Bullmaestro's recent activity
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Comment on Apple announces iPhone Duo, its first foldable iPhone in ~tech
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The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (Switch 2) | Zelda 40th anniversary Direct trailer
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Comment on Nexon pursues ‘StarCraft’ sequel development rights from Blizzard in ~games
Bullmaestro LinkThis is the same company that is charging $59.99 for Founder's Packs which would give customers early access to MapleStory Classic World for two weeks before its official launch. Now I get it,...This is the same company that is charging $59.99 for Founder's Packs which would give customers early access to MapleStory Classic World for two weeks before its official launch.
Now I get it, they made Shattered Galaxy and their home country loves the franchise to the point of treating it like a televised sport. But licensing StarCraft out to Nexon doesn't bode well for me.
They are up there with EA, Supercell and Take Two Interactive as the four horsemen of greedy publishers.
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Comment on What made that wedding that you attended particularly memorable? in ~life
Bullmaestro LinkIt's more like what happened around that day. Wedding ceremony itself was at a countryside inn and got interrupted several times by moving trains and people doing welding work nearby. I took part...It's more like what happened around that day. Wedding ceremony itself was at a countryside inn and got interrupted several times by moving trains and people doing welding work nearby.
I took part in the quarter-final of a (unrelated) karaoke competition later that eve and got eliminated.
And I caught food poisoning and spent the next few days uncontrollably shitting and vomiting...
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Comment on What are your "how on earth did I not learn this sooner" tech moments? in ~tech
Bullmaestro LinkDefinitely Ctrl+Shift+Esc on Windows. Gives immediate access to the Task Manager without having to go through an additional menu. And to a lesser extent Windows Key + . brings up an emoji keyboard.Definitely Ctrl+Shift+Esc on Windows. Gives immediate access to the Task Manager without having to go through an additional menu.
And to a lesser extent Windows Key + . brings up an emoji keyboard.
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Comment on Gamergate but actually in ~games
Bullmaestro (edited )Link ParentIt absolutely was. Zoe Quinn made a freeware game. Didn't charge a penny for it. And the gameplay was more like a series of multiple choice questions in a "choose your own adventure" text based...It absolutely was.
Zoe Quinn made a freeware game. Didn't charge a penny for it. And the gameplay was more like a series of multiple choice questions in a "choose your own adventure" text based storytelling format, except positive options get crossed out when your mental state gets worse.
And she got hate because apparently she was sleeping with a games journalist who published an article about her game? So?
CNet got less hate for firing Jeff Gerstmann from Gamespot over a negative review of Kane & Lynch. And even when CNet ironically acquired Giant Bomb and basically acknowledged that Gerstmann was unfairly sacked over Eidos threatening to pull ads, there was even less outrage. Getting bought out by the parent company that initially flipped the middle finger over journalistic standards should have immediately led to a boycott of Giant Bomb if gamers had the same level of standards they showed towards Zoe Quinn but alas, they're hypocrites.
Heck, Future Publishing releasing falsified 9/10 reviews for Driv3r in exchange for early review copies got even less outrage than that...
Anita Sarkeesian crowdfunded and made a very badly-researched series about how tropes negatively portray women in video games and probably gave thunderf00t enough fuel to see him through several nuclear winters. Her episode on Hitman Absolution for example painted the game as encouraging you to murder scantily-clad women when the game actively penalizes you for killing anybody other than your target.
Crowd funding feminist analyses of games was all it took for Sarkeesian to get rape and death threats thrown at her, showing GG was only ever about harassment and misogyny.
If Gamergate has taught me anything, it's that the discourse from both sides were toxic as fuck. I've seen supporters and opponents of the movement get doxxed and swatted everywhere on Twitter.
But also, it taught me that if an e-celebrity or major content creator is big enough, criticising them when they pass away becomes a cardinal sin. Case-in-point: John "Totalbiscuit" Bain, a supporter of GamerGate known for getting into some really toxic flame wars whilst he was still alive.
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
Bullmaestro LinkCities Skylines 2 Ohhhh boy. I dunno how Paradox managed to mess up the sequel to a SimCity killer so badly, but here we are. My problem isn't necessarily that the game is a mess, it's that the...Cities Skylines 2
Ohhhh boy. I dunno how Paradox managed to mess up the sequel to a SimCity killer so badly, but here we are.
My problem isn't necessarily that the game is a mess, it's that the game is not even remotely an upgrade to the first one. Paradox have some cheek releasing paid DLC expansions to effectively bring back features that were in the first game.
