Bullmaestro's recent activity
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Comment on Your favourite karaoke songs? in ~music
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Comment on What creative projects have you been working on? in ~creative
Bullmaestro LinkMentioned it two weeks ago but I am planning to create a 2D puzzle platformer/Metroidvania inspired by earlier Wario Land games (immortal playable character, you use transformations, upgrades and...Mentioned it two weeks ago but I am planning to create a 2D puzzle platformer/Metroidvania inspired by earlier Wario Land games (immortal playable character, you use transformations, upgrades and treasure items to progress.)
You play as a thief who washes up on an island. The game world has about 12 different levels (including a city hub) which seems like a small amount until you consider how huge they will be. Each one will have about ten treasure chests to unlock where you need to find the corresponding key.
Upgrades will be a mix of temporary and permanent things. Temporary upgrades are the kind you'd find in a box which you'd lose upon taking damage. Permanent ones are found in treasure chests. Some examples:
- Knuckle dusters which let you break stronger blocks with punches
- Boots which let you jump higher or dash.
- Grappling hook which lets you climb up to higher areas.
- A horned helmet which allows you to break stronger blocks with a headbutt and also impale ceilings.
- Jetpack
- Protein Powder, which temporarily transforms your character into a gigachad that can easily bust down walls.
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Comment on 007 First Light | Rules of Spycraft trailer in ~games
Bullmaestro LinkI've always found Hitman to be quite comical as a game series because of how much Agent 47 genuinely stands out like a sore thumb. And I don't mean in terms of how jank and outright broken the...I've always found Hitman to be quite comical as a game series because of how much Agent 47 genuinely stands out like a sore thumb. And I don't mean in terms of how jank and outright broken the stealth mechanics in early entries were. More like, the mere notion that a bald guy with a barcode printed on the back of his head could just change outfits and blend in.
I was worried that First Light was just going to be a reskinned clone of Hitman, but the gadgets and interactions alone are making it stand out. Combat (Hitman's weak point) actually looks quite good too.
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Comment on Anyone else enjoying OSRS leagues? in ~games
Bullmaestro (edited )LinkDemonic Pacts has been... okay. Not gonna lie, the lack of Misthalin this time around is a major detriment. It means missing out on so much content. All but one Echo boss has been been straight-up...Demonic Pacts has been... okay.
Not gonna lie, the lack of Misthalin this time around is a major detriment. It means missing out on so much content. All but one Echo boss has been been straight-up recycled from the last league (Amoxliatl is the only new one.)
I also wish region locking wasn't a thing, because some regions are more equal than others and it just feels bad to make tough choices and have to miss out on content.
So far, I'm on tier 4 and picked:
- Endless Harvest - I don't have the time to no-life the game.
- Hotfoot - Agility, Blacksmithing and Cooking solve is huge.
- Evil Eye - Hueycoatl teleport is basically a convenient bank teleport
- Butler's Bell - Basically a nerfed version of Pocket Kingdom, but I grabbed it because it helps with resource gathering for so many skills.
Next relics will probably be:
- Larcenist - I fucking hate Thieving as a skill. Nothing is worse than spending hours clicking, failing pickpockets repeatedly and being stunned.
- Grimoire - Simply because the Slayer relic is ass this time around. If Slayer Master (always on-task for monsters) returned from the last league I'd pick that instead.
- Flow State - 2-ticking multiple skills is way too OP to pass up.
- Minion - Free thrall...
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Comment on World of Warcraft private server Turtle WoW to shut down May 14 2026 in ~games
Bullmaestro Link ParentBlizzard are a textbook example of how automation and outsourcing can ruin customer service. The amount of posts I've seen on r/classicwow from people who got wrongly banned for RMT is...Blizzard are a textbook example of how automation and outsourcing can ruin customer service.
The amount of posts I've seen on r/classicwow from people who got wrongly banned for RMT is astronomical and really should be placing Blizzard into disrepute. I have seen so many stories of people spending months wrangling with a customer support "team" that would rudely fob them off with templated copy & paste rejection responses, and threaten to effectively terminate all further interaction with them if they keep appealing, then a month or two later, their perma ban gets overturned because their case was finally manually reviewed by a human.
There is allegedly a full-blown mafia of Iranian players who have fixed boosting and auction house prices, and will weaponize the automated mass report system against anybody who competes.
