Bullmaestro's recent activity
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Comment on What are your architectural hot takes? in ~design
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Comment on Minecraft Java Edition is switching from OpenGL to Vulkan rendering in ~games
Bullmaestro LinkEh, I'm sure it's a good change, but I refuse to touch this game again purely on the principle that Microsoft and Mojang nuked my alpha account from orbit because I didn't merge it into a...Eh, I'm sure it's a good change, but I refuse to touch this game again purely on the principle that Microsoft and Mojang nuked my alpha account from orbit because I didn't merge it into a Microsoft account by their deadline. Absolute nightmare for people who make and use shaders though.
Hopefully Hytale brings some actual innovation in this genre.
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Comment on Pokémon FireRed and Pokémon LeafGreen releasing February 27th on Nintendo Switch in ~games
Bullmaestro Link ParentBest they can do is sue the fuck out of rom hosting sites. Hosting these on GBA Classics for NSO subscribers should have been a no-brainer.it seems like Nintendo could have done more
Best they can do is sue the fuck out of rom hosting sites.
Hosting these on GBA Classics for NSO subscribers should have been a no-brainer.
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Comment on Sony is shutting down the PlayStation studio Bluepoint (gifted link) in ~games
Bullmaestro LinkAfter all the work they did on remaking Demon's Souls, remaking Shadow of the Colossus, remastering Uncharted and Gravity Rush for the PS4, and helping out Sony's Santa Monica studio with God of...After all the work they did on remaking Demon's Souls, remaking Shadow of the Colossus, remastering Uncharted and Gravity Rush for the PS4, and helping out Sony's Santa Monica studio with God of War: Ragnarok, their parent company has just delivered a massive "fuck you" to Bluepoint Studios.
Just a thought... instead of trying to pump out GAAS titles, maybe Sony should have put Bluepoint to the task of remaking some of their other older titles. Imagine if they had been working on a Legend of Dragoon, Syphon Filter, Terracon or CoolBoarders remake instead of chasing live service slop.
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Comment on pyrite64: N64 Game-Engine and Editor using libdragon and tiny3d in ~games
Bullmaestro LinkThe graphics and performance coming out of this engine are utterly insane by Nintendo 64 standards. 256x textures? Bloom? HDR? There has to be some kind of catch...The graphics and performance coming out of this engine are utterly insane by Nintendo 64 standards. 256x textures? Bloom? HDR? There has to be some kind of catch...
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Comment on Communities, relationships, and navigating the enshittification of absolutely everything in ~talk
Bullmaestro Link ParentI'm well aware that Discord are doing the age verification checks due to government regulations. What I don't like is how these checks are being done, nor the fact that ~70,000 government IDs...I'm well aware that Discord are doing the age verification checks due to government regulations. What I don't like is how these checks are being done, nor the fact that ~70,000 government IDs which Discord claimed they'd dispose of once age verification was complete were leaked in a gargantuan data breach.
Or what about them suddenly switching to using Persona, a Peter Thiel owned service that definitely records and keeps this data under their terms and conditions, contrary to what Discord have claimed?
Our risk of descending down the path of authoritarian police states is only part of the reason why these age verification laws suck. We're allowing companies to profiteer off of the collection, use and misuse of our data and risk opening people up to scammers (i.e. running fake porn sites and falsified age verification checks) or data breaches which would serve as an identity fraud jackpot for cybercriminals.
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Comment on Leaked email suggests Ring plans to expand ‘search party’ surveillance beyond dogs in ~tech
Bullmaestro LinkNot me justifying their plans, but Ring messed up from a PR perspective because they didn't cut to the chase and focus their Superbowl ad around law enforcement. A far more dramatic advert where...Not me justifying their plans, but Ring messed up from a PR perspective because they didn't cut to the chase and focus their Superbowl ad around law enforcement.
A far more dramatic advert where Search Party helps catch a dangerous sexual predator mid-abduction, rescues his victims and lands him life in federal prison would have received far less backlash. Finding lost puppies is a weak argument for Search Party's existence, yet "think of the children" has been the strawman argument for mass surveillance.