Age of Empires II Definitive Edition
Vs CPU matches on Arabia have made me realise how rusty I've become mechanically with RTS games. I used to be Master in SC2 and id probably get stomped on ranked ladder in this game.
It's bad when in 4 games out of 3 I managed to get supply blocked after making my very first villager.
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Comment on What are your current pain points with Linux? in ~tech
Bullmaestro LinkCant comment so much on current pain points, aside from the obvious one that games with ring-0 anti cheat are incompatible. Only Linux devices i have are a Chromebook (I mean it runs Linux apps)...Cant comment so much on current pain points, aside from the obvious one that games with ring-0 anti cheat are incompatible.
Only Linux devices i have are a Chromebook (I mean it runs Linux apps) and a Steam Deck where I only found the Battle.net launcher a pain to install.
I also found that the occasional game verified for Steam Deck practically crashes to desktop (specifically Cthulhu Saves The World.)
I was practically forced to use Ubuntu eighteen years ago (TL;DR I got goaded into pirating Norton PartitionMagic by a "friend" from school because my computer was weirdly partitioned, nuked my Windows XP install, had no backup media and had to use Linux) and it was fucking awful. Only game I even managed to get running reliably was World of Warcraft.
The current state of Linux says a lot more about how the FOSS community (and more importantly, Valve) advanced the system's gaming support by a few decades.
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Comment on Twenty-year-old Xbox 360 game Blue Dragon now has a fantastic unofficial PC port that unlocks the FPS, goes 4K, and even adds mod support in ~games
Bullmaestro LinkI mean the Sonic fandom is who you should thank for Xbox 360 decompilation, since Sonic Unleashed was the first game to get that treatment. When they're not drawing shitty OCs and shipping...I mean the Sonic fandom is who you should thank for Xbox 360 decompilation, since Sonic Unleashed was the first game to get that treatment. When they're not drawing shitty OCs and shipping characters that have zero business to be romanticised, Sonic the Hedgehog fans can be really fucking creative and laser-focused.
Just look at the sheer number of fan games created that shit all over official efforts from Sonic Team themselves. I'm not just talking about Christian Whitehead and LakeFeperd here. So many developers have made brilliant fan games and would become great solo devs in their own right if they focused that energy elsewhere.
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Comment on Who likes GTA? in ~games
Bullmaestro LinkI was really impressed with the extended look trailer (watched it on YouTube, was at a karaoke night when Netflix had exclusivity), and it even showed that the footage Cyberleek posted was from a...I was really impressed with the extended look trailer (watched it on YouTube, was at a karaoke night when Netflix had exclusivity), and it even showed that the footage Cyberleek posted was from a much older build.
Not gonna buy it on launch. I skipped the PS5 and they're now prohibitively expensive to buy. I'll wait for the PC port.
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Comment on ‘This is crazy. This is insane’: Bill Gates has changed his mind about AI and jobs in ~comp
Bullmaestro Link ParentI see a lot of hubris in his words if anything. Gates is acting like he's one of the first to have these doubts about the AI revolution when the masses have been decrying AI slop for months if not...I see a lot of hubris in his words if anything.
“I am in a state of shock that I’m sort of the first one saying, ‘This is crazy. This is insane,’” he said. “I’m just deafened by the silence.”
Gates is acting like he's one of the first to have these doubts about the AI revolution when the masses have been decrying AI slop for months if not years at this point.
That shows how bafflingly out-of-touch he and other billionaires are.
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Comment on ‘This is crazy. This is insane’: Bill Gates has changed his mind about AI and jobs in ~comp
Bullmaestro LinkIt's like he's trying to save face before shit inevitably hits the fan with the world turning on billionaires and trying to bring out the guillotines. (I say "trying" because I don't think a class...It's like he's trying to save face before shit inevitably hits the fan with the world turning on billionaires and trying to bring out the guillotines. (I say "trying" because I don't think a class war in the literal sense would succeed. The civil unrest coming from climate collapse or mass unemployment will probably be brutally put down by the ruling class.)
Not a very good survival strategy compared to the literal doomsday bunkers that other billionaires are constructing.
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Comment on 10,000 people rallied in Stockholm to demand stronger action on climate change, weeks before Sweden's general election in ~enviro
Bullmaestro LinkI don't understand what they're expecting the Swedish government to do. Sweden is already pretty green. They contribute 0.1% of global CO2 emissions. They're 21st when it comes to emissions in...I don't understand what they're expecting the Swedish government to do.
Sweden is already pretty green. They contribute 0.1% of global CO2 emissions. They're 21st when it comes to emissions in Europe and 41st in Europe when that same metric is measured per-capita. For the 89th most populous country in the world and one of the more wealthy economies in Europe, they're a drop in the ocean.
