Source
Note: Based on observing question-taker's profile, he is still taking answers, so two parts may or may not completely summarize the AMA.

Questions	Answers
Space Cadet Pinball, how does it feel to be the most played "bring your child to work day" game? I remember it fondly.	The best part is that I used to "teach" computer lab when my kids were in K through 6th grades, back when Pinball was still included and well known. The kids could care less about anything technically hard or interesting that I'd worked on, of course, but Pinball gave me instant street cred with them.
	Especially cool was being able to walk over and enter a secret code that only I knew that would turn on all the cheats, like infinite lives. They thought I was a wizard at that age!
	The code, by the way, is "hidden test" without the quotes! Then various keys do different things, you can click and drag the ball around, and so on. Google it for the gory details!
	I always like to point out that I was working with a full set of original IP from Maxis, so I had nothing to do with the design of the game, or it's art, etc... that was all done! My contribution was volunteering to port it, including a partial rewrite from asm to C, to work on MIPS, Alpha, PowerPC, IA64, ARM, and so on, which was actually a lot of work. But I got it into the Windows box, which is how and why everyone knows it today. But all credit for the gameplay and so on goes to Maxis, all I did was not screw it up in that case!
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To add a bit of detail re Space Cadet Pinball: we built Space Cadet originally at my company Cinematronics and did a deal with Microsoft to ship it with the Plus Pack that accompanied Win 95 and Win 98. While it technically didn't ship w/ Windows, the Plus Pack had something like a 25% attach rate and pinball wound up on most systems anyway. Microsoft actually had an option in our original contract from 1994 to ship it with the OS itself or the Plus Pack. Maxis was our publisher for the subsequent retail version, and later bought my company. More germane to this thread: I believe Dave's port entered the picture a few years later, after Win 98, and was likely critical to pinball continuing to ship on later iterations of the Windows OS (i.e. 32-bit). I definitely appreciate the time he put in to give the game extra years of life on the Windows platform. Kevin Gliner, game designer and producer for 3D Pinball, and co-founder of Cinematronics.	Pleased to FINALLY put a name to the game design! You should update the Wikipedia article for the game, as I think it lists Matt Ridgway, who might have been sound? I've been crediting Maxis for years, not knowing the role of Cinematronics who was who. One thing that confused me: wasn't there a company that did video games in the 80s called Cinematronics? Any relation? Star Castle, Armor Attack, etc...
	As for timing, this likely between the Win95 and Win98 Plus! packs. It was very early on at least, and shipped at least in NT4, and perhaps earlier in "SUR" release that ran atop NT 3.51, but I don't have access to any source files to check dates!
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I keep meaning to fix that wikipedia article, there's a significant number of people that worked on the game and for some reason only Matt (an independent sound guy who did some excellent part-time contract work for us) is listed. There's also a lot of confusion about the timing of various releases and the companies involved, and who owns it now (EA). I actually have all the original source, although no rights to any of it anymore. Hard to say on the timing of the port. I was working in Redmond in '99 when I got word someone had done an NT4 and Win2000 port (I'm assuming that was you), so that was the first time the port showed up on my radar. I have a more confident memory (and contracts, email, etc) of all the events related to how pinball came about and the first couple years after it was released. I like to think pinball was the very first Win95 game (it was fun to watch Gates and Leno pretend to play it on stage at the Win95 launch event), but of course there were other games that shipped with the launch too. You're correct, there was an 80s arcade game company called Cinematronics that went out of business long before we started in 1994, and someone had let the trademark lapse. How we came to be called Cinematronics is a long story for another time...	NT shipped in 96, so the version I did for it would have been done in 95. I remember working on it about the time Win9X was shipping or in late beta. I could be wrong on that part, but Nov 95 would be my guess.
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Damn dude, porting assembly? You are a legend!	Thanks - we actually did all of our debugging in assembler. We didn't have any source-level or line-level debugging at all (except as noted below). So you'd connect to a machine through an ssh-like tool and then, if the symbols were right, you could get a callstack and inspect memory, disassemble functions, and so on. But since we spent much of our day staring at assembly, I became reasonably adept at it.
	I say "reasonably" as I was lazy enough that I would compile the components of interest to me with Visual Studio PDB symbols so that, if I could repro on my own machine, I could then source-level debug it. That made me fast at some stuff that others were slow at, but I likely never got as proficient at asm debugging as someone who never had an alternative. I had a developer friend named Bob whom was an ntsd (our debugger) superstar, and he'd write expressions inside of breakpoints to fire conditionally, that kind of thing. So I did learn that trick, but I'm sure there were dozens I just never knew.
	That all said, we rarely if ever coded in assembly. All coding was in C/C++.
	In the Pinball case, parts of the original were written in hand-coded in asm by Maxis, like the sound engine, and wouldn't have had a hope of working on anything but an x86. Rather than be lame and not have sound on the RISC platforms, I opted to rewrite that stuff in C so that it was portable.
	The RISC platforms also bring their own set of problems like 32-bit alignment for data. And being on Windows NT (now just "Windows") meant being Unicode, but fortunately there isn't a TON of text in a pinball game!
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boytekka: damn, the only time that I did assembly language is when we tried moving a small machine through the printer port.. I miss those days LordApocalyptica: Only time I did assembly was when I wanted to make a game on my TI-84, and decided that I didn't want to. I miss those days too.	First game I wrote in assembly I did in a machine language monitor on my C64. You can't (easily) relocate 6502 so to add code you'd have to jump out, do stuff, and jump back... Crazy!
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If I can ask a question, how does it feels to go from coding with basically zero help to working with modern IDE and code editors that give you a lot of infos, tips, error notifications and so on? I've started programming like a year ago from zero, and I don't think I could be able to program like y'all did 20 years ago or more. Thanks for doing this AMA anyways!	You're very welcome! The progression in tools has been amazing, really. I remember HESMON and my first machine language monitors for the PET and C64, then really nice ROM dev environments, and CygnusEd for the Amiga... all the way up to PlatformIO and Visual Studio Code.
	My most recent "WOW" moment was adding a line to my lib_deps line in platformio, which magically included the library being developed at the URL on github. So you can link to online projects... cool.
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Just wanted to say thanks for the Alpha port!	Alpha AXP was by far the hardest to debug! "Branch later, maybe"
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I just want to thank you for my first experience with pinball. I am now a top 100 competitive pinball player and own 16 pinball machines.	That's cool, which do you collect primarily? I was always a fan of Williams, and am FB friends with a couple of their older devs like Steve Ritchie, Larry DeMar, and Eugene Jarvis (but I should be careful, Bill Gates warned me never to name drop :-) )
	I have a Black Knight 2000 as my own machine right now!
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I have a wide range. Some modern Sterns like Metallica, Jurassic Park, Tron and Iron Maiden. Older Bally’s like Frontier and Fathom. 2 classic Bally/Williams Dr Who and Attack From Mars. Plus a few EMs. I like them all! Attack From Mars was the game that got me into the physical world of pinball. Collecting has been more of a recent pandemic thing since I can’t go out and play. I miss traveling around the country playing in big tournaments. Oh yeah and Steve Ritchie is quite the character. You must meet him some day. I’ve met him a few times and each time has earned a place in my pinball stories I talk about with friends.	Congrats on the collection, that's a nice set! I've never met Steve - I did meet Larry DeMar in vegas. I was playing at a slot machine and he was next to me, and had a name tag, and I was like... "Excuse me sir, but does the word Robotron mean anything?" and it turned out to be him!
Asking as someone pretty new in software development, did you experience impostor syndrome? If so, how did you deal with it?	My first couple of years were very productive, so I wasn't insecure about my output, but even so I definitely experienced imposter syndrome. I think most people who achieve aspirational roles do... I have a friend who was in the NFL who describes the same feeling.
	Being as productive as your peers is sort of the pre-requisite, and if that's true, then remind yourself that when you were in fifth grade, the eighth graders on the playground seemed so old and mature! It's odd in that I started in 1993, but to me anyone who started in the 80s was a "true" Old Timer and remains so in my head to this day. And similarly I'm no doubt the grizzled veteran to people I hired a few years later.
	I know when I started I felt like the dumbest guy in the room, and by the end I felt like the smartest guy in the room, and I don't think I'd gotten any smarter along the way. So it's all relative and perception. Well, that and the stock caused some serious attrition of the "really smart"!
	I remember visiting Google a couple of years ago in the bathrooms they had posters that read "YOU ARE NOT AN IMPOSTER", and info about seminars and so on about it, so it's very common! I wish I had a concrete strategy for you, but I don't other than "It's commonplace, and I bet there are a ton of resources on the Web. Don't be surprised you're experiencing it!"
What would you encourage someone to start learning today related to your field?	I'm learning React at the moment. Let's face it, the web development experience is utter nonsense. So I kept hoping for something that would make it clean, and easy to make components, and to work with REST apis. So I went looking for a solution. Then I read about Angular, and it seemed like "too much" to learn for the sake of making a SPA.
	But React seems understandable enough and solves a ton of problems with web development, not the least of which is being able to intermingle HTML and Javascript (via JSX).
	As for languages, I'd probably start with Python. I prototyped a complicated LED system a couple of years ago and it was admirable what it could accomplish for an interpreted language. And you probably have to know modern Javascript as well.
Now, would you be rather interested in working for windows, macos or linux ?	I work in all three. For my own projects I write to the ASP.NET Core 3.1, and that's available on Windows, Mac, and Linux. I originally wrote my LED server to it under MacOS, then moved it to Windows with about 5 minutes of changes (related to the consoles being somewhat different). Then I moved it to Linux, where I made it work and then containerized it with Docker. I got it up and running on my Raspberry Pi and in a Windows HyperV and under WSL using Ubuntu. To me that kind of stuff is super cool.
	Once I had it working in a Docker container I deployed it to my Synology NAS, which is some variant of Linux. So my NAS runs my Christmas lights!
	I love stuff like that when it works!
	My main workstation is a Dell monitor that has an internal KVM. I have a 2013 Mac Pro connected to it, which is maxed out and then has an eGPU and eRAID setup via Thunderbolt. And then I have a 3970X Windows PC connected as well, and I can jump back and forth with a button.
	I spend most of my day in Windows now, unless it's video related, in which case I use Final Cut Pro.
Hi Dave, thanks for the AmA! In regards to task manager - often times I have to click the 'end task' button more than once to get the frozen program to actually close. Why is this? Thanks again.	Remember that, at least in my day, End Task is different than End Process. The former sends a "Please close yourself" message to the app, and if it's hung, it should then detect it and so on, but doesn't always. Imagine the app is in a weird state where it's still pumping messages, it's not hung, but it's broken. End Task likely won't work.
	That's when you need End Process, which tears everything down for you. The substantive difference is that the program gets no choice in the matter and no notification. End Task can be graceful. End Process is brutal.
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What about when the task manager stops responding? We need a task manager manager to manage the task manager. Lol	I've never seen that happen, ever, unless the system itself or the window manager is bunged in some way. Your puny Task Manager cannot save you now.
	Then again, nothing can, save a reboot.
What cool new tech are you excited about?	Right now I'm actually trying to productize something of my own, a system for doing hidden, permanently-installed LED holiday lighting. It receives the effect entirely over WiFi, or it can fall back to built-in effects and so on. Quick demo from 4th of July here:
	https://youtu.be/7QNtj2hZtaQ
	I'm done the software on the ESP32 and on the desktop, and working on the phone app now. So the next step is to find someone to manufacture the actual addressable LED strip fixtures. They'd be like under-counter LED strips that snap together end to end, but weatherproof, and with WS2813 LEDs internally.
	In terms of stuff that I'm just benefitting from, the latest CPUs from AMD are amazing. I have the 32-core 3970X and the raw computing power is hard to comprehend. That you can buy a 32-core chip for $2K (or 64-core for $4K) amazes me! Now I need to learn AI or something to make use of all of that hardware...
After the rise of WinRAR, did you continue to use the trial or did you pay?	From: [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected])
	Sent: Saturday, April 29, 2006 3:14 PM
	To: Dave
	Subject: Your BuyRAR.com Order #: 122229610 License Key