I mean it's why my country ended up with the Online Safety Act...
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
Bullmaestro LinkVampire Survivors - Played through much of the Foscari DLC and unlocked the best gold farming method in the game which makes the O'Sole Meeo farm look tame by comparison. You can farm billions of...Vampire Survivors - Played through much of the Foscari DLC and unlocked the best gold farming method in the game which makes the O'Sole Meeo farm look tame by comparison. You can farm billions of gold within 15 real time minutes with Sammy and the correct setup.
The problem is that after buying so many golden eggs on a character, the game utterly breaks and becomes trivial. You move so fast that it's easy to run entire screens within a frame. Yes you can remove Golden Eggs that increase your move speed to counteract this, but there comes a point where the game no longer becomes fun because your character is so broken.
Old School RuneScape - I wish I could have played more Deadman Annihilation and actually maxed my account to make Permanent Deadman playable again, but it sucks when your free time is being drained by a crappy job and social obligations.
Anyway, hit combat level 81 with the plan to use my 60 mins PvP immunity on moving to the next bracket to do Wilderness Agility Course runs for big loot. And then I hit a brick wall when I first forgot to grab a bladed weapon to cut the web near the deep wilderness teleport lever, then forgot that I need a looting bag for some arbitrary reason, then found out I actually need 150k coins and not 100k to receive loot from doing the course.
Bring on Leagues VI. Deadman is basically a much crappier Grid Master at this point, except you can't progress your account because you get griefed by PvPers outside safe zones and for some reason pickpocket restrictions ruin things further.
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Comment on Hot take: movies suck because there is no rental market in ~movies
Bullmaestro LinkI just spat out my drink at that. $25 TO RENT A MOVIE!? I guess the absurd rental pricing is there because they have to prop up the dying brick & mortar cinemas somehow. This feels like what you'd...The category that will really open your eyes is new movies. Zootopia 2 just became available for digital purchase, with no physical editions, and is not yet available on Disney+. If you want to purchase the film, it costs $29.99. Rental is $24.99. Frankly I cannot imagine a world in which the number of people who would pay for that rental exceeds the number of people who opted to pirate but would have paid if the price was at least half that.
I just spat out my drink at that.
$25 TO RENT A MOVIE!?
I guess the absurd rental pricing is there because they have to prop up the dying brick & mortar cinemas somehow. This feels like what you'd be paying if you also bought soda and popcorn at the cinema...
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Comment on The mega-rich are turning their mansions into impenetrable fortresses in ~finance
Bullmaestro LinkUnderstandably so. Brian Thompson was assassinated fifteen months ago. Many sympathise with the alleged killer and there is a very real possibility that Luigi Mangione could walk free due to jury...Understandably so.
Brian Thompson was assassinated fifteen months ago. Many sympathise with the alleged killer and there is a very real possibility that Luigi Mangione could walk free due to jury nullification when his case goes to trial in state and federal court.
I have seen a growing number of "eat the rich" comments online, and people genuinely calling for us to start guillotining billionaires and corrupt politicians. Wealth inequality in the US has reached levels previously seen in France pre-Revolution and I think it's only a matter of time until things kick off - and things are going to get much uglier than previous revolutions.
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Comment on Tubi will start featuring Warner Bros. Cartoons on March 1st in ~tv
Bullmaestro Link ParentWe never had Adult Swim. The closest we've had to it was CNX (which lasted a year) and Toonami (which lasted four years) as dedicated side-channels. Both failed to gain traction. I was also wrong...We never had Adult Swim. The closest we've had to it was CNX (which lasted a year) and Toonami (which lasted four years) as dedicated side-channels. Both failed to gain traction.
I was also wrong about when Totally Spies was airing. For some reason it airs at 5:10 every morning on Cartoon Network.
Doubt that it's because the show has been deemed inappropriate for kids, considering the fact that it was one of the main staples of Fox Kids/Jetix back in the day. I think it's more like the people running the UK & Ireland Cartoon Network channel have zero taste and are just pen-pushers doing constant reruns of the same 2 or 3 shows.
