Are the tactics and procedures used to break down such documents leaked? Id love to read more about it, and I suppose it may be part of some of the leaks that happened in the last few years.

I’m interested in how exactly they do/did it, so I know what to watch out for.

I never noticed that the logo in fact does look like am asshole. Cool

This is a great point, and I definitely agree, and I haven’t thought about it in this way. I don’t think that I’ve ever ran into a group where our expectations would be so much different that it would cause an issue, but it’s a great thing to keep in mind. Now that I read it again, I think I should add that I don’t think that it’s wrong to play RPGs as a board game, and I don’t really mind if someone does even in our group and I’m having fun either way, but I mostly felt like it’s a little bit shame that it may not even occur to some people that you don’t have to focus mostly on rules - since thats what most of the game book is about, and can do it differently, especially when you’re starting out. Which is also a good thing to keep in mind, to discuss and make the options and expectations clear before starting.

I agree, and I think that what may have also helped was that I was still basically a child when I was introduced to the dice-only RPGs. Also, it’s definitely way more difficult for the GM, which I was fortunate enough to have a really experienced and amazing one.

It’s true that if the whole group including the GM is starting out, going with something like Fate is better choice, which I also prefer nowadays. Or more experimental ones like Dread or the candles one.

I’m really glad that my first introduction to RPGs, when I was on a summer camp and like 13yo, was with a GM who didn’t use any rules (aside from a D10) and instead focused on RP, and resolved actions based on what exactly we described, intuition and a D10 roll without a set goal or number.

It has taught me an entirely different approach to pen&papers that has carried really well over to when I started playing more rules heavy systems, which is especially apparent when I play with groups who never really played without rules, where most of the combat or actions are reduced to playing a board game and a lot of talk revolves around stats and numbers, instead of on the RP, which is a shame. Which is understandable, since if your first experoence with RP is a rule heavy system, it’s not exactly intuitive to just ignore the stats and rolls, because they seem important.

I’m used to paying almost no attention to stats aside from vaguely knowing what my character is better at, and threat them and the rolls in same way as I did when starting - don’t care what are the odds, don’t care about the roll, I just start with describing an action I want to do and figure out the stats as an afterthought. And it makes for such a better experience, and I higjly recommend for anyone starting a new group or having inexperienced players - just go with a single d10 for the first session, and guess the results based on a vague gut feeling based on the situation and the number rolled. Its suprisingly intuitive once you start from the GM side, and it teaches the new players way better habbits in how to approach the game and what is important, that will stay with them even after they add rules to the mix.

My favourite take on DI is this set of articles from like 12 years ago, written by a guy who has written the first DI framework for Unity, on which are the currently popular ones, such as Zenject, based on.

The first two articles are pretty basic, explaining his reasoning and why it’s such a cool concept and way forward.

Then, there’s this update:

Followed by more articles about why he thinks it was a mistake, and he no longer recommends or uses DI in Unity in favor of manual dependency injection. And I kind of agree - his main reasoning is that it’s really easy for unnecessary dependencies to sneak up into your code-base, since it’s really easy to just write another [Inject] without a second thought and be done with it.

However, with manual dependency injection through constructor parameters, you will take a step back when you’re adding 11th parameter to the constructor, and will take a moment to think whether there’s really no other better way. Of course, this should not be an relevant issue with experienced programmers, but it’s not as inherently obvious you’re doing something potentially wrong, when you just add another [Inject], when compared to adding another constructor parameter.

Some kernel anticheats work too, I had no issues playing Helldivers and Hell Let Loose, both of which use EAC. Developers have to enable Linux support, which AFAIK is just one checkbox, so you still get games that don’t allow it (like EVE Vanguard), but most of them are OK.

League and Valorant is a different story, those don’t work.

I preffer KDE and use x11. Wayland is getting better with nvidia, but I still had some bugs with taskbar freezing often when I first tried it, so I just switched to X11. I haven’t tested it recently though, so it may be OK now.

We’ve had to work in Pharo for our OOP uni course, and it was one of the worse experiences I’ve had in school. Mind you, it was something like 7 years ago, so the language may very well be a lot better now, but the whole “your IDE is the code” felt cubersome, it was buggy and crashed randomly, and in general I spent more time fighting with the IDE than doing something useful.

It was a bad time, but also a great learning experience. Being forced to work in something that IMO sucks is an useful skill, but I never want to see that language again :D

I have a Nvidia gpu and I did run into issues on Fedora with drivers and cutscenes, switching from Gnome to KDE and wayland to X11 fixed some problems, but I fidn’t manage to get it to work properly and have given up in a few weeks.

However, I switched to Nobara which is based on Fedora and handles the gaming related configuration for you, and so far O’ve had a great experience without any issues for half a year already, so if gaming is what you’re primarily after, I’d recommend going with Nobara.

I suppose it comes with mantadory analytics and data sharing with meta, right?

But a paid licence will affect users that are all right abd for whom you’re doing it.

I understand that using something with a risk of loosong access because you’ve upset the developer is something that will turn away a lot of people, but then again, I’d say that “don’t be a dick” is a pretty reasonable requirement. The only issue I see that it’s a pretty vague definiton, but maybe just limiting it to profanities and insult towards the contributors is something more concrete, which would be easy to fulfill and also enforce.

