I love Sky and most people there genuinely are so nice. And now on Steam I can finally play it with a decent framerate (the Switch was a big step up from my phone already but that still struggled sometimes)

nah man

correct |-|0.-5€ battery 5+4|°|€

I have one that I like to imagine as secure as fully randomised passwords. It’s four words but, because I’m a cool pwnz0r, the second and last word are written in leetspeak. The phrase is super easy for me to remember and the leetspeak portion has become muscle memory by now. But I only use it for my password manager. For everything else it depends if there’s a good chance I’ll need to login via my phone (no pw manager there). If yes, I use one of my couple rather-safe passwords. If no, I’ll let KeePass2 go to town with a random one.

Oh and I’m subscribed to the haveibeenpwned leakletter, so i know as soon as possible when definitely to change my password.

Oh wow, I had no idea! That’s quite interesting Thank you for the comprehensive answer and link to the blog!

Weird, I thought I only saw a single DLC thing on the store page. Must’ve missed it

Very much agree that I’d rather see a game’s development conclude with a bang instead of just slow dev burnout.

What do you mean that MT’s situation seems more complex? I haven’t been following news on that front.

Oh? I specifically checked the Steam store page just to be sure. I guess I must have not scrolled far enough hah

Incredible! It’s incredible how, for so many content updates, they kept the game fresh and interesting. Andy only a single paid expansion and it’s even only 9€!

I wish Motion Twin all success and can’t wait to see what else they come up with. If I’m not mistaken, they’re currently working on a co-op top-down slasher with cute animals getting absolutely obliterated and everything is super fast, no? I believe that one is already on my wishlist!

My gf already sent me an instagram reel of just that and I wanted to just rip their new toy off their faces so bad.

This is the one, if you’re interested.

it’s hard to totally land that message when the game offers no alternative.

I’m of such split opinion when it comes to this argument against the game. I’ve read it so many times now and I kind of agree that there should have been some nuanced choice that changes the story in such a way where Walker tries to redeem himself? If I recall correctly, the only choice that actually made a difference for the end, was what you did in the very end scene with the mirror, right? And, of course, the choice not to play the game.

Then again, would it have been better if the player had had the option for a less shitty (not necessarily good or positive) path? Sometimes in life, especially during war, the only things that happen to you are shit and even what you do might be out of your control, because you only have one option that results in staying alive or because your mind is so focused on the task at hand that you can’t even consider other ways of tackling a problem. This might be a bit graphic, but I think Spec Ops puts you in the passenger seat with a maddened driver. You tell the driver your destination (finishing the game) and he just hits the pedal and, no matter how much you protest, he roadkills every person on the way there. The car doors are unlocked and he occasionally stops, giving you an opportunity to get out. When you finally arrive at your destination and complain that he killed all those people, he goes “If you had left the car, I would’ve stopped.” I don’t know, I feel like I have a point here, but I can’t put it into words.

Also, there are games like Animal Crossing that aren’t criticised with “Well, the message (of positivity and being rewarded for hard work and cooperation while being friendly) falls a bit flat, since the player doesn’t even have alternative options, aside from not playing the game.”

So, yeah, I’ll leave it at that now, since I think my comment is plateauing in its insightfullness.

Better ground transportation could be a big game changer. At the moment I could either fly to London for a couple hundred quid at a convenient time of day within 4-5 hours door-to-door, or I could spend a substantially higher amount on a train ride that takes three times as long and requires me to change trains at least twice in the middle of the night.

This is such an annoyance, not just from an environmental point of view. Even here in Germany, where we really do have a pretty great train network (mind you, the network is great, not necessarily the “adhering to time schedules”-part), it’s sometimes cheaper and faster to fly from city to city than to ride the literal Inter City Express trains, whose sole purpose it is to quickly connect far-away mid-to-large cities.

I never knew that having your own domain was that cheap! I’m pretty happy with Port87 at the moment, but I might use a custom domain in the future, if it’s really that affordable.

Oh that’s a cool and really helpful thing I didn’t know about Gmail! I think I’ll use the plus-trick for the few sites that won’t play ball with Port87! Then, on that front, Port87 only has the advantage that people who try to mail the bare address would receive an automated response, telling them to use one of the sub-adresses (you can choose which to show in this automated reply).

I can see how most people would be turned off by having yet another website have their email address (even if it’s honestly just for sending them the newsletter), but, at the risk of sounding like an advertising agent, there are solutions to that.