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Comment on In a blind test, audiophiles couldn't tell the difference between audio signals sent through copper wire, a banana, or wet mud in ~tech
Bullmaestro LinkI used to have a pair of Raycon earbuds and lost one of them when walking home from a night out drinking. The Earfun ones I bought to replace them cost about a third of the price and honestly had...I used to have a pair of Raycon earbuds and lost one of them when walking home from a night out drinking. The Earfun ones I bought to replace them cost about a third of the price and honestly had comparable sound quality. The only thing I didn't like about them was that they'd sometimes lose connection with my device.
This may be more of a dig at Raycon because I found their earbuds to be overpriced and actually quite bad in quality, but I thought I'd see more complaints about them, given how many YouTubers shill their brand for sponsor revenue.
I've since switched to Denon PerL Pro and the difference in audio quality has been subtle. But the best part about the new pair I got is that it comes with an app where I can enable noise cancelling.
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Comment on South Korea seeks multilingual talent to hunt down K-content piracy in ~tech
Bullmaestro LinkIf I understand this correctly, they're trying to curb international piracy of Korean shows? Genuine question: Are there any legal avenues to watch k-dramas and similar content? Or are we expected...If I understand this correctly, they're trying to curb international piracy of Korean shows?
Genuine question: Are there any legal avenues to watch k-dramas and similar content? Or are we expected to only watch the very few Korean shows that do get a localized Western release like Squid Game?
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Comment on Tubi will start featuring Warner Bros. Cartoons on March 1st in ~tv
Bullmaestro LinkVery good lineup. Looking at this has made me realize just how fucking dire Cartoon Network has become in the past two decades. I just had a look at the TV guide listings for the Cartoon Network...Very good lineup. Looking at this has made me realize just how fucking dire Cartoon Network has become in the past two decades.
I just had a look at the TV guide listings for the Cartoon Network channel in my country. It's like they only ever show Teen Titans Go, Gumball and The Regular Show on repeat, and for some reason, they're showing a Totally Spies episode at 2am...
Boomerang (the channel originally launched to host all the vintage Hanna-Barbera and Looney Tunes stuff) isn't that much better. Do you feel like watching hours of Tom & Jerry or whatever the fuck Mush-Mush and the Mushables is? Tom & Jerry I can understand but not Mush-Mush, Boomerang was meant to be the retro channel and their idea of retro is a babies cartoon from 2020? Either I'm geriatric or I've just discovered the reason why people turn to YouTube and online streaming...
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
Bullmaestro (edited )LinkVampire Survivors has gotten a lot more interesting since defeating the game's final boss and effectively unlocking the endgame. I have been using the O'Sole farm to farm gold (and golden eggs),...Vampire Survivors has gotten a lot more interesting since defeating the game's final boss and effectively unlocking the endgame. I have been using the O'Sole farm to farm gold (and golden eggs), which I wouldn't recommend because:
- It's very active. The idea is that you run around Il Molise constantly with O'Sole because his baseline ability has the unique property of healing the enemies (that can't damage you) and earning experience that way.
- Setting up this farm is a huge pain in the arse. You need to configure settings to only have one max weapon, have every stage modifier except Random events and Random level-ups enabled, and seal every pickup except for Gilded clovers, and ensure you have three particular Arcana and one particular Darkcana unlocked, then get very specific upgrades in a very particular order.
- Your screen is going to be constantly flashing with spell effects once you reach a criticial threshold of Area % and Duration % scaling. This is not only horrible for anybody who suffers from photosensitive epilepsy (Vampire Survivors does have an epilepsy warning on start-up for reasons like this) but also lags the hell out of your PC. I'm running this game on an RTX 3080, Core i7 and 16 gigs of RAM and I feel like I always get close to frying the rig if I farm for too long.
Old School RuneScape: I have spent just over a week playing Deadman Annihilation and let me just say... I'm not a fan.