I wonder, is it possible to create a license that would allow you to simply ban people who are being a dick about something from using it? Sure, it may turn away some people, since there’s always a risk of abuse, but it’s your work and as far as I know, you are the one who sets the terms.

If I’m not mistaken, most of the FOSS licenses (or maybe even laws?) guarantee you that you would be able to use the software even if the project later decides to change to proprietary license. But I assume you can simply specify in a licence “Everyone can use it, expect X.Y.Z”.

Would that be legal? Sure, it would probably be pretty hard to enforce, but in some cases it could make for a pretty satisfactory (and petty, of course) C&D letters, for people that really deserve it. You insult the devs of a software your company depends on, demanding something while being a dick about it? Well, fuck you, no library for you and your company.

What gives me immense joy is that there’s probably someone at Unity really really upset now. Fuck them.

Someone once told me a story how they made a game in Unity, and were in contact with them, since they are also a content creators. Then they decided it sucks and rewritten the project into Unreal, and when they met someone from Unity who asked how it’s going and whether they need help with anything, and when they told them that they are actually working on Unreal now, the Unity guy got literally upset and angry at them how they can’t do that and what are they thinking. It was hilarious.

Reportedly, then Unreal support was way better and more friendly.

Another one came to my mind - ROBLOX_OOF.mp3 by hbomberguy.

It’s really a wild ride. As traditional with his videos, it starts with a pretty innocent investigation into one of sounds popular on the internet, and then gets into a mindboggling rabbit hole about Tommy Tallarico, the guy behind Video Games Live, and how he accidentally discovered what an insane text-book example of pathological lier he is. It’s funny, and really absurd - I’d recommend it to everyone, because it’s really interesting insight into how bad can it get with pathological liers. It’s a roller coaster, and a really fascinating one. And I also learned that Guiness World Record is a scam and literally only an advertisement business, which I never realised before.

It’s a shame, I really liked Video Games Live, the live recordings of it’s shows are great. Assuming you skip the ego-trip monologues he interupts the concert with.

That’s true. I guess that in this case, your best bet is (assuming you don’t have something so illegal to hide, that they do want to expend large amount of resources on you) to just go security by obscurity, and have some kind of obscure custom steganography that’s not widely used.

And for PGP - I though that there’s a difference between signing and encrypting a message, and when you only encrypt and don’t sign, they can’t attribute the message to you, assuming they don’t have your private key or the original plaintext? Or is it possible to attribute a encrypted message using only public key and cyphertext?

Down the Rabbit Hole for EVE Online is absolutely amazing. I’ve played the game here and there for quite a long time, and it’s one of my favourite experiences, that is however really hard to put into words.

That game is weird. I still can’t explain why it’s one of the best games I’ve played, but I always keep returning to it and love consuming content about it from time to time. And this document is amazing in explaining how extremely unique and cool the game is in it’s metagame and the stories it generates. The game has it’s problems, but I still think it’s one of the most unique lifestyles in gaming, that nothing ever comes close to. It’s the only MMORPG that’s actually literally roleplay, that basically forces you to roleplay without you even realizing it. Sure, you may not speak in character, but the fleet doctrines, logistics, corp organization, propaganda, corp-politics and everything around it people do - that’s literally roleplaying.

Another one would be B-Movie: Lust & Sound in West-Berlin 1979-1989. This document is really really hard for me to watch, because it’s a subculture that was always really important to me, to the point where I help with event promotions and DJ at local 80s goth/synthpop events and it’s my main hobby. But, since I’m now in my 20s, I’ve missed it. The way internet transformed music subcultures is terrible, especially so the alternative ones, but music consumption in general - sure, it’s really amazing to have every almbum ever in the palm of your hand, but there’s just so many that I don’t know any. If I talk to anyone who started with music with the one MC tape, and each new relleas was something hard to get that you actually treassured, I really envy their relationship with music. And that’s something that’s almost impossible to build in this day and age.

The fact that I’ll never get to experience the scene as it was in the 80s is one of the saddest things for me, and this documentary shows it in really genuine and amazing way.

And then there’s The Social Dillema, about the dangers of social networks. A word of warning from people who worked at large social network companies and left because the way they exploit users got too much for them, and now they are trying to spread the word. I really recommend this for everyone, it’s eye openning and really terrifying. It was one of the first impulses that got me heavy into privacy, and it everyone should see it at least once.

The final nail in the Unity coffin for me was when few years ago, they announced discontinuation of several of their features, like MP, fired hundreds of employees, and bought a new company that’s focused on monetization of games and ads.

That’s a pretty clear message about their intentions and area of focus. No thank you.

Once you have a tool that uses pgp with keys you provide, and encrypts messages in normal chats, changing the actuall message format would probably be easy, so there’s plenty of room for adittional steganography. Images would make for a perfect cover, with something like last-bit steganography.

But, I hope it won’t come to that.

But… They said that privacy is the most important thing for them 0_0 https://about.meta.com/actions/protecting-privacy-and-security/