On the general topic: I feel for anyone who is trying to get into journalism and stuff like voice acting right now. Any article that reads a little weird and too stiff (same with voice-over in YouTube videos), I almost immediately scoff off (is that a word?) as being AI-generated and not worth my time. I wouldn’t be surprised if, doing this, I already skipped one or two pieces of media that were actually from humans but those humans were still novices in their field.

Ooh it sounds like it has great potential, once the bugs are ironed out!

That last half-sentence really isn’t in good faith. Just in the past couple years Valve made three “beloved products” that come to my mind immediately. Valve Index (the VR set), SteamDeck (the handheld PC) and the Steam Controller (although that one could be a bit older than “just in the past couple years”).

Thanks, your obvious question prompted me to take another look at that issue. My first thought was “Yes, but it’s not quite there because…actually, why?” Since I couldn’t come to a good answer anymore (because by now the AFD really seems just as bad as the NPD always was), I did some digging through the constitution-equivalent, the Grundgesetz.

1. Art. 20 specifies that Germany is a democratic and social state and clause 4 states that any German citizen has the right to resistance/opposition against anyone who seeks to abolish that order/construct, if other means do not work out (it’s not specified what kind of “resistance”, so armed resistance is also on the table, especially with the wording “if other means do not work out”)
2. Art. 21 states that political parties can be formed freely and that their inner structure must equate democratic base values. It also says that political parties which (in their stated goals or their behaviour) seek to disrupt or disable the free, democratic foundational order, or endanger the German Federal Republic, not only are illegal but also may not receive governmental funding.
3. Art. 26 states that actions which seek (and are able) to disrupt the peaceful coexistence of the countries (internationally speaking), especially the preparation of an offensive war, are illegal.

So, why is the AFD still not banned? I read through two or three news articles and it seems to boil down to a couple good arguments:

1. Currently the AFD has been given the classification of right-wing extremist, which could possibly threaten the democratic order. This allows the German intelligence agencies to insert so called Vertrauenspersonen (basically spies), whose function it is to gather as much evidence as possible and needed to support a ban of the AFD.
2. Evidence may only be gathered before, not during, a trial procedure. So unless you are absolutely confident that you have more than enough (or at the very least exactly enough) evidence, you shouldn’t initiate a ban-trial.
3. If a ban-trial fails, it could give the AFD additional support because “if the government, despite using literal spies, couldn’t find evidence to ban us, we can’t be that bad!”
4. Those ban-trials can take multiple years to go through. During that time, the AFD could gain the support of impressionable, but not yet swayed, people by claiming “Omg, we told you! They are trying to ban us for speaking the truth! Please, help us against the oppressors!” (if you’ve seen the scene in Revenge of the Sith, where Mace Windu wants to kill Palpatine then and there, because he’s too dangerous and Palpatine goes “See, Anakin? I told you, the Jedi are evil!”, its basically that scenario)

I would be so happy to be rid of the AFD, but unfortunately it seems to not be a quick process :c

Oh, People Make Games have not one but two vids on Valve? I never noticed that, thanks. I’ll watch them after work and possibly (because PMG really are good at the whole journalising stuff) change my stance on it.

Reading the entire article, it seems that they still want to tread very carefully with this whole AI ordeal. Valve isn’t just opening the floodgates, as the title would make it seem.

While yes, a healthy dose of skepticism is good to have, I think if I had to trust someone to navigate AI in gaming in the gamers’ favour, I would pick Valve. Or maybe I’m overestimating Gabe’s involvement in the happenings of the legal department’s section that is currently responsible for AI stuff.

EDIT: Shame on me, @princessnorah@lemmy.blahaj.zone , I think I had already seen the PMG video about the Steam Marketplace and its lootboxes and the gambling sites. But because I neither play these titles nor participate in the marketplace, I forgot that these serious issues exist. And the documentary concerning actually working at Valve rocked my stance back and forth. On one hand, I love the concept, but there are big problems here as well.

Once more, a genuine thank you for pointing me at these two video documentaries, even if I had already seen one of them.

Could you elaborate, please? I tried looking it up and I only found a post from 2010, asking if VBA for Access and Excel will stop being supported in 2012" and a couple articles that state how much MS apparently dislikes VBA (the lack of some feature-updates are shown as evidence for that).

I currently rely on a couple VBA scripts at my job that I wrote myself. I understand that they likely won’t just stop working tomorrow (too many companies use VBA in important documents), but if it’s already clear what will replace VBA sooner or later, I’d like to know so I can get a headstart, kind of.

Wow thanks, I recently installed OsmAnd~ and found it kind of clunky to have to actively look for, and remember to fill in, missing map data.

This gets me to walk new dog walk routes, too!