	Attachments: rarkey.rar
	My WinRAR order number, from about 15 years ago, is above. And my WinZip license is much older than that. As someone who (a) made their real living in shareware and (b) worked on Product Activation, I'm the kind of guy who always licenses everything! You'll notice in my PlatformIO/"Arduino" video I even walk people through how to contribute to show how easy it is. I love good, cheap software.
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Would you download a car?	My wife's Tesla downloads update all the time. I'm sure they're just as complex as the mechanical components of the car, so in a sense, we already do!
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But... why did you keep the email?	I have a folder on my OneDrive called Registrations where I keep copies of license keys and registrations. So it was handy. Looks like Telix is my oldest registration from 1989 or so.
Also what was Microsoft really like back in the 90s? As a user of MS-Dos 3.30 forward till now. I’m assuming there has just been a whole tide of changes. Was double space really as funny on the dev side as it was on the user side with the slowness and the pufferfish as a logo :)	I worked on Doublespace in that I wrote a thunking layer that could live in low memory and then moved the rest of the code into the HMA. I didn't work on the compression, but odds are the guy who did is reading along right now, I bet!
	I don't really know if it was faster or slower than its contemporaries like Stacker. I wrote one for the Amiga, though didn't get it quite finished before starting at MS, and it's an interesting and hard problem to do well. At least on the AmigaDOS it was, FAT would be a tad easier.
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I mean for its time it was great. But back then floppy disks and 10M RLL-MFM drives were more the norm. It was actually awesome to have it included IN the OS instead of having to buy stacker. I think this is why I get so much of a kick out of every phishing AD that says download this to double your RAM. It just takes me back.	RAM Doublers are a whole 'nother ball of wax. Raymond Chen, in his blog "The Old New Thing", covers them well. If I understand it correctly, in the most famous case the code to do the actual memory compression was disabled, so it literally did nothing, but did it with overhead.
	On the other hand, I note that current Windows, the HyperV, and even my Synology NAS offer "Memory Compression" now so perhaps there's a time and a place on modern cpus and systems.
I'm an Engineer and regularly use MS Office to produce reports and calculations. Subscript and Superscript are something I use all the time. For at least the last 15 years, in MS Word I can hit "Ctrl +" & "Ctrl Shift +" to make the highlighted text Subscript or Superscript. But MS Word sucks for calculations, so I use MS Excel. But MS Excel it's about 8 clicks to make something super or subscript, and the hotkey technology hasn't made it in. So my question is, why was MS Office 2003 the best version of office that was ever produced?	I retired in 2003. Coincidence? I'll leave that one up to the scholars.
If you could go back and change anything about Windows without consequences or worrying about backwards compatibility, what would it be?	Format! I wrote that and since I was used to using the Visual Studio Resource Editor for dialogs, but couldn't in this case, I just laid out a stack of buttons and labels, content in the knowledge that a Program Manager or Designer would come up with a proper design for it that I would then code up. But somehow, no one did, and no one has for 25 years! So it's a big tall stack of buttons like a prairie grain elevator.
Ever met Bill Gates or have an interesting personal experience with him or another higher up you can share?	Yes, even when I was a new college hire he had the 30 of us or so over for beer and a burger in his back yard. It was a nice touch and quite informal. Obviously, at some scale, it wasn't 30 people anymore and they couldn't continue it!
	Ever play the video game Star Castle? It was like that. Concentric circles of people standing around BillG each armed with what they hope is a question or comment so clever they'll stand out in some way!
If every software you need would be available for both systems. Would you use a Linux distribution or Windows 10?	Right now I'd use Windows 10 because, if the same client software is available, I'd do it on Windows simply because I have a new 3970X w/ 128G of RAM and triple RAID0 SSDs plus an Optane stick. All for about 1/10th the price of a Mac Pro. Since the hardware is so cheap and powerful, it's really hard to resist.
	Even if all the client software were magically available, or Parallels for Linux were a thing, I'd stick with Windows because I haven't seen a Linux UI that I really like. I know everyone has a favorite... if there's an actually good and attractive one that works out of the box, let me know what distro, and maybe link a screenshot!
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Give Mint 20 with Cinnamon a fair shot! I have struggled for years trying to like a Linux distro but never found one that felt and looked right which I think had been the reason Linux hasn't been adopted mainstream but Mint20 with Cinnamon is possibly it..if not its very very close.. Has awesome multi-desltop winodws feature and you can make it basically just like Win10.. Would love to know what you think of it! 20.1 BETA just dropped and has a super interesting feature called Web Apps that needs to be checked out asap! Heres a link to the 20 long term support version.. some people do not like the Minto Logos/Backgrounds out of the box..keep in mind there are a ton of nice ones included and many more you can get quickly if that's something you don't like..what is really neat is that you can make Mint20 look like any OS.. there are themes that make it exactly like MacOS I just have not personally tried those out yet. https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=3928	Thanks, I'll check out Mint!
I am looking at my copy of Douglas Coupland's "microserfs". Although it's fiction, do you think it resembles the Microsoft Culture of the time?	Lord no, that book bugged me. On the one hand, they're a bunch of pretentious and precocious, annoying kids. I worked on a team (NT) where the tone was set by Dave Cutler and the guys he brought over from Digital, so it was rather different. On the other hand, it's such a big company that odds are those four main people DID exist somewhere in the company. Just not around me!
Why was (is) a monolithic registry preferred over distributing the settings in a number of files like Unix? Why did windows remain single-user focused for so long when Unix was multi-user since the 70s? In my understanding, if there is just one user, that user has to be admin which opened Windows up to security issues. (I don't even recall any sudo-like privilege escalation in pre-XP Windows.)	Windows NT was multiluser from birth. And there's nothing about the Windows architecture that requires users to be admin; the reality, I think, is that most apps started out in Win95 land and just didn't work if they were run as non-admin, so people ran as admin because the apps required it.
	We couldn't just break all those apps and say "Oh well, get better apps" so what you got was a convention of people running as admin. But again, there's no need to. Same as Unix.
	The one exception is that under Unix it's easy to sudo and so admin work briefly. I wish Windows had (or exposed) a simpler mechanism for letting me run as a non-admin credential and escalate when needed. I know UAC does the same thing, more or less, if used cautiously.
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Yeah NT did eventually get around to fixing it. My question was really about the earlier systems, because I think you said you worked on MS-DOS? Since there were existing systems with multi-user and privilege escalation even before the first Windows, somebody must have made a conscious decision to not include that functionality.	MS-DOS was only the second or third OS I can think of for a Microprocessor (CPM, SCP, then MS-DOS). What existed for mainframes and minis didn't matter much in the memory limits available on the desktop.
What was the inspiration for Space Cadet Pinball and what is your high score?	I don't know, I wasn't the designer, the inspiration part happened separate, I provided the perspiration part! I was actually pretty good at the game, since I was literally paid to play and test it... but I don't know the score, sorry! I do have the world high score on Tempest, though! But not Pinball :-)
1. What's something super useful within Task Manager you think even seasoned Windows users don't know they can do? 2. What do you think a future version of Task Manager should be able to do?	I think CTRL_SHIFT_ESC is a surprise to a lot of people!
	I think Task Manager needs Dark Mode, and a way to show who has locked what file or device so you can kill the offender when needed.
Why is it that I can still find dialogs in Windows 10 that were clearly built using 16 bit Visual Studio 97 version?	This should explain it. When you achieve perfection, you leave it alone:
	https://youtu.be/l75a8CvIHBQ
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Please for the love of God, use your Microsoft contacts to stop the snipping tool from going away. It's literally perfect but they keep trying to discontinue it.	One Compound Word: SnagIt. It's what you need to make your life complete.
	After my time, but I heard the new snipping and history that's being built in to replace it is pretty good. It better be if they kill snipping tool!
Thanks for task manager! I use it for so many things. How do you feel about newer versions of Windows de-emphasizing the control panel in favor of their new settings app?	I'm all for it if they made sure they had 100% coverage of all settings. It's sort of weird that in this day and age, with an R&D budget in the billions, we still have a mix of new control panel and old property pages. But I like the new stuff if it covered all cases!
Hello Dave! Why does Windows have such a rough time transferring a lot of small files? Is it a limitation of NTFS?	It's not Windows, it's all operating systems. Part of it is filesystem related:
	Imagine copying a file takes 200ms of overhead plus 10ms per MB. Coping 100M of large files will take 200ms + 1000ms = 1.2 seconds.
	Now imagine you have 100M of 1M files. Now you have 100*200ms + 1000ms = 20000ms or 20 seconds. 20 times as long for the same amount of data.
Did you ever get a chance to work in/on OS/2? I stuck with OS/2 until 2005/2006, before moving onto Linux, and would love to hear any opinions and stories you might have.	I didn't! I used OS/2 a bit but never had a chance to work on it. Many of the people I worked with did, though... but if OS/2 were Kevin Bacon, I'm one degree removed.
I had waited more than 20 years to ask this... What the fuck is Trumpet Winsock?	That's what you need to use TCP/IP on Windows before it was included in Windows. You're welcome.
What was the idea behind having "generic" activation keys starting in Windows XP that would activate any version, it was said they were for [educational purposes], did Microsoft provide them to 501c3/non-profit schools, or was there a different reasoning?	I'm not sure what you mean by "generic". I remember retail and oem, but what was a generic key?
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There was a set of keys that became public knowledge partway through XP life that appeared to activate unlimited machines as valid, though added a banner "For Educational Purposes Only". I remember trying it back in the day and always wondered what the intention was that was important enough the key activations were never blocked. [I did have multiple legal keys, but curiosity killed the cat and I had to swap one to the "educational" key to see for myself, lol]	I don't actually know! But I can surmise that if it was displaying a banner down in the bottom right corner of the screen, it knew it was not licensed and was likely limited or time-limited in some way. Unless you could actually ACTIVATE them with that key, which would surprise me.
