whbboyd's recent activity
-
Comment on Supermarkets freezers across Europe hit by second suspected cyber-attack in ~tech
-
Comment on Electronic Arts to cut 400 jobs, shut down BioWare in ~games
whbboyd (edited )Link ParentIiiiiiiii would argue that their first underwhelming big release was Mass Effect 2, which was released in 2010 (and was the first major release developed all or mostly under the auspices of EA)....Iiiiiiiii would argue that their first underwhelming big release was Mass Effect 2, which was released in 2010 (and was the first major release developed all or mostly under the auspices of EA). It was a critical darling, obviously, and for some reason is beloved by a lot of fans, but, like… the main plot makes no sense, the gameplay is pure "gears of war but worse", there's functionally zero continuity with the previous game, and even the character writing must be admitted to be extremely inconsistent. (For every Mordin Solus, there a The Misspelled-Elusive Dude and wildly-recharacterized Liara.) The signs are there that early, but it took many more years for them to escalate sufficiently (and fan loyalty to be sufficiently eroded) for the games to really start flopping.
Now… the timing, of course, doesn't directly mean that EA was responsible. The reporting definitely makes it sound like Bioware put plenty of effort into their own grave. I find it tough to dismiss, though.
-
Comment on I survived the certificate expiration of October 19th 2026 and all I got was to make a silly shitpost in ~tildes
whbboyd Link ParentNo, it has (at least) two concrete benefits: Shorter lifetime of an undiscovered compromised cert. This means anyone who compromises a cert has to move more quickly (or lose the use of it), which...No, it has (at least) two concrete benefits:
- Shorter lifetime of an undiscovered compromised cert. This means anyone who compromises a cert has to move more quickly (or lose the use of it), which makes them more likely to get caught or fail to accomplish anything harmful.
- At a certain point, it gets sufficiently inconvenient to refresh short-lifetime certs by hand that users have to automate it. At that point, the cert lifetime is pure implementation detail; and automation is a tremendous win. (See the scads of late revocation bugs where the CA's excuse is basically "we have thousands of customers who have to manually refresh and they're making a stink", for example.)
There are, of course, tradeoffs (it's more load on certificate infrastructure, particularly CT logs, for instance). But it's definitely not just security theater. And LE's current cert lifetime is already 90 days, so this isn't a huge change, regardless.
-
Comment on I survived the certificate expiration of October 19th 2026 and all I got was to make a silly shitpost in ~tildes
whbboyd Link ParentThis is a hilariously accurate description of the system.This is a hilariously accurate description of the system.
-
Comment on What is your dream game? in ~games
whbboyd (edited )LinkMorrowind. I mean, you could fix the stuff that's obviously wrong with Morrowind (the appallingly-unfriendly dice-roll combat mechanics, the ugly character models, the handful of quests with...Morrowind.
I mean, you could fix the stuff that's obviously wrong with Morrowind (the appallingly-unfriendly dice-roll combat mechanics, the ugly character models, the handful of quests with totally bogus directions…), but that would be to make it someone else's dream game. I'm perfectly happy with Morrowind as it is, weeping corprus pustules and all.
(I should start another playthrough.)
Morrowind does have a handful of features I would really like to see other games adopt more, though:
- No time pressure on the main quest. (In fact, there are several points where the main quest questgiver tells you to go do something else for a bit.) The Big Bad is immortal, patient, and not in a big rush; his plans have been slowly metastasizing (see what I did there) for literally millennia, and so the main character taking a few months sidequesting is completely immaterial. Now, I'm fine with games having time pressure on the main quest, but if you have time pressure on the main quest, you have to have time pressure on the main quest. Cyberpunk 2077's "you are rapidly dying and macguffin lady is literally hanging out 24/7 in this restaurant waiting to ship you to the endgame oh you're spending in-game weeks on sidequests" thing… does not work. And if you have an open-world game littered with sidequests, actual main-quest time pressure will backfire in a different way, because players will get very cranky if their sidequesting is interrupted. Morrowind's solution of just not pressuring you to get on with the main quest works so well, I wish it were more widespread.
- It does the Stranger in a Strange Land setting genre really well. Obviously as a first-time player you are Not From Around Here in in-game terms; Morrowind plays into that, with a Weird Fantasy setting and xenophobic NPCs who for the most part don't like you and treat you like dirt. Pairing the unfamiliar experience of entering a new game world with that world actually treating you as an outsider is quite immersive.