I've seen this kill Heroes of the Storm. Trolls would genuinely weaponize the report system against other players, and it was incredibly easy to get a lengthy silence (chat mute and Ranked queue ban) because of how shit the system was. First mute would start at 24 hours and then double for each subsequent penalty, meaning that after 10 mutes, you'd be chat and Ranked banned on your account for a cumulative 1023 days. And good luck appealing any of this with Customer Support, because Blizzard deem anything and everything to be offensive chat and deserving of a years-long chat restriction.
The difference between how Blizzard police their servers and how Turtle WoW and other major pserver operators police theirs is like night and day.
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Comment on World of Warcraft private server Turtle WoW to shut down May 14 2026 in ~games
Bullmaestro LinkGonna miss them. Blizzard need to get off their asses and do Classic+ already. The fact that a bunch of pirates and fan developers absolutely dunked on official efforts is hilarious in itself.Gonna miss them.
Blizzard need to get off their asses and do Classic+ already. The fact that a bunch of pirates and fan developers absolutely dunked on official efforts is hilarious in itself.
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Comment on Street Fighter | Official trailer in ~movies
Bullmaestro LinkStill cannot believe that Cody Rhodes and Roman Reigns are actualy playing Guile and Akuma. It shouldn't work but it does. I know it's something that probably won't happen, but I'd like to see...Still cannot believe that Cody Rhodes and Roman Reigns are actualy playing Guile and Akuma. It shouldn't work but it does.
I know it's something that probably won't happen, but I'd like to see Capcom take another swing at adapting the movie adaptation of their game series into a video game of its own. But rather than quarter-arse it like they did with Street Fighter: The Movie: The Game, make it a video game that could stand up alongside the main series.
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Comment on How are we all feeling about piracy these days? in ~movies
Bullmaestro LinkI used to be against piracy except in very specific situations like a product/service/show being outright unavailable in your region. But that stance has become increasingly untenable. First it...I used to be against piracy except in very specific situations like a product/service/show being outright unavailable in your region. But that stance has become increasingly untenable.
First it was the heavy pivot towards subscription models, streaming platforms and games/software as a service. When big corporate executives tell us that we should start getting comfortable with not owning anything, it begs the question of why piracy is compared to stealing in the first place.
The second dilemma is with artificial intelligence. Should big tech firms be allowed to use copyrighted works to train AI models without compensating the rightsholder nor obtaining their permission? The fact that politicians are defending companies like OpenAI and Meta, and aren't subjecting them to the same heavy-handed criminal responses as pirates who, say... redistribute retro game ROMs or rebroadcast football matches for free via their website, or sell DRM circumvention and jailbreaking tools is basically eroding any and all moral arguments against piracy.
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Comment on Income tax will be dead within five years as AI jobs crisis grows, says Monzo founder in ~tech
Bullmaestro LinkTom Blomfield, founder of Monzo, has predicted that AI tools will become generalizable by the end of 2026, and that within five years, income tax will be replaced with taxes on compute. Britain is...Tom Blomfield, founder of Monzo, has predicted that AI tools will become generalizable by the end of 2026, and that within five years, income tax will be replaced with taxes on compute.
Britain is particularly at risk of an AI-droven jobs shock. According to Adzuna, advertisements for entry level positions have dropped by 35% since ChatGPT launched back in November 2022.
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Income tax will be dead within five years as AI jobs crisis grows, says Monzo founder
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
Bullmaestro (edited )LinkExtinction Day just came out and I have mixed feelings about it. It's basically a 3D Plague Inc but with the scope heavily expanded to include natural and man-made disasters, like wars, volcanoes,...Extinction Day just came out and I have mixed feelings about it.
It's basically a 3D Plague Inc but with the scope heavily expanded to include natural and man-made disasters, like wars, volcanoes, storms, etc. Where I have mixed feelings about it is in how badly it performs and how frustrating the whole countermeasures and corruption points system is.
Also booted up Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age on my Steam Deck to revisit the game. Given all the game crashes and technical problems I've dealt with when running the X/X-2 remaster on Windows, it's shocking how well this game actually plays on the Steam Deck. I'm not sure if I like the Zodiac Age changes, as it feels like the game's revamped Licence board both presents you with the option of selecting a class for each playable character and punishes you for picking an option that doesn't fit the character's starting equipment and stats.
I didn't know for example that Penelo was meant to be the White Mage of the game with low physical stats but high MP. I stupidly specced her into the Archer License Board. Similarly for Fran, I specced her into Uhlan, but she starts with a bow, which no class other than Archers can equip.
