Bullmaestro's recent activity
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
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Comment on What did you do this week (and weekend)? in ~talk
Bullmaestro LinkNot had the greatest weekend. As some of you may know, I am a regular when it comes to pub karaoke. I am part of a group chat created by one of the KJs I follow (I'll just call him Gary.) He...Not had the greatest weekend.
As some of you may know, I am a regular when it comes to pub karaoke. I am part of a group chat created by one of the KJs I follow (I'll just call him Gary.) He stepped away from hosting Fridays at a particular pub over a month ago and Lucy (yup, same Lucy who came on to me over a year ago) ended up taking over as the host.
Last night, I went to her karaoke night and rapped Forgot About Dre as my second song (No, I did not say the n-word. That is a massive no-no for me.) The crowd like it, but not the landlord, who was livid and pretty much told her off for allowing me to do a song with swearing. It hadn't come up before when when she was hosting, even though some of the regulars did songs with swear words before, like Creep and Living Next Door To Alice.
Gary told me they only hated people using the c-word. I think he lied to me because he wanted to make Lucy look bad and I feel annoyed with him.
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
Bullmaestro LinkMy time has been largely taken up by MapleStory: Classic World. I've clocked over 15 hours played so far and hit level 20 on a Magician. Compared to the modern day post-Big Bang version of...My time has been largely taken up by MapleStory: Classic World. I've clocked over 15 hours played so far and hit level 20 on a Magician.
Compared to the modern day post-Big Bang version of MapleStory which has three different flavours of adventurer classes, dozens of ridiculously overloaded hero classes and some of the most streamlined progression I've ever seen, Classic World has honestly been a breath of fresh air. It finally feels like I'm playing a MMORPG and not a shitty hack & slash game where I can deal 76 quadrillion points of damage and delete an entire room of mobs in a single button press, whilst following some incredibly contrived and poorly written story about a dark mage who once threatened Maple World. OG MapleStory was never like this, and the superior quality of the restored classic game by comparison really shows.
Things haven't been entirely smooth sailing. Nexon, for some incredibly stupid reason, decided to kick off the two week Founder's Access period by launching the game with only 1 world and 18 channels. Nearly every zone is massively overcrowded with players and competition for enemy mob spawns is rife.
And as everyone who bought in got the Founder's Pack, nearly every safe zone is full of player-run shops and obnoxious flashy effects, which would all otherwise come from limited-time rental cash shop items.
Only places I've seen that hasn't been overloaded with players are the two maps between Henesys and the Victoria Island Dungeon, and the only reason is because Iron Hogs are level 26 mobs that have incredibly high evasion stats, and are practically impossible to damage with physical attacks even if you could hit them.
If this is the state of the game for people who paid Nexon $60 for two weeks' early access, I dread to think what the servers will be like on 21st October when the game truly launches F2P.
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Comment on Solo developer rebuilds Adobe Creative Suite in Rust using Claude, releases it free to all in ~tech
Bullmaestro Link ParentI think AI is killing my drive to continue pursuing accountancy because of how much it's automated my industr too. I am debating whether to go into music production, singing or hosting karaoke.I think AI is killing my drive to continue pursuing accountancy because of how much it's automated my industr too. I am debating whether to go into music production, singing or hosting karaoke.
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Comment on Software developers are not okay in ~tech
Bullmaestro LinkHave they though? Fifteen years ago, the industry was desperate to hire coders. Landing a software engineering gig in a Big Tech firm was the dream. Their salaries were huge, their offices seemed...The fewer people you have working for you, the fewer stock options you have to pay out, the less resistance there will be to watering down the product, collaborating with the military-industrial complex, or helping authoritarian governments control and murder their citizens. Over the past two decades, one of the more effective forces for keeping tech companies in line have been the tech workers themselves who have tried resist corrupt and unethical behaviour. It hasn’t always worked. There wasn’t enough of it. But what little there was it added meaningful friction at several important moments in tech history.
Have they though?
