motherboard audio will usually have lower quality for multiple reasons - the space is limited - compare to the size of a sound card to the portion of the motherboard dedicated to audio. less screening/isolation - in part due to lack of space, in part due to cost lower quality DAC and its analog circuits- to save money, as not everyone who buys the motherboard cares that much about sound quality, so why make it more expensive? An external audio interface would be better, whether using USB or a DAC/ADC that is connected using a digital interface (if you use optical, you can even avoid ground loops).

There are some long-running threads in a style of "Who is your favorite pony?". I may want to post in such a thread, but I do not want to repeat myself every month or year. However, so far, the only wa of knowing if I posted in this thread before that I know of is to go through all the pages and search for my name. Is there any faster way to find out if I posted in a thread before (let's assume that my memory is not perfect and that I am too lazy to keep notes)? If not, I think there should be.