- The game is completely indifferent to how powerful your character is. Curbstomped by a rat on the outskirts of the first town? Should have majored in a weapon skill, that's just how it goes. Stack enchantments until you can punch God to death with your bare fists? I guess God needed to git gud. The world being objective like that is much more immersive than either Oblivion's "epic-level bandits decked out in Daedric armor" or Witcher 3's "trash-tier bandits wearing rags and wielding sticks, but they're super high level so the literally superhuman Geralt still struggles with them". It also enables a very satisfying gameplay experience where you can run into something too challenging; leave and level up; and come back and pass it with ease. I'll fully grant that a statically-leveled world with a leveling player character introduces some balance challenges (and boy howdy does Morrowind have balance issues), but trying to dynamically-level that out is definitely a case of baby-with-the-bathwater.
- The game's lore is presented in realistic histories. By which I mean: nobody knows what happened, everyone has ulterior motives for supporting their own pet theories, and they drag each other in in-game books (seriously). And I don't mean "in-game, nobody knows what happened"; I mean nobody knows what happened. Read the UESP's page on the Battle of Red Mountain, and it lists out a half-dozen different accounts, with none of them (not even the ones by characters who were actually present there, some of which hilariously contradict each other) being canonical. This is, of course, how history works in the real world, and it makes contemplating and discussing the lore way more interesting than if it is the game designer's background document paraphrased in an in-game style.
-
Comment on What is your dream game? in ~games
whbboyd Link ParentAhaha, I know it wasn't the point, but your bullet-pointed summary of Pern's setting is absolutely perfect. =)Ahaha, I know it wasn't the point, but your bullet-pointed summary of Pern's setting is absolutely perfect. =)
-
Comment on Do you iron your clothes? in ~life
whbboyd Link ParentYeah, same. I do specifically purchase clothing to support this habit, though. I wear almost exclusively cotton shirts and cotton twill pants which will—in principle, anyway (don't get me...Yeah, same. I do specifically purchase clothing to support this habit, though. I wear almost exclusively cotton shirts and cotton twill pants which will—in principle, anyway (don't get me started)—hold up to robust laundering.
In principle I do fold my clothing, though. (I don't want to talk about in practice. =P)
-
Comment on Meet the first new cat species discovered in 100 years in ~enviro
whbboyd Link ParentThe header video? Interpreting the body language of a wild animal is going to be iffy, but if that were a domestic cat, I would say it was comfortable and maybe being a bit of a pill. Its ears are...The header video? Interpreting the body language of a wild animal is going to be iffy, but if that were a domestic cat, I would say it was comfortable and maybe being a bit of a pill. Its ears are erect and forwards (anxious cats fold their ears back to protect the delicate pinna); its feet are folded under it and tail wrapped around (the classic "cat loaf" pose, from which it's definitely not prepared for sudden action); at the end of the video, it hoods its eyes (a classic non-aggression gesture, "I trust you enough not to maintain precise visual tracking of where you are and what you're doing"). A domestic cat would certainly be meowing for attention, but that's a uniquely domesticated behavior, so I'm not sure what this wild cat intends by its vocalizations here.
Again, that's interpreting the body language of a wild cat in domestic cat terms, which could be wildly wrong. But I think the relaxed posture is pretty convincing: that's not a cat that's planning to bolt in the immediate future, because it physically can't—it would have to get all its legs out from under itself first.
-
Comment on What are the genuinely worst films of all time? in ~movies
whbboyd Link ParentI think Phantom Menace is peak lightsaber. The original trilogy's lightsaber duels are competently executed, but they're basically normal movie swordfights with effects on top. TPM starts to...I think Phantom Menace is peak lightsaber. The original trilogy's lightsaber duels are competently executed, but they're basically normal movie swordfights with effects on top. TPM starts to really lean into the acrobatics and stuff. It looks choreographed in a way that the original trilogy doesn't (although obviously all these movies feature very detailed fight choreography), but all the characters involved are prescient—it should look choreographed.
Attack of the Clones features Yoda popping around doing backflips, and that's waaaaay too much. That was the point at which Star Wars jumped the shark for me. I was 14 at the time, and that was the first movie where I walked out of the theater thinking it was bad.
-
Comment on Anyone ever imported a kei truck to the US? in ~transport
whbboyd Link ParentNot just many hours of driving, but many hours of driving a tiny, at least 25-year-old, left-hand-drive, barebones microtruck you've never driven before—on US highways. (In your case, Texas...Not just many hours of driving, but many hours of driving a tiny, at least 25-year-old, left-hand-drive, barebones microtruck you've never driven before—on US highways. (In your case, Texas highways!)
(I mean, you could rent a trailer, obviously, but where's the
perilterrorfun in that. ;) -
Comment on LibreOffice breaks download records after declaring it has no AI features in ~tech
whbboyd Link ParentAre you saying the paperclip maximizer is actually the utilitarian ethical ideal?Are you saying the paperclip maximizer is actually the utilitarian ethical ideal?