Fifteen years ago, the industry was desperate to hire coders. Landing a software engineering gig in a Big Tech firm was the dream. Their salaries were huge, their offices seemed luxurious and they were based in some of the most prestigious places in the world. And out of all of them, only Amazon really had a bad reputation for how they treated their workers pre-COVID (and it was really in their warehouse and logistics divisions.)
Since then it's been a race to shittify the entire industry.
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Comment on Solo developer rebuilds Adobe Creative Suite in Rust using Claude, releases it free to all in ~tech
Bullmaestro LinkThe latest Claude and GPT models have done some fucking crazy things, like reverse engineering and splicing two games together. AI is actually one of the main contributors on projects like KytyPS5...The latest Claude and GPT models have done some fucking crazy things, like reverse engineering and splicing two games together. AI is actually one of the main contributors on projects like KytyPS5 (a PlayStation 5 emulator that has made a tonne of progress lately) and AnyPS5 (a tool for porting PS5 games to Windows and Linux), and is a core reason why a lot of recent video game decompilations have taken weeks instead of years to produce.
Am I right to be genuinely concerned by this?
I mean even if you have a raging hate-boner for greedy monopolistic companies like Autodesk and Adobe, it should be alarming that AI is currently in the state where it can be used to create working vibe-slop clones of proprietary software.
I once envisioned a "watershed moment" for AI where someone straight-up recreates Adobe Creative Suite and releases a free working clone of it a few days ago. I was not expecting this moment to have already passed.
I would not be surprised in the slightest if Anthropic and OpenAI get hit with massive lawsuits in the coming months. Heck, I can even see this getting laws rewritten and legal precedent on fair-use and reverse engineering to be overturned.
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Comment on What single episode of a show would you recommend as a standalone? in ~tv
Bullmaestro LinkI wouldn't say single episode (more like six), but there is a mini-arc of Sword Art Online that I would thoroughly recommend watching over the main series. Specifically, S2E19-24 (or the Mother's...I wouldn't say single episode (more like six), but there is a mini-arc of Sword Art Online that I would thoroughly recommend watching over the main series. Specifically, S2E19-24 (or the Mother's Rosario arc, which technically starts at Episode 18 but that's a filler episode that can be skipped.)
I hate Sword Art Online for a lot of reasons, but this is easily the best arc in the series by a mile, and it's a side-story.
To sum up Mother's Rosario
Asuna meets a skilled player called Yuuki in Alfheim Online and challenges her to a duel, only to then be recruited by her into the Sleeping Knights, a guild that is trying to land a world first Aincrad floor clear and immortalize their names. Despite being actively pushed away from their goal by a rival guild, they accomplish it (with some help from Kazuto) only for Yuuki to fear she's grown too close and disappear off the face of the map.
After Kazuto tips her off, Asuna visits a hospital where she learns that the Sleeping Knights are a guild of terminally ill patients and that Yuuki is immunocompromised, because when she was born, a botched c-section and blood transfusion resulted in her (and her mother) contracting AIDS. She was the first patient to use a Medicuboid, a full-dive virtual reality device. They reunite once again and spend more time together, until Yuuki dies, but not before passing on her 9-hit sword skill as a scroll.
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Comment on Danish government confirms its Central Person Register was hacked – data breach affects eight million citizens and includes names, addresses, and social security numbers in ~tech
Bullmaestro LinkOne of the reasons I seriously oppose our push for more digitalisation, mass-surveillance and data harvesting. Many organisations are notoriously fucking bad with data security, especially...One of the reasons I seriously oppose our push for more digitalisation, mass-surveillance and data harvesting.
Many organisations are notoriously fucking bad with data security, especially government-owned ones founded by lawmakers who have hardly any grasp on how technology works themselves.
At this point I think it's going to take a cataclysmic and highly destructive data breach until we finally begin to slam the brakes.