The original also had a really good title opening cinematic which for some reason is completely absent in the Zodiac Age remaster...
Glad that the Zodiac Age version does do away with some of the bullshit in the OG release though. For example, did you know that the Zodiac Spear was the best-in-slot weapon in the original game, and could only be obtained if you didn't open any of the four "forbidden" treasure chests which were arbitrarily programmed to make the item despawn? Did you also know that the original game's optional superboss took literal hours to kill because it had 50M health, all attack damage was originally capped at 9,999 and the superboss cut damage by 1/3 halfway through the fight making max hits 6,999? Damage is uncapped in the remaster and this boss no longer reduces it.
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Comment on OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s home targeted with molotov cocktail in ~tech
Bullmaestro Link ParentOh, I'm definitely not advocating for violence either. But I can see why there has been so much anger. A socialist revival in politics would be the good outcome...Oh, I'm definitely not advocating for violence either. But I can see why there has been so much anger.
A socialist revival in politics would be the good outcome...
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Comment on OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s home targeted with molotov cocktail in ~tech
Bullmaestro Link ParentI think AI is overall a bad thing. The sheer amount of LLM-generated slop littering Reddit, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and TikTok these days shows just how spot-on the Dead Internet Theory is....I think AI is overall a bad thing. The sheer amount of LLM-generated slop littering Reddit, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and TikTok these days shows just how spot-on the Dead Internet Theory is.
One example of how prevalent AI has become is when you look at pub advertising on social media. Almost every pub I follow uses AI to generate images in their posts, and while I don't blame them for doing this rather than hire actual graphic artists and professional photographers (labour is expensive and pubs are struggling), it leads to glaring inaccuracies like seeing a post advertising televised darts matches with completely incorrect numbers, or even random letters along the rim of the dartboard. Or... AI-depictions of pro players wearing jerseys that have complete gibberish sponsor logos.
And don't get me started on the blatant Ghiblified cartoons and piss-filters I see on a lot of AI images.
But in a capitalist society, robots replacing you just pushes you into worse and worse jobs to further help the capitalist class hoard resources, leaving you with even less in the end.
Definitely my experience, although being pushed into a worse job is a hopeful outcome. I was laid off from a commercial reporting job last year and struggled for months to even find anything in accountancy and finance. AI is a very big reason why the job market is in such shambles. If entry level programming jobs are practically nonexistent these days thanks to Anthropic and Claude Code, imagine how it is for any office-based job that doesn't require you to write code...
The most code I've ever written in a professional setting has been the occasional VBA script to automate a tedious task. Otherwise, much of my work involves basic data entry in an accountancy system and using formulas and pivot tables in Excel. Claude could probably do about 90% of my previous job.
I have genuinely questioned whether I should continue studying ACCA or pivot towards a different field entirely. But this would be the second time I've gone into higher/further education and ended up with my academic qualifications becoming worthless. And I don't know what I could even do that is AI-proof. I didn't spend years and lots of money studying degrees and professional qualifications to work in a warehouse or cleaning offices for minimum wage...
In a functioning society, robots doing all the work would mean people being more free, not less.
We unfortunately do not live in such a society. We need money in order to acquire food, drink, shelter and everything else we need to survive. Cut off the source of money and people end up starving.
UBI is often touted as a solution but I think it's a socialist pipe dream at best. Any nation that implements it will either go bankrupt or pay a pittance that doesn't help anyone. The big question is how will anyone even fund it? We can't even make billionaires and big businesses pay tax at the moment - what the hell makes people think they'll suddenly cough up when unemployment soars?
I think the next few years are going to get incredibly ugly. Either the AI bubble bursts and crashes global stock markets, or entire industries of people get replaced and we end up with mass civil unrest, which could end up being suppressed brutally, especially if AI ends up being implemented in autonomous weaponry.
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Comment on OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s home targeted with molotov cocktail in ~tech
Bullmaestro LinkI think it's only a matter of time until another major CEO gets assassinated. Anti-capitalist sentiment has been rapidly growing over the years. Just a few days ago, a disgruntled worker in...I think it's only a matter of time until another major CEO gets assassinated.
Anti-capitalist sentiment has been rapidly growing over the years. Just a few days ago, a disgruntled worker in California who compared himself to Luigi Mangione set fire to a warehouse, destroying roughly $500 million worth of goods.
