Exactly. It’s like when people complained that rock and roll died again at the end of the 90’s. Sure, if you don’t seek out better music and just take what’s handed to you by MTV and the radio (or what Spotify shows on its Home screen these days), then music is terrible now. If you go digging, you can find all kinds of amazing stuff. Same goes for gaming. Good studios get too big or bought out and ruined by people who only care about money, but if you dig around you can find all kinds of good stuff.

The stuff that “lands in your lap” was actually shoved there by a multi-million dollar marketing budget. That almost certainly means the product itself is meant for mass consumption and may not be that compelling or interesting. If you’re willing to spend the time and effort to look around and play some bad games along the way, you’ll find the good ones.

Here’s the question that worries me the most: Across how many critical industries is this happening, and at what scale?

It feels to me like decision makers are pushing for the creation of mountains of code no one fully understands and potentially creating massive issues with systems we can’t afford to have go down. Are we creating decades’ worth of technical debt in a matter of months and eroding systems that our societies need to function because people just want to save money and be part of the fad? How bad is this going to get?

Completely true. Even with games where you’re talking about executable code, the best option seems to involve licensing servers and you can’t use them if you’re offline or they shut the servers down.

Honest question: Has anyone invented or proposed a DRM system that would actually meet the needs of both media producers and consumers? We know they can prevent that mass dissemination of media to protect producers/artists/etc., but those DRM methods always have some major drawbacks for consumers and ultimately make the product unusable after a certain period of time or have incredibly annoying restrictions. I can’t quite wrap my mind around how you could have both, but I also haven’t put a lot of time into thinking about it.

Not taking anything away from the fact that this is a real news story and the guy is a corrupt tool, but I’m getting tired of how much of the internet has become “Here’s a screenshot of a random claim being made by people you’ve never heard of on a website site that doesn’t deserve anyone’s attention, and also here’s someone telling you how to feel about it.”

Exactly. When it comes to food service, if all you did was make it and bring it to the counter, that’s all just rolled into the price of the meal. If you’re bringing it to my house or refilling my drinks and taking empty plates away while I sit and enjoy myself, then that’s beyond the meal itself and I’ll happily tip for that service.

If Trump had seen them chop off Obama’s head at Riot Fest like I did, he would be celebrating them and feeding them Arby’s at the White House.

It also depicts servers as doing some decadent super easy job when those people work their asses off. I dislike tipping culture, but I factor it into the cost of a night out and make sure someone gets paid fairly from my side if they’re doing a great job and making sure I have everything I need while I sit and enjoy my meal and conversation.

The whole system needs an overhaul, but until that happens, I’m on the side of the working people that make my night out easy and pleasant.

I went to one of those exactly once. If a doctor, vet, or dentist even gives me the slightest feeling that I’m being upsold rather than taken care of, I’m gone forever.

Jim Gaffigan likened making your bed to tying your shoes after you take them off. I do enjoy making my bed every now and then to keep things tidy, but that comparison is absolutely perfect.

True. I once asked myself why people have been so quick to fill the internet with garbage and ruin things for everyone just for a quick buck. The answer that immediately came to me was that they did it with the real world, so why not the virtual one?

Amazing. I came here to say that my Sims shenanigans are 100% my biggest worry. Dropping a penguin off a cliff is one thing, but removing the ladders from a pool or walling off whichever of my sim’s many wives is causing the most issues in a room full of creepy pictures with no door is probably a bigger concern. High school me was very nice to others in the real world, but a goddamned sociopath in the digital world.

Here’s a whole list of misconfigurations for specific binaries and the privileges they can accidentally provide. Useful for replacing the whale in your nightmares: https://gtfobins.org/

Because one of the biggest companies on the planet that has issues with account takeovers clearly has no internal red team working on this stuff.

Amazing. No notes.

I tried using LibreOffice Calc when I was working on my OSCP and some of the basic functionality was so broken it was almost laughable. I think my text was pasting in as an image sometimes? I forget the exact details but it was unusable for my purposes and I decided to try again in a few years.

Was happy to find out that ours wasn’t public facing and our network guys were fine with just shutting it off.

Fair point.

That was my gripe, too. Any one of them could have said, “I know it’s an awful regime, but I went to go give a lot of regular Saudis who live in an oppressive state a chance to laugh and have some real fun.” and I would have said, “You know, that’s fair.”, but for some reason not a single one of them did.

I just saw these replies now. You have a really good point about cops overseas. I like the UK model where most cops only have non-lethal weapons and they call in the cops with guns only when needed. I retract my point about cops in America needing guns. They don’t in all situations. Well said.

As for violence trumping everything, I just mean someone can walk up with a rifle and start demanding shit and if no one else in your society has a gun, well I guess that guy is in charge now. An egalitarian and peaceful society is always the way to go. Dumb shits with weapons can waltz in and fuck yo that whole thing if you don’t have a plan for that, though.