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
Bullmaestro (edited )LinkAntivirus Survivors 2003 Professional is a bullet heaven game heavily inspired by Vampire Survivors where you play as a cursor on a Windows XP inspired desktop fighting off hordes of viruses. It...Antivirus Survivors 2003 Professional is a bullet heaven game heavily inspired by Vampire Survivors where you play as a cursor on a Windows XP inspired desktop fighting off hordes of viruses. It absolutely nails the Y2K computer aesthetic in every way, but there are some nitpicks I have with this game.
Firstly, movement feels clunky. While I understand that implementing mouse movement would be very difficult in a Survivors-like where you want to limit movespeed, instead we got a system where we can only move the cursor in 8 cardinal directions and need to use the left mouse button or Shift key to click. And when you have to double-click, it just feels unsatisfying.
Secondly, the levelling and progression systems, whilst good homages to the early 2000's, just drag the game's pacing down a lot, whether it's:
- Level-ups, which are very frequent.
- Installers for a new upgrade that consume keys (which are collected from, you guessed it, Keygens)
- Zip files which take about 30 seconds to open and may fail (spamming your screen with popups)
- Download More RAM applications, which have a very high chance to fail (more popup spam, I don't even know what they actually do because the success rate is so low.)
- The Limewire parody you need to stand within for a certain time to open.
- A uTorrent parody that opens a torrent client with random upgrades that have a significant chance to stall and ultimately fail to download.
- A Steam parody which wipes your screen of everything, including useful unopened files, which makes it more often than not counter-intuitive to use.
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Comment on What have you been listening to this week? in ~music
Bullmaestro LinkJomm feat. readyaimfire27 - Melatonin. I discovered this song through a Facebook ad of all places. Was really surprised by how good it was and how they pretty much nailed Japanese city pop. It's...Jomm feat. readyaimfire27 - Melatonin.
I discovered this song through a Facebook ad of all places. Was really surprised by how good it was and how they pretty much nailed Japanese city pop. It's not my favourite song by them though, that title would go to Astronaut Song.
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Comment on 'Chainsmoker Cat' anime discussion, what do you think? in ~anime
Bullmaestro Link ParentFormer Diablo/Warcraft content creator. Nicknamed the cockroach king because he lives in squalor and doesn't clean up after himself. Became a right wing political streamer. More recently came back...Former Diablo/Warcraft content creator. Nicknamed the cockroach king because he lives in squalor and doesn't clean up after himself. Became a right wing political streamer.
More recently came back for the WoW Forever beta. His followers came in the thousands, made characters with offensive names, got banhammered, then proceeded to dox, harass and expose the historic post history of WoW Forever's lead dev James Gunn style, all because he told people with homophobic and racist names to be better people...
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Comment on Premier League statement: Manchester City FC in ~sports.football
Bullmaestro LinkI fully expect little to come of this. The last time the book was thrown at seriously corrupt football officials on any level was due to FBI intervention in FIFA (what got several seniors arrested...I fully expect little to come of this. The last time the book was thrown at seriously corrupt football officials on any level was due to FBI intervention in FIFA (what got several seniors arrested and Sepp Blatter to resign)...
They'll probably give Man City a points reduction, maybe at most a relegation where they'll shit all over the Championship harder than a German adult film star in a scheiße flick, then be in healthy contention for the next title in 2028-29.
Plus i'm sure the UAE will pressure the English FA and British government into submission, because "how fucking dare you mess with one of our main international assets"...
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Comment on Interview: Firefox’s chief on why he hopes a redesign will help win users from Chrome in ~tech
Bullmaestro LinkChrome memory leaking and crashing on my PC was initially why i switched to Firefox. Chromium getting fucked with nuked Manifest v2 support was why I stuck. Is there genuinely a good ad blocking...Chrome memory leaking and crashing on my PC was initially why i switched to Firefox. Chromium getting fucked with nuked Manifest v2 support was why I stuck.
Is there genuinely a good ad blocking browser in 2026?
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Comment on An interesting take on Reddit about why the art direction of World of Warcraft Forever misses the mark in ~games
Bullmaestro LinkI (partially) don't mind the inclusion of Skyborne. I just wished they would have asked the player base and publicised the result of their votes á la OSRS. But I do think they went with Skyborne...I (partially) don't mind the inclusion of Skyborne. I just wished they would have asked the player base and publicised the result of their votes á la OSRS.