How does OLE still work? I can't think of anything else that complex and old that still runs. We've got a legacy piece in our application that uses it and I can build against it using .net 4.0, in an Azure pipeline and deploy to windows 10 hosts and a piece of 90s technology still works perfectly. How and why?	It was complex, but pretty well written and very well tested. That's not to say there aren't a lot of bugs outside the common case codepaths, but I bet if Office used it, it's pretty solid, and will be forever.
Other than your personal phone number, did any Easter eggs make it to general availability?	There was one in the Win9X shell, but I think we removed it for Windows XP and later. So not that I'm aware of!
Have you ever wanted to make a "sequel" to Space Cadet?	There are actually two other tables available in the original Maxis game that should work, in theory, but I think Space Cadet was the best of the 3, so...
Were there ever any 3rd party edit/change to shell that made you think, "Why didn't we think of that?"	Not offhand, but "Stacks" on MacOS where it tries to rescue your mess by grouping things by filetype (Images, Docs, etc) is pretty clever. So that's something I wish we'd though of!
Have you worked at all with Bryce Cogswell and Mark Russinovich?? Also, what was your initial response to Process Explorer /the Sysinternals stuff??	No, but the SysInternal guys are geniuses of the highest order, so far as I'm concerned (and I say that based on their products, no knowing them). They know their stuff.
What are your best/oddest purchases you were able to justify as a work expense (for example, were you able to get MS to buy pinball machines as an R&D cost)?	I had DirecTv in my office! I was working on the Media Center prototype and we couldn't get cable on campus, so I got the dish installed on the roof, etc....
	I had a Tempest machine in my Office but at my own expense. I started right around the days of the "shrimp vs weenies" memo, so they were pretty cost conscious.
Is it true that you and Dave Cutler got into a knife fight over a hand of poker gone bad?	A broken bottle is not a knife.
Was DoubleSpace stolen from Stacker?	No. As I understand it, DoubleSpace was licensed from an Israeli developer. Then I heard that Stacker had somehow been awarded a patent on using a hash table in compression, which sounds pretty ludicrous if true. There was a trial, and even though it revolved around hash tables and math and compression engines, and no one on the jury had been to college, as I heard it. So the big guy lost. That's the story I heard, your mileage may vary. I'm not a spokesman, etc.
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MS-DOS 6.21, the most useless version. I remember writing an extra "2" on my 6.2 OEM disks when the update came out (no point wasting disks).	You say "useless", I say "canonical".
	I think I actually worked on 6.22, not sure. It was 6.2 something. In terms of usefulness, the features I added to it personally were:
	- Moving Doublespace to HMA to free up a lot of low mem, as noted
	- Giving Diskcopy ability to do it in a single pass with no swaps
	- I wrote a new version of Smartdrv that added CD-ROM support
	- I wrote a special version of Setup that worked via deltas and put everything on a single floppy (no point wasting disks).
	Mind you, I was just a summer intern when I did that, and it took me about 3 months.
What are your favorite DOS command-line tricks that still work in Windows 10?	doskey!
What actually happens if someone deletes Win32?	Human sacrifice, cats and dogs living together, mass hysteria. Do not attempt.
Did Bill ever swing by your cubicle and tell you'd he'd take your assignment home and finish it in a weekend if you didn't hurry up?	Cubicle? It was the 90s at Microsoft! I had a corner office with a table, chairs, a Tempest machine, and a sofabed.
What is the best project you worked on or had friends work on that was canceled, that you would revive if you had the resources?	Windows Media Center, I'd say! And I wish they'd done a great AutoPC that the OEMs could have licensed and made common to most cars.
There has been a lot of hate on Windows / Microsoft from the Unix / Linux advocates. What are some narratives that you disagree / don't think are true?	I used to love the Amiga, so I know what it's like to feel a sense of advocacy for a platform that you feel is superior but overlooked in the marketplace.
	I think the most untrue narrative I've heard about them is that they all have neckbeards. I think it's only "most", not all.
How do you introduce yourself at parties?	"Does anyone here know how to update my Groove subscription on my Zune?"
What OS are you using now? What's your favorite OS of all time? What's the worst OS of all time? What's the worst Microsoft OS (if different)?	The best OS of all time was Windows NT 4.0 with the Shell Update Release.
	The worst OS of all time was the TRS-80 Model 1, Level 1 DOS that didn't have the keyboard debounce code in ROM yet so you couldn't even type on the thing.
[deleted]	No, I never put a true easter egg in anything. Especially in an operating system, I don't believe in them. You have to be able to trust the OS, and I think it goes against that.
How did you get started in this specific field?	I first wandered into a Radio Shack store in about 1979 when I was 11, where I saw my very first computer. It was not connected yet, as the staff had not figured out how to set it up yet. Being somewhat precocious, I asked if I might play with it if I could manage to set it up. On a lark they said, “Sure kid, have a shot”, and ten minutes or so later I had it up and running. This endeared me to the manager, Brian, enough that every Thursday night and Saturday morning I would ride my bike down to the store: I’d type in my crude BASIC programs and they were kind enough to indulge my incessant free tinkering on their expensive computer. So that's pretty much how I started!
Do you ever have moments where you’re like “they have it so easy nowadays” or do you think that because of the groundwork put in place 30 years ago that systems have become exponentially more complex?	Only when someone spools up an entire docker instance to pipe something to it on the command line... then it's like "Really? You're basically booting a virtual computer as a command?"
What's the best C++ expert tip you can share for fellow programmers?	If you make anything in your class virtual, make the destructor virtual, particularly if there's any chance that anyone might delete an instance of your derived class through a base class pointer. Otherwise, the behavior is undefined, I think, but even if it works, it's not what you want!
^{the below is a reply to the above}
Wow this is eerie. I literally fixed a bug a couple weeks ago that was this specific case.	They can be weird bugs to track down, too!
Tabs or spaces?	Spaces on an indent of 4, tabs set to 8.
How can I open an MS Binder file?	Push down on the metal tabs at the top and bottom of the central spine of the binder. That will release the 3-hole punch claws, and then you can remove your printed file.
"It's now safe to turn off your computer" Why was this splash removed?	I think most current BIOSes can do it on their own by now!
Do you have any insight as to why MS decided to build Windows 95 from the ground up instead of building off of an existing *nix system the way Apple did with OSX? Was it just for backwards compatibility or were there other reasons? Also, had you gone this way, how do you think Windows, and the industry in general, might be different? I'm asking as someone who thinks that WSL is the best thing to happen to Windows in years.	Windows 95 was not built from the ground up, but NT was. The most succinct reason (and just a guess, I'm not a spokesman) is that even though MS had Xenix on hand, there were fundamental problems in the way Unix handled SMP multiprocessor locks and so on at the time. I presume these have long since been solved in Linux, etc, but not without significant work.
	WSL is one of my favorite things too, but for the library of tools and software, it makes available to me, not because of some fundamental architectural superiority, I don't think!
What are your feelings about "Microsoft Bob"?	https://youtu.be/rXHu9OmLd8Y
What did source control look like in the 90's? How did MS keep its code from leaking out to the public? How did you handle versioning and different developers working on the same feature?	We used a tool called SLM, or Source Library Manager. It was sort of available briefly as a product under the name Microsoft Delta.
	It was OK for smaller teams but did not support branching, so just before I left we moved to Source Depot.
Why was Ctrl + Alt + Delete changed to Ctrl + Shift + Escape?	It wasn't! Ctrl-Alt-Delete raises the "Secure Alert Sequence" which triggers the OS to switch to the secure desktop, where you have the ability to click a button which will start task manager upon return to your regular desktop.
	Ctrl-Shift-Esc is a feature built into Winlogon that launches a TaskManager on the current desktop without switching to the secure desktop.
	There are theoretically hacks and exploits that can only be caught by switching to the secure desktop, so if you're ever in doubt, ctrl-alt-del is the more secure way to go.
How did DOS ever get away with just pulling device names like "COM1" out of thin air when it came to output redirection etc..?	That's for compatibility with MS-DOS.
What are you currently working on?	Mostly on LED and Microcontroller projects that I detail on my YouTube channel, and the channel itself takes a fair bit of my time! If you're curious, you can check out my current successes and failure adventures at http://youtube.com/d/davesgarage
Did you work with Kris Hatleid on Super Hacker and the game Evolution?	I worked with Kris on an unreleased title called "Commander Video". That's largely where I learned assembly language, since he did the bulk of the coding, I watched and did level design, etc. 1982 or so I believe!
Got any dev back door mainframe access codes for pinball?	hidden test
Dave, how did you manage to do all that without being able to google everything?	That's one of the craziest things... I got a degree in computer science before you could even look anything up!
	The hardest part was OLE2. Coming form a different platform (the Amiga) it was a monster to wrap my head around, and the book (Inside OLE2) was not the best for introducing devs to OLE. It scared me, and I sure could have used a YouTube tutorial or two!
Hi Dave! So here's a bit of an odd one. I loved your Space Cadet Pinball! I must have spent countless hours on it as a kid, and even now I still occasionally try to find ways to boot it up. A legitimate classic. But lately, the version windows offers just... don't feel the same. They aren't as nice. Is there a game you can name that you would say feels like a worthy successor to Space Cadet Pinball? Or even any more general pinball games you would recommend?	I have a real Black Knight 2000 machine here in the house that I fully restored, so I'm a fan of physcial pinball as well!
	I think the two best video games are (a) arcade Tempest, and (b) XBox Geometry Wars 3.
	GW3 is a classic, or should be!
Woah woah woah, University of Regina?!? Are you from here? Cool to see a UofR grad had such a major impact!	Yup! Check out the regina sub for a recent article
When working on MS-DOS what did you think of alternatives such as 4DOS, NDOS or DR-DOS, were they source of inspiration for new features or not at all ?	No in general, but Norton had NCD. It was a change folder command that could jump around the disk, so if you typed "NCD drivers" from the root, it could go down to "C:\windows\system32\drives". Super handy.
	So I tried to write one for NT, but it meant changing the working directory of the PARENT process (cmd.exe) and I could never figure out a clean and elegant way to do it without modifying CMD itself!
Which is the best version of Windows? (Figuratively speaking).	Windows NT 4.0

