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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 1st, 2023

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  • 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.








  • 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.





  • 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



  • 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.