Jagex made the frankly asinine decision to disable the ability to pickpocket NPCs in Guarded areas. While I kinda understand why they did this (there's a relic that lets you auto-pickpocket up to 28 coin pouches at a time and makes all attempts to pickpocket succeed, effectively creating a money printer and an incredibly easy 99 skill to obtain), the problem is that a vast majority of the game's pickpocketable NPCs are in Guarded zones. Half of the NPC types you can pickpocket are in East Ardougne alone and the entire city is a safe-zone, effectively making Knights of Ardougne, Paladins and Heroes impossible to pickpocket. Actually, you can pickpocket Knights if you have completed Mourning's End Part 1 and unlocked the ability for them to spawn in West Ardougne, which is a PvP zone.
To do this whilst simultaneously buffing some of the game's more egregious money printers is baffling. We literally have 5x to 8x rare drop rates, autocast High Alch, sigils that reward up to 6 times more resources from woodcutting/fishing/mining and high level mobs dropping shitloads of consumables from a global loot table and Jagex are concerned about inflation when progress moves over to the Permanent Deadman world?
I also think Deadman is a bit of an afterthought to Jagex, even now. It's telling when you look at the map of safe zones in the world and see that the only safe zones in Zeah (the Western continent exclusive to OSRS) are Kourend Castle and the Wintertodt - which was made safe in the current season.
Teamfight Manager: I think if this game remained consistent as a 4v4 MOBA management sim, rather than forcing 2v2 and 3v3 in early leagues, it would be a lot better. The game is clearly not balanced around smaller team comps with fighter and assassin champions utterly dominating early ranks. While I do like that balance patches are automatically introduced after each split to nerf overperforming heroes and buff bad ones, I think these patches aren't frequent enough to really emulate the pro MOBA experience and often miss the mark due to their automated nature.
My playthrough of the amateur league went like this. I barely won my first game, saw how busted Swordsman was and treated him as an immediate pick/ban, pretty much winning any round where I picked him. After the first split, Swordsman gets a ~66% nerf to his attack damage, yet somehow is still viable. Sniper is introduced to the game and every team picks her because she's FOTM despite having a really bad winrate. I then treat Ninja as a pick/ban because of his ability to blink on top of Sniper and one-shot her. Archer has the hitpoints to actually survive a Ninja gank and can defeat him 1v1, but nobody picks her. Meanwhile the game's myriad of support and mage heroes are basically worthless in this part of the game because they are only effective in larger team comps.
Unfortunately, the rest of Teamfight Manager centers around pot luck due to what I can best describe as braindead AI. Sometimes you will draft an assassin and dunk all over your opponent with 20 kills by the end of the round. Sometimes, your assassin will constantly focus the tank or bruiser and die repeatedly.
Another thing I don't like about Teamfight Manager is their egregious use of existing League of Legends and Dota 2 pro names in the randomly generated player names of their rosters. You'll see Dendi, Carzzy, Faker, Nemesis, Rekkles, Bjergsen, Puppey and so many others...
Agent 64: Spies Never Die: I got into the playtest for it and played through the first campaign mission to refamiliarise myself. I don't know if something changed for the worse since the demo dropped, or if A64 has always been like this, but the controls immediately put me off. There's an almost complete lack of responsiveness when you try to turn with your mouse, and excessive amounts of autoaim which trivializes the game. The only time I even used the right mouse button to manually aim was when I had to shoot locks off a door.
I really don't know how one could fuck up a Perfect Dark/GoldenEye 007 successor this badly...
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Comment on Poker Night at the Inventory | Rereleasing March 5th in ~games
Bullmaestro LinkVery surprised they made the effort to rerelease this. The novelty of watching Max, Tycho, the Heavy and Strong-Bad play poker was cool back in 2010 when their respective series were relevant but...Very surprised they made the effort to rerelease this. The novelty of watching Max, Tycho, the Heavy and Strong-Bad play poker was cool back in 2010 when their respective series were relevant but it's been over fifteen years now!
None of the featured franchises are still relevant.
Sam & Max had a VR game released five years ago, and their final episodic TT game released nearly sixteen years ago.
Penny Arcade is still going but hardly anybody reads it now. It may get brought up with some old memes like the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory but gaming webcomics are dead. Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik are nowadays better known for organizing PAX, a series of gaming festivals/trade shows which grew from the decline of E3.