Interesting Expected Value Problem

Recommendations on poker training sites?

S3 Ranked Mirrors: a Guide for f2p

Introduction
Scoring Rules
Opponent Selection
Team Composition
Battle Mechanics
Micro-optimizations
Above All Else

Introduction

Frustrated because Momoko spooked your gacha rolls for the 3rd time? Threw your phone because a whale with maxed Friends landed triple-crits? Tempted to pull out that ~~credit~~ gachaskill card? Fear not, this guide will teach you how to reach S3 in Ranked Mirrors (top .5%) without spending a dime.
EDIT: screenshots may not be mobile-friendly. Also, thanks for golds, generous incubators!

About Me

I’m a math and gacha game enthusiast who goes by Cirnobey both in-game and on Discord. One of my hobbies is using math to compete with whales on pvp in gacha games while being f2p. Turns out you can get pretty far as f2p using the power of math, including:

Arena tier 20 in Fire Emblem Heroes (before the rank 21 patch).
Rank 1 in Exercises in Azur Lane.
S3 with 199k in the first Ranked Mirrors in Magireco (top 7 on Discord).

https://preview.redd.it/e4mc9cetohp31.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=2e4df89b2766bf07142dff5c7e32aaef3222b5da

Prerequisites

Have disposable time and mental energy to devote to Magireco. Seriously, don’t ruin your grades or career for a mobile game.
Have a few 5* fully awakened lvl 100 girls, preferably with at least 2 slots, and covering at least 3 elements. Even as f2p you are bound to roll some dupes, and have decent welfare units like Tsuruno and Yachiyo on top of that.
Read and understand the Magical Girl Tier List.
Read and understand the Memoria Tier List.
Take both tier lists with a grain of salt, as they are based on the JP meta which has been developed for 2 years. For example, it ranks Momoko at D-tier in JP, but I consider Momoko to have been A-tier in NA during the first Ranked Mirrors, before Yachiyo’s uncap. No need to memorize the tier lists, but understand the principles behind them.
Be comfortable with Expected Value (EV) and probability. Pop quiz time!
Question 1: The enemy Ren has non-maxed Friends (20% crit chance). If Ren attacks 6 times, what is the EV for the number of crits?
Answer: 6 * .2 = 1.2
Question 2: The enemy team has 3 girls. What is the probability that the enemy Kyouko gets a Puella Blast Combo?
Answer: 12 C 2 / 15 C 5 = 66 / 3003 = .022
I will now go over maximizing your Ranked Mirrors score by focusing on opponent selection, team composition, and battle mechanics.

Scoring Rules

This section should be review for most readers, but here’s a refresher on how Ranked Mirrors scoring works.
When you win a match, you get 1000 * (difficulty bonus) * (performance bonus) * (break bonus).
When you lose a match, you get 300.
When you disconnect, you get 0. Never play Ranked Mirrors with unstable connection!
Difficulty bonus is a coefficient that goes as high as 1.8 based on the opponent’s team power. The thresholds for 1.8 are:

112k for 2 girls
150k for 3 girls
180k for 4 girls
208k for 5 girls

Performance bonus is a coefficient that goes as high as 1.5, and is calculated as follows:

The multiplier starts at 1.4
It decreases by .1 at the start of turn n, if n > 2
It increase by .1 each time you Connect

Break bonus is 1.5 for the 3rd battle each day, and 2 for the 7th battle each day. On the final day this includes the 13th battle and 17th battle respectively. For all other battles the coefficient is 1.
Altogether, you can score as much as 2700 per battle ignoring Break bonus. In the first Ranked Mirrors, the S3 cutoff was around 186k, which corresponds to an average score of 2310 per battle.
Conclusion: your first goal is to not lose. If your win is secured, your second goal is to maximize bonus.

Opponent Selection

This is the most important section of the guide because it is the most overlooked. During the first Ranked Mirrors, many players rushed their battles in a single play session - some did so within the first hour after a daily reset. These same players then complained about losing to an evade or a crit. It may be tempting to rush your battles to show off your score, or simply to get it over with, but the key to winning as f2p is to only pick battles you can win, just like ~~Disgusting Lord~~ Ephraim.
https://preview.redd.it/i972psm1php31.png?width=480&format=png&auto=webp&s=4db4aab2eb5336fda6ad5720001e450bd50dbe92
If you clicked on this guide hoping for some secret whale-hunting technique, then...sorry for the disappointment. Avoid whales like the plague (unless you get lucky and catch one in the middle of team editing). The most consistent path to S3 consists of winning against f2p and minnows, with the occasional dolphin.
Let’s justify this claim with quick maths. You fight 10 matches a day. After each match except the last, you get a refresh. You also get a time-based refresh every 15 minutes. You also get 10 free refreshes. Each refresh shows you 3 possible opponents. Assuming you open the app at least 10 times a day, you will be shown as many as 3*(1 + 9 + 10 + 10) = 90 opponents, yet you will only challenge 10 of them to an actual fight. This means that you should be extremely picky about whom you fight.
To make an analogy, beginner poker players tend to play too many hands, and only after running out of chips a few times do they learn that the majority of poker hands are not worth calling the big blind. Ranked Mirrors is similar: unless you have outlier gachaskill as f2p, you should be folding liberally and challenging conservatively.
To get that sweet S3, only fight opponents at 1.7 and 1.8 - you can lean more toward 1.7 or 1.8 on average depending on how many slots you have. In the first Ranked Mirrors I fought 1.8 teams about 30-40% of the time, but as teams in NA improve over time, the bar for S3 as well as our predilection for 1.8 teams must rise accordingly.
Losing is costly, so only challenge opponents at 1.8 if their team power is manageable for your girls. In particular, I never fought 2-girl teams at 1.8 because 112k is ridiculously high. Attacking a girl with 56k power feels like slapping Thanos with a pool noodle. On the other hand, 5-girl teams around 210k are almost always worth challenging.
Look up your opponent by name beforehand. I know it’s a hassle, but I did this almost every fight because slots and dangerous memorias are vital information. Things to check for:

How many slots does each girl have? 2-slot girls will hit much harder than 1-slot girls. 4-slot girls will hit about as hard as 2-slot girls, but will be a lot tankier.
Which important memorias do they have?
- Look out for Friends, especially if maxed. Maxed Friends is hot garbage and the best counterplay is to pick a different opponent.
- Against bulky teams, look out for powerful turn 3 actives like maxed Dependable Negotiator.
- Keep track of new important memorias as they get released. After the Rain - Mito) is a powerful Active that will come out 2 days after this guide is posted.
Are there girls on their Mirrors team but not their Support team? Make an educated guess for their slots. Welfare girls like Tsuruno and Yachiyo generally have 3 or 4 slots.
Try to foresee turn 1. Will you have a good play regardless of which of your 2 girls gets Puella? Are all of your girls likely to survive turn 1? Do you still have a path to victory if one of them dies turn 1?

Some opponents will not be searchable by name due to their name being too common. Assume the worst based on their team power - personally I seldom challenge unsearchable opponents.
Here’s an example of a 220k team that I felt comfortable challenging.
https://preview.redd.it/alqt0yk4php31.png?width=904&format=png&auto=webp&s=9fbc18da40880f086164ccd5f5257bfb94557e1e
Slotwise, Mami and Madoka are 2-slot, and Ayame is 4-slot 4*. Tsukuyo isn’t visible, but given that Kirika is 1-slot I suspect Tsukuyo is 1-slot as well.
https://preview.redd.it/5ddd0s96php31.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=059b70244794dd6b308266c3e54d4339188d82a1
Perusing their memorias, I do not see any hot garbage like maxed Friends. Granted there is a possibility that they are hiding Friends, but I figure that even if they have one non-maxed Friends, the variance due to RNG is acceptably low.
https://preview.redd.it/ljsnhev6php31.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=3868c21b37e388aea5e0490e010b7797971ca80b
RNG losses are by far the most common grievance, so leave buffer room for random events like crits/evades within reasonable expectation. A rule of thumb in opponent selection is that bad luck should cause you to lose multiplier, not lose the battle. If you lost because the opponent landed triple crits with non-maxed Friends, then you were obviously cursed by some unspeakable comment or picture on Reddit. If you lost because of 1 crit, then that’s on you. You shouldn’t be challenging that opponent in the first place.

