• 8 Posts
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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 1st, 2023

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  • I have one that I like to imagine as secure as fully randomised passwords. It’s four words but, because I’m a cool pwnz0r, the second and last word are written in leetspeak. The phrase is super easy for me to remember and the leetspeak portion has become muscle memory by now. But I only use it for my password manager. For everything else it depends if there’s a good chance I’ll need to login via my phone (no pw manager there). If yes, I use one of my couple rather-safe passwords. If no, I’ll let KeePass2 go to town with a random one.

    Oh and I’m subscribed to the haveibeenpwned leakletter, so i know as soon as possible when definitely to change my password.








  • it’s hard to totally land that message when the game offers no alternative.

    I’m of such split opinion when it comes to this argument against the game. I’ve read it so many times now and I kind of agree that there should have been some nuanced choice that changes the story in such a way where Walker tries to redeem himself? If I recall correctly, the only choice that actually made a difference for the end, was what you did in the very end scene with the mirror, right? And, of course, the choice not to play the game.

    Then again, would it have been better if the player had had the option for a less shitty (not necessarily good or positive) path? Sometimes in life, especially during war, the only things that happen to you are shit and even what you do might be out of your control, because you only have one option that results in staying alive or because your mind is so focused on the task at hand that you can’t even consider other ways of tackling a problem. This might be a bit graphic, but I think Spec Ops puts you in the passenger seat with a maddened driver. You tell the driver your destination (finishing the game) and he just hits the pedal and, no matter how much you protest, he roadkills every person on the way there. The car doors are unlocked and he occasionally stops, giving you an opportunity to get out. When you finally arrive at your destination and complain that he killed all those people, he goes “If you had left the car, I would’ve stopped.” I don’t know, I feel like I have a point here, but I can’t put it into words.

    Also, there are games like Animal Crossing that aren’t criticised with “Well, the message (of positivity and being rewarded for hard work and cooperation while being friendly) falls a bit flat, since the player doesn’t even have alternative options, aside from not playing the game.”

    So, yeah, I’ll leave it at that now, since I think my comment is plateauing in its insightfullness.






  • Reading the entire article, it seems that they still want to tread very carefully with this whole AI ordeal. Valve isn’t just opening the floodgates, as the title would make it seem.

    While yes, a healthy dose of skepticism is good to have, I think if I had to trust someone to navigate AI in gaming in the gamers’ favour, I would pick Valve. Or maybe I’m overestimating Gabe’s involvement in the happenings of the legal department’s section that is currently responsible for AI stuff.

    EDIT: Shame on me, @[email protected] , I think I had already seen the PMG video about the Steam Marketplace and its lootboxes and the gambling sites. But because I neither play these titles nor participate in the marketplace, I forgot that these serious issues exist. And the documentary concerning actually working at Valve rocked my stance back and forth. On one hand, I love the concept, but there are big problems here as well.

    Once more, a genuine thank you for pointing me at these two video documentaries, even if I had already seen one of them.


  • Could you elaborate, please? I tried looking it up and I only found a post from 2010, asking if VBA for Access and Excel will stop being supported in 2012" and a couple articles that state how much MS apparently dislikes VBA (the lack of some feature-updates are shown as evidence for that).

    I currently rely on a couple VBA scripts at my job that I wrote myself. I understand that they likely won’t just stop working tomorrow (too many companies use VBA in important documents), but if it’s already clear what will replace VBA sooner or later, I’d like to know so I can get a headstart, kind of.