HarkMahlberg

HarkMahlberg, 7 miesięcy temu

It's not the boeh.org link, but here is a similar timeline of events: https://research.swtch.com/xz-timeline

HarkMahlberg, 7 miesięcy temu

When I started to read breakdowns about the social engineering behind the xz backdoor I was like, "Waaaaitaminute, I've seen that sort of talk before." I found it notable to point out the similarity and maybe poke around at it.

People decided to use the thread (to my excessive chagrin) to talk shit about kbin and rehash the exact same pressures I was attempting to analyze.

It's a shame, because I noticed similar patterns was looking forward to some good discussion about it here. Alas...

HarkMahlberg, 7 miesięcy temu

The hype is real. There's no microtransactions, no multiplayer, it's just about building the best deck with as many synergies as possible and getting the highest score you can. If you played Magic or even Inscryption, you'll feel right at home.

HarkMahlberg, 7 miesięcy temu

It might be a hot take but I think the bgm is actually the weakest part of the game. Feels too repetitive and too short, like Mementos in Persona 5. I legitimately play on mute and put something else on in the background.

HarkMahlberg, 8 miesięcy temu

I hope the procedure goes well and you have a speedy recovery! ❤️

HarkMahlberg, 8 miesięcy temu (edited 8 miesięcy temu)

The nature of software development and internet communities has always been transient - frameworks and projects and websites have all come and gone. Despite how unlikely it may seem, even Facebook is not immune to becoming dust in the wind someday. God knows I've started my fair share of hobby projects and left them behind in states ranging from broken to buggy, so I should be the last person to throw stones. I know how it feels to just hit a complete motivational brick wall, or to have so many other things come up in life that my little project is the last thing on my mind.

For as long as I can remember, from the days of PHP bulletin boards to Reddit to kbin, I've never had only a single profile. So I think it's not a bad idea to prepare for the possibility that kbin doesn't last forever - literally nothing does. Nor do I think that's a foregone conclusion! But even if Ernest has moved on, or he's tied down by other matters, I think what he built is inspiring. I legitimately believe that kbin is cool tech, far far cooler than Bitcoin or VR or AI. Maybe someone else spins up a kbin instance, or mbin becomes the new de facto standard, but I don't mind running this account for as long kbin.social sticks around... no matter how many 503's I see lol.

I recognize each and every other commenter in this thread, y'all are prolific contributors. So if you are leaving, at least link your new profile in your bio.

HarkMahlberg, 8 miesięcy temu (edited 8 miesięcy temu)

Yeah he did have a medical procedure, on top of just finishing with divorcing his wife. Guy's got plenty on his plate I'm sure.

HarkMahlberg, 8 miesięcy temu

Much as I love the software, I made accounts in a few other Fedi platforms just to have some "outs." Don't put all your eggs in one basket and all.

HarkMahlberg, 8 miesięcy temu

Really just the big ones. Lemmy, Mastodon, and Misskey. In my humble opinion, judging by the software alone, Misskey > Mastodon, kbin > Lemmy. Judging by the culture is a lot harder because it depends on the instance.

HarkMahlberg, 8 miesięcy temu

I think they have so much technical debt that if they tried to move away from their current stack, it would be the end of them, almost overnight. They don't have the manpower and know-how to move to Unreal or Unity or otherwise. If they did, they would have done so by now.

HarkMahlberg, 8 miesięcy temu

This makes no sense. Zork and Asteroids are practically contemporaries. Last of Us and Dota 2, Persona 5 and PUBG, Street Fighter 6 and Baldur's Gate 3, each of these pairs released the same year. We can probably point to as many story-driven games as action-driven games, every single year, since 1977.

On the time scale you're talking about, there's almost no correlation between time and the quality of video game storytelling. If anything, it has been improving (insofar as bigger games with bigger budgets have more grandiose stories being written for them).

HarkMahlberg, 8 miesięcy temu

Oh wow, what a day for the fediverse huh? Kbin's infrastructure went down, Lemmy.ml's certs expired (or so Firefox told me), and a ton of Misskey servers got hacked and started botspamming everyone.

HarkMahlberg, 9 miesięcy temu

I think more likely than Valve going under is Valve getting bought or going public. Both would result in the new owner (a megacorp in their own right, or greedy shareholders, respectively) turning the system into shit to squeeze more money out of it. And new DRM would be foisted onto the system regardless.

HarkMahlberg, 10 miesięcy temu

Wesołych Świąt!

HarkMahlberg, 11 miesięcy temu

is it still impossible to withdraw staked coins?

Wait back up.

still

Hahahahaha holy shit.

HarkMahlberg, rok temu

Oh joy, these are my specs! Good to know it's working well for you.

HarkMahlberg, rok temu

Trader Joe's is privately owned, but it is owned by Aldi.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trader_Joe%27s

HarkMahlberg, rok temu

IIRC, Lucasarts had a massive legacy reputation as a publisher, but toward the end of its life, the public perception of Lucasarts had soured after the cancellation of Star Wars Battlefront 3. According to the developer Free Radical, Lucasarts cancelled the game, didn't pay the developer for creating a "99% finished" game, the developer went bankrupt, and then all the assets fell into Lucasarts's hands since it was their IP. These assets were then repurposed to create Renegade Squadron for the PSP.

https://www.gamespot.com/articles/battlefront-3-was-99-percent-done-when-canceled/1100-6400833/

HarkMahlberg, rok temu

Wait a second, you can add on the Bluray drive to the slim PS5? Meaning you're not locked in to an all-digital console, but you can still upgrade later? That's a great idea, why is no one talking about this?

