A gay pride and an American flag hang from a shoulder bag during a demonstration in San Francisco June 13, 2011. On Friday, the Supreme Court announced it will review the constitutionality of both the federal Defense of Marriage Act and California’s Proposition 8. Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Nine years ago, it sounded like this: Two women in Massachusetts had a daughter through artificial insemination. They wanted the same legal privileges of marriage granted to heterosexual couples, so they asked the state court for expanded civil rights.
Now the Supreme Court will hear two cases with similar players and events in legal challenges to the Defense of Marriage Act Section 3 — a federal law that allows states that bar same-sex marriage to not recognize it from states that do, like Massachusetts — and Proposition 8, a voter referendum that bans same-sex marriage in California.
In about a decade, state-level law has changed in 10 places to recognize same-sex marriage: Connecticut, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Vermont, Washington and Washington, D.C. Another 30 states have forbidden it through constitution amendments.
The steady march forward on the issue continued to pivot on the same general arguments. Same-sex marriage advocates hope for a change as a way to recognize their equal rights. Those opposed to same-sex marriage find the recognition of marriage between one man and one woman a fundamental underpinning of our society.
Take Martha Minow, now dean of law faculty at Harvard Law School. She spoke to the NewsHour in July 2003, before the Massachusetts court weighed in. She cited a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in July of that year that struck down a sodomy ban in Texas.
She called the ruling “a first step in a free country toward what ultimately I think will be equality, equal treatment … once people start to realize these are people just like us. They’re our neighbors, sending their kids to school. We are not allowed by law to discriminate against them, and in fact we see that they deserve the same kind of treatment in the country as everybody else.”
NewsHour correspondent Margaret Warner hosted Maggie Gallagher of the conservative Institute for Marriage and Public Policy in a debate on the NewsHour four months later, in November 2003.
“It’s going to be a national battle from day one because the question is whether people who are married in Massachusetts who are same sex are going to have to be recognized in all 50 states … It’s a big national conversation about what marriage is and what it’s for and whether fundamentally it’s about adult interests and agendas in sexual liberty and sexual affirmations or if it’s about the idea that all of us have an obligation to give our children mothers and fathers.”
A California court allowed same-sex marriage in 2008. But then a statewide vote, Proposition 8, nullified the ruling. The debate then moved to the federal arena, with a challenge to Proposition 8, and a court overturning the law because the state had given same-sex couples a right and took it away.
In the past six months, the debate has peaked, as same-sex marriage advocacy groups felt moments of success.
President Barack Obama announced his support of gay marriage at a time when gaining support and financial backers was critical in his re-election efforts.
Then, on Election Day last month, voters in Washington state, Maryland and Maine decided to allow same-sex marriages, the first statewide referendums to do so.
For years, people who worked to protect marriage as a union between one man and one woman had charged that most Americans sided with them — that no majority of a state’s citizens wanted to allow same-sex marriage.
“We’ve had no real effective way to counter that argument until (Election Day),” Lee Swislow, executive director of Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders told the NewsHour in November.
Today we are announcing that we are discontinuing the sale and distribution of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, CentOS and Oracle Linux. We will continue to resell Oracle Solaris and Microsoft Windows 7. The Enterprise Linux line will be replaced with OS4 Enterprise 4.0 as our only Enterprise Linux based system for distribution.
We are also discontinuing PC/OpenSuite for Windows and PC/OpenSuite for Apple and distribution of LibreOffice and other Open Source alternatives will be handled on a per client basis.
If you have purchased RHEL or Oracle Linux as well as PC/OpenSuite line of products and are under a support contract that support contract will be honored through its entirety.
The first few seconds of this trailer for Mountains of Madness might be enough to convince you that Eldritch's upcoming free DLC will be a happy, Christmas-themed adventure. After all, penguins are too ridiculous to be scary, even in a first-person stealth roguelike. Of course, when the ice of the winter wonderland clears, we're instead left with darkness, evil and creeping dread. An apt metaphor for a family engorged on sprout-heavy Christmas dinners? Probably not.
Beyond the trailer and accompanying screenshots, details of the expansion's added content are thin. What we do know is that this Arctic horror will arrive on the 19th December.
Anyone who’s spent enough time on the Hearthstone ladder will know how bad it feels to go on a losing streak. The rage builds, you play faster trying to recoup those precious stars, and make worse decisions leading to more losses. You’re on tilt, and it feels bad man. In this article, I’ll teach you how to deal with tilt and other mental obstacles in order to consistently perform to the best of your ability.