Team Composition

Team Members

To aim for S3, you should be running 2 girls. 3 girls may be justified if 2 girls have an unacceptably high chance of losing against a particular opponent, but if so, ask yourself whether you should be fighting this opponent in the first place. The benefit of running 2 girls is a guaranteed Puella on turn 1, and a probable Puella Connect on turn 2. Getting connects is semi-reliable with 3 girls, and woefully unreliable with more than 3 girls; each turn you spend without Connecting is a loss of .1 Performance bonus!
I often see players ask, “Is this a good team for Mirrors?” with a screenshot of a single team. Running a fixed team is fine for casual Mirrors. For tryhard Ranked Mirrors, first decide your opponent, then pick the optimal team to counter their team. Use clearly-named Memoria Sets to minimize the hassle. Prefer choosing girls with 1) elemental advantage, 2) more slots, 3) stronger connects, and 4) better discs.
Elemental advantage is self-explanatory. Advantage matters more for Fire/Aqua/Forest girls than Light/Dark girls.
Slots make a large difference to stats: about 2k HP and 2k ATK/DEF for a MLB 4* memoria. For most girls the gap from 1 to 2 slots is more important than the gaps from 2 to 3 slots, and 3 to 4 slots. This is because each girl can equip up to 2 Passive memorias, which are preferable over Active memorias. Tanks are an exception to this rule, as they make more efficient use of many Actives. Moreover, keep in mind that natural 2* girls like Tsuruno and Yachiyo have slightly lower stats than natural 4* girls, a tradeoff for being easily slottable.
Connects are pivotal in Ranked Mirrors because of Performance Bonus. Your goal is to score 1.5 on Performance as much as possible, and a devastating Connect like Momoko’s or Kazumi’s excels at ending battles on turn 2. Prefer consistent Connects like Momoko’s over RNG-based Connects like Yachiyo’s: this game has enough variance to begin with.
Finally, discs make a difference, but are often overhyped in online discussions. Blast is usually best in Ranked Mirrors. Contrary to popular belief, Charge is usually a close second because of synergy: Blast damage scales rapidly with charges. Charge also helps you distribute damage more efficiently, e.g. use CCB to clean up two half-HP girls and one-shot a full-HP girl. The downside of Charge discs dealing less damage is rarely noticeable since you will Puella almost every turn. Accele is useful for dealing reliable damage, but sadly AP will almost never matter in this lightning-paced meta.
Personally, I ran Momoko (2s) and Mami (2s) for the majority of my matches. Against teams with elemental skew I used these subs in descending order of frequency: Tsuruno (4s), Nanaka (4*, 4s), Kyouko (2s), Rena (1s).
https://preview.redd.it/zno9y9o9php31.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=c4c598b99157df5cc8bbd4f27191574f4da9a820
A huge shoutout to Momoko for being my hard-carry. She gets a lot of flak for spooking gacha rolls, and funnily enough some players complain about Mirrors while having a 3s Momoko’s sitting untouched at level 1. However, I honestly couldn’t have made S3 without my Momoko. Time and time again, she soloed 3-4 enemy girls after Mami’s brave sacrifice.
You might be surprised that I hardly used Kyouko (2s), one of the hardest hitters in the game. The issue with Kyouko is her Connect being almost dead weight outside of Blast Teams. By contrast, Momoko’s Connect is the flex tape of Magireco.

Formation

Use Brave Echelon, and put your most important girl in the center. For me that was Momoko, as she was the anchor in case of bad turn 1 RNG. You can switch to Attribute Delta if you are running 2 girls of the same element and need the extra damage. If so, put them in different columns to avoid getting Kyouko-blasted.

Memorias

Here is the memoria setup I ran for the majority of my matches. Perfectly Imbalanced has great stats, and ensures that I can 2-shot a glass cannon of my choice on turn 1. When subbing in Tsuruno (4s), I equipped her with Active memorias Longchiyo and Unfaltering Conviction. Longchiyo’s Active saved me a few times 2-3 times, while Unfaltering Conviction’s Active was never used.
https://preview.redd.it/3tz3m2ldphp31.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=ea54e79240174d77328f11a4fd7da86003ae2116
For the most part, equip your best offense memorias, and make sure they are max lvl. Although I previously mentioned minimizing variance, Friends is still good because it is Friends. If one of your glass cannons is the target for all attacks, consider giving her an Active memoria to boost her Def and divert some attention. The effect of the Active is often less important than the stat boost.
Do not run Evade on offense. Players often overestimate the effectiveness of Evade memorias. Due to recall bias we tend to remember that time when we lost to a triple-evade, while forgetting all the times when Evade did nothing except serve as a detriment. Evade takes a Passive slot and has 2k less in stats than a maxed 4* Memoria. It can sneak you a few defense wins, but on offense it is too unreliable. You might argue, “But I won a match the other day with a really clutch evade!” Okay I believe you, but probabilistically 4 out of 5 times that evade won’t happen - if that evade was actually clutch, then you shouldn’t be challenging that opponent in Ranked Mirrors in the first place. Also keep in mind that we will receive more anti-evade options like Magical Halloween Theater.
Do not run Magia cheese on offense. Contrary to the words of a man with tiny hands, magic isn’t everything. Without Connects, you will not have enough bonus to reach S3. Fun fact: out of 70 matches, the 1 match I lost did not involve crits or evades. I tried to Magia cheese with Mami, but overestimated the damage on Tiro Finale and was punished by a Puella to the face.

Battle Mechanics

This section covers everything after the battle begins.
Have a general understanding of the damage calculation mechanics of Magireco. You do not need to memorize the full damage formula, or the damage sum of every disc combination (thanks u/Darkbeetlebot), but you should know that e.g. BBB and CCB are the two combinations with highest damage output in Mirrors, or that e.g. the optimal way to arrange A, B, C discs is ACB.

Memorias (continued)

Although you just spent a considerable amount of time looking at your opponent’s Memorias, you will need to do so again when the battle starts to verify their distribution. In the first Ranked Mirrors, you could reasonably assume that sword icon meant Friends (occasionally Perfectly Imbalanced, which can be disabled with 1 attack), blast icon meant Onward to the Light, and invisible icon meant Evade, etc. We will get a bit more variety as the meta evolves, but Friends is still broken in JP. Since you stalked your opponent beforehand, you know the slot counts for most of their team: use this to deduce whether a girl has an invisible icon.
For instance, whenever I saw a Kyouko with a blast icon and a sword icon, I knew that she:

Could blast me for extra damage.
Could crit me for extra damage.
Could not evade.

Hence it made sense to eliminate her asap.

Targeting

This section is about targeting for both you and the CPU.
Conventional wisdom says that you want to target the girl who deals the most damage. However, often it is worth leaving her at low HP to more evenly distribute among among your girls, and to reduce the chance of the opponent getting Puella. This is especially true against 3-girl teams, where hitting each girl once on turn 1 may be the safest setup for turn 2. Losing a girl means losing the option to Connect. Quintessential for damage mitigation is to not let the opponent have just one girl left turn 1, as that gives them guaranteed Puella with best possible discs. Unfortunately crits from Friends can sabotage you here.
Each enemy girl will target the girl she can do most damage to, taking into account defense and element, but not taking into account damage reduction effects. However, the CPU may attack a different target to deal a fatal blow. Also, the CPU abides by the same rules you do in that it must commit to 3 discs. This means that if the CPU expects one of your girls to die, its subsequent attacks will target another girl, even if the original girl survives (damage reduction, guard, etc.). As far as I know this isn’t consistently exploitable, but is nice when it happens.
On the other hand, if your attack targets a girl who is now dead, the attack will be redirected to a target in the rightmost column, specifically the topmost within that column. This is important when you are not sure how many hits are required to finish a target.
Keep track of attacks and prevent the CPU from Connecting - it will almost always Connect when possible. This usually takes priority over other targeting concerns. In one of my most embarrassing battles, I knew that the enemy Ren had Connect, yet I only targeted her with one attack. She evaded, and her Connect cost me 2 more turns, crippling my bonus.
The battle will rarely last until turn 3 for the opponent, but if it goes, never let CPU use Dependable Negotiator or other devastating actives.

Connects

As long as you have 2 girls left, you should chain Puella Connects to maximize your Performance bonus, barring extreme circumstances, e.g. the girl who would receive the Connect is fogged and you need to win this turn.
Sometimes players forget that a Connect counts as a disc for both the donor and the recipient. If girl X has connect but girl Y has insufficient discs, you have the option of doing the following:
Turn 1: X X X
Turn 2: X(to Y) X X
which will still qualify as Puella. This screws over your Connect chain on Turn 3, but you still get 1.5 if you win on Turn 2, and 1.4 if you win on Turn 3.
If you are running a 3-girl team, even if you don’t get Puella on turn 1, you have the option of double Connecting on turn 3 by doing the following:
Turn 1: X X Y
Turn 2: X Y Y
Turn 3: X(to Z) Y(to Z) Z
You can salvage your 1.5 Performance bonus on Turn 3 this way. However, it’s rare for all 3 girls to survive this long, and I only managed this once or twice in 70 matches, via meticulous target rebalancing.
Although most Connects give ATK UP or Damage UP, do not blindly connect with the first disc. If the enemy Tart has 5k HP left while the enemy Kirika has 30k HP, you may be able to finish them both in one turn with B C(connect) B.

Mindset

As I alluded to earlier, to aim for S3 as f2p you’ll want to think about Magireco like poker. In the world of professional poker, discussions almost always revolve around the EV of decisions that players made, not what outcomes those decisions entailed. This is equally applicable in Magireco.
In the first Ranked Mirrors season, there were some matches where I got 2700, but immediately put my phone down and sighed, “That made a terrible mistake”. There were also some matches where the reverse happened. After all, there are 70 matches in one season, a pretty large sample, so even small misplays and habits will get amplified in my expected final score.
Staying EV-focused will help you to not tilt. Tilting leads to poor decisions in both poker and Magireco. If bad RNG hits on you match 7, consider taking a break until you feel clear-headed again. While on break, remind yourself that bad luck happens to everyone, and that many players would have lost in your position. Actually, many players have lost or will lose in your identical position, even whales (word on Discord is that even Envvi lost a match this season), and as long as you continue to make high-EV decisions, the Law of Large Numbers will reward you in the long run.