-
Comment on What workplace absurdity are you forced to live with? in ~life
whbboyd Link ParentAhaha—last year, we got vague encouragement to use LLMs for self-reviews. This year, we were explicitly told not to. Too much slop for HR to parse through, I guess.Ahaha—last year, we got vague encouragement to use LLMs for self-reviews. This year, we were explicitly told not to. Too much slop for HR to parse through, I guess.
-
Comment on What workplace absurdity are you forced to live with? in ~life
whbboyd Link ParentThat's 77%. Not even Github's celebrated "one eight"! It's been obvious for a loooooong time that corporate tech basically celebrates mediocrity, and LLMs certainly enable heretofore unplumbed...out of the last 90 work days, only 20 have been incident free
That's 77%. Not even Github's celebrated "one eight"!
It's been obvious for a loooooong time that corporate tech basically celebrates mediocrity, and LLMs certainly enable heretofore unplumbed depths of mediocrity at heretofore unprecedented scales. It remains to be seen how much mediocrity customers will tolerate, I suppose.
-
Comment on Compact phone in the works for the fans of small phones in ~tech
whbboyd Link Parent…What? My phone has a 2.9Ah battery, 2.3 megapixel screen, specs that were top-end in 2018, and easily gets 36 hours of battery; 48 if I limit my toilet crosswording. There's absolutely no way you...…What?
My phone has a 2.9Ah battery, 2.3 megapixel screen, specs that were top-end in 2018, and easily gets 36 hours of battery; 48 if I limit my toilet crosswording. There's absolutely no way you need >4Ah to get more than a day of battery.
Now, can Google and the manufacturer load it up with enough bloatware that it doesn't last a day? Obviously, but that's true at 5Ah, 6Ah, 10Ah, as well.
-
Comment on How rigid/fluid is your LGBT identity? in ~lgbt
whbboyd LinkI put myself vaguely on the ace spectrum, and a lot of ace discourse is (or was, I guess, I'm not particularly dialed in any more) open to the possibility that orientation can vary or drift over...I put myself vaguely on the ace spectrum, and a lot of ace discourse is (or was, I guess, I'm not particularly dialed in any more) open to the possibility that orientation can vary or drift over time. (Or that it might not! Obviously lots of people e.g. realize they're suuuuuper gay at 15 and absolutely never waver in that conviction, and that's totally fine.) Some of this might just be that various ace identities overlap in ways that are difficult to explore intentionally (e.g. if you're demi, you're likely to consider yourself fully ace until you meet The One™), but I think some of it is probably a reaction to a common reaction to people who enter a sexual relationship after having identified as ace: "oh, that's normal/just for attention/you just haven't met the right person yet". This is obvious BS, and the most comprehensive way to head it off is to say "they can have been ace before and now they're not and that's valid".
Anyway, regardless of the reason, I never felt super tied to the way I identified, and my self-identity drifted from fully ace to demi as I had the opportunity to act on crushes in my late teenage years. These days I'm happily married to one of those crushes, and so I really don't think about it much. It's not clear to me if that was my identity changing or my romantic circumstances, and… I don't really care much? Thinking it can be fluid, for me, means I don't feel the need to worry about my identity. If I bumped into some rando on the street tomorrow and thought they were super fuckin' hot, that would be very surprising, and socially awkward, but not a crisis of identity.
Being a cis person married to another cis person of the opposite gender is obviously an extremely passing situation, so I don't think my identity has ever come up outside conversations with partners. It's discernible (for example, a surprising number of my straight male coworkers have been willing to openly express attraction to random women; unprofessionalism aside, that experience is just totally alien to me), but not overt.
In general? I think a lot of straight people (and probably at least a few gay people) would benefit from allowing for a bit more fluidity. You don't control who you're attracted to, and so if you find yourself attracted to someone unexpected, that ideally shouldn't trigger a crisis of identity. I realize that straight folk denying same-sex attraction is heavily tied up in internalized homophobia, so it's not as simple as I'm presenting it here, but I guess I just wish that brushing up against queer experiences would make people more inclined to broaden their horizons rather than doubling down.
-
Comment on [SOLVED] Hunting for a movie in ~movies
whbboyd Link ParentOkay, well, this triggered a missing movie (ish) for me. Way back in… '97, I guess… I was seeing a movie in theaters, and got subjected to at least two trailers which gave nine-year-old me...Okay, well, this triggered a missing movie (ish) for me. Way back in… '97, I guess… I was seeing a movie in theaters, and got subjected to at least two trailers which gave nine-year-old me nightmares for weeks. One was Volcano. The other was some sci-fi flick with rat creatures tunneling under various loose ground surfaces and far, far too much implied gore for a trailer put in front of a nine-year-old.
(I do not remember what the feature was. It obviously didn't leave as much of an impression.)