But I do think they went with Skyborne because community polls from Reddit don't represent the player majority of WoW. But I also believe the conspiracy theory that Chris Metzen intervened last minute because he wanted something as outlandish as sky elves.
They're getting relatively close to matching Turtle WoW quality of Classic here based on my beta testing.
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Comment on 'Chainsmoker Cat' anime discussion, what do you think? in ~anime
Bullmaestro LinkIs this the one where people have said the protagonist is like a female catgirl Asmongold? I need to get around to watching it since it is on Netflix.Is this the one where people have said the protagonist is like a female catgirl Asmongold?
I need to get around to watching it since it is on Netflix.
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
Bullmaestro LinkUnlike a lot of other games I tried during the last few Steam Next Fests, IGTAP: An Incremental Game That's Also A Platformer didn't disappoint. I'd say you could beat the game and see the full...Unlike a lot of other games I tried during the last few Steam Next Fests, IGTAP: An Incremental Game That's Also A Platformer didn't disappoint. I'd say you could beat the game and see the full conclusion within about 10 hours of gameplay, and I would 100% recommend playing with a gamepad (and not a keyboard like I did) because keyboard controls are genuinely strenuous on your hand. If you're going for all achievements, maybe add an extra hour or two.
League of Legends has been a mixed bag for me lately. The only game mode I've been getting any enjoyment out of is ARAM Mayhem, and my enjoyment is wholly dependent on if I end up with a decent champion, a decent team-comp and decent augments.
Classic would be a good game mode if there was a serious ranked competitive ladder, if queue times weren't 5+ minutes long, and if there wasn't more draft-dodging going on in champion select than in the USA during Vietnam. Three games and a cumulative 90 minutes of dodged lobbies later and I just gave up trying to play this game mode. Not even OG Quinn coming in a future patch will likely make me want to try this mode again given its current state.
Ranked is my other major peeve. Out of the last ten games which have gotten me demoted from Bronze 2 to Bronze 4, eight have been losses and all but three have been labelled "Unlucky" on my OP.GG, meaning I performed well but had inting assholes sabotage them. The kind I got in my matches (stats below are Kills/Deaths/Assists) have included:
- 1/15/8 Master Yi jungle with 19% kill participation.
- 1/10/0 Renekton top, or less than 7% KP.
- 3/10/0 and 4/10/7 Nilah ADC and Sion support respectively. Sion has zero redeeming qualities that would allow him to be played in that role, his CC is slow and heavily telegraphed and his passive scaling relies on you killing minions which you don't want to do as a support.
- 5/6/3 Kai'Sa ADC, which doesn't sound bad until you realise that they spent almost the entire game 2-3 levels below me (the Leona support in that game), spent much of the laning phase under tower not even in sufficient range of minions to gain XP, and had less than 4 CS per minute. I only died twice and despite my best efforts couldn't carry people who refused to pull their weight, especially when they'd outright ignore objectives and give the enemy team free drakes, voidgrubs, rift guardians, Barons, etc.
I also bought the Skyborne Epic Pack and got beta access to World of Warcraft Forever that way. I'm impressed so far with what they've done to the game world. Paladin rework has been great and the new quests have been a nice addition for the most part. What I haven't liked is the push towards a realmless megaserver and how layering has worked. Megaservers are fine for retail because rules on tapping mobs are far more lenient to prevent kill-stealing, whereas Forever works on Classic's rules.
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Comment on Ed Sheeran concerts at Robert Kraft stadiums cancelled over weather in ~music
Bullmaestro LinkEven Mother Nature is mad at Ed Sheeran's complicity in Netanyahu's genocidal campaign.Even Mother Nature is mad at Ed Sheeran's complicity in Netanyahu's genocidal campaign.