At this point net zero is a pipe dream and we should be pumping our resources into geoengineering research to find ways to cool the planet and reverse the effects of man-made climate change. It will prove valuable if we try to move away from Earth.
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Comment on Ali G: Who Iz I? | Official trailer in ~movies
Bullmaestro LinkI dunno what's more surreal, seeing Ali G in 2026 with dreadlocks wearing a rastacap, or seeing that this is being published under MGM, a brand associated with James Bond, Tom & Jerry, Pink...I dunno what's more surreal, seeing Ali G in 2026 with dreadlocks wearing a rastacap, or seeing that this is being published under MGM, a brand associated with James Bond, Tom & Jerry, Pink Panther and Rocky.
Not sure how well this is going to land. Chav culture kinda declined by the late-2000s (which is probably a big reason why Sacha Baron Cohen retired the character in the first place), and Tim Westwood, the DJ and radio presenter who inspired Ali G's character in the first place, is currently awaiting trial for serious sex offences.
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Comment on Dolly Parton, country music legend, dies at 80 in ~music
Bullmaestro LinkWell there goes the rumour that she was recording an album with Slipknot... Yes I know that was written as satire, but I didn't know it was satirical when a friend first shared the article with me...Well there goes the rumour that she was recording an album with Slipknot...
Yes I know that was written as satire, but I didn't know it was satirical when a friend first shared the article with me two years ago. That would have been an incredible mashup out of nowhere.
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Comment on Are others finding themselves spending less and less time online? in ~tech
Bullmaestro Link ParentWe've also been through so many "once in a generation" crises that life has become exhausting. We have been through multiple recessions, political crises, wars, waves of mass migration, a pandemic...And so, in a climate where the cost of living is absolutely skyrocketing, the creatives are forced to diversify, appeal to a broader audience, or simply stop and do something else. I don't know a single person who isn't struggling with money, the cost of food, fuel, housing, and so on. I know zero people who make their living through content creation, but I do know that those who do are more like me than we sometimes think.
We've also been through so many "once in a generation" crises that life has become exhausting.
We have been through multiple recessions, political crises, wars, waves of mass migration, a pandemic resulting in several global lockdowns, an AI-driven squeeze on electrical components, a super El Nino which has cooked Europe, and two ongoing wars which are currently disrupting global oil and fertiliser supplies.
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Comment on Are others finding themselves spending less and less time online? in ~tech
Bullmaestro (edited )LinkI have definitely been feeling this way. Partially due to a change in hobbies, mental health struggles, conflicts at home and this feeling that the world in general has significantly gone down the...I have definitely been feeling this way. Partially due to a change in hobbies, mental health struggles, conflicts at home and this feeling that the world in general has significantly gone down the toilet since COVID-19 and is going quickly towards societal collapse. It's like tech billionaires like Elon Musk who were celebrated went full sociopath and showed their true colours.
The dead internet theory is something I believe to be 100% real, and is a huge reason why social media and online gaming isn't so engaging to me anymore. Automation and AI has enshittified the user (particularly customer support) experience a lot and Reddit is a great example of how bad this can get.
I actually received an automated account warning from Reddit on Sunday due to a reply I posted (which I don't fully remember the wording of, and can't double-check since it was immediately replaced with "[removed by reddit]" upon posting. For context, someone posted doorcam footage of a woman with a cold emotionless expression trying to bash down somebody's front door with a rifle. Someone asked about the legality of using their second amendment rights to shoot an attempted home invader in this situation and I replied with (in retrospect bad advice) to fire a warning shot to give them pause and warn them you're armed. Because I used the phrase "pew pew" (onomatopeia for gunshots) in my OG comment, I tripped their system.
Apparently that was a violation of Rule 1 and according to Reddit's own dogshit AI content detection systems, I was deemed to have incited violence and issued a warning instantly after posting my comment. Inadvertently tripping their bad word filter again could risk a full account ban. The subsequent appeal I filed was upheld within hours by what was presumably another AI-driven decision that probably used up a few more LLM tokens than the initial one, and it seems there is no way to contact an actual human at Reddit Inc to discuss exactly how my comment incited violence and was hateful.
Going back to the topic of gaming, Blizzard and Riot have outsourced and automated the crap out of their player support functions to their detriment. World of Warcraft is a particularly egregious example where cartels of gold farmers and boosters actually weaponize the report system against players who oppose them. The amount of times I've seen on r/wow and r/classicwow people being wrongly perma banned because a RWT mafia mass reported them maliciously and them being repeatedly fobbed off by the CS team is baffling.