I didn't retain the name of either film, but a few decades later I got curious about them. Volcano was of course easy to look up, but the other one eluded me. But skimming your suggestions, it was definitely Screamers. (The trailer scene where a character grabs at a circular saw attached to a homicidal robot for some reason and it spins up to try to saw his fingers off was one I didn't remember until I rewatched it, at which point I very much remembered the gut clench and feeling of "WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING"—probably not phrased like that in my nine-year-old head—from the first watching.)
I have absolutely no interest whatsoever in watching either of these movies. But at least now I can satisfy my curiosity about which movie the second one was. I'll take some amusement from the fact that it was critically panned. =)
-
Comment on What is the oldest file you still have? in ~tech
whbboyd LinkI personally? Have high school classwork from 2004 backed up. My parents have backups of files dating back to the mid '90s (though I made those backups years ago, and they haven't been checked...I personally? Have high school classwork from 2004 backed up. My parents have backups of files dating back to the mid '90s (though I made those backups years ago, and they haven't been checked since, so their viability is an open question at the moment).
I keep this stuff around because backups of old files are negligible in terms of storage load, and it would be more effort to triage and clean them up than just to store them forever. Am I ever going to have a good reason to reread that essay about The Catcher in the Rye from 10th grade English? No, absolutely not (in fact, I'll definitely be happier if I don't), but I can't say that with confidence about everything in there, and there's too much of it for it to be worthwhile to sort through it all.
-
Comment on Why am I left-handed? in ~science
whbboyd Link ParentI started from the front but wrote on the back of each page.I started from the front but wrote on the back of each page.
-
Comment on What lesser-known sci-fi reads do you recommend? in ~books
whbboyd Link ParentI'll second Mote as one of my absolute favorite books of all time. One detail from it that I really like: The Mote in God's Eye spoilers When the human characters first arrive in the (alien) Motie...I'll second Mote as one of my absolute favorite books of all time.
One detail from it that I really like:
The Mote in God's Eye spoilers
When the human characters first arrive in the (alien) Motie system, they offhand mention spectrogram results in a list of various readings. There's an anomalously strong helium line. This isn't really remarked on, and at the time it's just sort of treated as one oddity among many others, but it turns out to be foreshadowing: the Moties have been using fusion power for an extremely long time, enough that the helium "exhaust" has "polluted" their system.
It's just a little thing, but I love the attention to detail it reveals.
-
Comment on Why your Amazon order confirmation emails have become so unhelpful in ~tech
whbboyd Link ParentIt is probably straightforward, but there are plenty of ancillaries you're not going to do with a curl script that they could pick up on (like, did your IP pull down the page that's supposed to...It is probably straightforward, but there are plenty of ancillaries you're not going to do with a
curlscript that they could pick up on (like, did your IP pull down the page that's supposed to make this request within a reasonably recent window) and filter on.(You could drive e.g. a Selenium instance, of course, but that's well outside the realm of "simple scripting". Also I think Amazon ships a fair amount of pre-rendered HTML? That's technically an API, but the "A" is a web browser and extracting structured data you care about may not be straightforward.)
The bigger problem is that those internal interfaces are likely to be frightfully unstable. It's not hard to do once, but if you're rewriting it weekly, it rapidly stops being worth the effort.
This case isn't clear-cut.
(In case it needs to be said, Russia is a failing state whose leadership is engaged in an unprovoked war of aggression in which they have committed and continue to commit numerous war crimes.)
The freezers in question are horrifically insecure. This is a fact about which there's absolutely no question; they exposed a management interface with trivial default credentials (IIRC based on the date), and were open to the Internet so literally anyone could credential-stuff until they broke in and then "manage" them.
We don't have any evidence (at least, not that I've seen) about who broke into these freezers. Russian state hackers are definitely on the differential! But again, the level of sophistication required here was negligible. "Bored British teenager" is also on the differential, and we have no shortage of proven cases of bored British teenagers engaging in exactly this sort of activity. Aside from questioning why in the absolute fuck every operator didn't yank their freezers off the open Internet the instant news of the last hack broke, we should reserve judgement until we have actual evidence to base it on. The appropriate reaction to Russian hackers attacking the food supply chain of other countries is very different from the appropriate reaction to unaffiliated hackers poking at a particularly juicy target.
If you are aware of any such evidence, please link it! I am, very seriously, completely open to either of those scenarios (or some other plausible one I didn't mention). But I'm not going to jump to conclusions without any, even circumstantial, evidence.
MH17 was a very different situation. Bored teenagers halfway across the globe cannot shoot down an airliner. The facts of the situation—a plane flying well above short-range SAM range—left exactly two even slightly plausibly responsible parties, and to the best of my knowledge nobody who wasn't obviously Russia-aligned ever disputed that the shootdown was done with Russian materiel.