Leading a company in an industry that strives to replace workers with robots and drive mass unemployment is a sure-fire way to be deeply unpopular, especially when their antics have skyrocketed RAM prices and done serious harm to the consumer electronics market.
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Comment on I’m traveling internationally for the first time and could use tips! in ~travel
Bullmaestro LinkI travelled to Germany (specifically Dresden and Leipzig) ten years ago to visit a German-American friend who I original met online playing RIFT. Can't speak for the other two countries, but I...I travelled to Germany (specifically Dresden and Leipzig) ten years ago to visit a German-American friend who I original met online playing RIFT.
Can't speak for the other two countries, but I know that Netherlands and Norway also have a large number of English speakers, so I wouldn't be too worried about the language barrier.
If you ever go to Leipzig or Dresden, I would 100% recommend checking out the Völkerschlachtdenkmal (Monument to the Battle of the Nations) and the Frauenkirche. I also went on a 2 hour dine-out cruise across the River Elbe, which I'd also recommend doing. You may need to book in advance nowadays though.
Most major German cities have a decent and affordable tram network. The country is very safe, and people are generally very friendly.
It would be a great idea to get some foreign cash beforehand just in case. Euronet ATMs should be avoided. Here is a good video explaining why.
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Comment on Am I German or autistic? in ~health.mental
Bullmaestro Link49% autistic, 27% German. As someone who was actually diagnosed with Aspergers at a young age, I'm surprised it wasn't higher.49% autistic, 27% German. As someone who was actually diagnosed with Aspergers at a young age, I'm surprised it wasn't higher.
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Comment on The Amazing Digital Circus: The Last Act in ~movies
Bullmaestro (edited )Link ParentI'd say it's PG. One of the things about the circus is that Caine, the ringmaster, has a swear filter in place so any cursing is bleeped. Penultimate episode spoilers and additional context: Caine...I'd say it's PG. One of the things about the circus is that Caine, the ringmaster, has a swear filter in place so any cursing is bleeped.
Penultimate episode spoilers and additional context:
Caine was seemingly deleted at the end of the previous episode, and it's very possible that the final one could go into Vivziepop levels of profanity, since the world pretty much ends up falling apart upon his deletion.Glitch Productions is headed by the same guy who made SMG4, a gaming (mainly Mario themed) machinima channel that used to have some pretty edgy videos. They obviously santized it over the years due to YouTube's guidelines, and pivoted away from gaming parodies and into original animation due to potential legal issues - at that time, Nintendo started being more trigger-happy with lawsuits.
I would recommend avoiding the fandom surrounding TADC though. They can not only get quite toxic, but fan-art has a tendency to sexualise some of the characters, especially Pomni.
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Comment on What creative projects have you been working on? in ~creative
Bullmaestro LinkI installed GameMaker yesterday and I thought about trying to create a project I've wanted to do for a while. A 2D puzzle platformer inspired by the Wario Land series (specifically 2 and 3.) You...I installed GameMaker yesterday and I thought about trying to create a project I've wanted to do for a while.
A 2D puzzle platformer inspired by the Wario Land series (specifically 2 and 3.) You play as an escaped convict and the sole survivor of a prison ship that sinks near an island. The game is a mix between a Metroidvania and collect-a-thon. Nothing in the game can kill you, and the challenge mainly focuses around either avoiding or navigating the world using status effects to find treasure.
I didn't want to do a game based around the original Wario Land, as it was basically a Mario Land reskin (albeit a very good one), and Wario Land 4 is my least favourite entry in the series, and even though it inspired some very good games like Antonblast and Pizza Tower, I want to make something that plays more like the second and third game.
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Comment on The best way to protect your phone from a warrantless search in 2026 in ~comp
Bullmaestro LinkYou know things are bad when Philip DeFranco is literally recommending that US travellers only bring burner devices on entry.You know things are bad when Philip DeFranco is literally recommending that US travellers only bring burner devices on entry.
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Comment on Proton Meet isn't what they told you it was in ~tech
Bullmaestro LinkWhen Proton are announcing just how pro-privacy they are, this is a nightmare situation for them. I wonder just how compromised they are...When Proton are announcing just how pro-privacy they are, this is a nightmare situation for them.
I wonder just how compromised they are...
A few go-to ones I've been known for doing:
When it comes to karaoke, I take a "throw shit at the wall and see what sticks" approach. It's probably easier for me to list the songs I wouldn't try again.