Example Battle

Earlier I decided to challenge a 220k 5-girls team as an example. Let’s apply what we learned to the ensuing battle. In the screenshot below, whom on the enemy team should we target?
https://preview.redd.it/qr2nny2fphp31.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=c98b884a0e9d454ebcd4d2a61afbead3c53e6353
On our team, Mami has less Def than Momoko. This implies that on the enemy team:

Rena will target Momoko
Ayame, Madoka, Tsukuyo, and Mami will target Mami

We know from stalking earlier that Rena is 1-slot while Mami and Madoka are 2-slot. Tsukuyo is probably 1-slot, but 2-slot is not beyond question. Therefore Momoko has negligible risk of dying turn 1, so our bonus-maximizing strategy is to protect Mami. This can be done by eliminating Ayame and weakening Madoka and Tsukuyo:
C(Tsukuyo) C(Tsukuyo) B(Ayame)
You might wonder, “Why not eliminate Ayame and Mami?” This goes back to ensuring a path to victory being our first priority.
If Mami dies an early death (just like episode 3), Momoko needs to solo the battle, and having the opponent Mami alive dilutes their discs, giving Momoko better survivability odds while chipping away at Rena, which is our path to victory.
If Momoko dies an early death, Mami needs to solo the battle. She can do so by cleaning up everyone but Rena. Rena would have Connect but no allies to give it to, leaving our path to victory secure.
https://preview.redd.it/934hzfchphp31.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=a252cb471cee3c325daadd3c4ded6131918ec70c
Fortunately, both of our girls survive turn 1, though this outcome is unsurprising. Mami ends the battle turn 2 using Momoko’s Connect:
C(connect, Tsukuyo) C(Rena) B(Madoka)
Thus we collect our 2700. Even in most cases of bad RNG, we would have lost multiplier but not the battle. The EV of challenging this opponent was at least 2600 by a rough estimate - in other words, we should gladly challenge this opponent again if given the chance.

Micro-optimizations

This section is for other small tricks I employed to gain more edge.

Endless Mirrors is a fantastic training ground for Ranked Mirrors. Being able to predict who lives, who dies, ~~who tells your story~~ on turn 1 largely comes from Endless testing.
- I used to maintain a Google Sheet with an entry for every match I lost in Endless Mirrors, and what misplays I made. I stopped maintaining the sheet after Friends came out, but I still review my misplays mentally.
- I also mentioned avoiding whales like the plague. In Endless Mirrors you can challenge whales to your heart’s content, to make up for all the times you’ll have to decline them in Ranked Mirrors.
You can get more defense wins by switching to a dedicated defense team between matches.
- Very annoying to do; slightly less annoying with Memoria Sets.
- Sadly, Magireco doesn’t let you set a dedicated defense Mirrors team, unlike Fire Emblem Heroes.
- I lack stats to back this up, but I suspect that defense wins matter very little for getting into S3 as f2p. The players you are competing with are almost certainly disjoint from the players you are getting defense wins from.
You can get more defense wins by changing your name to something generic, so that players cannot find you via name search.
- E.g. I changed my IGN to “Sakura” for the duration of Ranked Mirrors.
Some players have Japanese characters in their names, like “entロピー”. Counter this strat by learning Japanese.
- It takes only a week to learn hiragana, and another week to learn katakana, then a minute to install the Japanese keyboard on your phone.
You can follow someone after a match to stalk their team and memorias whenever you want, bypassing any name shenanigans.

Above All Else

If you made it to the bottom, thank you for reading my guide. There is a final piece of advice which I cannot stress enough: you are welcome to follow this guide as closely as you’d like, but remember to have fun. Magireco is just a game at the end of the day.

we developed a mobile poker tracker & toolkit and are looking for feedback, tell us what you think!

December 26th: Picks: ENJ, BURST, ICX, XVG, STRAT, XEM, ARDR, NXT, MCO Promo and Card release,NXT (IGNIS future value ^ 40% last night), Coordinated Attacks on Verge (I made $ off it did you?) and NEW ICO PICKS!

