Back when we thought marquee and blinkentext were the evils of the internet.

And you can use a keyfile separate from the database for even more security. If the database is backed up on Google Drive and the keyfile is saved on a USB or in a (non-Google) email somewhere for the rare times you add a new device, your passwords should be safe even from keyloggers or Google themselves.

Fittingly, it was only a happy landing for the ones who crashed it.

Hey now, Trump appointed Musk and DOGE to hollow out all the regulatory agencies that could have prevented the AI bubble from getting so big, so he at least deserves the credit for how bad things will become once it finally collapses.

He was very open in interviews during/after his first term about how he didn’t actually care about his campaign promises, but went with whatever got the best response from the crowds. IIRC he directly stated this about the whole “lock her up” movement he spearheaded. Somehow those confessions never made headlines.

I don’t know why the Democrats didn’t simply run ads showing all the times he crapped on his own movement and supporters. There’s easily enough content for an entire series of ads and it’d be way more effective than anything they actually ran (aside from Waltz pointing out how weird they are, which the party made him stop doing despite it being the single most effective part of the 2024 Democratic campaign).

Poor old Resolute suffering one last indignity under him.

Many of them are, but most are afraid of the cult. They’ll put their own future electability ahead of any amount of damage to the country or its institutions.

Sync for Reddit users: “First time?”

How To (res)Train Your Dragon

Did anyone ever bring it up, or were there just awkward silences whenever they introduced themselves?

2d art. I just meant not live action.

Sure, why not? Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, right? So we can just use the logic of magic any time we imagine a sufficiently advanced technology.

Brilliant.

Could be worse. My sister picked one that ended up being the username of a popular drawn porn artist over a decade later.

This aligns the Maxis praxis.

Every few years I think “this is true photorealism; we can’t go further”. And every few years they introduce some new technology that upheaves everything and requires a new generation of graphic engines and tech to properly show off.

Though maybe it’s just my eyesight getting worse, but I think the first Star Wars: Battlefront reboot was close enough to reality that they could have stopped there. That or the FOX Engine - the tech demos from before Konami killed it would show a real video side-by-side with a render and they were nearly indistinguishable. (Edit: might have been this one?)

Skin and facial animations are what’s really holding us back. Forget yet another lighting revolution, focus on the basics!

I hope the property gets sold off and it’s able to achieve its full potential without being laden down with telemetry and spyware.

Ah, Malazan, the series that filters out most of its potential audience with the driest and most incoherent first book I can remember reading.

For anyone who bounced off it, know that it gets so much better after that. It’s like asking Tolkien readers to start with the Silmarillion - I just skip book one entirely on rereads.

Though given how later on he tried to weave all his books together into a single shared universe, there’s probably a bunch of arguments out there about which order to read them in.

We already know a bit about Valve’s internal culture due to leaks and interviews, and it’s dysfunctional but in a completely different way from almost every other company.

Thanks to having a small headcount plus more money than God, Valve has zero (internal) pressure to release, and has embraced a culture of freedom where developers can work on whatever they want. This has led to tons of Valve projects getting 80% finished before being abandoned once they reach the final stages of development and are no longer fun to work on. Every release they’ve managed since Steam took off has been due to a few major players with the charisma to swing others to join their pet projects and stay for the long haul.

In a rarity for the field, I’m not aware of any toxicity issues in Valve’s workplace or a single complaint about Gabe himself. Those who’ve quit have nearly always said it’s because their passion project got canned due to it being so hard to get anything past the finish line. Other than that, employees seem to love working there (the massive paycheck probably helps too).

Gabe seems to be held in high regard, even though the internal structure he’s cultivated is such a mess. And I still prefer this clusterfuck of inefficiency to literally any other AAA developer.