Before we begin, I'm going to assume you're not deliberately playing a terrible deck, and that you’ve invested some effort in learning how to play it. From that point, the biggest obstacles in your way are internal. The first thing to realize is that ladder climbing is not a competition against the other players. It's a time trial. Your opponents don't know who you are. You will never meet again. They will not adapt to your style, deck choice or tactics. The only things dictating your win-rate are your skill level and deck selection. Play well enough for long enough and you will hit the rank you want.
Tilt is an emotional state brought about by a loss, or series of losses, which you perceive to be unfair. That feeling can be caused by the type of deck you faced (“Ugh, aggro Shaman is so cheesy”), your bad luck (“Why is my Golden Monkey always the last card?”), your opponent’s good luck (“he needed that exact card”) or even tech cards (“why did I face the only guy who still runs The Black Knight?”).
Regardless of the reason, when you’re on tilt it feels like you’re owed. The universe screwed you, and now it's time for it to make amends. This is, in essence, a variation of the gambler's fallacy, which causes reckless decisions because subconsciously we feel a game's more likely to pay off when we're 'due' good luck. And when those plays don't pay off, the feeling of unfairness only intensifies, leading to a spiral of losses.
The root cause of going on tilt is this feeling of unfairness, so it helps to actively note all the instances when you get lucky. Losing to a topdecked lethal will sting less if you remind yourself you topdecked lethal yourself two games ago. Try to keep track of everything that goes well for you, whether it’s drawing Fiery War Axe on turn two, queuing into a favorable matchup, or your opponent not having the board clear they need. It won’t prevent tilt completely, but should help mitigate the effects.
The second half of avoiding tilt is assessing just how unfair the situation really was. Let's say you're on 4 life and a Druid topdecks Swipe for lethal. It's less aggravating when you stop and consider that you would also lose to Druid of the Claw, Ragnaros or C'Thun, and that your opponent’s hand might have included cycle cards to give them more ways to draw these remaining 'outs'. Sometimes you will just be undone by a super lucky draw, but try to consider the context of the rest of the game.
For most of us, tilt is recognized in hindsight, if at all. To avoid going into a vicious cycle, it helps to pace yourself. You can decide to always have a short break, say 30-60 seconds, after each loss, during which it's best to do something unrelated (stand up, get a glass of water, or even just stare at the wall). That's often enough to regain the composure to be able to identify whether your mentality is falling into the feeling of unfairness pattern, and avoid it.
More importantly, you should stop playing the game (take a long break, an hour or so) after suffering a number of losses in a row. Three is what I personally use. While you can reasonably expect to lose three games in a row even while boasting a 65% win-rate—in fact, it's expected to happen after 35 games—it’s likely that you're not playing optimally, and the outcome will be going on tilt. Here are some other mental obstacles to be aware of...
Once you start thinking that the world is out to get you, that your opponents always have the perfect curve and draw the exact cards they need, it will poison all your decisions. Negative thinking will skew your mulligan decisions and lines of play to be very reactive, because mentally you’re preparing for the worst every turn. As with tilt, the way to deal with negative thinking is by focusing on positive things that have happened in your games, and taking breaks where necessary.
Confirmation bias is the brain's tendency to remember things that reaffirm our existing beliefs, and forget or discount things that weaken those beliefs. For example, I may believe everyone will now play Priest if Tempostorm places it in Tier One of the latest Meta Snapshot. (Hey, it could happen.) So, whenever I encounter a Priest on ladder, I'll mentally pat myself on the back for making the right read, and the times I face other classes will diminish in my mind. Pretty soon I'll have a skewed perspective of the meta that leads to me teching my deck heavily against Priest, to the detriment of my win rate.
It gets worse: I'll also tend to remember more vividly the time my tech cards paid off, because they feel spectacular, and forget about the other times those cards rotted in my hand when facing other classes. The way to avoid confirmation bias is simple: don't rely on your memory. When it comes to the meta, refer to online resources such as the excellent Data Reaper report. When testing out tech cards or countering meta decks, stats beat gut feel every time. Which is why you should really be using a deck tracker.
Humans are hard-wired to be afraid of taking chances. Most people will prefer to avoid even money bets or even slightly favorable gambles. In Hearthstone, this can cause you to take unnecessarily defensive lines of play, which often leads to otherwise close games becoming slow losses. It's a slippery way to lose your win percentage, because it's difficult to gauge the real risk of a situation without knowing the other player’s hand, so even when reviewing games the risk may remain hidden.