Team Fortress 2 hasn't seen any major content updates from Valve in nearly a decade. In fact, the game has been overrun with hackers whilst Valve has done little/nothing to combat cheating.
As for Homestar Runner, it still gets updated from time to time, but the Brothers Chaps are more focused on other projects and only update the site & their YouTube channel with new content every year or two.
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Comment on UK retailer GAME closes all standalone stores as it enters administration in ~games
Bullmaestro Link ParentUnless things have changed, you can still buy physical games from Sainsbury's, Morrisons and Asda. Tesco discontinued game sales about two years ago, and I'm surprised they even announced it. The...Unless things have changed, you can still buy physical games from Sainsbury's, Morrisons and Asda. Tesco discontinued game sales about two years ago, and I'm surprised they even announced it. The last time I saw the games section in a Tesco supermarket, it was just a few shelves of empty Xbox and PlayStation branded Call of Duty and FIFA boxes. And there were a few cards you could redeem at the counter for a physical console.
I do agree that Mike Ashley is one of the worst things to have happened to the brand.
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Comment on Hi, how are you? Mental health support and discussion thread (February 2026) in ~health.mental
Bullmaestro LinkFeeling miserable. I feel like nobody takes me seriously and I'm growing increasingly resentful of the world. But if I speak up suddenly I'm the asshole or nobody is interested.Feeling miserable. I feel like nobody takes me seriously and I'm growing increasingly resentful of the world. But if I speak up suddenly I'm the asshole or nobody is interested.
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Comment on Hi, how are you? Mental health support and discussion thread (February 2026) in ~health.mental
Bullmaestro Link ParentAs a neurodivergent person myself, I actually find articles like these to be vindicating, because it's showing that we are not stupid. I've seen "autistic" used as an insult online far too often....As a neurodivergent person myself, I actually find articles like these to be vindicating, because it's showing that we are not stupid. I've seen "autistic" used as an insult online far too often.
Calling pattern recognition a "superpower" is a bit far-fetched though.
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Comment on Ashes of Creation founder resigns as studio begins mass layoffs in ~games
Bullmaestro (edited )Link ParentEDIT: Redacting my previous statement because there may be a lot more that has been going on behind the scenes. Kira, a YouTuber who often calls out crypto, NFT and Web3 scams released a...EDIT: Redacting my previous statement because there may be a lot more that has been going on behind the scenes.
Apparently there is a board of directors, and the reason Steven walked is that the board agreed to sell the company to private equity investors and planned to lay off a majority of staff and outsource positions overseas.
If Kira's sources are credible, it's possible that AoC may be revived but it'll probably be enshittifie, just like anything a private equity firm touches...
In other words, he's full of shit and just did a rug pull. There is no "board of directors."
I disagree with the National Heritage Act 1983 and think it should be abolished, or at least relaxed in regards to Grade II listed properties. It's led to some derelict buildings staying up in my city and being stuck in limbo because they're too expensive to redevelop and cannot otherwise be knocked down.
Two examples in my city (Bristol)
The George and Railway Hotel (Grade II listed) and the Grosvenor Hotel next to it had remained derelict for decades and was torched in 2023, now just being covered up by billboards. Its grade II listed status is part of the reason it's become so difficult to do anything with the site. It's been stuck in regulatory limbo due to a long saga involving a property firm run by an asshole who snapped up the hotel and just sat on the property for decades, an Indian scam artist who fooled property developers into investing money for student flats that didn't exist on land that he did not have planning permission for, and a ludicrously incompetent local council (trust me, the Bristol City Council suck.)
The White Hart Hotel (also Grade II listed) in Brislington used to be a great pub, but closed in 2007 as a result of the indoor smoking ban passed by Labour, which heavily reduced footfall. It became a performing arts school until they moved location mid-COVID, and since then it's been derelict. It was also set on fire two years ago in an arson attack. There are plans to redevelop the former hotel/pub into a nursing home for dementia patients, but as things stand, the garden and car park are currently being used as a caravan site. Did I forget to mention that we have an epidemic of people living in caravans parked (often illegally) across the city because of our housing crisis?