Or how much gaming in general has been chipped away by enshittification. Xbox went through waves of mass layoffs when Phil Spencer was supposed to be the saviour that would free Activision Blizzard from Bobby Kotick. Sony outright ditched physical media and then quintupled down when facing significant backlash. Rockstar and Take Two Interactive have been particularly litigious and greedy, to the point where the upcoming GTA6 Extended Look is a timed Netflix exclusive.
I don't think things will improve unless the quality of products/services for these companies get so bad that it drives people to alternatives. And given the lack of viable alternatives to Reddit and a lot of major online games...
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
Bullmaestro LinkI've actually played a few recently. Agent 64: Spies Never Die was a game I was greatly anticipating since it was meant to be a spiritual successor to Goldeneye 007. Unfortunately, I'm a bit...I've actually played a few recently.
Agent 64: Spies Never Die was a game I was greatly anticipating since it was meant to be a spiritual successor to Goldeneye 007. Unfortunately, I'm a bit disappointed with the end result and kinda wish I passed after playing the demo. The cipher system forces you to play on harder difficulties to progress through the game in a meaningful way. Guns feel very weak, enemies feel like bullet sponges, your character comparatively takes very few hits to die and the excessive amounts of autoaim and lack of permanent crosshair just make the experience feel really clunky and cumbersome to play. The story also sucks and the level designs are just so boring and unmemorable.
I mean that control scheme made sense on the Nintendo 64's limited hardware and was a solution coined for a very weird gamepad, coming out three years before Alien Resurrection on the PS1 (NOT Halo: Combat Evolved on the Xbox, contrary to popular belief) created the twin-stick control scheme that has become the standard in all console first person shooters. Designing a game around the N64's limitations in 2026 just feels bad.
Tyr held an open playtest recently and as someone who used to play a lot of World of Tanks, I just had to step in. Not a fan. Matchmaking is poorly balanced because you pick your tank after queueing up, meaning that the distribution of light, medium and heavy tanks is all over the place. There are also no artillery or tank destroyers (which are core roles in WoT.) The game straight-up highlights enemy tanks and tells you if your shot will penetrate or not (and is extremely fucking lenient with this), completely removing all sense of skill expression and any reward for learning the strengths/weaknesses of each tank. When I lost two straight-games to bullshit like a tank taking off and flying halfway across the map with its signature ability, I just knew this game had issues in its current state.
Marvel Rivals is an Overwatch clone that may or may not be better than the hero shooter it's copying. The complete lack of a tutorial, the clusterfuck that is matchmaking and my overall lack of knowledge surrounding the Marvel universe kinda holds back my ability to enjoy the game. It also seems to suffer from a similar issue to League of Legends where players will actively throw tantrums and outright sabotage the game if they either don't get to pick their character or you draft a character that isn't meta.
Duskfade is actually really good. My only issue is that the combat feels a bit unrefined. Zirian also feels really, really brittle, but then again I have been playing on the hardest difficulty. It feels a bit too inspired by Kingdom Hearts, to the point where your main weapon is also a key that works a bit more practically as a blade.
I actually caved and decided to return to World of Warcraft: Midnight recently. Part of the reason is that Fellowship simply didn't scratch that dungeon crawling itch because of its low player count and slow gear progression. The campaign was mostly alright. My main reason for wanting to go back was to try PvP, but progression is arguably worse than previous expansions, with the only way to grind Honor points now being co-op vs AI game modes.
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Comment on Replicating Reddit's best feature on other forums in ~tech
Bullmaestro LinkI didnt know about this feature. Never really interacted with friend lists on Reddit because the only people who added me on OG Digg were blog spammers.I didnt know about this feature. Never really interacted with friend lists on Reddit because the only people who added me on OG Digg were blog spammers.
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Comment on Luigi Mangione pleads guilty to federal stalking charges in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO in ~news
Bullmaestro LinkI wonder how this'll impact the state trial since he more-or-less admitted to Brian Thompson's killing and have basically given prosecutors enough ammunition to land him behind bars for life...I wonder how this'll impact the state trial since he more-or-less admitted to Brian Thompson's killing and have basically given prosecutors enough ammunition to land him behind bars for life without parole.
Federal stalking offences carry a max sentence of five years, and since we're talking about a plea deal...
Surprised they even bothered with a foldable phone, considering how easily they wear down and break. The only real advantage you get from using one is having double, even triple the screen real estate.
At this point they're well and truly aping Samsung and Huawei...