The way to combat the fear of losing is first to articulate the risk. Explain to yourself why you're clearing the board instead of going face, or why it's important to use an AoE spell this turn and not the next. This simple trick forces you to think rationally, rather than give in to the general feeling of unease we all get when taking risks. The other thing you can do is watch better players play and note when they choose more risky lines of play. This can calibrate your intuition so you're less likely to be timid even when not thinking about it explicitly.
Our brains are essentially comprised of two systems, a quick inaccurate one, and a slower more accurate one. The quicker one is what's engaged when solving problems fast without really thinking about them. In Hearthstone, this translates to making the obvious plays: taking the good trade, coining out a 2-drop into another 2-drop, etc. Playing like that isn’t necessarily bad, but it's important to remember that you won't improve if you keep making the first good move that occurs to you.
If you're not satisfied with your win-rate, you should be thinking about every turn longer than you want to. Articulate what the alternatives are and why you've picked the option you have. This will force you to engage your slower mind, which will in the long run result in better autopilot decisions. Again, it's important to take regular breaks. Concentration is a limited resource—there's a reason why you’re given a short break between lectures at school. Playing 50 minutes out of every hour will improve your concentration, which will, in turn, make sure you have more energy to think through your plays.
Similar to playing on autopilot, tunnel vision involves missing certain types of play due to unconsciously making assumptions. For instance, let’s say you're playing against an aggressive deck and have been trying to stabilize all game. You spend your entire turn deciding on the best attacks to clear the enemy's board, but don’t notice you could go face for lethal. In this case, articulating your reasoning won't help, since it won't expose the hidden assumption you're making. The best way to combat tunnel vision is to routinely go through a mental checklist on each turn: do I have lethal? Does my opponent have lethal if I pass? Etc. You can find a great guide to checklists here.
This is a lack of desire to play which is most commonly encountered after success. Maybe you feel like you're on a roll and don't want to jinx it by playing again. Maybe you just hit the highest rank you’ve ever reached, and don't want to risk dropping. Whatever the reason, if you haven't reached your ultimate goal, you have to keep playing to get there.
Ladder anxiety can be considered a sort of reverse-tilt. Instead of feeling you were screwed unjustly, you feel your success was an accident. To mentally offset that, you can assure yourself that your win-rate over many games is unlikely to be coincidental, or remind yourself of your ultimate goal and how good it will feel to get there.
More practically, you can structure your play sessions. Play a fixed number of games (assuming no interruptions due to losing-streaks) each time, only considering stopping when you're done with the designated batch of games. This gives less weight to individual games and makes the whole thing seem more routine, which offsets the tendency to 'quit while I'm ahead'.
Our brains were not designed to play Hearthstone or any other competitive game. Several of our survival traits can be detrimental to such activities. I hope you've recognized some of the mental obstacles described above in yourself, because if so the tips will be helpful to fight those tendencies. Feel free to offer any other observations or advice in the comments, and good luck out there on the ladder. Even though you won’t need it in the end.
A version of this article was originally posted on r/competitivehs. The edited version is republished here with permission.
The theme of Experient’s EnVision 2017 conference — held at the Huntington Convention Center of Cleveland on March 15–17 — was “True North.” The third-party company riffed on the idea of personal and professional wayfinding throughout the program, including during a “glamping” (that’s “glamorous camping”) reception at the Westin Cleveland Downtown.
“The glamping idea transpired from several collaborative conversations with key players from Experient, our banquet and culinary teams, and trusted local vendors,” said Brittany McGuiness, the hotel’s director of event planning. “With no outdoor space, we truly wanted to bring the great outdoors in at the Westin Cleveland.
“Our vision was to put a high-end twist on down-home favorites and create a space where our Experient guests truly felt like they could relax at a picnic table, or pull up a log to catch up with colleagues they don’t see often enough,” McGuiness said. “We created indulgent variations of comfort foods such as cornbread-in-a-can and gourmet s’mores served reside in our ballroom.”
With an April 12 deadline fast approaching for the large-scale rollout of Windows XP Service Pack 2, Microsoft offers some free help to smooth the migration for large enterprise customers.
With less than a month left before Microsoft Corp. removes the block on the automatic delivery of Windows XP Service Pack 2, the software giant updated its Application Compatibility Toolkit to help smooth the migration for large enterprise customers.
The Redmond, Wash., company has set April 12 as the drop dead date for the delivery of the service pack to all Windows XP and Windows XP Service Pack 1 systems, whether businesses are ready or not.
With that deadline fast approaching, Microsoft has added three security-centric evaluation tools to help customers identify the common issues caused by SP2's increased security settings.