Dec 26th: Picks: ENJ, BURST, ICX, XVG, STRAT, XEM, ARDR, NXT, MCO Promo and Card release, NXT (IGNIS future value ^ 40% last night), Coordinated Attacks on Verge (I made $ off it did you?) NEW ICO PICKS!
I appreciate all my loyal followers! For tips and strategy hours before being posted to the message boards follow on Reddit, Instagram: JaketheCryptoKing and Twitter: JbtheCryptoKing. And now on Discord: https://discord.gg/MWBTWFV (join group to reach me directly and see posts early!). If the first paragraph is a foreign language to you read my Cryto -101 post and let’s go from there: https://redd.it/7m48ne Remember in trading minutes matter, hours are eternities.
ENJ: I’ll start today’s post with a new coin I’ve yet to mention! ENJ, until recently I like most of you had yet to hear about this coin. However, the news I stumbled upon and their one-week plan fits my investment strategy to a T. I actually am upset with myself for missing it until now. ENJ this week, by January 1st, is coming out with a Minecraft Plugin and Digital Wallet for your phone. The coin is a token designed specifically for gaming with a Minecraft Plugin and Digital Wallet being completed this week. They are also running a promotion giving away free ENJ on the Minecraft platform to get users involved. What could be a better boost to your coin value than a working Minecraft Plugin and a brand new wallet? ENJ I expect big things from you this week. You’ve made “The List.” Check out their twitter regarding the new wallet and Minecraft release: https://twitter.com/enjin?lang=en
Verge: I’ve seen a pump and dump but last night was the first time I’ve seen the inverse. A Reddit post, multiple twitter posts, all simultaneously bashing Verge causing the price to crash 50% in 20 minutes only to recover 20% minutes later, after the Reddit post was removed and the twitter account’s said they were “hacked.” The screenshots of the largest position Verge holders changed dramatically last night (check out the screenshots). Someone who wasn’t in the top 10 is now the #1 holder of Verge. Odds are he knows that Wraith will be game changing and coordinated what amounted to the opposite of a pump and dump. More like a big squish. Wraith is coming, XVG will be above $.50 when it does. If you sold last night you do not have the cojones for Crypto. XVG, VERGE WRAITH PROTCOL (XVG promises this to come out by end of year, plus a very impressive ad came out 10 days ago so I doubt they miss their deadline) anonymity with the flick of a button (public and private ledges in one block chain). By the time you are reading this post it may unfortunately be too late. There is speculation Wraith may be released in the morning. XVG has promised WRAITH will be released by the end of this year, it should hit $.50-$1 range when it does, McAfee although I don’t agree w/him on much he says, states a $15 price target within 6 months of Wraith Protocol being released. I’m saying $1.00 it’s currently $.25 that’s a 400% upswing if I’m right, 4000% if McAfee is. Does it matter really who is correct at that point?
Wraith allows the individual user to determine if they want their balance visible on the block chain or not. Right now we have coins like Monero which are completely anonymous hence their use on the dark web, or ones that are completely public where anyone who knows your wallet address can check your balance. Verge lets each user determine whether to be, public or private, this will revolutionize blockchian and altcoins. If you want to see the impressive link for the Wraith ad here it is: https://youtu.be/dMrk6rozbJg
MCO: Let’s start with a quick update on MCO which had promised a Christmas bonus. It turns out they are running a Promo with Binance (free MCO and a free Lambo) which should lead to heavy volume and accumulation over the next 48hrs. This is still a Buy and Hold for the short term. Has anyone actually looked at their debit cards? Check them out online they look GORGEOUS. I have already placed orders for 3/5 of the available ones and I’m #40,000+ I expect MCO to start rolling these cards out, there is absurd demand for them. This is not expected to be the biggest gainer of the week, but a strong play regardless. To join Binance and start trading MCO please use my referral link: https://www.binance.com/?ref=15316928
PAY: Tweeted earlier today about shutting down their system for a short period while they prepared for their Christmas surprise. I am still waiting…Hey PAY! Santa never stopped by…
BAY: Has hinted at a Christmas surprise for some time now. The crypto coin market is gambling mixed with stock trading. Bay released their news regarding being a poker network there are building and implementing their token to be used on. Sold after the news with the nice gain it provided. BAY is not a must sell, but I think there are better short term opportunities while they get their platform in order.
BURST: I’m officially counting down the days until the 27th. BURST is one of the most unique altcoins on the scene. I wrote about them yesterday and they are here today because on the 27th we get Dymaxion. Do you investors/followers/crytophenes know what one of the biggest problem with mining is? Electricity consumption! BURST changes that by using 400x less electricity then BTC miners. They have their Dymaxion launch this week and their mining platform should revolutionize blockchain tech.
BURST uses free memory space instead of CPU, GPU, and ASIC miners using literally less than 0.025% of the electricity when compared to BTC’s mining algorithm. BTC mining uses more electricity than many small nations and BURST will provide an ability to mine at a very low cost while still having a tradable coin on exchanges. Imagine being able to use the free memory on your computer, while you sleep to earn an income, the technology is crazy. I expect this week (their release is the 27th), particularly the next 72 hours to see the biggest BURST gains to date, while leading volume on Bittrex.
NXT UPDATED: NXT (will be in each post until the airdrop, and it went from $.7 when originally recommended to $1.80ish), with the future value of airdrop priced this should trend toward $2.50 or $3.00. As I’m writing this I see NXT is hovering around $1.60. I’ve been screaming to buy NXT in all of my prior posts. Three days ago it popped. However, NXT should continue to trend toward $2.50+range.
UPDATE!!! I just did the math on the IGNIS airdrop, the IGNIS Future has increased 40% since my last calculation which was valuing it at $4.02., meaning NXT should be worth a minimum of $2.80, a penny more for every penny NXT is worth following the airdrop, price point $2.80-$3.80 depending on if IGNIS continues to appreciate. More people will become interested in “free IGNIS” tokens in the coming days. NXT and the future value of IGNIS should continue to appreciate following Christmas leading up to the airdrop. The future value can be seen here: https://www.cryptocompare.com/coins/ignis/overview/ETH (40% gains yesterday, but NXT is unchanged this is a EASY win).