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Comment on What are the genuinely worst films of all time? in ~movies
Bullmaestro LinkWorst movie I've ever seen was FDR: American Badass. You'd think from the trailer that this is going to be a hilarious B movie spoof of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's life and presidency where he...Worst movie I've ever seen was FDR: American Badass.
You'd think from the trailer that this is going to be a hilarious B movie spoof of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's life and presidency where he fights Nazi werewolves on a heavily armed wheelchair.
In actuality, it was horribly scripted, overly raunchy to the point where each scene dragged on for way too long because they were full of crude jokes, and much of it just wasn't funny.
I nominated it for a film night some friends were doing. We didn't even last 30 minutes until we had to switch it off.
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
Bullmaestro LinkThe Loopler is a great, albeit heavily RNG-dependent game. It's a roguelite deckbuilder where you drive a car around a loop track, rack up higher scores and aim to achieve infinity. My only real...The Loopler is a great, albeit heavily RNG-dependent game. It's a roguelite deckbuilder where you drive a car around a loop track, rack up higher scores and aim to achieve infinity. My only real problem with it is that there are a lot of truly shit-tier cards, gates and charms that can kill a run early. At least you can enable/disable these with relative ease, at the cost of only being unable to earn a particular achievement for that run.
It's up there with Vampire Survivors in terms of how you can customize a run. Just wish it had more content.
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Comment on Rockstar had a mole in the union worker Discord server "for over two and a half years," GTA 6 company reveals during legal battle in ~games
Bullmaestro Link ParentI'm on the side of the workers. Given how incredibly greedy and litigious Rockstar and Take Two Interactive have been, and how they stabbed Leslie Benzies in the back a decade ago, I can...I'm on the side of the workers. Given how incredibly greedy and litigious Rockstar and Take Two Interactive have been, and how they stabbed Leslie Benzies in the back a decade ago, I can definitely see them trumping up allegations to bust a workers' union.
But it is going to hinge on what was actually discussed in the Discord server, if there were server rules preventing confidential information from being discussed, how they were enforced by server moderators, how they controlled server access, etc.
I agree that yes, their opsec was flawed, but it's not like they could have used the company's internal Slack channels for this purpose; that's just asking for senior management to use PIPs to try and weed any pro-union staff out early.
Not sure what labor laws are like in the UK but if this was in the US this would seem like a pretty clear case of violating the NLRA.
Our labour laws are generally stronger than those in the US.
Gave Banjo-Kazooie a second chance. First time around, I gave up quickly on it because I was playing the Rare Replay version via Xbox Cloud Gaming and had to deal with some horrendous input lag. Second time around was on NSO.
I dunno why it got rave reviews and is considered up there with Super Mario 64 as one of the best 3D platformers of the 90's. The game controls like crap on both versions in almost every aspect, from the camera down to some of the worst swimming controls I've experienced. When you save and quit, the game also forces you to watch a lengthy Game Over cutscene. Rare also littered the start with craploads of tutorials that just bog the experience down.
What ultimately made me give up was several failed attempts of trying to pick up the Blue Jinjo on Treasure Trove Cove, and me retrospectively feeling like an idiot as I write this because it turns out you can kill Snacker the Shark.
Also recently played the Melvor Idle 2 demo. From what I played, it's just a slight graphical upgrade over the first game with a different interface and nowhere near as much additional depth as advertised. Being unable to actually move the window in Windowed Mode also completely and utterly blows. Malcs needs to cook for a lot longer before releasing this one, because otherwise it'll end up as underwhelming as Cities Skylines 2.
I also reached level 22 on MapleStory: Classic World and kinda burned out already. I hit a serious quest drought with the only ones still outstanding being ones I can't farm because every map is still heavily overcrowded with players. This is the state MSCW is in right now, and the only people playing are those who were willing to pay $60 for a Founder's package to get 2 weeks early access. Grand Launch is on Wednesday and the game will be unplayable.
I think Nexon should have launched the game with multiple worlds and more content to ease overcrowding (at the very least, the original versions of Orbis, El Nath, Ludibrium, Zipangu and New Leaf City should have been in launch.)