It's easy to get Ask.com's toolbar installed on your browsereven if you didn't want itbut it's quite a challenge to remove. Here's how you can get rid of it without going crazy.
Chances are, you've had this experience: you weren't really paying attention to all the little checkboxes and fine print when you were installing a software application, and the next time you opened up your Web browser, you found out that you, like countless others before you, had accidentally installed the Ask.com search toolbar.
Well, no big deal, it's just a tiny toolbar, right? Not so much. The problem is, it isn't just taking up precious screen real estate on your screen. The Ask Toolbar is frequently referred to as a browser hijacker because it takes control of the Web browser and does things you may not want, such as using Ask.com instead of Google or Bing to perform a search, or setting the Ask.com webpage as your default homepage. Many people call it a virus, but it isn't malware. The security industry generally refers to it as a "PUP," or potentially unwanted program. Users who it hijacks mostly have less polite names for it.
Ask Toolbar and Search comes bundled as part of various other applications and add-ons, but the most common culprit happens to be Oracle's Java (as if Java wasn't already problematic enough!). During the software installation process, you are shown a checkbox that says, "Install the Ask Toolbar and make Ask my default search provider." The checkbox is already checked off, by default. (I hate opt-ins by default).
I frequently get comments that users are clearly informed when they are prompted to install these add-ons, so they shouldn't complain when it happens. While I agree that users should be deliberate when installing software and scrutinizing every line and checkbox that comes up, it's also clear that there are serious problems with an entire distribution model that relies on users not noticing what's happening.
In some cases, the "typical" installation already includes the add-on and the only way to turn it off is to use the "custom" installation, which many users won't do.
It also doesn't help that, at least on the Java installer, users are shown the message "We recommend installing the FREE Browser Add-on from Ask." From a user's standpoint, if you are installing software, you don't expect recommendations of other programs that have nothing to do with what you are currently trying to do. If it's recommended, you should listen, right?
You didn't notice the checkbox in your rush to hit Next, or didn't realize what the Ask Toolbar was going to do, and now you are paying the price. Have no fearhere is what you can do to get rid of it from all your browsers.
Remember, just removing the software that installed the toolbar won't do anything. Uninstalling Java laves the Ask toolbar on your system. We need to uninstall Ask Toolbar Updater and Ask Toolbar from your computer. Ask.com provides a fairly detailed list of steps on how to uninstall the toolbar and also a "Ask Toolbar Remover" tool. The tool seems to work only with older versions of the toolbar and is not always effective for recent versions, though.
Before we do anything, we make sure all browsers are closed. Check the Task Manager to make sure none of the browsers are open. (Maybe you should print the directions out first, or use a different device to display this page)
Then, we open up Control Panel and go to "Uninstall a program" (Add or Remove Programs if you are still on Windows XP). In the list of applications, find and uninstall Ask Toolbar Updater and Ask Toolbar.
If you have already done this and you still have a problem, look for any applications in the list that has "Ask" in the Publisher field.
With the software gone, the next step is to clean up the Web browser. The toolbar installed several browser extensions, changed your default homepage to nl.ask.com, and changed the default search engine to use Ask.com.
The Consensus conference showed how massively the blockchain and cryptocurrency spaces have grown, but highlighted that there's anything but consensus between them.
The Consensus conference in New York City this week was a collision of worlds. The cryptocurrency space is fresh off a volatile price boom that put it in the global spotlight, and crypto entrepreneurs are more confident than ever that the token economy is the decentralized future of blockchain. The enterprise blockchain market, meanwhile, is looking beyond coins to deploy private, permissioned blockchains across different facets of their businesses.
On the surface, the Bitcoin-led crypto space was feeling itself. There were Bitcoin Lamborghinis parked outside the Midtown venue, while an LA startup on the show floor was selling actual 18-karat cryptocurrency emblazoned jewelry and gold coins. Startups were advertising new initial coin offerings (ICOs) with dancing mascots.
The reality of how cryptocurrencies are evolving is far more nuanced. Panels delved into complex issues like the token economy, the mining boom, and advanced cryptography. Popular coins, from Ripple to ZCash, had a big presence at the show, and there was a lot of money to go around. Unicorn crypto startup Circle announced a massive $110 million funding round, a partnership with mining hardware giant Bitmain, and a Fiat-backed coin to connect US dollars to the Poloniex exchange.