ICX was a big winner yesterday! Their Mainnet goes live by the end of December which means any day now there will be that 100% pop everyone dreams of. Leading up to that we should receive the hype and anticipation boost on a daily basis. I expect ICX to rally 10% daily until the Mainnet announcement is made with a 100% gain the day of going live! Having a live Mainnet is essential for a viable crypto currency. Welcome to the big leagues ICX. Very excited to continue to have these rises as the approach of the Mainnet comes.
XEM has been quiet but is about to make a lot of noise. Catapult, which is version 2.0 of NEM (is to be released by the end of the year). Following Catapult is a 4-week hackathon beginning in January. There is nothing better to build awareness and test out their new Catapult network they’ll be releasing this week, then a worldwide hackathon and a new update to their NEM network. XEM will have a pop this week when Catapult goes live, followed by a 4-week awareness rally driven by a worldwide hackathon.
STRAT, is going to have an amazing week (it already has!). They promised that by January, "I can confirm they will be able to host ICO's on our blockchain agnostic platform this year." STRAT is on the cusp of being able to host ICO’s for other companies. This is extremely valuable technology and they’ve announced it will be ready to go this week. Would anyone like to know the going rate of an ICO? 20-40BTC. Per ICO these small companies and their coin holders are making $250k-$600k at the depressed BTC prices. This is a very big business. They’ve also announced 2 Flagship ICOs that will be available on their STRATIS network in January. The platform to host ICOs goes live this week, and within 2 weeks we find out which ICOs STRAT is hosting. This should be a very positive 2 weeks for STRAT.
ARDR’s platform launches Jan 1st. Ardor’s blockchain becomes fully operational Jan 1st., and the Genesis snapshot is announced 1 week in advance. Not to mention all those NXT you’ve been holding for the free IGNIS are used specifically on the ARDR block chain. ARDR should continue to trend upward with NXT and IGNIS leading up to the airdrop. Since IGNIS is up 40% with no correction from NXT or ARDR I expect both to correct accordingly in the NXT 48hrs. With a new platform and coins to be used on it this will be a positive week for ARDR with exceptionally high returns correlated with the new platform and IGNIS’s continued appreciation.
I am including some CB predictions as they are a favorite DM topic I’ve received of late. CB Future Picks are determined from the same screenshot that showed BCC which also showed XRP and Monero. CB admits new coins will be added in the next few months. It was speculated in the online community that because CB released wallets for BCC, XRP, and Monero that those would be added next. CB adamantly denies that they planned to add BCC, XRP, and Monero. And then CB added BCC. I fully expect XRP and Monero to be added within 2 months, and that the original rumor they denied had some truth to it. XRP and Monero are buy and holds. Another favorite question is ICOs.
Wednesday or Thursday we will discuss reallocating the proceeds from MCO, STRAT, ICX, BURST, NXT, and ARDR.
The month of December has seen more ICOs than any month in the history of the crypto markets. This is not surprising as the crypto markets have exploded. I’ve found 2 ICOs both of which are ending within the next few days (approaching hard caps or ending outright). I spend countless nights up studying white pages and reading about platforms. Analyzing which ICO provides the most opportunity for the specific market it’s reaching into. From my analysis I’ve found 2, 1 I’ve told you about, and here is 1 new one!
Pluscoin: When analyzing an ICO I look for a functioning platform with partners, coin holders, and a profitable basis. Without this you are literally investing in little bits of technology with their own signature on a block chain. Pluscoin is EXCEPTIONALLY unique (yes all caps) for an ICO. There are only has 4 days left to their ICO, but what makes it different from other ICOs? They already have 1500 partners and over 1million Pluscoin owners (list of partners include McDonalds, BK, KFC). It is the simplest of concepts, you have an App running on your phone while you visit location A (MCD for example) and you earn Pluscoins for stopping by. $14 for 3000 coins, this is one of those where if a coin goes to $1 you won’t be thanking me you will be sending me a gold Rolex. If it goes to a penny you make 150% on your investment. I’ll bet by the time the coins hit the actual exchanges(2 months) they are valued at between 2 cents and 5 cents. A 600%- 3000% gain in a few months. Please use my referral if you do buy Pluscoins as I do all this research for free and if you haven’t read the Whitepages yet (well I don’t recommend it), you’d be using every referral link I post. Pluscoin: https://ico.pluscoin.io/users/sign_up?promo=Uce8yKBVSF
Crypterium- The team is unreal and they are presenting at the Dubai Blockchain Intl’ in January. The ICO is also ending very soon! The bonus period ends in 1 day so I highly recommend getting an ether or 2 involved in this. The Dubai Blockchain Intl’ will greatly increase the number of individuals interested in holding Crypterium, (I make $0 off my posts and extensive research if you do purchase the ICOs please use my referral link): https://tokensale.crypterium.io/?ref=4a5381543424516aa2b4e3a6
Some Lovely Followers Requested I Provide Addresses for “Thank You’s and Holiday Cheer” Here are 3 address to help provide my girlfriend with presents so I can spend more time researching! What is 5% of the 200% I earned you this week? (NXT, Verge, MCO, PAY, EMC2, STRAT, ICX)
ETH: Address: 0x955A1a68613C028Ea98b0b5dcC58901897EB90DB LTC Address: LSnEW1h1bZwFH67s9tXZVX2GCZHNmzFGVN BTC address: 1GKPSkohnt9pSgBnXRmn2SejQNPWD96qif
Once again, no tips are mandatory but I spend 100’s of hours a week researching to make your investment and my small investment grow (while infuriating my girlfriend)! Help spread the love this Holiday Season!
THESE ARE SOLELY STRATEGIES I USE IN THE CRYPTOCURRENCY MARKETS BY NO MEANS AM I TRYING TO PROVIDE INVESTMENT ADVICE. I DO OWN SOME OF THE LISTED CURRENCIES FOR THE REASONS I’VE STATED.

Giving away promo codes for my new iOS poker calculator app. Please check it out and give me feedback. Thanks!

Java Robot Class - I designed a Texas Hold'em Poker Bot

Is it worth it to join the iOS Developer program?

The APP game you play is actually gambling. Many people are ruined.

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Should I Pursue This Poker App Idea? Reddit Gets First Vote!

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My first app, a Poker Odds Calculator, just wen't live! Please check it out for free. It's simple but I'd really like to know what you think.

[Table] I am Dave Plummer, author of Windows Task Manager, Zip Folders, and worked on Space Cadet Pinball, Media Center, Windows Shell, MS-DOS, OLE32, WPA, and more. (pt 1/2)