Sony finally gets to join the ranks of add-on-disc-player consoles: the Sega Megadrive, the N64DD, and this... thing.

HarkMahlberg, rok temu

Oh... then it's not that good of a deal. Cool tech, but not consumer friendly.

HarkMahlberg, rok temu

In case nobody's said it already, it's awesome you're taking an active role in teaching your daughter media literacy. 🙂

HarkMahlberg, rok temu

The crossover? The scalpers?

HarkMahlberg, rok temu

They do at least make it available online. But I agree that the artificial scarcity is scummy.

If you don’t have plans to travel to Amsterdam any time soon, you will still have a chance to get in on the artsy action via the Pokémon Center online storefront.

A range of Pokémon x Van Gogh products, though not the entire collection, will go live on the Pokémon Center and be available for purchase while supplies last. This includes a number of art prints, figures, and more.

The Pikachu with Felt Hat promo card will be given out as a gift to users who purchase products from this collab collection—again, while supplies last. It is likely that you will only get one Pikachu promo per order as a way to send as many cards out to as many people as possible.

https://dotesports.com/pokemon/news/how-to-get-pikachu-with-felt-hat-pokemon-van-gogh-collab-tcg-promo-card#2-pok%C3%A9mon-x-van-gogh-online

HarkMahlberg, rok temu

My pet theory is that the military uses the war thunder forums as a honeypot to catch leakers.

HarkMahlberg, rok temu

Can't help but feel like that was a missed opportunity. Exploration being risky could lead the player to make meaningful choices with meaningful consequences. It certainly seemed to have that effect in Dark Souls (yes I just invoked Dark Souls please don't dogpile me).

HarkMahlberg, rok temu

The problem is the game industry, in the meantime of never going beyond the $60 threshold, found a far far more lucrative way of making money than just raising the MSRP. In fact, they found multiple ways of making money: skinner boxes, loot boxes, micro transactions, season passes, FOMO storefronts, etc etc. And even though we may agree that the MSRP eventually has to increase, they won't suddenly give up on those anti-consumer, predatory practices.

HarkMahlberg, rok temu

Fandom sites are maybe the most ad-ridden pages on the entire internet.

HarkMahlberg, rok temu

Forget all that shit, anyone have an IBM 5100 lying around?

HarkMahlberg, rok temu (edited rok temu)

From everything I can see, you did have to buy games on Stadia. They would give you a free game a month, but if that wasn't the game you wanted to play, you had to buy it. The base version of Stadia was free, but the Pro version gave you a discount on games - it did not make them free.

This is the official support forum and there are many Q&A's about purchasing games:

https://community.stadia.com/t5/Payments-Billing/Can-t-buy-games-in-the-Store-OR-HDT-01/m-p/52482

Got my Stadia Pro account with a credit card...

... If you have an Android device, you can also try via the Stadia app to purchase games (once purchased, you can play them everywhere, on mobile, TV or PC).

HarkMahlberg, rok temu (edited rok temu)

Forget fake scarcity, the REAL scarcity of pre-acquisition Nintendo games and consoles would skyrocket. Microsoft is only consumer-friendly now because they're still in the phase of acquiring a critical mass of content and users. Once they have both, and everything is on Game Pass, they'll jack up the price as high as they want knowing you'd lose access to all your games if you don't pay.

HarkMahlberg, rok temu

https://me.ign.com/en/xbox-series-x/212848/news/leaked-microsoft-email-reveals-xbox-boss-phil-spencer-really-wants-to-buy-nintendo

HarkMahlberg, rok temu

an ancient game engine that’s probably barely hanging together

I think Bethesda is a company full of people at the terminus of their careers - they don't know how to make any other kind of game than "Bethesda RPG," they don't know how to use any other game engine, and they are unable to learn either of those skills. Many other game studios have learned to evolve and shift their resources and assets - Naughty Dog doesn't still use the Jak and Daxter engine, From Software went from making mecha games like Armored Core to defining an entire genre with Dark Souls. It seems like Bethesda doesn't have the capacity to change like other companies.

HarkMahlberg, rok temu (edited rok temu)

I was referring to the Armored Core games that From developed starting with the original PlayStation in 1997. But to your point, it speaks to their flexibility in using the same engine to make games of two fairly different genres.

HarkMahlberg, rok temu

Did they not learn from watching Sony delist Cyberpunk after CD Projekt Red told consumers that Sony would give them a refund?

HarkMahlberg, rok temu

I mean, what does he think makes a good game, if not sorry, characters, and world? Must a game only be evaluated by it's rules and systems? Then guess what, BG3 is built on DND 5e, arguably the most successful RPG system of all time. What even is his complaint?

HarkMahlberg, rok temu

Gaming media has a difficult time differentiating their thoughts on games as a consumer product and games as art. For the former, it's useful to have objective measures. For the latter, subjective.

HarkMahlberg, rok temu

Those are in fact all objective measures of a game's quality. FPS on certain hardware, game length, frequency of crashes, the presence of microstuttering, lists of features, these are all things that can be quantified, and by being quantified they are made objective. You can take this information and compare games against each other to make purchasing decisions, critique them, etc. Those decisions are subjective, yet they are based on objective data.

But I didn't say that we should only use objective measures to evaluate games, nor do I agree that we can only evaluate games subjectively. We need both, gaming media should give us both, but we both need to be able to distinguish between them.

HarkMahlberg, rok temu

Odd, I got TPK'd in a regular combat encounter and it just prompted me to reload a save.