There is actual 18 karat gold crypto jewelry here. What even is 2018 #Consensus2018 #BlockchainWeekNYC pic.twitter.com/i2JyT5tMEc
The enterprise blockchain side of Consensus felt like a different conference. FedEx talked about using blockchain for logistics. Enterprise tech and fintech giants like Deloitte, Microsoft, and SAP made announcements around enterprise adoption and deployment-ready use cases hosted on their own clouds. Even AWS entered the fray through a partnership with new ConsenSys-owned blockchain platform Kaleido. There was also a big focus on interoperability and standardization, with organizations such as the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance announcing a 1.0 specification.
Eager startups on the exhibition floor straddled blockchain and cryptocurrency, but several people I spoke to throughout the conference talked about the detachment between the crypto bros sporting T-shirts and the blockchain businessmen in suits. Yet the 8,000-plus attendees from both sides crammed into the overstuffed venue all the same. Last year, Consensus had about a third this many people.
This year's Consensus also marked more mainstream consumer tech buy-in. Hardware maker HTC made the surprise announcement of its forthcoming blockchain-powered HTC Exodus smartphone, which will feature a universal cryptocurrency wallet and support multiple protocols including the Bitcoin and Ethereum networks.
Smartphones are the most ubiquitous computing devices in the world. The not-yet-released Exodus is just a start, but the decentralized potential of turning millions of smartphones into blockchain nodes is staggering in its scale.
Ultimately, it comes back to that core question of what's more important: Bitcoin and the massive cryptocurrency market it spawned, or blockchain's potential as a foundational technology driven in large part by investments from big banks and tech giants?
Prominent venture capitalist Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures hit on that during a Wednesday panel. He said we'll look back at some of the valuations of crypto tokens today and say they were inflated, but doesn't believe cryptocurrencies are a bubble. However, he does believe blockchain's potential as foundational tech outweights the allure of its first and flashiest application.
"This is an entirely new stack we'll get to build applications on, and the tokens are just the fuel that lights up that stack," said Wilson.
Of course it's not as black and white as that. IBM is using it to track carbon credits, but doing it with tokens on the Stellar financial cryptocurrency's network. Another very different example is Blockstack, which is building a startup building a blockchain-based decentralized internet. At Consensus, Blockstack launched a new ecosystem-wide decentralized app (DApp) store that doesn't just offer financial DApps. The marketplace features decentralized productivity apps, encrypted messaging and video chat, and social networks.
Co-founder Muneeb Ali also brought blockchain's topicality full circle by revealing that he and co-founder Ryan Shea served as technical advisors for the decentralized internet storyline on this season of HBO's Silicon Valley.
Enterprise blockchain company Bloq is crossing that divide as well. Co-founder Jeff Garzik is an original Bitcoin core developer and led the failed Segwit2x Bitcoin fork before it was canceled due to lack of consensus. Bloq is bridging the cryptocurrency and blockchain worlds with its new Metronome cross-blockchain crypto token, which Garzik said is the first crypto asset that doesn't have to exist on a single network.
However, the starkest showdown between the crypto and blockchain worlds came during a Monday afternoon panel that was supposed to be about "secure and reliable commercial networks." It turned out to be a heated debate over public cryptocurrencies and enterprise blockchains.
Former JPMorgan blockchain lead Amber Baldet moderated the panel, fresh off announcing her new Clovyr private blockchain development startup. On one side was Joseph Lubin, the reserved and soft-spoken CEO of enterprise Ethereum company ConsenSys. On the other was the bombastic, cowboy hat-wearing Jimmy Song, a Bitcoin developer and partner at Blockchain Capital who said Bitcoin is "the real innovation."
Song came out guns blazing. At various points he called blockchain "magic dust" that doesn't instantly solve problems and mimicked Oprah with chants of "you get a blockchain, you get a blockchain!" He said that for most of the centralized businesses exploring the decentralized technology, he doesn't think blockchain is very useful. Song believes the future of blockchain technology is in Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. Asked about Baldet's Clovyr announcement, he said "I didn't see anything but buzzwords."
"In five years, I think most of the projects in this space will have been for nothing. Especially the enterprise ones," Song said frankly.
Half of the crowd cheered Song's anti-blockchain rhetoric, and the other half (including Baldet and Lubin) sat there quizzically and silent. Lubin eventually clapped back, and got Song to agree to a bet for "any amout of Bitcoin" that he's wrong about where Bitcoin and blockchain will be half a decade from now.
In a conference full of paradoxes, the fiery exchange brought the otherwise unspoken debate at the heart of Consensus to the fore. Before Song walked offstage, he said he was excited to find the attendees in the crowd that were clapping and buy them some drinks.